Beyond Dreams

by Marilyn Reynolds

  After school I go to In-N-Out Burger with Eric and Tyler and Manuel. We sit in Eric’s car for a long time, eating and talking. When I get home I’m so tired I stretch out on the couch and fall asleep. But it’s a good sleep, not a wishing-for-fog sleep.

  After Mom gets home I borrow the car again and go to the cemetery. Hector is already there. I tell him about my weird dream, and the really weird thing with the baton in my pocket.

  “You probably put it there and forgot,” he says, but I know better.

  “I dream about Gabe sometimes, too. He’s always laughing in my dreams. I think that’s a good sign, don’t you? Like he doesn’t hold anything against me?”

  “Gabe never held anything against anyone,” I say. “He’d always say how everyone makes mistakes so why be all uptight about anything so natural as some stupid mistake?”

  Hector and I are quiet for a while, thinking our own thoughts.

  “I guess we don’t have to hold anything against us either,” he says. “Like I don’t need to feel guilty about the ice cream, and you don’t need to feel guilty about the beer.”

  “I’ll always feel guilty about the beer,” I say. “I’ll always wonder ‘what if?’ But I think he was right, in my dream. He sprinted through life and finished early, and I’ve got to work on endurance. I can’t help thinking ‘what if?’ but I can’t give up before I’m even halfway into the race, either.”

  We talk a while longer, then walk back across the cemetery to our cars. I drive to the comer of Fourth and Sycamore and pull over to the curb. I sit there until my breathing slows. I can’t be running away from things, avoiding things.

  So now I can drive past this comer. I can hear “Oh, shit,” without freaking out. I can be doing something useful in track. It doesn’t bring my friend back and it doesn’t take away the what ifs, but it’s helping to ease me back into the race. Gabe would want it. I want it.

  For Ethan and Me

  ***

  I can’t believe this! I look at the pink form, as if looking at it again will change the words. There it is, my name, Christina Calderon, and a check in the box that says PREGNANCY POSITIVE. I sit on the bench outside the Family Planning Clinic, waiting for the 4:30 bus, crying. God! How could I have let this happen? Since I had my baby, Ethan, almost two years ago, I’ve been practically living the life of a nun. Then I let myself get carried away. Once! Just one time! And I’m pregnant. What an idiot.

  I feel sick, not only from being pregnant, but from being stupid. I hope I don’t throw up. I keep having to swallow, and I’m all sweaty. By the time I get off the bus and walk two blocks to my job at The Gap, the wave of nausea has passed. Usually I only throw up in the mornings, unless I catch a whiff of cigarette smoke or the smell of greasy food, then watch out. It’s a good thing I don’t work at Burger King.

  “Hey, you green-eyed Latin beauty,” Alex says as I shove my bookbag under the counter. “Let’s grab some bills from the cash drawer, hop a plane to Jamaica, and live the rest of our lives on love.”

  “I’m not in a joking mood, Alex,” I say.

  “Who’s joking?”

  I shine him on. He’s cute, I guess, if you like the surfer look— blond hair, blue eyes, kind of an athletic build. I think he’s about nineteen. There’s always some girl hanging around, pretending to be looking at clothes but really trying to get Alex to notice her, which is usually not too difficult. He’s always flirting with me. But he’s not my type. Besides, men—they mean trouble to me.

  Tiffany, who is a friend of mine from school and also is the assistant manager, comes over to talk to us. She’s kind of chubby, in a cute sort of way. She’s got short black hair and big dark eyes. She and I are in Peer Counseling together. That’s my favorite class because it deals with real life. My other favorite school thing is being a teacher’s aide in the hearing-impaired classes. I want to work with deaf kids when I finish college.

  “So far, things have been slow this afternoon,” Tiffany says. “Justin will be back in the stockroom unless things get busy later. Christy, you stay at the cash register and Alex, would you straighten out the sale tables and check to be sure the jeans and T-shirts are in order on the shelves?”

  “No problem,” Alex says.

  I wish it would get so busy I wouldn’t have time to think, but hardly anyone’s in the store tonight. Time drags. I reach deep into my pocket and feel the pregnancy form. I want to take it out and look at it again, but that’s dumb. I know what it says.

  Suddenly I jump about two feet. “Don’t do that!” I scream at Alex. He’s got this habit of sneaking up behind people and poking them in the ribs. I hate it.

  “Gotcha,” he laughs.

  “Grow up,” I say.

  “What’s eating you?” he says. “You’re a bigger grouch than usual tonight.”

  I feel tears filling my eyes and I look away. I hate being called a grouch. Some of my so-called friends at school started calling me that last year, because I never went out with them anymore. I tried to explain that it’s not that I’m a grouch, it’s just that I’ve got a lot, I mean a lot, of responsibility with my baby. Some people don’t understand that, though. I know I didn’t, until after Ethan was born.

  When Alex takes his break, Tiffany comes over to where I’m straightening a rack of shirts.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Fine,” I say, looking away.

  “You looked like you were ready to cry when Alex was teasing you. He doesn’t mean anything by it, you know,” she says.

  “It’s not just Alex,” I say.

  “But something’s wrong,” Tiffany says. “I’m your friend, remember?”

  Sometimes I can’t stand it when people are nice to me. I go along, keeping everything inside, cold and hard, and then some­body shows they care, and all my locked-up tears start pouring out. Right now, I can’t help it. I start sobbing.

  “Hey,” Tiffany says, moving closer to me. “What is it?”

  Then this dad and his sullen-looking son come to the counter to pay for some jeans. Tiffany rings them up while I walk over to a deserted part of the store. How embarrassing for a customer to see me crying!

  When Tiffany finishes the sale, I hear her call to Alex and tell him to take over for a while. Then she comes over to where I’m standing, takes me by the arm, and walks with me back to the employees’ lounge.

  “It might help to talk, and you know I won’t blab about whatever it is that’s bothering you,” she says, handing me a tissue.

  I nod. I know from Peer Counseling she doesn’t go around gossiping about people’s problems—she respects confidential­ity, like we’re all supposed to, but not everyone does.

  We sit at the big round table that’s got doughnut crumbs and hardened refried beans on it because some people never clean up after themselves. I’m crying my guts out. I wish I could cry out the little seed that’s started growing inside of me.

  Tiffany sits with me, not saying anything. Finally, I take the pregnancy form from my pocket and slide it across the table to her. She reads it once, then again.

  “You’re pregnant?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “And you’re not happy?”

  “Do I seem happy to you?” I gasp out between sobs. Then, I don’t know why, I guess I’m a psycho or something, but I start laughing. Tiffany looks at me kind of funny, for an instant, then she starts laughing, too. Pretty soon we’re both laughing so hard we can hardly catch our breath. Then I get serious again.

  “God, Tiff, I can’t have another baby. I can barely take care of Ethan.”

  She slides the pregnancy positive paper back to me.

  “What does your boyfriend say?” she asks.

  “He’s not even my boyfriend,” I tell her.

  She looks at me, wide-eyed, but says nothing.

  “Do you think I’m a slut?” I whisper, afraid of her answer.

  “No,” she says.

  “I’ve always thought that about girls w
ho get pregnant from someone who’s not even their boyfriend.”

  “Me, too,” Tiffany says. “But I know you’re a good person. I would never think you’re a slut.”

  My tears start again. I can’t control them.

  “We can use some help out here!” Justin yells from the hallway.

  “I’ll go,” Tiffany says, touching my shoulder as she walks past me.

  I go into the restroom, splash cold water on my face, and try to look better. I take a bunch of deep breaths, then I go back out front. People are lined up at the cash register. For the next hour, until closing time, we are very busy and I don’t have time to dwell on my problems.

  After work, Tiffany and I sit on the bench in front of the store, waiting for our rides.

  “So what happened?” she asks. “All that safe sex stuff . . .”

  I know what she means. My senior project in Peer Counseling includes giving safe sex talks to ninth grade health classes. Tiffany is working on the same project. We go to classrooms with a big “Safer Sex” bag filled with condoms, foam, a dia­phragm, a cervical cap, you name it. If it cuts the chances of pregnancy or AIDS, it’s in our bag.

  “You weren’t raped, were you?” she asks in a whisper.

  “No. It’s my own fault. That’s what’s so stupid. The first time I got pregnant, I sort of let it happen. My boyfriend then, Jeff, didn’t seem to love me the way he had in the beginning.”

  “He’s the guy who was on the debate team when we were sophomores, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I remember seeing him and that black guy, Dashan, at an assembly. I thought they were both so cool.”

  “Yeah. I thought so, too. I was really dependent on Jeff. I didn’t get along with my dad, who’s the bossy type, and I couldn’t stand the way my mom let him push her around. My sister, Maria—you know Maria?”

  “Hangs out with the Eighth Street Cholas?”

  “Yeah, that’s my sister all right. She’s one of the biggest brats ever invented—so I didn’t have what you’d call a satisfying, fun, family life. When Jeff and I got together he gave me a lot I really needed. He was fun, and loving, especially at first . . . Anyway, when he started seeming less interested in me I got really scared. I kept looking for signs that would reassure me that we’d always be together. I know it sounds totally bizarre, but if I put catsup on my french fries and then he put catsup on his french fries, that meant we would stay together. Sometimes, if he didn’t put catsup on his fries, I would dump some on, like that would make us stay together. What it did was annoy him in the extreme.”

  Tiffany laughs.

  “What can I say? I’ve already admitted how stupid I was. But talk about stupid! I started thinking that if I happened to get pregnant, that would really mean we’d always be together—a baby from both of us would be like a sign from God, or fate, or something. So I stopped taking the pill, and I didn’t tell Jeff.”

  “You stopped taking the pill, and he thought you were still on it?” Tiffany says, looking at me like she can’t believe what I’m saying. She and I sort of knew each other back then, but we didn’t get to be real friends until I started working at The Gap.

  “Here’s what I thought in my dumb little fifteen-year-old brain,” I tell her. “If I didn’t get pregnant, then maybe it wasn’t meant to be, but if I did, we would stay together, for certain. That’s what I thought. I thought I’d get away from my bossy dad, and that Jeff and his mom would take care of me and the baby at their house. What a joke!”

  “I have a friend from junior high school who got pregnant to get away from her house. It only made things worse,” Tiffany says.

  “Me, too. Jeff was so angry that I’d let myself get pregnant that any chance I had of keeping him was lost. Now I know you can’t trick people into loving you, but back then I was lonely and desperate . . . But God, I can’t believe I’ve let myself get pregnant now!”

  “Maybe there’s a mistake,” Tiffany says.

  I shake my head. “I know what it feels like to be pregnant, and I’m definitely pregnant.”

  Tiffany’s mom pulls up in a bright red sports car, a Miata I think, and honks the horn.

  “See you tomorrow,” Tiffany says as she gets in the car and waves back to me.

  After she’s gone I feel lonely, and kind of embarrassed about telling her all that stuff.

  ***

  It’s 9:30 by the time my dad comes to get me. He has Ethan in the car with him.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” Ethan yells, leaning as far out of the car seat as he can, reaching his arms toward me.

  “Hey, lover baby,” I say, leaning in and nuzzling his soft, sweet-smelling neck. We both giggle, and for an instant I forget everything else. I slide into the back seat, beside him, so I can play with him on the way home.

  “He wouldn’t go to sleep,” my dad announces in a tone that means it’s my fault.

  I ruffle Ethan’s hair. He grabs my hand with his own dirty, sticky hand.

  “Did he get a bath yet?” I ask.

  “No. Your mother went to bed early. She was tired,” Dad says, as if that’s my fault, too.

  I look at the back of his head, feeling anger well up, knowing it’s best to keep my mouth shut. But couldn’t he even give his own grandson a bath? He’s probably been watching some mindless ball game all evening long, barely paying attention to Ethan. My mom says he gets tired easy because he’s older, but she’s always making excuses for him. I think his day’s easier than mine.

  This morning I was up at six—got ready for school, then got Ethan up and dressed, fed him breakfast, packed his Lion King bookbag, and caught the school van with him. I got him settled at the Infant Center, and then caught the van to Hamilton High. Besides my regular classes I had to do a Safer Sex presentation to a ninth grade health class, which was fine, but it took up my whole lunch period. Then I had to keep my appointment at the clinic, rush to work, and here I am now, with at least another hour of stuff with Ethan before I can get him settled down. It will be ten o’clock at the earliest before I can even start my homework. Then up at six tomorrow morning for more of the same.

  As far as I can see, all my dad has to do is get dressed in the morning, go to work, come home and flop down in his chair, and start bossing people around and expecting to be waited on. But then I think about how Darlene’s dad kicked her out of the house when she was pregnant, and how he won’t even see her baby. I guess I shouldn’t complain.

  Sometimes I wonder if things will ever be any easier for me. Like, will I ever get out from under my parents and into a life of my own? Most of my friends are all excited about going away to college. My grades are good enough to get me into lots of different places, probably even with some financial help, but I can’t figure out how to live in a dormitory with Ethan. And since Jeff and I have joint custody, I can’t very well move away with Ethan.

  Anyway, my life is a lot more complicated than Tiffany’s, or Alex’s, or anyone else I know who’s my age, except for the other girls in the Teen Moms program. Some of them are a lot worse off than I am. At least I know what I want to do, like for a career, and even if Jeff and I aren’t together anymore, we share respon­sibility for Ethan pretty well. Some of my friends who have babies don’t get any help from anyone.

  I walk in the door carrying Ethan and my bookbag, which weighs about a ton. Maria, who is fourteen years old, always seems mad at something. She’s watching TV, and she doesn’t even look up when I say hi to her. I walk straight past her, down the hall and into the bathroom where I start Ethan’s bath. He loves it, and even after ten minutes of splashing and playing he still doesn’t want to get out. Only when I drain the water out will he lift his arms to me and let me take him out of the tub. I wrap him in a towel and carry him into the bedroom that he and I share. I dry all of his cracks and crevices and rub baby powder on his sweet, brown body.

  He’s got Jeff’s features—a thin nose, dimple in his chin, kind of a high forehead, but he’s got my co
loring—medium dark skin and dark hair. Except for the color of his eyes and his thin nose, he looks Mexican, like my family. But his last name is Browning. I hope he doesn’t develop an identity crisis later on.

  I read stories I hope will make him want to go to sleep, like Good Night Moon, and Bedtime Bear, and Sleepytime Mouse. Then he turns over on his side and sticks his thumb in his mouth. I rub his back for a while and then, finally, I hear the deeper breathing that lets me know he’s asleep.

  I take my books to the kitchen table and start on tomorrow’s assignments. My mind wanders as I’m reading a short story for English—it’s about some shoe salesman and right now I couldn’t care less. What am I going to do? I keep thinking—thinking of all the responsibilities I have right now, thinking I can’t do it. No way can I manage two babies. What am I going to do? God, I wish I could go back and erase that one senseless night with Benny.

  I think about Karla, who has a boy a little older than Ethan and a baby about three months old. She’s dropped out of school, she’s always depressed, and she yells at her kids all the time. She wears the same clothes practically every day, and she already looks like she’s about forty years old. I don’t want that.

  I can’t have another baby! Not yet. There’s only one thing to do—the thing I never thought I would do. But would it be murder? I was raised to believe it’s murder to end a pregnancy. I mean, I am Catholic. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to believe?

  But now, when it’s just a cluster of cells? Is that murder? If I don’t have the baby, will I bum in hell? But if I do have another baby, my life will be totally messed up. Which means Ethan’s life will be messed up, too.

  My dad would go more nuts this time than he did the first time. He thinks I’m all pure again, living a life of celibacy. Which I was except for that one unchangeable night. And my mom—she’s always dragging around as it is. As much as she loves Ethan, I know he wears her out. Another baby in this house? Forget it.