Long Blue Line: Based on a True Story

by E. McNew

  As confident as ever, he took charge and changed the green mess like he knew exactly what he was doing. Great. How am I supposed to be mad at him now? Our newborn baby would depend completely on us to give her a safe environment to live in, free of alcohol and fighting. However, Josh had done nothing to prove his intentions were to grow up and stop drinking. On the other hand, if Josh and I did not stay together, I would be forced to do most of this teen parenting stuff on my own. I would have to live at my mother’s house until I turned eighteen, and even though things at home were great for the time being, I knew they could quickly change back to catfights and bickering to no end. After a thirty-second battle with my own mind, I decided to stick it out to see if he was capable of growing up. After all, he had just made a small amount of progress.

  The clock was nearing noon, and I was ready to spend time at home with my new baby. I was excited when my mother returned from the nurse’s station with the news that I could go home. Josh and my mom helped pack everything up, and Chloe was safely tucked into her car seat and ready to go on her first car ride. I could not believe how tiny she looked in her seat. She was so delicate, and every movement with her was slowly and cautiously carried out. On the way home, my mom stopped by our local grocery store to get dinner and a prescription for me. I thought it would be fun to take my new baby into the store with me and show her off to the envious women who were past their childbearing years.

  I thought young mothers were so much better than older mothers. At least we were pretty and still youthful with enough energy to play with our kids. This parenting thing is going to work out just fine, I was thinking to myself as my mom and I were checking out at the store. The Clerk, who had interacted with our family frequently from several years of our local shopping, was looking at me strangely. She looked confused. Finally, after purposely stepping away from the counter to get a good look at my new prize, she said “Oh my! How old is the baby? I was hoping it was one of those fake plastic babies the kids get from school! I’m sad to see that it’s not a school assignment!” This ticked me off, and I felt the blood rushing to my face in anger. I gave her no reply. What would I say anyway? “I’m sorry I had a baby,” or “Yep, my baby is real!” Luckily, my mother did the talking, and I got out of explaining my situation. I was sad after this encounter because I knew that the negative remark would not be the last one I heard.

  We pulled into the driveway of our home eager to carry our new family member in and get her acquainted. As I began to climb the stairs, I noticed that there were scattered garments lying around. I knew that this was an indicator that Josh had made another horrible mess. He was notorious for this. I walked into my bedroom and was once again immediately pissed. It was one thing for him to get wasted the night that our daughter was born, but it was a whole different playing field to mess up my personal space. I was livid. I screamed at him from the top of the staircase, and told him that he needed to watch the baby so I could clean up his disgusting mess. He obediently complied.

  Still recovering from the strenuous process of childbirth, I was on my hands and knees wiping the dirt off the bathroom floor. I gathered all of the trash he had left lying around and was finally able to vacuum. When I was finished getting my bedroom back to normal, I was tortured with painful cramping, followed by gushing blood running down my legs and ruining my new pajama pants that my mom had gotten me just for my recovery. I wanted to have a meltdown, but I was too tired to battle with my OCD any longer. Josh brought Chloe back up to me as I crawled into bed, exhausted. “I wanted to come back and clean up before you came home, I just forgot,” he said with worry in his voice. “Whatever, Josh. Just have some respect in the future. I just had a baby. You never consider important things like that.” I was happy when Josh finally quit babbling apologies and left me alone. By this point, I had learned to turn off his uncontrollable rambling.

  Josh had a true case of ADHD, and his most obvious symptom was speaking nonsense for hours on end. Sometimes he just didn’t make sense. I was the one in control, and as long as Josh did as I asked, I truly did not care if he made sense. I did, however, frequently get comments from our peers regarding his conversation style. I knew where people were coming from, but I chose to disregard their input. Josh had good intentions; he was a hard worker and a nice person. As long as he didn’t embarrass me in front of important people, I could deal with it. Josh wasn’t crazy, just often confused.

  The first night home from the hospital with my baby wasn’t the easiest. Chloe took four days to learn how to nurse properly, and this meant that I was waking up every few hours when she became frustrated and hungry. After finally getting the hang of it, on both of our ends, caring for my baby quickly became more of a pleasure than work. Chloe was a very calm and content baby. She hardly cried, and when she did, it was always for a feeding or diaper change. Our routine became natural and perfect - that is, as long as Josh was behaving. He had a few nights of trouble, but for the most part, he was on track.

  Chapter 15

  My mom and I were counting the days to my sixteenth birthday as she was driving me home from my last day of summer school. I wanted to graduate early, so I had hauled Chloe along and raced through my required courses. As the summer nights passed, our home felt smaller and smaller with our new addition taking up more room. Josh also had a new addition of his own. His best friend, James, was devastated about having to leave Tahoe when his parents moved out-of-state for a new job. I hadn’t really seen much of James during my pregnancy. Once Chloe was born, I was more mobile and motivated to get out of the house. The boys became best friends all over again, and James pretty much became a part of the family. We had a spare room in our home, and both Josh and I thought it would be fun to have James around permanently. We offered him the room with my mother’s hesitant permission. He gladly accepted and moved in.

  Not long after James moved in, I could tell that my mom was getting tired of putting up with a house full of kids. She wanted and needed her own space back. She asked us what our long-term plans were. Josh and I looked at each other and gave her a shrug. She brought up the marriage topic again. I thought it sounded fun, and Josh was on board as well. Legally, because of my age, I could not move out of my mother’s house to live with Josh unless I married him. With the marriage, I would be emancipated. That meant freedom! Plus, I was really beginning to feel like a loser with a baby and living under my mother’s roof. I knew that I wouldn’t have any sort of respect from the community if I remained just another statistic. Josh and I began casually talking about getting married, and the more we spoke of it, the more excited we became. We decided to get married as soon as good ole’ Uncle Sam approved. That would be the day after I turned sixteen!

  We realized that we only had six weeks until I would legally be permitted to marry in the state of Nevada, which was just a short five miles away. After looking through a calendar, we decided on the official date. The day after my birthday landed on a Saturday. It was going to be just perfect. First, we had to start planning the details. Unlike my baby shower, I was eager to come up with a guest list and send out the invitations. It was the perfect summer to plan a wedding. It would also be the perfect opportunity to prove to my peers and family members that I was actually kicking ass at the whole teen mom thing.

  The first person I wanted to invite and be my bridesmaid was Megan. When I was pregnant, she ended up moving away to stay with her mom for the remainder of the school year. It was about four hours away, and I had gotten used to her coming and going. She loved living with her dad, Neil, but just needed some time away from him. For the most part, he was a good guy with good intentions. Because he was six-foot-four and clearly had too much testosterone pumping through his veins, he was easily angered, and I mean fast. There was a summer when Megan and I were considerably bored out of our minds most days. Neil didn’t know what to do with us, but I think the fact that I had pretty much moved in for a few months to stay occupied had made it easier for him to keep his
daughter occupied. There were a few days that summer when Neil was unusually angry and getting upset over any little thing that went wrong. One day, Megan’s long lost great-aunt stopped by for a surprise visit. This put Neil into a state of rage, but he was forced to contain it because he was obligated to be nice to his aunt. This woman really must have had ESP. She came at the perfect time, just as Megan was considering moving back to her mother’s home. When Neil had to go to work unexpectedly, his aunt pulled a white tackle-style box out of her bag. She began to present us with small pills to use as a remedy for Neil’s violent outbursts. She reassured both of us that the pills would dissolve immediately so Neil would not know.

  We spent the remainder of our summer drugging Megan’s dad with holistic remedies by putting it into homemade Kool-Aid. We loved studying the effects of his response so we’d know if he needed his dosage upped. It gave us both a sick pleasure to know that we had more control than he knew. He was so easy to trick. This, however, was by far one of the less sneaky antics we had gotten into in our early teens.

  I could easily write an entire novel covering our rebellious shenanigans - especially the ones we put over on Neil. The selling point of this novel would most definitely be the incident where we had a naked man hiding in the attic crawl space of my sister’s apartment. Neil came to check on us while we were babysitting, and this, of course, was a good judgment call on his end. When we heard him coming up the staircase to the front door, Megan’s victim for the night, Marcus, bolted out of the spare bedroom so fast that it took a second for his nudity to register in my brain. He clambered into my sister’s closet, knocking things off the shelves, and pulled himself up into the crawl space. I wondered about what the itchy insulation was doing to his naked body. Trying to keep from laughing was excruciating.

  Megan still ended up living with her mother. I called to ask her for her address so I could get her invitation mailed. She excitedly announced “Guess what? I am coming back for good in two weeks!” Relieved, I responded “Good! Now you can be in my wedding!

  Josh has a friend that we both think you should meet. He started renting the extra bedroom a few weeks ago. He decided not move out of state with his family.” “Oh!” she squealed with delight followed by “Is he cute?”

  “I think he is pretty cute. I really think you will like him. Our boyfriends will be best friends, and we are best friends so it is just perfect!” I plotted. We ended the conversation in an excited fashion. I was so thrilled to start living a life with friends again. It wouldn’t be the same as it had once been, but maybe that was a good thing.

  Once again, I put together a guest list for my wedding, drawing off of the baby shower guest list, but with much more confidence this time. I already knew who my bridesmaids would be; I just had to get enough men who didn’t appear to be twelve years old to balance it out. This was going to be an exciting summer.

  As promised, a few weeks later Megan was on her way home. I forced her and James to talk on the phone for a few minutes every time I talked to her just to find out if they would even like each other. I figured that they must. Opposites usually attract, and their personalities were like night and day. James was pretty calm and laid back. He was a little bit on the passive-aggressive side and only got mad at me one time when my bath tub water leaked through the upstairs pipes and onto his bed. He acted like I did it on purpose! It wasn’t my fault that Chloe and I loved to splash! Megan was not quiet or easy-going at all. She was loud, exciting, obnoxious, snotty, and a complete blast to be around. We could say or do anything, literally anything, in front of each other and laugh about it. The most fun we had was usually laughing over some sort of torturous prank we were inflicting on someone. Megan and I had fun together every day until an unspeakable tragedy occurred a few years later.

  Chapter 16

  Four other girls were to be in my wedding. The first was Merri, (obviously), then Kate, Holly, and Jessica who had been best friends with us since we were eight. Holly had almost been our stepsister at one point. Our parents dated for about a year and our young families were like the freaking Brady Bunch. We had a blast going to Disneyland in a humungous suburban and torturing other drivers because we were in love with the Hanson Brothers and we were blasting bop down the freeway. That really makes me cringe. The Hanson Brothers – ugh!

  Holly was not only a friend growing up, but she was also like a mediator for twins and a loving sister trying to keep the peace. She made it hard for me to hold on to grudges. She always laughed at me or said some hilarious nonsense statement. After inviting Holly to be a part of my wedding, she secretly and cautiously whispered over the phone to me that she was pregnant. “Shut up! NO WAY! Holy shit!” I was throwing the poor girl shocking reactions instead of advice. I knew she wouldn’t mind though. The only problem was that the dress I wanted her to wear for my ceremony was surely going to reveal her pregnancy. I felt her pain; her father was coming to the wedding. We agreed that she should wait to tell him out of fear that he wouldn’t allow her to be part of the wedding.

  Once the guest list was settled and we had found just enough men to stand in, I was relieved that I was still important to other people. My mother and I spent several days, without rest, planning all of the details. It was really fun doing this with her. I knew that I could always trust that she had the best taste and class when it came to decisions for me. She knew who her little girl was, and she chose the most beautiful dress for me. However, the first time I tried it on was discouraging. My boobs were implant-huge from nursing Chloe who was only about six weeks old at the time. My mid-section had some serious flab I needed to lose, and my stretch marks were horrendous. We also went cake tasting which was a blast. I had a strange craving for lemon that entire summer. I chose lemon icing for the cake and obsessed over lemonade on a daily basis.

  We searched the town for a location that would be a happy medium - not too fancy but not dumpy either. One of our favorite restaurants at the time was a place connected to the tiny local airport. We would swing by there for lunch often, and the Cajun grit cakes were fantastic.

  After picking up our engraved champagne glasses (to be filled with bubbly cider, of course), we stopped for our usual gumbo and grit-cakes and it clicked. This would be the reception location! It was big and bright inside, with huge windows facing the airport runway and the beautiful meadow beyond it. The owner offered to reserve the space and cater a buffet for an extremely reasonable price. On top of my mother’s savvy and class and resourceful talent, Pastor Gene offered to help out once again. I believe he contributed $2000 and that was a big help. I still don’t know how my mother did it, but she truly planned the most elegant and beautiful wedding a sixteen-year-old could ever want. With all the details taken care of, it was time for the countdown.

  Almost forgetting that I wanted to invite Derrick and Donnie (Josh’s co-workers), we stopped by their house to deliver an invitation and show off our little Chloe. Hesitantly walking into a typical bachelor pad with barking dogs, Derrick greeted me with extra positive energy. I set Chloe on a stool in her carrier so I could sit down while the guys talked about nonsense. Derrick looked my way and asked me how I was recovering. “I am doing pretty good but still waiting for my fat to go away - other than that, I’m good!” I was surprised that he was taking an interest in something that wasn’t leading up to a flirtatious remark. Who was I kidding… he couldn’t help himself. “Did you get that weird line down your stomach from bein’ pregnant?” he curiously and oddly inquired. “Yeah, I got it a little bit, but I think it will fade,” I said. “Well, lemme see!” he politely demanded. “Uh…okay...” I responded, as I hesitantly lifted my shirt to just above my belly button. “Ah nah, that ain’t shit. You’re all good,” he enthusiastically said. I was definitely having a flashback of that horrible mistake I made while we had been fishing last summer. I thought it was strange of him to be interested in the progress of my returning figure. I grabbed my precious cargo and said goodbye. It was time to get
home and call Megan and have her hurry over. She had just gotten into town, and I couldn’t wait to see her.

  James was home being lazy on his bed and babysitting Merri’s snake, which we kept far away from baby Chloe at all times. I thought it was so creepy how it strangled its dinner and swallowed it whole - only to crap out bones that seemed like it would hurt! When Megan’s dad dropped her off for the night, I ran to the front door excited and screaming. She looked pretty, as usual, but was still her snotty and sarcastic self. “It’s time to meet James!” I sang, dragging her down the hallway and practically launching her into his room.

  Immediately the awkwardness kicked in and both of their faces instantly turned bright red. They eased their way over to each other for a shy hug. It was only a matter of minutes before Megan was bossing James around, and he clearly didn’t mind. Megan came over to the couch as I was nursing Chloe to sleep. Goggle-eyed and puppy faced, she had that all-too-familiar mischievous twinkle in her eye. Oh crap, I thought, Megan has an idea. This is bad. This is very, very bad.

  Chapter 17

  “What, Megan?” I asked her, with a smirk on my face. “This is so much fun!” she loudly whispered. “You freaking love James, don’t you?” I accused. “Sort of!” she giggled. I knew that this was not the only thing on her mind. I didn’t want to pry too deeply into it with the boys in the next room. Plus, I knew that we would have plenty to talk about later.