Jumping Off Swings

by Jo Knowles

  “Wait a minute. How long have you known about this?”

  “Relax. Not that long. Corinne told me and swore me to secrecy.”

  But he’s still looking out that damn window and fidgeting with his key chain. He’s not telling me everything.

  “What the hell, Cay? Corinne? Why would you agree to anything that bitch says? I can’t believe you’re into her. You kept this from me for her?”

  “She’s not a bitch! What is it with you and Dave? You don’t even know her! God, Josh. I didn’t have to tell you all this, ya know.”

  Some fresh blood oozes out from under the stuff that’s drying.

  God, I’m an asshole. Everything’s my fault. Everything.

  “Sorry,” I say. I reach in the backseat for his jacket and hand it to him. “I’m a fuckup.”

  “Forget it.”

  “How’s your face?”

  He touches his lip and flinches. But he smiles real fast and says, “It was worth it — that bastard.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “Right.” I should have known that. “How’d that prick find out, anyway?”

  He groans, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out what looks like a letter.

  “Ellie had it at school. She was really upset, so Corinne took her to the girls’ room to talk. I guess Kayla and Jessie overheard and blabbed to Kyle.”

  “What is it?”

  “Read it,” Caleb says, handing the paper to me.

  Oh, shit. What now?

  I open the folds slowly, trying not to get any blood on it. My hands are shaking so hard, I have to press the paper against my thighs to read the blurry note.

  “Your mom knows?”

  Caleb nods and looks up at the house as if she’s watching us from inside. “She knows about Ellie. I don’t know if she knows you’re the . . . you know.”

  He doesn’t say the word, but it’s there between us anyway.

  Father.

  You’re the father.

  I lean back into the seat and try to breathe. Oh, God, please just let this be some stupid nightmare. Please let me wake up now. But I have this very real note in my hand, and when I look down again at those blurry words, I know they’re probably like that because of Ellie’s tears.

  I crush the paper into a ball with my good hand and hold it in my fist.

  “I’m outta here.”

  Caleb sits up a little. “Want a ride?”

  “No, thanks. Sorry about the armrest. I’ll take care of it.”

  I shut the door and leave Caleb sitting in the car. It was cold in the car, but it’s twice as cold outside. I put on my jacket and throw my backpack over my shoulder. The wind rips at my face and into my ears as I walk slowly down the driveway and toward home. When I turn the corner near the park, I look out over the playground where Caleb and Dave and I first met. Where I first saw Ellie that day after it happened.

  The swings and slide and other playground stuff are covered with snow. I stand there like an idiot, wondering how this all happened. Cars go by me, splashing slush at the backs of my legs. My right hand is throbbing inside my pocket. I pull my other hand out and open my fist. The note is squeezed into a tiny ball now. I hurl it over the playground fence. It lands in the snow near the merry-go-round and disappears. I’m numb but stinging all over at the same time, and all I hear is my own voice in my head. What have I done? What have I done?

  “WHY DID YOU DO IT?”

  My mom’s in her studio with her back to me, dabbing her brush to make leaves on a fallen tree, only the color is red instead of green.

  She stops dabbing but doesn’t turn around.

  “What did I do?” she asks calmly.

  I force myself not to grab her brush and throw it across the room. “The note? To Ellie?” My lip and jaw throb when I talk.

  She sets her brush down and turns toward me on her swivel stool. She jumps when she sees me.

  “What happened?” She starts toward me.

  “Nothing. Don’t get up. We have to talk.”

  “You’re bleeding!” she says, reaching for my face.

  I lean back. “I’m fine! Forget it! Just tell me about the note!”

  “What note?”

  “The one you gave to Ellie? The one you shouldn’t have given to her? God, Mom. Do you have to interfere with everything? You act like Ellie and Corinne are your kids. They’re not! They’re my friends!”

  The concern for me drains from her face. “If they’re your friends, you should be trying to help them! Ellie obviously needs to talk to someone —”

  “How did you know?”

  “I can put two and two together. And I overheard her say something to Corinne that gave me a pretty big clue. I’m sorry. I should have talked to you first.”

  I sink into the chair she uses for models in the once in a hundred years she uses one. When I was little, I used to curl up in this chair and fall asleep to the rhythmic sound of her brushstrokes.

  She rolls toward me on her stool. When she sees my face up close, she flinches.

  “You need to get some ice on that. Who did it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Stop changing the subject. You should have seen her, Mom. She looked . . . devastated. Holding that letter in her hand and crying? With everyone staring at her and thinking she was nuts?”

  “I don’t understand. Why did she have the note at school? I thought she’d read it at home.”

  “Well, you thought wrong. She read it in homeroom this morning. Corinne thinks I told you. She won’t even talk to me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I was only trying to help.”

  “Well, you didn’t.”

  She sags in her own stool.

  “Is Josh the father?”

  I look into her watery green eyes and nod.

  “Everything’s so messed up now,” I say. “But maybe it’s what Ellie needed. Maybe now she’ll do something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Get an abortion?”

  She bites her bottom lip and nods. “Has she told her parents?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about Josh?”

  “He just found out.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  I look out the tiny window in the studio, wondering how long it took him to walk home. “He’s pretty messed up.”

  “Poor kids,” she says. She leans closer to me again. “Speaking of messed up, let’s take care of your face.”

  But when we get up, we hear a car outside.

  “It’s them,” I say quietly. “What should we do?”

  “Let them in?”

  I follow her through the door that leads back to the house and into the front hall. My mom opens the door before Ellie and Corinne reach the steps. The wind brushes their hair across their faces as they squint up toward the porch light. My mom steps back to let them in.

  Ellie and Corinne glance at my face, but they don’t talk to me. I take their coats and scarves. They follow my mom into the living room while I hang up their stuff. When I join them, they’re sitting at their usual places: Ellie and my mom on the couch, Corinne in the chair nearby. I take my spot on the floor. When I bend down, my face throbs.

  “Who wants to go first?” my mom asks quietly.

  Corinne and Ellie look at their hands, the paintings, the coffee table. Pretty much everywhere but at me, my mom, or each other. I feel like I should leave, but I don’t know how.

  “I know this is hard,” my mom finally says. “But I think we should get things out in the open so I can help you.” She turns to Ellie. “I’m sorry about my note. I meant for you to read it at home. I should have written that on the envelope.”

  Ellie nods but stays quiet.

  “And Caleb didn’t tell me,” my mom adds. “I just had a feeling.”

  Corinne looks at me guiltily.

  “How far along are you?”
my mom asks Ellie.

  Ellie grips the edge of the couch. My mom reaches over and lays her hand over Ellie’s. “You can say it out loud. Maybe that’s what you need to do.”

  I wish I could sneak out of the room, but I’m trapped.

  Ellie stares at my mom’s hand on hers like it’s a foreign object.

  “I’m sorry, hon. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

  Ellie pulls her hand away. She crosses her arms at her chest and shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want it to be over. I — I want you to take me. Will you take me?”

  Her mouth starts moving around in that frowny way little kids’ do when they’re trying not to cry.

  My mom touches Ellie’s shoulder. “Of course. Of course I will. But, honey. You have to tell your parents first.”

  Ellie nods, then hides her face in her hands. Her shoulders start to shake. A small sound comes out from behind her hands, all muffled and hidden.

  My mom leans into Ellie in slow motion. She wraps her arms around her and rocks her, slowly, like she’s done to me a hundred times. “It’s OK. You let it out. It’s OK,” she says into Ellie’s ear.

  Corinne’s crying now, too. The quiet kind of crying, when tears drip down your cheeks without anyone noticing, like my mom does when she watches sad movies.

  My mom holds Ellie as if she’s her own daughter. Then Corinne gets up and sits on the other side of Ellie. The three of them huddle on the couch in one big hug. I sink lower on the floor, as if I shouldn’t even be witnessing this.

  At this moment, I would give anything to disappear.

  “IT’S NOT TRUE,” my mother says. She’s holding a dish towel in her hands. Her knuckles are white, she’s clutching it so tightly.

  I’m sitting at the kitchen table. The tabletop smells like Murphy Oil Soap.

  “It is,” I say.

  “Shut up!”

  She’s never said that to me before. I don’t think she meant to say the words out loud. She covers her mouth with her hand as if she just said the F word.

  I look down at the grain in the wood. I clasp and unclasp my hands in my lap.

  “I’ll get an abortion,” I say. The word and its meaning echo in my brain. Abortion. Abort. Terminate. End.

  My mother turns away from me and looks out the window above the sink at our snowy backyard. Our playhouse is out there. The one she and my dad gave to Luke and me for Christmas when I was in first grade and Luke was in second. Luke wanted my dad to help him build a tree house in the big oak tree at the back of the yard, but my mother said it would be unsightly. Instead she made my father order a kit from Little Victorians. My father and Luke spent a weekend assembling it. They spread all the different-size boards out on the lawn, and I helped make piles of the various screws and bolts and things they needed. As soon as the house was put together, my mom painted it the same colors as our house. Beige with white trim.

  Luke said it looked like a dollhouse and refused to play in it, even though he’d spent all that time with my dad building the thing. But I spent hours alone in that house. Only in my mind I wasn’t alone because I had an imaginary dog and cat, Ginger and Cocoa, to keep me company. I had tea parties with them and told them all my secret worries and dreams.

  Luke and I always wanted real pets. Something warm that you could cuddle or hold on your lap. But pets are too messy. They shed. They smell. One Christmas my mother actually got us each a goldfish as a compromise. Luke and I put them in the same bowl so they wouldn’t be lonely, and we took turns having them in our rooms. They swam in circles in the water, looking at me with big, pleading eyes. Bored eyes. All I could do was touch the cold glass with my finger and wait for my orange fish to swim past, brushing the side of the clear cage with its tail.

  My mother sniffs. She puts her hands on the edge of the counter in front of the sink. I think she’s holding herself up.

  I breathe in the clean smells slowly, filling my lungs with pine scent. People always say to take a deep breath before you do something brave. It’s supposed to calm your heart. But mine is beating so fast it hurts.

  “Mom,” I say, “I’m going to take care of this. No one has to know.”

  Her shoulders are shaking.

  “How could this happen, Ellie?” she asks without turning around.

  I don’t know how to answer.

  I breathe again. “You don’t have to take me to the clinic. Just give me permission. Corinne will take me.”

  She reaches her hand to her face. I’m sure she’s wiping away tears.

  “How?” she says again, almost in a whisper. “You’ve always been a good girl.”

  I hear their words in my head: You’re so beautiful.

  She tips her head downward toward the sink. I bet she wishes there were some dishes to do, but she always cleans the dishes as soon as she clears the table.

  “Mom?” But she still won’t turn around. “I’m sorry.”

  I wait for her to come to me and hold me and tell me I will be OK. That she’s sorry she didn’t give me the girl talk she should have. That she’s sorry she never warned me to be careful. To understand the difference between words and love. To know when to stop. To say no.

  I wait for her to scream at me. To shake me and tell me what a fool I am. I wait for her to do something. Anything. Please.

  But she stays at the sink. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t touch me.

  Not even my mother can love me.

  IT’S BUSY WHEN WE GO BACK TO THE CLINIC for the final visit. The first time, I waited for almost two hours while Ellie got poked and prodded and tested and educated about her choices. Liz went to the exam room with her, so I had to sit by myself, watching people come in and out for reasons I could almost guess by the looks on their faces.

  Today, Ellie sits between Liz and me. We wait quietly, seemingly fascinated by the purses we hold in our laps. When a nurse comes for Ellie, I stand up and give her a hug. I barely feel her hands touch my back. I want to tell her that a few months from now, this whole thing will be just a bad memory. I want to tell her she’s doing the right thing. But I know she won’t forget. And she wouldn’t believe me. So I don’t say anything at all.

  I try not to look at the other women and girls waiting their turns. They know I’m here as a friend. The lucky one. Only one of the girls is here with a boyfriend. They sit across from me, holding hands. The boyfriend rubs his thumb back and forth across the top of the girl’s hand in a calm rhythm. She rests her head on his shoulder. He stares straight ahead.

  I have to get out of here.

  It’s cold outside but sunny. I lean against the brick building and close my eyes, letting the sun warm my face. On any other day, this would feel good. But today, all I can think about is Ellie. Ellie on some exam table with a hot light shining between her legs. I bet she won’t say anything, even if it hurts. She’ll just bite her lip and let them do whatever it is they do. My sister never told me what it was like. I wanted to ask, but then I heard her and her boyfriend crying together in her room when she came home afterward and I knew I never would.

  It’s strange how such a hard thing brought Ava and Zack closer together. I wish Ellie had someone like him. I wish she wasn’t so alone.

  I rub my eyes with the sleeve of my sweater, but it’s scratchy and doesn’t really wipe the tears away. I decide I should go back inside. I should be there when Ellie comes out. But as I make my way back to the door, Ellie and Liz are already coming out. Liz holds Ellie’s hand as they step into the bright sun.

  I walk up to them, but I don’t know what to say, so I just walk behind them, back to the car.

  Neither of them says a word all the way home. From the backseat, I watch the two of them, waiting for someone to say something. But Liz concentrates on the road and Ellie watches out the window. When Liz gets to my house, I feel awkward getting out of the car. I want to tell Ellie she’ll be OK. I want to tell her she’s my best friend. That she did the
right thing. But I don’t. I get out of the car and walk to our front door.

  It isn’t until Liz pulls out of our driveway that it hits me why it was over so fast.

  Ellie didn’t go through with it.

  And if she didn’t go through with it today, she probably never will.

  I don’t even think when I press the numbers. I just want to hear his voice.

  “Hello?”

  I can’t say anything.

  “Hello?” he says again.

  “C-Caleb,” I manage.

  “Corinne? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. My voice is shaky. “I’m sorry I got mad at you.”

  “Corinne, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  I picture Ellie and Liz coming out of the clinic, their awkward silence in the car. “She didn’t do it,” I say.

  He doesn’t answer.

  I bite my lips together with my teeth. Warm tears slide down my cheeks and neck.

  “But what does it mean?” he finally asks.

  “I — I think she’s going to have the baby.”

  When I get to school on Monday, I find the word on her locker. I knew Kayla and Jessie were going to get back at me for kicking the bathroom door and making them spill their concoction and stain their clothes. I just never thought they’d take it out on Ellie.

  But there it is, staring at me on her locker door just as I am about to slip a note inside telling her that I will stand by her no matter what. That she is my best friend.

  I search the hall to see if Ellie is anywhere in sight. I spot her way at the end. She hasn’t seen the door yet.

  I put the note in my pocket and use my hands to cover the big, ugly letters scratched into the metal.

  S L U T

  People walk by staring at me like I’m nuts, standing here with my hands on a locker door. But I don’t care. I’ll stand here all day if I have to. I swear I will.

  Ellie can’t see this. Not now. Especially not now.

  She just can’t.

  I’M NOT THE SAME ME ANYMORE. I walk down the hallway toward my locker feeling — different.

  I sat with Liz and Corinne in that row of chairs with all those other women and girls looking at me. Wondering what I was there for. If I was in as much trouble as they were.