Jumping Off Swings

by Jo Knowles

  I don’t even get to say good-bye to her. Or tell her good luck. I want to hug her and tell her I’m here and that I’m so sorry for everything. That I’m sorry for not understanding why she was with those guys. And for not understanding why she decided to have the baby. For thinking she was crazy. Even stupid. I want to tell her I’m sorry for not covering up the word on her locker just because she asked me not to.

  I don’t get to tell her I think she’s amazing for surviving all this crap in the first place. Or that someone will love her.

  I don’t get to tell her that I love her.

  I don’t get to do anything but watch them take her away.

  I follow behind as they make their way quickly through those sliding doors, then another set of solid ones I’m not allowed to go through.

  I stand in the hallway until someone comes over and tells me I need to move my car. I go out and park where I’m supposed to, then head back to the hospital. My feet feel heavy as I walk. When I get inside, I go straight to the desk and they tell me to follow the pink lines on the wall that say maternity. The hallways all have these color-coded lines on them for people to follow. Every time I turn a corner, I read the word maternity on the pink line. I hope Ellie didn’t notice it. It seems too cheerful.

  I ask at the nurses’ station what’s happening, but the woman working behind the desk says she doesn’t know and I’ll have to wait. Her phone rings, and she turns her back to me.

  I realize I left my cell in the car, so I find a pay phone near the waiting room and call Caleb collect. He picks up on the first ring.

  “Hello?” he says after accepting the charges.

  “We’re at the hospital,” I say.

  “Is everything OK?”

  “I don’t know.” My hands are shaking. “I think so.”

  “Are — are you OK?” His voice cracks.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m on my way. I’ll be right there.”

  The phone clicks, but I don’t hang up. I let the buzz hum in my ear. Some people walk by me. I turn into the phone box so I can cry. Just hold the phone and cry with that steady buzz in my ear. I wonder how many people have cried into this same mouthpiece. How many have called to say “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!”? How many have called to say “It’s over”?

  How many have stood here and listened to the phone buzz, not moving. Just standing still and wondering how to move forward. How to move at all.

  A man taps me on the shoulder and motions for the phone. He looks like a grandfather. He has tears in his eyes, but he’s got a huge grin on his face.

  I wipe my own face and step aside.

  I find a chair with empty ones on either side and sit down. There are other people in the room. I try not to look at them. Instead I stare at the dusty-blue rug and wait for Caleb.

  I feel him before I see him. His hand gently touches my shoulder. I was thinking about Ellie. Dreaming almost. About when we were little and we put on my sister’s old dresses and had tea parties with our stuffed animals. Ellie taught me to hold my pinkie out when I took a sip, and we talked with British accents about the weather and how tasty our cookies were.

  Caleb touches my cheek and turns my face toward him.

  “You all right?”

  I nod, but at the sound of his voice I start to cry again.

  He sits next to me so I can lean into him. He wraps his warm arms around me and holds tight.

  “Have you seen my mom yet? Do you know what’s happening?”

  I shake my head against his chest, remembering how Ellie looked, being swallowed up by Liz and her parents. I wish I could have rescued her.

  “OK,” he says. “We’ll just wait. OK.”

  I nod and wipe my eyes with my wrist. I glance at the other people in here with us. The grandfather who took the phone from me is with a woman who must be his wife. She’s holding a balloon in the shape of a teddy bear. A younger couple is playing cards and laughing. Some guy is on a cell phone, smiling and saying, “Yeah! Yeah! Can you believe it?”

  I hide my face in Caleb’s chest. I don’t want those happy people to see me. See us. There should be a separate place for people like us. The ones who aren’t waiting for happy news. Who aren’t waiting to welcome the newest member into our family. Who aren’t waiting to find out if it’s a boy or girl, or rushing out to smoke a cigar or whatever people do when someone they love has a baby they plan to take home with them. They really should have a special room for people like us.

  THEY ARE ALL AROUND ME. Taking my clothes off. Wrapping me in a strange-smelling hospital gown with clowns on it. Helping me onto a bed. Pressing against my stomach. Telling me to put my feet in these stirrups and to try to relax.

  It will hurt less if I just relax.

  How can I relax when I feel like I’m going to die?

  My parents hover near me, waiting to be told to leave.

  “Who is Liz?” The doctor asks as he goes over my chart and my birth plan.

  Liz steps near me and takes my hand. She and my mother exchange a look, and I think I see shame on my mother’s face.

  My mother steps closer to me. For the first time since I can remember, she puts her hand on my face. “Ellie,” she says.

  “We’ll take good care of her,” the doctor says, gently ushering my parents out of the room.

  Another contraction starts, and I gasp at the sharpness.

  “Try to breathe,” the nurse says as she holds my knees apart. I try to squeeze them together. But she’s too strong.

  “You have to let me do this, hon,” she says. “You have to let the doctor see.”

  The doctor shines a light between my legs. He’s not one of the doctors I visited before. I don’t know him.

  “Please don’t!” I cry. “Please stop!”

  But his fingers reach inside to feel. The pain is so sharp, I lose my breath.

  “No! Nooooooo!”

  Liz’s hands hold my head. One of her tears drips onto my face and mixes with mine.

  “Liz! Make him stop! Please!”

  But he keeps pressing and feeling and it hurts so much. Oh, God, it hurts so much.

  I squeeze my legs together again.

  “Don’t,” he says sternly. “I know this is uncomfortable, but I have to feel.”

  “No! Get away from me! I hate you! Liz! Help me!”

  He finally moves back and nods at the nurse. The nurse looks at Liz. Liz nods back. There’s worry in their eyes.

  “The baby is in a breech position,” the doctor says to me. “Do you know what that means?”

  I’ve seen illustrations in one of my childbirth books. I nod.

  “You’ll have to have a C-section.”

  I nod again.

  He gives the nurse more orders I don’t understand.

  Liz kisses my forehead and holds her tear-soaked cheek against mine. When she moves away, she winks at me, despite that sad face.

  The doctor steps closer, and I squeeze my legs together. “I’m going to go give your parents an update, and then we’ll get started as soon as the room is ready and the nurses have you prepped, OK?”

  I nod again and he leaves.

  In the operating room, I close my eyes against the hurt I’ve been numbed to. Against the nurses standing beside me, trying to smile reassuringly. Against their looks of pity. Against the cloth in front of me so I can’t see my belly and what they are about to do. I close my eyes.

  I am not here.

  I’m going away.

  I won’t hear their voices. I will not hear them cut me open. I will not feel them reaching for my baby inside me. I will just close my eyes.

  Until I hear that sound.

  Crying.

  My baby is crying.

  I have to look.

  When I open my eyes, I see his little red body, covered with my blood. Little red fists flailing. Little red feet kicking. Little red face. Little eyes squinched tightly closed. Little open mouth in the shape of an O. Scr
eeching.

  My hand reaches out, trembling. “Please,” I say.

  The nurse turns to me with glassy eyes. “Don’t worry, hon. We’ll bring him back so you can hold him.”

  But my body hurts with emptiness.

  Later, when it’s over, after they stitch me back up and bring me to my room, the nurse helps me cradle him in my arms. He stops crying and nestles his face in my neck. I breathe in his sweet smell and fill my lungs with him. My heart.

  When he falls asleep, I adjust him so I can memorize his pink and wrinkled face.

  “Open your eyes,” I whisper.

  But he doesn’t understand.

  Please open your eyes, I say inside my head. Just once. So you see who I am. So you can see I don’t really want to give you away.

  “Are you ready?” the nurse asks.

  I study the scrunched face again, then lift him to my own face and press my lips to his soft little forehead. My tears dampen his warm cheek. My heart breaks with the weight of him about to leave my chest.

  It’s not too late to say I’ve changed my mind. To keep him after all. And yet I know I won’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I love you.”

  I close my eyes when the nurse takes him out of my arms. I can’t open them again. I can’t open them again and see him not here.

  When I fall asleep, I dream that I’m chasing after him. But the nurse is carrying him away.

  “I changed my mind!” I yell. But she keeps getting farther away.

  “I changed my mind! Come back!” But she turns a corner. When I get there and look for her, she’s gone.

  “I changed my mind,” I say to the emptiness. “I changed my mind.”

  When I wake up, everything hurts. My mother and father are standing over me. They look pale and old.

  I don’t know what to say to their sad, worried faces. Their disappointed faces.

  “Can we get you anything, honey?” my dad asks.

  I know he means a glass of water or some more drugs. But I want to tell him to go get my baby back. To go get back the one person who would truly love me. To go get back everything that I lost.

  I shake my head.

  My mother puts her hand on my forehead the way she did when I was little to check if I had a fever. Her hand is cold on me. I close my eyes until she takes it off.

  It’s too late for her to touch me now. It’s too late for her to be my mother.

  She steps back a little.

  “The nurses said you can come home soon,” my father says. “Maybe the day after tomorrow. They said things look good.” Then his shoulders begin to shake, and he starts to cry. He turns away and walks over to the window.

  My mother doesn’t go to him. She stares across my bed, over me, at his back.

  I close my eyes and wait for her to leave. But instead she sinks down onto the chair next to my bed. I listen to her breathe and then start to cry. I keep my eyes shut tightly to lock my own tears inside. But they leak out anyway.

  When her hand touches mine, I let it stay there. She rests it lightly on top of mine, then more firmly. Slowly, our hands start to warm each other.

  Finally, I turn my palm over and open it to hers. Then I carefully open my eyes and look into her sad face.

  The corners of her mouth turn up just slightly, even though she’s still crying. This time, she doesn’t turn away. She keeps hold of my hand and doesn’t let go.

  THERE’S A ROW OF BABIES in clear plastic bed things lined up to face the window. They look strange, all wrapped up like mummies so you can’t see their arms or legs, and those little caps so all you can see is their squishy faces.

  I stand here staring at them, thinking eventually one of them will open their eyes. And I’ll know. Somehow I’ll know that’s the one.

  The nurses give me looks from the other side of the glass. They must think I’m a big brother, or an uncle or something. They smile at me, as if to say, How sweet, a boy his age looking at babies.

  I turn away from them.

  A man and woman come out of a room holding hands. The woman’s wearing a bathrobe and still looks like she’s pregnant. The man helps her hobble over to the window next to me and they peer in.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” the woman asks.

  The man puts his arm around her and pulls her to him. “Just like her mom.”

  I watch their reflections in the glass. The woman’s hair is all over the place like she just woke up. The man needs a shave. I try to figure out which baby they’re looking at, but they all look the same.

  “I never thought —” the man starts to say, but he gets all choked up and starts to cry.

  The woman laughs. “You’d be so emotional?”

  He laughs, too. “Something like that.”

  They stare quietly after that. Being the perfect parents. Not noticing me.

  “Let’s have the nurse bring her back to the room,” the wife says.

  “You need your rest, honey,” the husband answers.

  She rests her head on his shoulder. “I know. But it’s so hard to leave her.”

  I study the babies and notice the small labels at the foot of their little beds that list their names. I try to read the names on the tags, but they’re hard to make out. Baby Finnegan. Baby Hirokane. Baby Jacobson. I don’t see Ellie’s last name. Maybe they wouldn’t even use it. The bed on the end is turned in a way so you can’t see the name from the window. Maybe they don’t want anyone to see. Maybe this could be the one. I knew my chances of seeing the baby were pretty slim. I figured the adoptive parents would take the baby right away and disappear to their happy anonymous home. But maybe I had it wrong. I could have everything wrong.

  My heart pounds in my chest as I walk around the man and woman to get closer. The baby is sound asleep. Somehow it managed to get a hand out of the tight-fitting blanket, and its tiny fist hangs out. Even though the baby’s asleep, that tight little fist makes it look angry.

  Without realizing, I’ve made fists with my own hands. I look down at them, then back at the baby’s.

  A nurse walks over to the baby and checks something from a file attached to the end of the plastic bed. She tucks the hand back into the blanket, gently pats the baby’s head, then moves on to the next one.

  But her touch wakes the baby up and the little fist escapes again. I tap gently on the glass. The nurse looks up at me, as if I was trying to get her attention. Not you, I want to say. But I pull my hand away from the glass. The baby doesn’t see me.

  “It’ll be a while before he learns to wave,” the man says to me, like I’m an idiot. “He can’t even see beyond a few inches now.”

  I don’t say anything back. I just look at the baby again.

  I guess the guy’s right. It must be a boy, since the little cap on his head is blue.

  “C’mon, honey. You should be resting.” The man guides the woman away.

  I stand alone, staring at the baby’s crinkled face, his tiny, angry fist. He closes his eyes again, and his hand seems to relax a little. I flatten my own hand against the glass.

  Good-bye, baby. Good luck.

  I turn and slowly walk down the long hallway, past the waiting room filled with excited relatives, past the admissions desk, past the lobby where I sat for hours before I got the courage to try and see, and into the hot afternoon sun.

  I walk all the way home. All three miles. I walk and think about that tiny, bundled-up baby I’ll never know. I think about that face as long as I can so I won’t forget it.

  When I reach the driveway, I hear music coming from the house. It’s my dad practicing. He thinks I’m still at Caleb’s. I walk up the driveway slowly. Listening. He’s not so much singing but humming. The sound is vaguely familiar. Like a lullaby.

  I stand in the doorway and keep listening. Rosie sits in front of him while he plays. He messes up a few times, but he keeps going. When he finishes, Rosie notices me standing in the doorway and comes over to lick my hand.

  My dad ju
mps when he sees me and looks embarrassed. He puts the guitar next to him on the couch and nods at me.

  “I used to play that for you when you were little. Remember? It was the only way your mom and I could get you to go to sleep.”

  “Yeah,” I lie. I wish I could remember. I wish I could remember him singing to me. Loving me. I wonder how often he sits here alone, playing these old lullabies to the dog.

  My dad sighs, and Rosie jogs back over to him and puts her head in his lap.

  I stay in the doorway. After walking so long in the bright sunlight, I feel like I’m stepping into a dark cave.

  “You OK, bud?”

  I nod. The sun shines hot on my back.

  Only a few seconds go by, but it seems like longer.

  My dad and Rosie both wait, watching me.

  But I can’t go in there.

  “You sure you’re all right, son?” my dad asks. He stands up. Rosie wags her tail.

  The sun beats down on my shoulders as I take a step back.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “I just — need to take a walk.”

  My dad takes a step toward me. “You want company?”

  My throat tightens. I swallow to keep myself together.

  “Nah,” I say, only it sort of sounds like a croak. “You should stay and keep playing. It sounds — nice.”

  When our eyes meet, I feel my heart start to crack.

  “Really,” I say.

  I push the door closed and nod at him through the screen. “Thanks for the offer, though,” I manage.

  I start down the driveway, not sure where to go.

  The truth is, I feel like I could walk forever. Like I could walk down to the end of the driveway and keep going.

  Too bad there’s nowhere for me to end up but right back here.

  I walk anyway. Just walk and walk. Past all the things I know. All these ugly parts of town. When I get near my dad’s garage, I don’t want to look at it, but I have to. At the grease-stained pavement and the cracked window patched with duct tape so it crosses out the black-and-orange cardboard OPEN sign hanging inside, making it read O EN. At the long row of cars and trucks waiting to be fixed and tuned and detailed and set free. At the Coke machine flickering in the sun with half its choices showing EMPTY.