Angel's Choice

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  I have taken the day off from school to be here. The breast-feeding clinic is only held on weekdays, and Dr. Caldwell thinks it’s a good idea for me to go.

  “You can learn a lot from books,” she tells me, “but sometimes books aren’t half as good as talking to real people.”

  So I sit with the other women as June Kaye, the midwife from Dr. Caldwell’s practice, regales us with the superiority of breast over bottle.

  I remember when Karin and I first started getting breasts, not long before my first period when I was eleven. I remember how confused and excited we both were. It was like our bodies, in changing like this, were doing things beyond our control. Plus, it was weird having breasts so young. It was kind of embarrassing at school, as though we’d somehow done something wrong to make our bodies turn out like this, so soon. But it also felt totally cool, and powerful in a weird way, like we were doing something unique, even if every other woman in the history of the world had already done the same thing before us. We were the first people to ever have breasts. Certainly, we were the first people to ever buy bras.

  “That white one with the pink bow in the middle sure is nice, Mrs. Hansen,” Karin said, “but don’t you think this light purple one is more … Angel?”

  My mother wound up buying two each for Karin and me—we each got one of the ones my mom thought we should have, and we each got one of the ones Karin thought would be better—before we headed off to the food court for pizza and diet sodas. Back then my mom always treated Karin like a second daughter, and Karin could always talk my mom into just about anything.

  “Breast is best,” I begin to think now, listening to June Kaye talk, is a catchphrase I could soon grow to hate.

  I look around at the other women at the breastfeeding clinic and wonder what their stories are. They are probably all married, or most are, probably have their nurseries all set up, have families where every single member of those families are excited about what they are going through.

  I listen as June Kaye talks about something called “proper latch,” as she explains pumping, as she talks about the benefits of breast over bottle.

  But I can’t help it: The idea of a baby attaching itself to my breast like that just totally skeeves me out. It is one thing to do that sort of thing with a guy; it is quite another to have a baby attach itself to you like some kind of tiny alien with strange eating habits.

  But as I listen to June Kaye talk, as I hear her talk about the antibodies breast milk gives a baby, about how breast-fed babies have on average eight more IQ points than bottle-fed babies, I think that I want my baby to be as healthy as I can help her be, I want her to have those extra IQ points.

  So I will try this thing. If it doesn’t work out—and June Kaye does say that sometimes, for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out—I won’t beat myself up about it.

  It’s simply that, now that I know about those antibodies and those extra IQ points, I can’t choose otherwise.

  Week of April 8/Week 32

  Back on my birthday my grandmother said she wanted to have a little talk with me sometime. And now Grandmother Hansen, a woman who despite sometimes seeming a little bit out of it has been known to beat the tables at both Atlantic City and Vegas, calls in her marker.

  “When you were little, “she says, “you used to come here all the time. So now that you’re so big”—in more ways than one, I think—”you can’t come visit your grandmother anymore?”

  She’s right, of course. When I was little I was over her place all the time. Even though my mother works from home, having me underfoot wasn’t always the easiest thing when she had lots of client appointments at the house, so up until around the time I turned nine, my grandmother would pick me up after ballet class, taking me back to her house to do my homework and have a snack.

  “I know you girls all want to be skinny these days,” she’d say. “But have a cookie.”

  “If I have too many cookies,” I’d say, “I won’t look very good in my costumes.”

  “Are you planning on being a professional ballerina?” she’d say.

  “No,” I’d say, and shake my head.

  “So?” she’d say. “Then have the cookie and dance. What’s the matter? You never learned to keep two opposing views in your mind at the same time?”

  She was right about the cookies and dancing, and she’s right now. I owe her a visit.

  “Do you have any cookies?” I ask her over the phone.

  “Chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin?” she asks.

  I really want the former, but …

  “Oatmeal raisin,” I say, thinking of the baby.

  “Well, I have both,” she says, “so you don’t need to make up your mind right now.”

  Her kitchen, when I get there, is so familiar: the pale yellow walls, the wooden table and chairs, the cookie jar in the middle of the table, the scent of fresh-baked cookies in the air.

  “Sit,” she says. “Milk, right?” she says, waving the carton in the air.

  I nod.

  She sets out plates, takes the lid off the cookie jar.

  “Chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin?” she asks again.

  “Oatmeal raisin,” I say.

  “But you like chocolate chip better.”

  “But oatmeal raisin’s probably better for the baby. You know—oatmeal? Raisins? As opposed to chips, chocolate?”

  She laughs, puts one of each on my plate.

  “You’re just like your mother was when she had you,” she says. “So many things people worry about these days. One chocolate chip cookie won’t hurt the baby.”

  As I bite into the cookie, the taste of butter and chocolate warm in my mouth, I think maybe she’s right.

  “Your mother used to worry about everything when she was pregnant with you,” Grandmother Hansen says, breaking her own cookie in half.

  “What were they like back then?” I ask.

  “Your parents?”

  I nod.

  “Well, they were young, of course, older than you are now, but still young. And so sure of themselves! You couldn’t tell them anything. Or at least I couldn’t. ‘Helena’s read all the baby books,’your father would say. ‘People do things differently these days from how you and Dad did them.’ “

  I wince for her sake. Ouch.

  “Exactly.” She laughs. “I mean, it was annoying. I’d raised three kids myself—your grandfather was hardly ever home back then, he worked so hard—and they didn’t think I knew anything.”

  “You must have been pissed,” I say, not thinking.

  “Pissed?” She laughs again. “Oh, maybe. But I could see how determined your parents were, how sure they were that they were making all the right decisions. And they both wanted you, so very much.”

  It’s funny. I suppose my whole life I have taken for granted my parents’ having me, but I have never really thought before of them wanting me, much less “very much.”

  “And your parents were right in a certain sense,” Grandmother Hansen says. “Things were different for them.”

  “How so?”

  “They decided they wanted to have a baby, so they got pregnant and had a baby.”

  “How was that different?”

  Grandmother Hansen looks as though she is debating something with herself, deciding whether to say the next thing or not.

  “This is something I never told anyone else,” she says. “Your grandfather doesn’t know. And, of course, I never told your father.”

  I don’t say anything, worried that if I speak she’ll change her mind.

  “I didn’t really want your father,” she says.

  This comes as a total shock. There has never been anything but good feelings between my father and his mother. Oh, sure, they argue and get on each other’s nerves sometimes, but don’t all parents and kids do that?

  “Then why did you have him?” I ask.

  “Are you kidding?” she says. “I didn’t have a choice. We didn’t have options back then
, not really. This was before Roe v. Wade. And I certainly wasn’t going to go to one of those back-alley doctors. My own mother used to tell the story about how, one day, she came home early from school to find her mother in the kitchen with some man who had a coat hanger.”

  This is an awful lot to digest.

  “My dad doesn’t know any of this?” I say.

  “No,” she says, “and don’t you tell him either.”

  I promise.

  “It’s funny,” she says, “but even though I didn’t want your dad when I first found out I was pregnant, it’s impossible for me now to imagine my life without him in it.

  This is her story, not mine, and yet a part of me feels like I understand something of what she is talking about.

  “So, tell me, Angel,” she says, “because I’ve never gotten a straight answer from your parents on this, why are you having this baby? “

  “In the beginning,” I say, “I didn’t want the baby at all, but I just couldn’t go through with what it would take to not have the baby. I couldn’t stop thinking about how all I’d ever done was react to things that were happening to me and that having an abortion was just one more reaction. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. I didn’t want to have any more regrets, so I made a choice. At first, though, I assumed I’d probably just put it up for adoption, but something changed along the way. Somewhere the baby stopped being an it to me, an idea , and now I do want to keep my baby, very much so.”

  “That,” she says, “is probably as good a reason as any.”

  Week of April 15/Week 33

  Since Danny gave me this journal, I have been scared in a way to open it. I love looking at the leather and gold-tipped pages, love thinking of him picking this out for me. But I suppose I have been scared to put pen to paper, thinking whatever I might write wouldn’t be worthy of the gift. At last I finally do so, because I have something I want to write about Danny.

  The prom is coming up in five weeks. I guess that seems a silly first sentence to have in this book, but its true. I don’t know what I was thinking about the prom. Certainly, I didn’t think I’d be going. I guess I just figured that I would stay home that night, maybe watch a little TV with my parents, that hopefully Karin would tell me all about it later: what people wore, who won King and Queen, who vomited on their gowns and tuxes.

  Karin is, of course, going with Todd for sure. I kept wondering who Danny was going to ask—surely he would go with someone; it was his senior prom, after all—but Danny and I have not talked much since the night he kissed me after the movies, except to talk about pregnancy stuff, so it’d feel funny asking him who he was taking. And, anyway, it would be too awful to listen as he named some other girl’s name. I know I could have asked Karin—through Todd, she’d know; they are probably all going together—but I don’t want to do that, either. It would be only barely less awful hearing it from Karin than hearing it from Danny.

  Then, yesterday, in the cafeteria, I got my answer.

  I was sitting at a table by myself next to one where Danny was sitting with all his basketball buddies.

  Danny actually did ask me if I wanted to sit with them when he saw me walking by, but I just shook my head, no. I may be okay with spending time alone with Danny, but it would feel too weird being with his friends too, being the way I am now.

  Then, as I was watching Danny laughing at something someone said, I saw Ricky D’Amico slink in from behind him, putting one leg over the bench and squeezing in between him and the guy he was sitting closest to.

  Danny looked surprised to see her right there, so close, but he didn’t try to move away.

  “Hey, Stanton, “I heard Ricky say, clear as anything. “You. Me. The prom. I’ll pay for the limo. “

  Give her credit: She had more nerve than I would ever have. I would never be brave enough to go so nakedly after something I wanted.

  Danny looked shocked, and then I saw him smile and open his mouth to speak.

  I quickly picked up my tray and awkwardly climbed off the bench, moving as fast as my body would let me toward the trash, because of all the things I’d ever wanted to hear come out of Danny Stanton’s mouth, I did not want to hear him say yes to Ricky D’Amico.

  I was trying to get everything off my tray into the trash—Why was that damn fry stuck to the orange plastic? Why wouldn’t it just come off?—when Joshua Carr came up behind me.

  “I’ve been looking for you, “he said.

  “You have, “I said, half-surprised, but more concerned with getting that last fry off my tray, with getting away from Danny and Ricky as quickly as wad humanly possible. “Well, you found me, “I said.

  “I want to take you to the prom, “Joshua blurted out.

  “What?”

  “I want you to go with me, “he said, gaining more confidence, even though he did dort of look like someone would look if they were about to eat broccoli when they hated broccoli.

  And in that look I could dee what was going on. Joshua Carr still felt sorry for me. He felt it was the do-gooder thing to do, making it do I could go just like anybody else.

  And I was tempted. If Joshua wanted to take me to the prom with him, fine, I thought, I’d go. So what if his reasons weren’t exactly flattering. At least I’d get to go to my senior prom, dee what all the fuss was about for myself.

  But even as I was getting ready to answer yes, I could feel my eyed being drawn to Danny and Ricky.

  “No, “I told Joshua.

  “No?”

  “Look, I’m sorry, “I said. “I know you meant well, but no, although I do thank you for asking. “

  Even though Joshua wad surprised by my answer—how could I have turned him down?—he also looked relieved as he walked away, like one of those fish I used to let go whenever I went fishing with my dad when I was a little girl.

  I looked at Danny and Ricky, still sitting there together, thinking how they would be going to the prom together, how I would be staying home alone. And it was okay. Okay, do maybe it wasn’t totally okay—maybe it was awful—but I realized then that I would rather stay home alone than go with Joshua Carr, since being with Joshua Carr was not where I wanted to be, since the only place I really wanted to be was with Danny.

  And as I sit here now and write this, I think about how everything we do somehow comes down to the choices we make. It is like life is a series of street corners, one immediately after the other, and at each of those corners there are only ever really two choices—a better choice and a worse choice—and I think how whatever we choose at any given point in time somehow influences every single thing that comes afterward.

  As I write about making choices, I remember what my grandmother said, what Aunt Stacey said, and I begin to see a pattern here. I see that we are all part of a continuum of experience, yet each of us experiences things wholly for ourselves.

  And I begin to see something else.

  I think that I have been so busy worrying about what others see when they look at me, worrying that I am not really seen at all, that I have failed to notice the obvious. Whatever Karin appears to be on the surface, she is not what she seems either. She is not simply angry with me, or bored with me, or just too busy with Todd. There is something else going on here.

  Week of April 22/Week 34

  I pound on Karin’s door so hard and fast, it is as though I might break it down.

  When Karin throws open the door, Todd is standing right there behind her.

  “Angel?” she says. “What’s wrong? Is something wrong with the baby? “

  “No.” I shake my head, puzzled. “If something was wrong with the baby, why wouldn’t I just go straight to the hospital?”

  She looks relieved at first, then the anger and dismissal I’ve become accustomed to settles into her features.

  “What is it, then?” she says. “What were you pounding so loud for?”

  I turn to Todd. “Wouldyou excuse us, please?” I ask nicely.

  “Hey!” Karin says.
“You can’t just tell him to go!”

  “I didn’t tell him to go,” I point out. “I asked him to excuse us, meaning he could just go to some other room. Of course, if he wants to go walk around for a bit, that’s fine too.”

  “Where do you get off?” Karin says.

  “Look,” I say, “he’s had all your attention for the last several months, and as far as I’m concerned, he can have it back again later for as long as you two want, forever even. I just want a few minutes of your time. Alone. That’s all.”

  Before Karin can protest any more, Todd kisses her on the top of her head. “That’s cool,” he says. “Later,” he says, brushing past me.

  “What?” she says when he’s gone, sounding both angry and tired now. “What is it?”

  “What happened,” I say, “to us?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, as though I might be nuts. “What are you talking about?”

  “We used to be so … close,” I say.

  “So?” she says. “So maybe we grew apart a bit. So? These things happen all the time.”

  “Not to us,” I say. “This was never supposed to happen to us.”

  “People change,” she says.

  “Maybe,” I say, “but the friendship doesn’t.”

  “I think you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” she says.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “We were never nothing. Tell me this, because I really want to know: What changed between us after I decided to keep the baby?”

  “You didn’t just decide to keep the baby!” She bursts out with it, and there is a half cry in her words. “You decided not to get an abortion! “

  “I still don’t understand,” I say, and I don’t, not yet. “Why should that change things between us?”

  “Because what you did was different from what I did! And every time I look at you now, it’s like an indictment of me, a judgment against me! It’s too hard to look at you, Angel. I just feel like you’re … judging me all the time! “