“I just wanted to apologize for the trouble yesterday. I am so sorry for my husband’s behavior…” Suzette tried to finish, but began to tear up. I’d hoped Suzette’s words would help Jarod feel better, but he looked worse. Sweat was beading up on his face as his eyes moved around. Attention, any attention, was probably the last thing he wanted. I told myself to stay behind the counter, but was already walking over to him. Regardless of what happened, he’d come to my side to help.
“Jarod, thank you for helping me yesterday. I thought it was one of the bravest things anyone has ever done for me.” His eyes lifted, and, for a moment, he saw me the way he’d seen me before, and I felt hope. Jarod pushed a smile, goofy, but good. I leaned in and kissed his cheek, and told thanked him again.
“Oh, Gabby, I almost forgot,” Mr. Thurmon started to say. From his pocket, he pulled a small white square piece of paper. “Got a phone call for you – an out of state call,” he continued, and slowly spun the paper in his fingers as he squinted his eyes. Trying to read his pencil scratches, he finally said, “Ahhh, here it is. Ummm… well wait, got no name, just that he was looking for Donut.”
I never saw Mr. Thurmon crumble the paper and throw it away. I never saw Suzette grabbing at my arm as I stepped back. I never saw Jarod reaching out as the air in the room became hot and poisonous and flipped my stomach and spun the room. I reached for the counter behind me, and sat at the stool, and studied the floor while the light green tiles turned and twisted. I hadn’t heard that name in almost ten years.
Ms. Potts assured Mr. Thurmon and Jarod that I’d be okay. They left soon after I fell back onto the counter and rested on a stool. Suzette stood behind me as Ms. Potts pressed a glass of water in my hand. The glass felt cold and wet, and I wanted to throw it on my face. Instead, I pressed the glass to my cheek, and counted in my head as I breathed deeply. I would be okay, and I told them that more than a few times.
“What is the name Donut? What does it mean?” I heard Suzette ask me. Ms. Potts joined a second later, commenting on the same. Memory bubbles surfaced once more, and erupted in a stream of images. All of it was fresh in my mind, as if it were just yesterday and not ten years ago.
“It’s what my father calls me. Or, what he used to call me, a long time ago,” I whispered, and drank half the water.
“Donut?” Ms. Potts asked, a genuine curiosity in her eyes. A small front of offense warmed in me, and I answered,
“Yeah… Donut. What’s wrong with that?”
“No, dear, nothing wrong with – just ain’t heard it before.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, my Daddy made it up,” I told them proudly. But then images and memories flooded my head again, and before I could stop it, I was crying. The memories were too vivid, and the feelings that came with them, too painful. Suzette walked around to stand with Ms. Potts.
“What is it?”
“My Daddy made that name up for me. Donut is a pet name. I was a little girl, and we went to watch how donuts were made. We even got to eat some. I remember how they tasted, they were hot, and melted on your tongue. I was so little then. My Daddy had to carry me on his shoulders because I was afraid to step on this raised metal floor. He didn’t mind though, and we walked along this long window, and we could see inside the donut room. A big machine was moving the donuts, and I asked my Daddy, where did the donut holes go? He started to laugh, and I thought he was going to drop me. He joked with me that maybe the donut holes were taken, stolen, and that we needed to go find them. So that is what we did. We went home and searched for the donut holes. I didn’t know what to look for, but I looked, anyway, because he was looking, and it made him smile. We had fun with it for a while, but finally I stopped looking. But my Daddy kept calling me Donut. And the name stuck. And then everyone started calling me Donut. When I grew up, everyone called me Gabby, and my Daddy was the only one left who ever called me Donut. I liked that. No, I loved it.”
Ms. Potts and Suzette laughed as I told them the story. I even giggled along, remembering being little and racing around the house searching with my Daddy. And then I started to cry again. Heat pushed up from inside of me, and I tried to stop it, but then I was sobbing, and I realized you can’t stop something after ten years. You can’t turn it off once it starts. Suzette rubbed my back while Ms. Potts did what my momma would’ve done: she picked up my hand, held it, and told me to let it out.
“Spill it all,” she said, and kissed my hand, then brought it next to her heart and cried with me. She said she’d try to take the pain if she could, but they weren’t her tears to shed, so she did the next best thing, and held me.
I only cried for a few minutes. No roads to get on before the sun comes up. No running from me in the next hour. I let myself cry, and I let my friends help me. And, thankfully, Angela’s Diner stayed empty – couldn’t imagine someone coming in and seeing the three of us huddled at the counter like we were.
“Gabby. What happened? What you running from?” I moved behind the counter, and fixed some coffee. Seemed necessary, considering how drained I felt. Suzette and Ms. Potts joined in. And I began to tell them. I told them why I left Texas. Why I left my family, and, at one point, why I made the decision to never see them again.
I woke up in my bed that morning, wrapped in my favorite comforter. Sunlight fingers squeezed through my window and tickled my eyes. Five more minutes, I just wanted five more minutes of sleep, but I had to do something that day, and the thought of it pulled me from my bed.
“Morning, Donut. Your momma left earlier,” my Daddy said, and handed me a few boxes of cereal.
“What’s your combination this morning?” I asked him, and watched as he studied his bowl.
“I think I’ve got some raisin something or other, and Sugar Smacks. Good stuff.” He playfully wiped a drop of milk from his chin. “What are you having?”
I studied the cereal boxes in front of me, and picked two of them. I looked over the selection again, and picked a third. We didn’t eat cereal like everyone else. That would just be boring, my Daddy liked to say. And he was right. So, we mixed up different combinations every morning.
“Gonna go with these three.” I held them up. He gave them a look, and then a thumbs up, as he dove back into his bowl.
“Listen, I have some things to do this morning before lunch, so I won’t be in the office for a little while in case you need to reach me, okay?”
“Sure. What things?” I was curious – he wasn’t the type to skip a day, or even a morning, of work. He stood up from the table, and reached his hand out to me.
“Don’t you worry. Gotta run – give me a hug.” When I stood up to hug him, I noticed his shoes. They were different colors. Identical shoes, but different colors. He had a black shoe on one foot, and on the other, he was wearing a burgundy shoe. I started to laugh. An odd thing about my Daddy: he always wore matching shoes and belts and eye-glasses. It was just his thing – and I loved that about him. As for the identical shoes? He didn’t like shoe shopping, couldn’t stand it. So, whenever he found a pair of shoes he liked, he’d buy two pairs, one for each color. But never brown, he hated brown. I loved that about him, too.
“Daddy,” I teased, and pointed to his feet, “you mixed up your shoes.” He lifted a foot to take a closer look, and let out a breathy laugh.
“You know, what, I’m not even going to change. Let’s see just how many people notice my shoes. Let’s see if anyone notices them at all,” he laughed again, and kissed me.
That was the last time I ever laughed with my father. The plans that day weighed on my shoulders and tore at my insides. With the house empty, I called Tommy. Tommy Grudin was more than just my first kiss. He was my first love. We were sixteen, in love, and pregnant. When I told him I was pregnant, he didn’t run like I thought he would. He didn’t scream or yell, or tell me I was ruining his life. He just held me, and asked me what I wanted him to do. I loved him for that. I loved him so much. When I heard his voice on the phone, I told Tommy tha
t I was going to be late for school, and that I’d see him after lunch. He asked if I was okay, and I told him I was fine, just that I was feeling a little sick.
An older girl, Jessica, who lived up the street, told me what to do. She used to babysit me, and, one day, while walking by our house, she found me sitting in the front yard, crying. I was just sixteen. I had my entire life ahead of me. I loved kids, but I wasn’t ready to be a mom. Jessica told me about a place that I could go to. She told me that it was simple. She said that all I had to do was go in and, after a few minutes, it would be over. All done. No more baby.
When I told her that Tommy knew about the baby, she said that was simple, too. Tell him that it was a mistake. That I was wrong about being pregnant. That I was just late, and that I got my period, anyway.
It sounded so simple. The words were easy to hear: I didn’t have to be pregnant, and that made sense to me. I couldn’t handle trying to think about my next twenty years. But I could handle thinking that I didn’t have to be pregnant. Jessica told me I didn’t need an appointment, or a doctor’s note, or anything, just that I needed to go with money and have someone to drive me. This last part got me crying again. I couldn’t tell Tommy what I was considering. And there was no way I could tell my parents. I couldn’t tell them. My old babysitter put her hand on mine, and I remember thinking how soft it felt, how calm and reassuring.
Jessica drove me that morning. The sun that pushed light into my eyes earlier was now tucked away behind some clouds for a nap. I was so nervous and scared, and remember shivering. I was jealous of the sun, and wanted to join in the cloudy nap. I wanted the time travel sleep again. A quick blink, and it’d be over. But it doesn’t always work out that way. When we pulled up to the building, the nerves that had me shivering stretched and turned my stomach, and I lost my cereal as I got out of her car. Some Cheerios, Apple Jacks, and a kind of Shredded Wheat puddled on the asphalt while Jessica held my hair back and told me it would be okay. I think I was supposed to hold off on eating anything, anyway. So losing my cereal was fine with me.
The room was bright, but cold. Too cold. Jessica waited outside while I changed, and then held my hand as I pushed on my feet to get up on the table. The sound of paper crinkled under me as the shivering in me started again. Metal and plastic legs stuck out from the sides of the table, reminding me of a half-dead spider. They told me to place my legs in the stirrups, and I giggled at the sound of the word. I think I giggled more because of what they had given me, but then I stopped when I heard the sound of a machine come on.
The low mechanical rumble and the chatter of voices started to ache in my ears. Jessica rubbed my arm, and I heard her tell me again that it would be okay. And then all I could think about were these baby chickens. We were just kids when Tommy and I were in a class together, and they assigned us an egg. It was our job to take care of the egg. We had to make sure it stayed under a lamp and stayed warm, and had to turn the egg every day. And we did it. We did it together. We took care of the egg. And then one morning, it began to hatch.
I remember watching the egg when it moved. The shell had a smooth texture to it, and Tommy told me to put my finger on the egg. He guided my hand.
“Gently,” he said, and we touched the shell. I felt a thump from inside. The baby moved. We laughed, excited by what we were seeing. When the baby chick started breaking through the shell, we cheered the little thing on until it was free. We cheered together. Tommy and I had a baby chick, and the first thing it saw in this world was our faces. I remember wanting to cry. He smiled, and wiped my cheek, and said he thought the tears were sweet and kind, and I remembered loving him that day. And I think I never stopped loving him.
I put my hand on my belly, and knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t know what would happen to me and Tommy, and I didn’t know who we would become, but I knew this was his baby, too. I started waving my hands, and told the nurses and the doctor no. I told them that I made a mistake, and that I wanted to keep my baby. I screamed at them when a nurse tried to put oxygen on me, and again when she told me to settle down. She held my arm and told me that I only needed to relax and wait. Just wait, and it would soon be over.
Jessica yelled at me to look at her. She said, “Look at me, and tell me what you want.” I screamed through the mask on my face that I wanted to have my baby – that I wanted to have Tommy’s baby. She nodded and said something to the nurses and doctors, and they all helped me off the table. My knees buckled, and the doctor caught my arm and gave me and Jessica instructions. He said that I should be okay, and that he hadn’t started the procedure. I held onto Jessica’s shoulders as she helped dress me. By the time I reached the doors, my mind was clearing, and I knew my decision to keep our baby was the right one.
When we opened the door, the outside rushed over me, and I breathed it in. But then something red and wet and clumpy exploded at our feet. We both jumped back with a scream, uncertain of what it was. Some of the remains had splashed up on our shirts and faces, and left runny red streaks across the front of us. The smell of rotting food was immediate. The explosion was a handful of spoiled tomatoes with scabs of white fuzz and blackened skin.
Remains of the tomatoes were everywhere as we tried stepping over them. Men and woman were screaming, and holding large signs with words printed in bold lettering. A sea of white and orange and turquoise poster boards danced up and down in front of us. The posters were carried on sticks, dancing back and forth with a steady low chant and an occasional scream directed at us. We grabbed for each other. I could feel the anger coming from the people in front of us. Words stood out on the posters scribbled in black marker. I could read awful, terrible things, like “Baby Killer” and “Save the Unborn from Murderers.”
Another explosion of tomatoes landed in front of us, and I saw fear striking Jessica’s eyes. The confidence and the all-knowing expression that helped me get to the clinic disappeared as she mouthed a curse. The crowd of protestors chanted “Baby Killer” and bounced the posters up and down. The chanting was deafening, and Jessica yelled in my ear to hurry up. We huddled together, arm in arm, and made our way into the swarm of protestors.
She yelled in my ear again, telling me to keep my head down, and to just follow the lines in the pavement. She said the protestors would move as we pushed forward, and that they wouldn’t hurt us. But they did hurt us. I felt the first jab in my back, and turned to see an older man whose beard hung loose above his shirt collar. Long hairs waved around in the breeze, as he shouted,
“Bitch – Baby Killer,” and then spat at my feet while pulling back the end of his sign. Another jab of a signpost hit Jessica, and she wheezed a cough out and then barely choked that we needed to move faster.
I kept my eyes on the lines in the pavement. We moved toward our car. It was slow, but we were moving. Another jab hit my side as I watched the legs and feet in front of us part to the left and right. I remember starting to scream, and Jessica held me tighter. The “Baby Killer, Baby Killer” chant grew to a roar, and the smell of rotting food lingered from the tomato bomb we wore on our clothes. At one point, Jessica decided to yell back, and grabbed a protestor’s sign when they lunged for a strike on my leg.
“You Baby Killer!” they shouted at her.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people? You don’t know us! You don’t know why we’re here,” she screamed back at them, and threw the sign to the ground. I hung onto her arm and winced when a heavier jab pierced the skin of my leg. My knees started to feel weak, and a hot wave of nausea choked my breath as the sedative wore away. I had to stop, but only for a second. Jessica pulled on my arm, and we pushed forward.
“Baby Killer, Baby Killer,” echoed in my ears, and a sudden urge to cry hurt more than the sign posts. I glanced at the sky, trying to pull the tears in, the sun was still napping, and I wished I could hide up in the clouds with it. When I looked over the sea of colored posters, as they continued to bump up and down, another fear cam
e to me. What if they were moving with us? What if they formed a circle around us and were walking all the way to Jessica’s car? Jessica yelled for me to put my head down. And I did, but not before someone grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled it out of my head. Screaming, I put my head down and followed the lines in the pavement.
The legs and feet continued to part ways and move to the sides of us. Relief began to settle in place of the nausea. The “baby killer, baby killer” chanting was softer. I could hear my own breathing, and realized I was crying, after all. We were passing the worst of the crowd. The remaining protestors continued to move around us, but then a pair of shoes stood in front of me. They didn’t move. A black shoe, and a burgundy shoe. And then I heard my Daddy’s voice.
“Donut?” My heart sank, and all I could do was look up into his face. His eyes were filled with confusion as he shook his head back and forth like the poster boards’ dance.
It was a moment we shared, a terrible moment, and it ended who we were. “Daddy,” I cried, and reached for him. He extended his hand, just enough to touch the paper and plastic medical bracelet the nurse had put on my wrist earlier. The confusion drained from his face. Deep lines emerged above his eyes, and his face turned red like the tomato remains on our clothes. He raged and cried and screamed at the sky, and pushed my hands away.
“But, Daddy,” I pleaded with him, reaching my hands to him, and again he pushed me away.
An Order of Coffee and Tears Page 13
