by Terri Cheney
“Jesus,” of course, made me think of sin, and sin made me think about Zach again, so the bumper cars were right back where they’d started. I put my head down in between my hands and groaned. “Are you okay?” asked the man with the dirty toes. But the lights were flooding the stage by then and I was already well onto the next thought. “Shhhh,” I said rudely. “It’s starting.”
Maybe it was the lighting. Maybe it was my close proximity to the stage or the heat from the densely packed bodies. But when Galway Kinnell stood at the podium and the applause swelled up all around me, I felt dizzy, overcome. I wish I could remember the timbre of his voice or exactly what he looked like. All I recall is a shock of dark hair hanging over one eye and a rakish grin. But I knew then that he was the handsomest man I’d ever seen—handsomer even than Father Tim—and his words were like butterflies, darting around me, fluttering in the light.
They were sexual. Deeply sexual. At first that made me fidget and squirm, and once I even accidentally touched my seatmate’s dirty toes with my foot. I was afraid that someone who knew me—a neighbor, a nun, one of my classmates’ parents—might somehow find me sitting here, listening to these dangerously dirty words. But gradually, when no one came to yank me out of my seat, I leaned back and surrendered. I knew it was wrong, terribly wrong, to be listening, but I did. The butterflies flew into my open mouth, and I swallowed quite a few.
The passage that struck me the hardest was perhaps among Kinnell’s simplest: he was merely describing two mosquitoes making love on top of the poem he was writing. But it floored me. To think of a world where even the tiniest things—mosquitoes, for God’s sake—were at it all around you! I realized then that the reason I had been feeling so out of sorts was because I was trying to deny the elemental nature of the universe. Sex was everywhere, it was all around me, there was simply no escaping it.
A dread began to fill my heart; a guilt like none I’d ever known. All those secret afternoons with Dan O’Leary. The trees, so many of them, that I’d climbed in pursuit of the elusive Feeling. I knew exactly what the Feeling was now, because I felt something akin to it listening to Galway Kinnell read his poems. The Feeling was sex.
All this time I’d been having sex, and I didn’t even know it. And as the Catholic night follows the Catholic day, that could mean only one thing: I must be pregnant.
I rubbed my hand against my belly. It felt a little swollen to me, although last night had been spaghetti and meatballs night, and my mother’s meatballs never quite agreed with me. Still, there was enough of a protrusion there to cause me real concern.
I had to get home. I craned my neck to see Professor Tremaine, but I couldn’t quite catch sight of him. I couldn’t just get up and leave—I was in the very first row, and everybody would see. Maybe they’d even see that I was pregnant, and rumors would start flying, and I’d be banished from Pomona College forever. I stared up at the podium, willing Galway Kinnell to finish his everlasting words, but he just kept speaking as if nothing whatsoever were wrong.
More sex, less rhyme, infiltrating my pores. I stopped up my ears, but I could still hear him talking.
Humming furiously to myself, I tried to remember what my mother had said about how a girl gets pregnant. She’d sat me down one afternoon a year or so back with one of her medical textbooks and shown me pictures of things with odd names like labia and uterus and hymen. It wasn’t the kind of book that I liked—there were no horses or heroines or derring-do, just rows and rows of dull, dry text and tiny illustrations. I understood that a baby might emerge from all these complicated words, but the how and the why of it slipped right by me. Now I wished I’d listened harder.
Getting pregnant was probably the worst thing that could happen to a girl. It was surely the end of the world for me. The Black Beast stepped up like an orchestra conductor and, with a single tap of his baton, changed the tempo in my brain. I could feel my mood begin to plummet. I stared at my seatmate’s hairy, dirty toes and longed to bury my face in their warmth. They too, like me, were nasty.
And then at last came the sound I’d been aching to hear: applause. Not end-of-the-poem but end-of-the-evening applause. I hoped that I could make a quick getaway, find my ride, and make it home to bed as soon as humanly possible. Not that that would make me any less pregnant, but everything just seemed better somehow from underneath my blue flannel sheets.
But Professor Tremaine had other plans. Even before the applause had died down, he’d grabbed me by the hand. “Come on, you’ve got to meet him,” he said, and he led me down the aisle to the stage, where a line was already forming. He stepped in front, and pulled me up beside him. “This is the girl I was telling you about,” he said to Galway Kinnell.
Kinnell stopped signing books for a moment, looked me up and down, and said something witty. I know it was witty because everyone laughed, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what he said because I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy holding my stomach in; too busy noticing the ice floe creeping up my back, inching along my neck and shoulders, solidifying in a frozen attempt at a smile.
“She’s a shy one,” said Kinnell, and he grabbed a book off the pile at his elbow and scribbled in it, “For Terri, writing poems.” Then he drew a little stick figure in a chair, hunched over a table, holding a pen. Years later, I would cherish that silly drawing and brief inscription. At that moment, however, all I could think was, I’m pregnant and there will be no more poems for me, ever. With rhyme or without.
Kinnell held out the book to me. It was so hard to get my body to move, like unsticking burnt fudge from the bottom of a pan, but I forced my hand to reach out and take it. “Thank you,” I mumbled. To my surprise, Kinnell put his own hand on top of mine. For a moment, the briefest of eternities, I could feel the shape of his fingers, the texture of his skin, the warmth of his touch. And that’s when I knew I was truly doomed: I liked it.
By the time I got home, I was exhausted. I tried to go straight to my bedroom, but my parents were waiting up for me. I could tell they’d been arguing—over what, I didn’t know. Money, no doubt, or the mysterious Rebecca. My mother’s cheeks were flushed, my father’s lips were stern and pursed. But he broke into an eager smile when I walked into the kitchen. “So, how was it?” he asked. “Tell me everything.”
“It was very”—I cast about for the nearest evasive word—“educational.”
“Did you like it?”
I searched his eyes for a clue. Could he be trusted with the truth? I found my answer in their shining depths. No, he was too proud of me. I couldn’t risk ruining his dream of the perfect little girl. So I gave him the closest I could come to truth.
“To be honest,” I said, “I was scared.”
“Ah.” He sat back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. “Now that’s good poetry.”
I glanced over at my mother. She was staring at the tile floor. Her arms were crossed, and her cheeks were still a ruddy red, as if the blood beneath them was bursting to escape. I knew just how it felt.
“You know, I’m really tired,” I said. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“At least tell me how many people were there,” my father said. “And what did Professor Tremaine have to say?”
My mother glanced up. “Jack,” she snapped. “Let her go to bed.”
I leaned over and kissed my father good night. “Do you want a cup of cocoa?” he asked. I realized then that he didn’t want me to leave, but it was too late. I couldn’t protect him.
“Bed,” my mother insisted, and she kissed me firmly on the cheek and gave me a little push from behind. I wasn’t ten steps away when I heard their argument resume. Sure enough, Rebecca. I didn’t stop to listen.
When I reached my room, I quickly slipped off all my clothes. My fingers were trembling, and it was hard to undo the buttons on my cardigan. I didn’t want to move, I wanted just to stand there in unconfirmed ignorance forever. But I knew I couldn’t. The pregnancy would announce itself whether I w
anted it to or not. I had to know for sure.
I finally managed to slip free of my sweater. I kicked my clothes to one side and stepped into the tiny bathroom that adjoined my room. There was a full-length mirror in there, leaning against the wall. Glancing reluctantly at my naked body, I noticed that my arms and thighs were covered in goose pimples. I was so slender, my breasts barely buds. My stomach looked disproportionately large in contrast, but I knew that fear was affecting my perspective. Steeling myself, I sat down on the floor, facing the mirror. I started to spread my legs—but I wasn’t ready yet. I knelt and made the sign of the Cross.
“Dear God,” I prayed, “please let there be nothing.” I said the same exact prayer to Mary Magdalene. I figured she, of all people, could understand sin. And then I spread my legs.
I wasn’t quite sure what I expected to see, having never really examined this part of my body before (and certainly not from this angle). It looked just like a sideways mouth, with one lip slightly bigger than the other. The lips were a pretty, rosy pink, as if someone had tinted them with lipstick. Gingerly, I reached down and touched myself. When it didn’t hurt, I grew bolder. I parted the lips and exposed the unknown inner sanctum between them. This was where babies came from, I was pretty sure I remembered from my mother’s lecture. I closed my eyes tight and asked Mary Magdalene to come hold my hand. Then I opened them and peered into the mirror.
What I saw was tiny—smaller than my thumbnail, but ever so unmistakably there. A baby. A fetus, really, all curled up inside itself. It looked remarkably like a little pink sea horse.
The room got unbearably bright, and the walls started whirling. My grasp on reality was so slippery by then, I felt like I was sliding in and out of consciousness. I pressed my palms against the cold tile floor to steady me. Sometimes when the Black Beast got really excited, clouds looked like faces and faces looked like clouds and chairs started dancing behind my back, but I was usually able to close my eyes and make those things go away. I knew that my mind was all in a tumble, but was it possible I was seeing things that weren’t really there? Only crazy people did that. Zach always said I was crazy. Was he right?
Was he, wasn’t he, was he, wasn’t he, and all the while the walls kept on whirling until I couldn’t stand it another minute. I snapped my legs together, then forced myself to look again. There it was, the sea horse baby: irrefutable proof that I was pregnant. I began to shake. Where could life possibly go from here?
I thought back to when I was seven years old, to my amateurish attempt at suicide with my mother’s pills. Now that I was ten, surely I could devise a more effective strategy. I knew where my father kept his straight-edge razors; and my mother was taking many more pills than she used to. It wouldn’t be easy to get my hands on them, but I could manage somehow. I was so much older and wiser now . . .
Yes, suicide was clearly the answer, with one major flaw. Up until now, ten had been an exhilarating year, chock full of adventures and discoveries. Who knew what further pleasures an elm could yield? I wanted to know everything. I wanted to stand at the college gate and watch the students kissing and fondling each other, their long hair loose and unruly in the wind. I wanted to catch a couple of mosquitoes going at it, swooning in ecstasy. I wanted to rid my world of rhyme.
I didn’t want to die.
There was only one alternative to suicide that I could think of, and it was far more intimidating than mere death: I could tell my mother. She was, after all, a registered nurse, but more than that, she was used to dealing with difficult things. She was the one who paid the bills, who made sure that we were clothed and fed. My father was very good with hopes and dreams, but he didn’t like to be bothered with problems. “Go ask your mother” was the litany of my childhood. Daddy was the bright star in our firmament, and I used to think my mother was the gravity, always pulling him down. But now I suspected that gravity might just be necessary to keep a star up in the sky.
I suddenly longed to hear her voice; even raised in anger, my mother had a lovely voice. I wanted to feel her arms around me, her smooth, cool cheek pressed close to mine. I wanted to hear her say, “Hush now, darling, it will be all right.” She’d never said those words to me before—my mother was not a “hush, now” sort of woman. But perhaps the extremity of my circumstances would soften her. Perhaps it would even bring us closer. We would fight this thing together, and we would beat it.
I could hear the Black Beast snickering, but I ignored him. Without my consciously willing it to, a cry escaped me: “Mom!” Then louder: “Mom!” Then full lung power: “MOM!”
I scampered into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I wasn’t ready for her to see the sea horse baby yet; it would take a powerful bit of explaining. My bedside clock kept ticking, ticking, and still she didn’t come. I yelled again, so loud it hurt my throat: “MOM!” This time I got back a muffled reply from the direction of the kitchen: “What is it? I’m busy.”
“I need you!” What more could I say?
Clocks must have a bit of the Black Beast in them too. One minute they seem to go so fast, the next they’re barely moving. I watched the second hand sweep the dial: time was passing, precious seconds as the baby was growing inside me. We had to stop him, stop him now, before he got so big we couldn’t extract him. Hazy as my mind was, I had a dim vision of my mother sanitizing a pair of chopsticks and plucking the sea horse out of me. Why not? It wasn’t any bigger than a kung pao shrimp.
Ten minutes passed, and still she didn’t come. I finally resorted to the lowest stratagem I could think of: I regressed seven years, and used the name I hadn’t spoken since I was three. “Mommy!” I called. “Mommy, please!”
Damn it, I hadn’t wanted to cry. I’d wanted to be crisp and clear: here’s a medical problem, please help me fix it. Logical, like Mr. Spock, Zach’s favorite TV character. But Vulcans never cry, because when you cry, your brain turns to mush. I could feel mine getting soggy now, with each cascading tear.
I didn’t cry like normal people. I had prolonged, exhausting fits of sobbing—“crying jags,” my mother used to call them. My chest would heave, my eyes would get so puffy I could barely see, my nose and throat would nearly swell shut. It was extremely uncomfortable but also a relief somehow. When I had to focus on trying to breathe, I couldn’t think about all the things that got me crying in the first place. So the tears that were streaming down my face as I watched the minutes tick by felt very familiar. They also felt very real. Pain did not diminish for me the more that I experienced it. If anything, it increased in intensity, as if building to a crescendo that never, ever came.
Fifteen minutes that felt like five hours passed before my mother finally arrived. She stood in the doorway, backlit from the hall. She was still wearing her nurse’s uniform, and the white took on a spectral glow. For once, I didn’t see an angel; I saw a ghost, and the vision frightened me.
“What is it?” she asked. “I’m tired.” And by God, she did look tired. Her normally erect posture was slumped, and there were circles underneath her eyes, which might just have been a trick of the light. She was only human, after all. Perhaps she’d empathize with my all-too-human frailty. Perhaps the world was a more forgiving place than I had ever realized. I began to get excited.
At last I understood the lure of confession. It wasn’t about ritual, it wasn’t about seduction. I’d always thought of it as a performance, but it wasn’t. It was a promise: if I bare my soul to you, you’ll grant me absolution. I wanted to tell my mother everything, not just about the pregnancy but all of it: my desperate struggle to be perfect, my constant fear that Daddy would leave, my wild mood swings up and down. Even the Black Beast. The words took shape inside my throat—dozens of them, hundreds, begging to be set free. But I’d been crying so long and hard by then that all that emerged was a sniffly croak. It wasn’t all that I wanted to say, but in the end, it was the truth: “Mom, I’m very sick.”
She sighed. “It’s always something with you.”
Her words went through me like a physical shock. She’d said far worse things to me in the past, but I’d never been so vulnerable before, so uncertain of reality, so willing to open up and be comforted. In spite of the evidence before my eyes, I still wasn’t quite sure that the sea horse baby was actually there. I wasn’t quite sure of anything, except that I needed proof at that moment that I was safe and loved. And it didn’t exist. Nothing was certain, nothing was real.
I went underground, and wouldn’t fully emerge again for nearly forty years. Trust is as fragile as fairies’ wings and almost as hard to find. I would never fully trust another human being after that, except perhaps my father. Nor would I believe in God; I’d prayed to Him, and this was what He had delivered. At ten, I wasn’t quite an atheist, but I harbored serious doubt.
I’d always been secretive—I had to be—but now I vowed to be subtle: cunning, cruel, manipulative. I’d never expose my raw and tender heart again. I’d let the world believe what it liked, but I’d never, ever let it see my flaws.
I rolled on my side to hide my swollen eyes.
“So, what is it?” my mother asked.
“My head hurts.” I spoke to the wall.
“All this fuss over a little headache?” she said. “Here, let me take your pulse.” She sat on my bed and took my wrist between her fingers. Looking back, I know this was a gesture of love, the best one she was capable of. But that night, her touch felt like a mockery of what a mother’s love should be. “It’s always something with you” was true, I knew it in my core. But that’s not why it stung. I’d somehow hoped my mother would think better of me than I thought of myself.
“Perfectly normal,” she said, relinquishing my wrist.
I rolled back over, reluctantly.
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
