Briana's Gift

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “Where’d you hear that?” Melody has looked ready to bust during the whole ride and now that I know what’s on her mind, I’m irked. How did the news get around without me saying a single word?

  “Mrs. Taylor saw her riding in a truck down Main Street, heading out toward your house,” Melody says. “She called my mom last night and Mom asked me about it this morning.”

  “Hey, wait up!” Stu comes running behind us, juggling his trumpet case, which was locked in the car’s trunk.

  We stop and wait for him to catch up. Melody plays clarinet and I play flute. When he reaches us, Melody explains, “I was asking Sissy about Bree coming home.”

  “Bree’s back?”

  Just last night I was excited about telling them, but knowing Mrs. Taylor, Duncanville’s biggest busybody, has already spread it around the whole town makes me protective of my sister’s private business. “Yes,” I say, then button my lips.

  “Well, how is she? Did she say anything about Hollywood?”

  “She was tired, Stu. She ate dinner and went to bed. We didn’t talk much.”

  “You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  “I just don’t have anything to say yet. Can we just do band practice?”

  “And Jerry?” Melody asks. “Where’s he? Mom said that according to Mrs. Taylor, he wasn’t with her in the truck.”

  “He wasn’t?” Stu asks, drilling me with his blue eyes.

  Just then Mr. Mendoza blows his whistle to signal us to line up in formation. “Let’s get a move on, people,” he yells. “Heat’s rising.”

  I ignore Stu and step around Melody and fall into my marching space. Our director’s right—the heat is building up. And not just the air temperature either. My heat’s up because I don’t like anyone, not even my friends, talking about my family. And I know that the inquisitive factor concerning Bree is going to be red-hot in Duncanville over the coming days. I can feel it already.

  By the time practice is over, we’re all dripping with sweat. Melody’s mom picks us up and both Melody and Stu begin making plans to go to the city pool this afternoon. “I’ll pack sandwiches,” Melody says. “Stu, bring colas. You coming, Sissy?”

  “Not sure.”

  “We’ll meet in the park at noon,” she instructs me. “If you’re not there by twelve-thirty, we’ll eat and go to the pool without you.”

  I know she’s miffed because I haven’t been forthcoming about Bree. I don’t care. I honestly don’t know much more, other than Bree and Jerry never getting married. Bad news that I want to keep to myself for a while.

  Melody’s mother lets me off and I walk up our long driveway kicking up dust. Bree’s sitting on the porch snapping green beans and tossing them into Mom’s old dented kitchen pot that she’s holding between her knees.

  “Hey,” I say, coming up on the porch.

  “Hey yourself.” She looks a mess. No makeup and her hair a mass of wild frizz. The old Bree used to work for hours taming her hair, smoothing it so that it fell in waves. She hated the frizzies.

  “Mom inside?”

  “In her office.”

  I shift from foot to foot, feeling awkward and self-conscious in front of my own sister.

  “You still play?” She glances at my flute case and asks the obvious.

  “I’m head flutist. Ninth grade too.” Maybe she’s forgotten.

  “I remember ninth grade. Bill Gorskey was crazy for me.”

  “You here to stay?” I blurt, in no mood for small talk.

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  She slumps backward in her chair. “You may as well sit down, Sissy. I’ve got some things to tell you.”

  My heart thumps and I sit on the floor cross-legged in front of her. “I’m listening.”

  “Do you think I want to be back here?”

  “I—I don’t know. Don’t you?”

  “Do you think I would have come if I’d had a choice?”

  That hurts me. What’s so horrible about living with me and Mom? “So why did you come home? Especially if you didn’t want to?”

  Moisture fills her eyes. “I’m pregnant, Sissy. I’m a cliché—barefoot and pregnant, with no place else to go.”

  “Pregnant! But you’re not married.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I bite my tongue. What a stupid thing to say! I feel my face go flaming red. “Sorry,” I say. “I must have had a brain disconnect. What does Jerry say about the baby?”

  “He was all right about it at first. Then I started getting sick and I couldn’t work. He—he left me in L.A. Said he wasn’t ready to be a daddy and that he was tired of me too.”

  “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “Turns out, Jerry wasn’t very nice about much of anything.” She snaps a bean with a vengeance.

  “So…now what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s Mom say?”

  “She says we need to talk about my ‘options.’”

  I’ve had sex education in school so I know what her options are. I swallow hard. “You’re not going to…I mean, you’re not thinking about—”

  “I—I don’t know what I want to do. I’m tired of thinking about it!” Bree turns pale. “I’m going to be sick.” She stands and the pot in her lap hits the porch floor with a thud. Beans scatter every which way, but Bree runs into the house and the screen door clatters behind her. With shaking hands, I crawl across the porch and gather up the glistening, fragile beans, fresh from their pods.

  I arrive at the pool late, missing lunch with Stu and Melody, who are already swimming—splashing, actually. There must be fifty kids in the water. “We didn’t think you were coming,” Stu calls from the center of the melee.

  “Chores,” I say, knowing it isn’t true, but unwilling to shout out what’s going on at my house, where Bree has retreated to her room and Mom is holed up in her office. It’s taken me over twenty minutes to bike into town and I’m hot and sweaty.

  “Come on in,” Stu says.

  I think I see the slightest hint of disappointment on Melody’s face, but then she smiles. “I saved you half a sandwich.”

  “I’ll eat it later.” I hurry and change into my swimsuit in the locker room, shower to wash off the road dust and am heading out to the pool when Angie Simpson stops me.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  I freeze. I sure don’t want to face questions about Bree. “What?”

  “You’re friends with Stuart Ableman, aren’t you?”

  “What about him?”

  “Do him and Melody have a thing?”

  “A thing?” The question catches me totally off guard.

  “You know, are they together? Is he her BF?”

  “We’re all just friends. Why do you want to know?”

  She giggles. “I think he’s cute.”

  “Stu? Are you serious?”

  “Don’t you?”

  I shrug.

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Forget I asked.”

  “It’s forgotten.” I trudge outside into the heat, squinting because the light off the concrete is blinding. So Angie thinks Stu’s cute. I look for my friends in the pool and find them on beach towels near the fence, both reading—Melody a romance novel and Stu a biography of some general from World War II. He has weird taste in books. I watch as Melody says something to him and Stu begins to rub suntan lotion on her back.

  Stu has shot up during the summer and now he’s taller than me or Melody. His hair’s blonder since he’s been in the sun so much, and I already know that his eyes are cornflower blue. I guess I can see why Angie said he was cute. I think about telling them what Angie said, then decide not to. Maybe Angie will make a move on him and Melody and I can tease him about it. We’ll have a great laugh, tease him until he turns beet red.

  I can hear Mom and Bree arguing all the way up in my bedroom. I open the door slightly and stand with my ear to the crack. “You need a plan, Bree,” Mom is saying.

&nb
sp; “Well, I don’t have one.” Bree sounds snarly.

  “If you’re keeping the baby, make Jerry pay child support.”

  “I don’t want Jerry anywhere near me and my baby.”

  “It’s not just your baby, Briana. It’s his too. He’s responsible.”

  “Like he cares.”

  “So what are your plans?”

  “I told you, I don’t have any yet.”

  “Where do you plan to live?”

  Silence. Bree finally says, “You want me to leave?”

  My heart hammers.

  “No,” Mom says. She sounds tired. “But Bree, I can’t take care of a newborn.”

  “Have I asked you to?”

  “You need a job.”

  “I’ll get a job.”

  “But if you’re working full-time, who will take care of the baby? This isn’t a doll you can pick up and put down anytime you feel like it. It’s a baby! It will have colic, cry at night, keep you awake. You’ll have to buy diapers, bottles, a crib—babies need stuff, and stuff costs money. How will you pay for everything? I’m still caring for your sister.”

  I hear Bree slam something on the kitchen table. “Will you stop with all these questions! I—I can’t think. Just get off my back!”

  I hear a door slam and know that Bree has left the house—not that she has anywhere to go without a car. I close my bedroom door and get out my flute. Music always takes my mind out of the moment and into a private place. I play until I feel calm, until I feel like the world isn’t spinning out of control.

  On the Friday morning before school starts, Mom rousts me out of bed before eight in the morning. “Get dressed,” she says. “We’re going into Chattanooga.”

  “Why can’t I stay here?” I pull the pillow over my head.

  Mom yanks it off, and in a voice that gives no room for protesting says, “Bree’s got an appointment with an obstetrician at the health department and you’re coming with us.”

  No one says anything at all during the forty-minute ride through the rolling hills into the city. Bree stares out the window and Mom keeps her gaze glued to the road. I sit in the backseat picking off my nail polish.

  The health department is in a small building right next to the city’s biggest hospital. We park and go inside, sign in, are handed a fistful of paperwork to fill out, and find seats in a waiting area crowded with people, kids and crying babies. Bree sits stony-faced and I rifle through an ancient, dog-eared Time magazine. By the time Bree gets called, it’s almost noon.

  Mom insists we all go to the exam room, where we meet a woman obstetrician named Dr. Wehrenberg. She gives me a questioning look and Mom says, “I want Sissy to hear what you have to say.”

  I get hot all over because she’s practically announced that she doesn’t want me to turn out the same way as Bree. As if. I’ve never even kissed a guy and can’t think of a single boy I even want for a boyfriend. Geez! I stand to one side.

  The exam room is small and brightly lit. There’s a padded table with gizmos that look like upside-down stirrups. The doctor asks Bree, “Do you know how far along you are?”

  “I wasn’t keeping track of…things.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” The doctor makes notes in a manila folder.

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  The doctor scribbles some more, then says to Mom, “I need to do an exam. Afterward, we’ll go into my office and talk. You and your other daughter can wait there for me. A nurse will show you the way.”

  Her office is piled with books and paper. Medical posters hang on the walls along with framed diplomas and certificates, all with names of different doctors. “She probably shares her office,” I suggest, but Mom is in no mood for talking, so I sit on a chair and study a poster of a pregnant woman with a cutaway side view showing a full term, upside-down baby. I’ve read the labels for all of the woman’s and the baby’s body parts when Dr. Wehrenberg and Bree join us.

  “Based on what Bree tells me,” Dr. Wehrenberg says, pulling out the chair behind the desk, “she looks to be about sixteen or seventeen weeks along. Full term is forty weeks, so I’m estimating that the baby is due around mid-January. She’s had no prenatal care thus far, so she needs to start immediately.”

  The doctor picks up a pad of paper and writes while she talks. “Prenatal vitamins to begin at once. A sonogram next week. Checkups here once a month until she’s seven months, then once a week until she delivers. Any hint of cramping or spotting, call me. I recommend attending labor and delivery classes—usually about six weeks before the birth. Will you be in the labor room with her?” The doctor looks at Mom.

  “Seems so,” Mom says, her lips tight around the words.

  I feel like excess baggage.

  The doctor looks directly at Bree. “It’s important that you take care of yourself, Briana. The baby’s growing and you need to be strong and healthy for a normal delivery. I’m giving you some brochures and a booklet that will help you understand what’s happening to your body and how a baby develops.”

  Bree looks somber and says nothing.

  I stop listening. Apparently my sister and mother have ruled out one “option.” She is going to have the baby. This secretly pleases me. I, Susanna Margaret Scanland, am going to be an aunt. I can feed the baby a bottle, show it off to my friends, maybe even take it downtown in a stroller when it gets older. Aunt Sissy. I like the sound of it.

  My ears prick up when the doctor says something about a sonogram. “…in a good position, we may be able to determine your baby’s sex. Won’t that be exciting?”

  Bree looks dazed. Too much information, I figure.

  Mom stands up. She looks grim, but also determined. “I’ll have her here for every appointment.”

  We set up an appointment, leave the health department and drive back home, once more in total silence.

  School starts on Monday. The halls are filled with the usual faces, but because we’re in ninth grade—technically high school—we feel totally cooler than the middle-grade bottom-feeders. This year, it’s Melody who is separated from me and Stu in homeroom, but we have two classes together, ending the day in band.

  With the first football game looming, Mr. Mendoza steps up practices, which means that I don’t get home until almost five, so Mom makes Bree responsible for starting supper, which she does without a fuss. She also lands a job as a cashier at the Super Wal-Mart out on Highway 111. I help Mom with the grocery shopping on Saturday. I push the basket while Mom rides around in one of those special motorized carts the store keeps on hand. Together we wait in Bree’s line and let her check us out. She tries to act professional while ringing us up, but I make faces and talk in funny voices until I make her laugh.

  On Labor Day weekend tons of stuff goes on sale. We buy some jeans and T’s for me, a pair of Mary Janes, and for my bedroom, two Christmas cactuses that the saleslady in the garden department swore would bloom in December—something I can look forward to. Mom also buys some maternity clothes for Bree, who is popping out of her regular clothes. Her belly looks like a fat water balloon while the rest of her is skinny as ever.

  When Bree brings home her first sonogram and shows it to me, I turn it round and round, but I can’t see a baby in the dark blobs and smudges. “You sure this is a baby?”

  She points to one dark spot in particular. “This is the head.”

  “If you say so.”

  She points again. “This is the spine.”

  “Is it a boy or girl?”

  “The baby was turned wrong, so we can’t tell yet. Maybe the next one will show its privates.” She sticks the paper image on the refrigerator with a magnet.

  Bree’s getting into having the baby, something Mom still isn’t happy about because Bree keeps refusing to make Jerry take responsibility. No one asks my opinion, but I think Bree is right. The guy is long gone out on the West Coast, and tracking him down seems more trouble than it’s worth. His folks have moved away f
rom Duncanville too, so it isn’t as if finding him would be easy. I feel like we’ll be fine—the baby, Bree, Mom and me, living in our house all together. The pictures in my head always show us smiling and playing with the baby. A far cry from the tension in the air around our home.

  Our school’s football team surprises us and makes it into the area play-offs in late September. The whole town catches the fever of winning and you can’t go anywhere without hearing someone saying, “How about those Red Raiders!” What it means for our marching band is more formation practice and long trips to additional games. On the night of the big game between Duncanville and Shelbyville, Melody has the flu, so Stu and I end up riding the bus together without her. It feels awkward because Melody is sort of like the gas that drives our threesome. Not that I don’t like being alone with Stu—I do—but he’s changed over the summer. Not in a bad way; it’s just that he’s different, more sure of himself, more aware of what’s going on around him. On the trip to the Shelbyville field, the whole bus is buzzing and I can cut the excitement with a knife.

  “I saw Bree at the Wal-Mart on Saturday,” Stu tells me. The bus is dark and his voice seems to float over me. “I’m thinking of filling out an application myself to work over the Christmas holidays.” Stu is Jewish, so Christmas isn’t a big event in his life.

  “Because you want to buy me and Melody presents?”

  He laughs. “I want to make more money than I do cutting grass. I thought if I worked over the holidays, it would be easier to land a job at the store next summer.”

  That Stu. Always thinking. “Sounds like a plan.” I realize that if he works next summer we won’t be hanging with each other as much. “I’d like to get a summer job too,” I say recklessly. In truth, I haven’t thought about it at all. “I want to have money for clothes and to buy Bree’s baby pretty things. It’s an aunt’s responsibility, don’t you think?”

  He shrugs. “I’m saving for college. Georgia Tech. They have a great engineering school. Where do you want to go to college?”

  We’ve never talked about this kind of stuff before. “Not sure yet,” I say. I want him to think I’ve actually given college a thought, which I haven’t.