I desperately wanted to tell him about the baby, but Ruth would have killed me, and what good would it have done anyway? Maybe I’d be able to tell him in May when he came back from boot camp. Maybe not.
“So what’s up with you and Ruthie?” he said. “You guys okay?”
You have no idea, I thought as I sat up and pulled on my T-shirt. He put his hand on my back, and I wondered if he could feel my heart accelerate.
“No big plans,” I lied. “Just, you know, get through high school, leave home, that kinda thing.”
“Cool,” he said, running his hand up and down my spine as Miles went off on one of his interminable jangly riffs. “Ruthie seems a bit down, that’s all. Sort of quiet— for her anyway. I just wanted to make sure she’s okay. She looks great, though. Healthier. So do you.” He sat up in bed, and I kept my back turned to him as he wrapped his arms around my waist and nestled his chin into my neck. “You look...” He paused and I wondered if he’d been about to say “thinner” and then thought better of it. Telling a girl she looks thinner is pretty much the same thing as saying, “You used to be a fat cow.” Instead he said, “I notice you guys don’t eat so much crap anymore.”
I wanted to blurt it all out right then. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I kept my face turned away from his and I kept lying. “Ruth’s fine. There was this guy—he dumped her and it kinda hit her hard. She really liked him. But she’s okay now.”
“Who was he? Anyone I know?”
“He was nobody. Just some cretin on the basketball team.” Shut up, Julia, shut up, I told myself.
“I could kick his ass if you like,” he said. “Give him a good ol’ Bible-thumpin’ beat-down.”
I laughed. “If anyone kicks his ass it’ll be Ruth. But thanks for the offer.”
“Keep me posted,” Jonah said as he pulled on his jeans. “I worry about you guys.”
“You don’t need to—really,” I said. “We’re totally fine.”
AS I HAD predicted, nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to our new healthy habits. After all, it was January— season of short-lived New Year’s resolutions. Maybe when we’re in therapy years from now, Ruth and I will say we wish our families had figured it out. At the moment, though, my parents’ trust, Ruth’s parents’ general cluelessness and the self-absorption of our peers were distinct blessings.
“When am I gonna feel it kick?” Ruth asked as we walked home from school in late January.
“Movement is usually detectable from about sixteen weeks on,” I said, parroting one of the books I had been reading.
“When’s that, Einstein?”
“Another month or so—maybe a bit sooner.” We’d been over this stuff so many times: her due date (sometime in late July—I’d tried about five different methods of calculation and got a different date each time), her mood swings (scary), the size of her breasts (impressive, unlike mine, which were shrinking), but she didn’t seem to retain anything but water. And not even much of that yet. It was one of the things I checked every week, along with her blood pressure, her weight and her emotional state. I also measured her stomach, which she hated, even though it wasn’t any bigger yet. I had managed to find a fetoscope and a blood-pressure cuff on eBay. I had to ask my mother if I could use her credit card to order Ruth a birthday present online, but even when she said yes, a Doppler was still out of the question. A $500 charge on her VISA would set off all her maternal alarm bells. I stole a tape measure from the sewing room at school, and I bought a really gorgeous lined journal and a special pen with purple ink to record all the information.
“Remember? I told you we’d be able to hear the heartbeat at around twenty weeks? You’ll probably feel the baby kicking before that,” I said. “It’s so cool. I heard Miki’s baby’s heartbeat on the Doppler when she was only eleven weeks along, but fetoscopes aren’t that sensitive. Wait till you hear it—it sounds like a tiny galloping horse.”
“So you’re saying I’ve got My Little Pony racing around in there,” Ruth said with a grimace. “I always hated their stupid manes and those lame little brushes. I think of it more as a Smurf anyway. Probably Sassette. She was always my favorite. Smurfette was such a turd.”
I had a sudden vision of Ruth popping out a little blue baby with red pigtails and pink overalls. Blue babies are not good. Blue babies mean a trip to the hospital. Maybe I needed to stop reading about all the possible complications of pregnancy and childbirth. I knew Ruth should be having blood tests and urine tests, that she might develop vaginal bleeding or gestational diabetes or have a breech baby. And what if she needed a caesarean or an episiotomy? I didn’t want to think about it, but somebody had to. As we turned onto my street, Ruth was still babbling about how she had flushed Smurfette down the toilet when she was four. As I listened to her, my heart started racing, and I broke into a sweat. When we got to my house, she was still going on about the look on her dad’s face when the plumber fished out not only Smurfette but also Pastor Pete’s watch, Peggy’s rhinestone cross and a handful of Jonah’s Lego.
“Shut up,” I yelled. I grabbed Ruth by the arm and swung her around to face me.
“What is your problem?” she screeched, swatting at my hand.
I grabbed her other arm and shook her. I didn’t care if she punched me or slapped me or pushed me into the street. I just wanted her to stop talking.
“You’re pregnant,” I hissed. “You’re not having a Smurf. Your baby is not a toy.”
She glared at me, and two red spots appeared on her cheeks. “Don’t you think I know that?” she said. “Don’t you think I pay attention to all the shit you tell me—eat less, exercise more, try tofu, meditate, take my vitamins, do yoga? Don’t you get that I still can’t believe this is happening to me? That I don’t want to believe it?” Tears formed in her eyes and she let them fall. “I’m scared, Julia. Fucking terrified. I’m not stupid—I know lots of things can go wrong. I just don’t want to think about them. Not yet anyway. You can worry for both of us right now. I’ve done everything you’ve told me to do so far, haven’t I?”
I nodded and moved my hands off her arms and up to her face. I felt bad for yelling at her, but I was scared too, and I had no one to talk to. No one at all.
“Your mascara’s running. You look like Alice Cooper,” I said as I stroked her cheeks. “C’mon. Let’s go nuts and have some dip with our carrot sticks.”
SEABISCUIT—WHICH IS what I called Miki and Dad’s baby—was kicking up a storm by early February. Every weekend I laid my hands on her belly and we giggled when the baby’s tiny elbows or heels pressed back. It felt like fetal tai chi. The bigger Miki’s belly got, the mellower she became, as if the baby were a giant hit of long-acting weed. Everything about her was softer—her hair, her voice, her skin. The baby had sanded away all her sharp edges. I could hardly wait for Ruth to soften up too. Miki and Dad talked and sang to the baby all the time, so I did too. The books all said that babies can hear and respond to voices and music, so I wanted to make sure mine was one of those voices.
“Hey, little buddy,” I said in the general direction of Miki’s navel. “It’s me, Julia, your big sister. We’re all really anxious to meet you, but don’t try and get out of there early. Enjoy it while you can—it’s way more stressful on the outside. Trust me. Just chill out and don’t give your parents a hard time.”
Dad laughed. “What kid has ever listened to that advice?”
I pretended to look injured as I continued. “I’m going to sing you a special song now, and I’m going to sing it to you every week until you’re born.”
Miki groaned and said, “This better be good—and it better not have the word ‘baby’ in it.”
“Trust me,” I said. “It’s not ‘Maybe Baby’ or ‘Baby One More Time’ or even ‘Baby Got Back,’ although that one was tempting. You should learn it, Dad.”
Miki groaned again, and I began to sing. “You are so beautiful... You are so beautiful...to me...”
By the time I got
to the end, Dad and Miki had joined in and we were all in tears. That’s how Maria found us—sobbing on the couch.
“I knocked but I guess you didn’t hear me,” she said. “The door was open. Is everything okay?”
We all nodded like dashboard dolls and grinned like fools. “Just singing to Seabiscuit,” I said.
“Seabiscuit?” said Maria. “You’re naming the baby after a horse?” She squeezed herself in between Miki and me on the couch and kicked off her shoes. Her nail polish was bright green. “Oh well,” she said, patting Miki’s belly, “at least it’s better than Pilot Inspektor.”
We must have looked pretty blank because she added, “You know—Jason Lee’s kid. And then there’s Moxie CrimeFighter and Speck and Sistine. I keep a file of weird celebrity baby names. Seabiscuit’s not so bad.”
Miki hauled herself up off the couch and announced, “We are definitely not calling our baby Seabiscuit. Although I am considering Flicka if it’s a girl. And what do you think of Granite?” She arched one unplucked eyebrow, and we all burst out laughing again as she headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
“How about Quartz—no—Obsidian for a boy?” said Dad. “Obsidian Stevens-Riley. Very manly.”
“Or what about Manitoba or Yukon?” I suggested. “So patriotic.” I wondered how Joseph Heller came up with all the incredible names in Catch-22: Milo Minderbinder, Yossarian, Aarfy, Chief White Halfoat and my favorite, Major Major. It must be like naming a dozen children at once.
Maria and I trailed after Miki, pelting her with names— Iota, Kumquat, Quince, Napoleon, Dandelion—but Dad disappeared, muttering something about needing to download a recipe. A few minutes later I heard him guffaw and start to sing, “I like big butts and I cannot lie”—Sir Mix-a-Lot had made another conquest.
SHE FIRST FELT the baby kick in early February. We were in homeroom, listening to Rachel Greaves explain how Jesus wanted us to remain celibate out of respect for the sad fact that He got crucified before He had a chance to get laid. Suddenly Ruth gasped and yelled, “Holy Mary Mother of God!” and clutched her stomach with a look of absolute terror on her face. My first thought was that she was having a contraction, and I fell to my knees beside her, clasped her hands in mine and shrieked, “Sweet Jesus, bless our sister Ruth as she is filled with your Holy Spirit, and forgive our sister Rachel for implying that Jesus was horny.” I’m not above using the Almighty to create a diversion. Rachel started to cry as our classmates snickered, and Mrs. Gregory told her to pray for God’s forgiveness. If God was anything like most fathers, he’d probably be proud that someone thought his boy was a stud. Ruth pressed my palm to her belly. It felt like Sassette was kickboxing; I could feel the pummeling of tiny heels and knobby elbows, and I’m pretty sure there was some head-butting going on in there.
“I know, sweetie,” Ruth whispered. “I’d like to put some hurtin’ on Rachel too, but we can’t go around hitting every idiot we meet.” It took me a minute to realize that she wasn’t talking to me and that we were in far more trouble than I could ever have imagined. If Ruth got attached to her baby, there was no telling what might happen.
ON VALENTINE’S DAY, I gave Ruth a cupcake covered in pink icing when she came over to my house for her weekly checkup. Before she bit into it she dragged her index finger through the icing and drew a heart with it on her belly. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Sassette,” she said before she scraped up the icing and licked it off her fingers.
I did all the usual things that day: weighed her; took her blood pressure; checked her ankles for swelling; asked her if she was constipated, in pain, depressed, anxious, stuffed up, light-headed, dizzy or bleeding from any orifice. When I had recorded all my figures and all her responses (minus the foul language) in my journal, I got out the fetoscope and said, “Let’s see if My Little Pony’s awake.” I hadn’t yet been able to hear the baby’s heartbeat, but I figured it had to happen soon, and it would be an even better Valentine’s Day present than a cupcake.
I bent over and placed the fetoscope on her belly, and suddenly there it was—the thunder of tiny hoofs. I must have gasped, because Ruth yanked the fetoscope out of my ears, jammed the earpieces into place, hunched over, held her breath and listened.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod,” she whispered. Her face turned the color of a McIntosh apple, and she made a strange choking noise. I put my hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it off, her face rosy and rapt. After about five minutes, she handed the fetoscope back to me, straightened up, hugged me and mumbled, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For looking after us.”
“No problem,” I said. And I meant it.
After that, Ruth was a much better patient. She listened to the baby every week with the same goofy expression on her face, and she grumbled a lot about the fact that I was losing weight while she was gaining, but she was surprisingly good-humored about all the changes to her body and mine. She even joked that the best thing about being pregnant was getting out of PE with a forged note from Dr. Mishkin.
IN THE MONTHS that followed, every time I examined her I’d go over the plan again: “I told my mother I wanted to go on a spiritual retreat in late July, and she said I could go as long as I take you with me. She’s arranged for us to use a cabin belonging to one of the women in her aerobics class. After the baby is born”—I always glossed over the actual birth—”we’ll leave it in your dad’s church right before a service. Someone will call Social Services and the baby will go to a good home. No one will ever know who the mother was. And then we’ll finish school and take off, just the way we always said we would.” Even as I talked about New York and LA and London, about our apartment and our jobs, I kept reminding myself that women give birth in weirder and more dangerous circumstances than these. In airplane bathrooms, in high school washrooms, in rice paddies, in prisons.
For a while Ruth continued to have whispered conversations with little Sassette, but as time went by and it became more and more difficult for her to conceal the pregnancy, she started to moan, “Get it out of me,” more often. The day she realized she had stretch marks was a dark day indeed, and when her ankles started to swell she started to act like the whole thing was my fault. By the middle of June, when Miki and Dad’s baby was born, I was the only one on speaking terms with the baby that Ruth now referred to as the Spawn of Satan.
Seven
In the great forest a little elephant is born.
—Jean de Brunhoff, The Story of Babar
Babar has everything you could possibly want in a story: it’s short, it has really amazing pictures and it makes its point in less than fifty pages. It starts with a birth and ends with a marriage, which is a classic literary pattern, according to Mrs. Hopper. In between are tons of the things that make life worth living: exotic travel, shopping, cool clothes, great food, a gorgeous red car, good friends and a loving family. Not to mention true love, spiky golden crowns, poisonous mushrooms and a hot air balloon. It’s also full of emotion: fear (what happens to Babar’s mother still scares the crap out of me); gratitude (the Old Lady adopts Babar); pleasure (the Old Lady lets Babar do pretty much whatever he wants); sadness (he misses his mother and his jungle home); joy (his cousins turn up) and triumph (Babar marries his cousin Celeste—apparently that’s not incest if you’re an elephant— and becomes King of the Elephants). I love it that the Old Lady knows exactly what Babar needs (an elegant green suit, a simple meal and a good night’s sleep) and that they function as a family—a really weird family, but what other kind is there? Is there any such thing as a normal family? Maybe it’s true, what Tolstoy says in the first line of Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Which is a great opening line, for sure, but since I still haven’t waded through the book, I don’t know how he goes about proving his theory. It makes happy families sound boring and undesirable, but I learned from Babar that there’s nothing dull about a happy family.
For in
stance: Miki and Dad are really happy. After she stopped being nauseous and started to enjoy food again, Miki decided that a bit of weight gain wasn’t such a bad thing. “Baby Got Back” became her theme song, and she danced around the house shaking her ass and singing, “So Cosmo says you’re fat, well I ain’t down with that.” Not dull. The sight of my dad practicing to be Miki’s labor coach wasn’t dull either (he looked like a demented frog when he practiced the breathing exercises), and his sudden interest in decorating the baby’s room was equally bizarre. He tried out various themes—rainbows, flamingos, teddy bears, suns and moons, tropical fish, jungle beasts—but he couldn’t settle on one. He chose colors and then painted them out. He put up and stripped off five different wallpaper friezes and hung about ten different mobiles before Miki called a halt to the madness by threatening to ask her mother, Irina, to come for an interior design consultation.
Miki’s mother is terrifying. She makes Miki (even the pre-pregnancy, skinny-ass, uptight Miki) seem like a total slob. Fortunately Irina lives in the United Arab Emirates or somewhere like that, where she designs gold bathrooms for rich Arab dudes. Irina is about as far from dull as you can get, but not in a good way. My dad can’t stand her. After Miki threatened him, he painted the baby’s room a buttery yellow with glossy white trim, put up a Winnie-the-Pooh frieze and hung a farmyard animal mobile that played “The Farmer in the Dell.” Miki was happy. Dad was happy. So happy that they asked me if I wanted to attend the birth. Now, you have to admit, that’s not dull.
In mid-June, the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry, Baby” woke me up in the middle of the night. It was the ringtone I’d set to alert me that Dad was calling (the ringtone I set for my mom is “What’s the Buzz” from Jesus Christ Superstar), but I didn’t recognize the voice on the phone.
“Julia, wake up.”
“Unh.” I wiped the drool from my chin.
“Wake up, Julia.”
The Lit Report Page 6
