that she was NOT putting the whole thing out of her mind. And frankly, neither was I.
And then the dreaded Friday came--and then the dreaded Friday passed. Like I said above, I simply cannot describe that day. Bob met me briefly to give me the money, and then I went down to the clinic. The procedure was simple enough, and was indeed basically painless, although it was a little uncomfortable. There was a short time of recovery, and then I went home. But something happened that day that changed me forever. Those few cells that they took out of me must have contained not only Jonathon's life, but my own. Because my life ended that day, just as his did.
April 22
This journal still lives! (unlike Jonathon) I did not throw it in the sewer after my therapy appointment as I'd planned. I tried to, and even found a particularly good sewer drain along the street to throw it into, where I could see the rushing, gurgling drain water, and could smell it a bit too. But for some reason, suddenly I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't throw the thing down there, even though I wanted to so badly.
And then all of a sudden I realized the reason. This journal is the only link I have to Jonathon, who has been gone for a year now. It is the only 'thing' I can look at and remember him by. And no matter how tortured and horrible the memory, I know I can never forget him. Not now, and not for eternity. I will forget my own existence before I will ever forget his.
But I'm off on a tangent again. The reality is, after the 'procedure' I went home feeling like a dead fish. I must have looked like one too since Mom wanted to put me straight to bed. "Are you sure you're all right?" she kept asking over and over, looking at me with big, worried eyes. Of course I always shrugged and said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I'm ok, really."
But she didn't believe me of course, and kept feeling my forehead and taking my temperature and then asking if anything was wrong again. Before long she convinced me I really WAS sick, and I ended up in bed for the rest of the weekend. In fact, I was still there on Monday and Tuesday as well. My senior year in high school was ending soon and my classmates were all getting excited about graduation and the big parties that would go along with it, but all of that had become meaningless to me. All I could think about was Jonathon. Oscar tried constantly to get me to notice him by bumping up to me, wanting to be petted and fussed over. But I felt too depressed to do any such thing, and just ignored him.
Bob was ecstatic of course and kept calling on my cell to ask if I was getting better and to congratulate me on having done the abortion. "I am SO relieved you did it!" he kept saying over and over. His repeating this started to annoy me so I asked him at one point, "So, don't you even care at all about the baby that just died? He was yours too, you know."
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then he said simply, "There was no baby, and nothing just died. It was just a bunch of cells that were removed."
I suddenly felt very angry. Why did everyone keep saying that? If it really WAS just a blob of cells like a wart, why did I feel so terrible? I'd never felt bad about removing a wart before! Besides, no wart I'd ever known could grow fingers and toes, and have a brain. That 'blob of cells' business was starting to sound like a bunch of nonsense. And to say that it didn't die was also ridiculous. Even a removed wart dies. There was no question that what was pulled out of me was now dead, even though yesterday it was alive. And if I hadn't aborted it, it would STILL be alive!
"Well, you should care about the baby!" I blurted to Bob, suddenly wanting him to feel some of my pain. "He was your responsibility just as much as he was mine! And you decided to kill him too. It's the same as if you were there in the abortion clinic with me, having it done to you. How can you just sit back and treat it so casually? Don't you feel ANYTHING?"
He didn't give me a straight answer. He just stammered and mumbled after that, not sure what to say. Not long after that he hung up.
Clarice called later, and told me she was going on Tuesday to the abortion clinic to fill out her forms and make her appointment. She expected the abortion to happen on Friday, like mine. When she told me that, I choked up and couldn't say anything. I wanted to scream at her to not go, to spare herself the agony, but I couldn't seem to say a word. All I did was sit there balling, my tears dripping onto my cell phone. She heard it of course, and didn't know what to say. In the end our conversation sort of tapered off and she said she would call me later.
That was the longest, worst weekend I've ever spent in my life. And it was during that endless weekend--the very first night after the abortion, in fact--when the dreams started. Some people have recurring dreams that always repeat themselves and always come out the same way no matter how much you want them to change. My dreams are not like that. They are almost never the same, and sometimes they're full of sunshine, while other times there's just darkness. But there's always one thing about them that's the same. In every one of them Jonathon is there.
He never speaks to me of course. Sometimes when the dream is dark I don't even see him at all. But I always feel his presence. It's hard to describe how, really. All I know is that he's there, looking at me, watching me. Sort of like how a baby loves to watch its mother. When I first started having the dreams I sometimes yelled at him to go away, that he was just a blob of flesh like a wart and that he should stop staring at me. But he never moved. He always kept staring, never making a sound.
The most frightening dreams are the ones full of sunshine, since there is plenty of light in them to see Jonathon. And he has never been a mere blob of flesh in any of them. Always he looks the same--like a baby. I can see his tiny arms and hands, his teensy little toes, and his cute little blue eyes. Those eyes always stare at me adoringly, and when I first started having the dream I would either start screaming at him to stop staring, or tried to run away from him. But you know how it is when you run in a dream. It's like you're running in slow motion, and hardly moving at all. Jonathon somehow always followed me no matter how hard I ran, and seemed to get closer the farther I tried to go.
Sometimes there were knives in my dreams. Shiny, ugly, sharp knives that somehow I knew were abortion knives. Not that they use such knives in abortions, mind you. I frankly didn't know then what they used, and doubted it would be knives like these. But in my dreams, I somehow knew that these knives were 'dream' abortion knives, and were there for me to use on Jonathon. I always threw them away from him of course, as far as I could. But when I looked back at the table next to Jonathon, all the knives were there again.
Many times that first weekend I woke up in a cold sweat, and a few times I woke up screaming. Poor Mom wondered what on earth had happened to me. She even called Bob in the middle of the night to chew him out, since she thought my condition had been caused by a fight between him and me. Which I suppose in a way is true. Somehow it made me smile to think of her chewing him out in the middle of the night, and I slept a little bet afterward.
Mom insisted on taking me to a doctor on Monday. "Come on, honey," she wheedled. "There's obviously something wrong. Let's not get side tracked with a tangent--let's find out what the problem is, and then take care of it."
If only she knew! I'd already 'taken care of it'--indeed, THAT was the problem! I didn't want to go to a doctor of course, since I was afraid he might do a lot of tests and find out about my abortion. I tried to force my body to get better so I wouldn't have to go. But my body just wouldn't do it.
So on Monday afternoon we went to old Doc Jenkins, who's been our family doctor ever since I was born (he delivered me!) He looked me over and put a stick in my mouth making me say 'Aw,' and bumped the funny bone in my knee and took a blood and urine test, which he sent off to his lab. But when Mom asked him what was wrong he just shrugged his shoulders in confusion. "As far as I can tell," he said slowly, "she's showing the symptoms of what looks like post-traumatic stress."
Both he and Mom looked at me curiously, after which I got gril
led with tons of questions about what had caused the traumatic stress.
"Did someone at school hit you?"
"Did you and Bob have a particularly bad fight?"
"Did you fall down a flight of stairs?"
"Did you and Bob have an awful fight?"
"Did you fall out of a tree house?"
"Did Bob tell you off, or hit you?"
"Did you nearly get hit by a school bus?"
Mom asked most of the questions of course, and most of her questions were about Bob. Naturally I told them nothing. But Mom didn't believe me of course, so she called up Bob again as soon as we left Doc Jenkins' office, and gave him another tongue lashing. Once more, it made me smile as I listened to her tear into him. It felt good to know that Bob was experiencing at least a little of the pain I was going through.
By Wednesday I was thankfully well enough to go back to school. As I walked down the familiar halls and saw the familiar smiling faces and goofy teachers, I felt totally like a zombie. It was as if I was a stranger here, looking through someone else's eyes at a world that didn't exist anymore. This place was not my school as it once had been. That was in a former life, before I died when Jonathon's blob of cells was removed.
To my surprise, Clarice was not in school that day. I suddenly realized that she hadn't called me back like she'd promised, and that five whole days had passed since we'd talked. I'd been too dead to the world to realize this before. So naturally I tried to get in touch with her. But no matter how often I texted her she didn't respond. That didn't help me of course, since I was starting to feel a desperate need to talk to someone, now that I was over being sick.
I talked to Bob at school, but he was no help as usual. He seemed genuinely confused about why I wasn't as happy and relieved as he was about the abortion. "What gives?" he demanded. "The things gone! It's not in you anymore! You should be ecstatic."
I just stared at him dumbly. "I don't feel very good about any of it. It still just doesn't feel right. And I keep having dreams about Jonathon."
Bob's face clouded over. "You're still giving it a name? Are you crazy? It was just a bunch of cells! Waste cells that you didn't want! You don't give your warts names, do you? Why do you care about something the size of a wart?"
"This wasn't a wart," I said with a frown. "It was Jonathon." Why was Bob so fixated on warts?
"Will you stop calling it by that name!" he yelled, causing several students down the hall to turn and stare. Then he started to chew me out for being ungrateful since he'd paid for it. He also chewed me out for the phone calls he'd got from my Mom. I just turned and walked away while he was still talking.
Thursday after school I went to Clarice's house since she still hadn't been in school and I wasn't able to reach her by texting. "She's not here," her dad told me when he opened the door. "She and her mom left yesterday to visit some relative in Florida that I didn't even know existed." He shook his head, apparently just as confused as I was. "Sounds like this relative is dying or something."
"Do you mind if I go look in her room?" I asked. Her dad just shrugged. Like Clarice's mom, he didn't much care if I came in, since I was at his house all the time. I dodged past him and trudged up to her room. Maybe there was some kind of clue about what had happened, since it just wasn't like Clarice to go this long without contacting me.
The mystery of why she hadn't answered my texts was instantly solved when I saw her phone by her bed. Obviously, future text and phone call attempts were pointless. But there was no other clue at all.
This was weird. Clarice had NEVER just gone off like this before. It crossed my mind that maybe her plan to have an abortion had been found out by her parents, and she was being punished for it. But her Dad wouldn't be acting the way he was if that was true. He'd be in a rage, instead of bumbling around his house in confusion. It just didn't add up.
I went home and tried to reach her on Facebook and gmail. But she never responded. Then I called the abortion clinic, since she'd said she was going in on Tuesday to fill out forms and make her abortion appointment. I thought maybe they could tell me what time her appointment was tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe she'd come back for it. But the clinic just refused to give me any information, citing some privacy law I knew nothing about.
After that I texted her boyfriend Tom, but it turned out he was just as baffled as I was. She hadn't told him a thing about leaving, but had suddenly just disappeared.
I envied her. Somehow, she just disappeared. I wish I could do that. Oh, how I wish I could just vanish into thin air and make all this go away!
April 24
Well, I'm back to this idiotic journal again. I hate it with a passion. I despise the sight of it, and have started cursing the day my stupid therapist told me to start keeping it. But somehow I keep feeling pulled to write in it, to finish my story. Maybe it's Jonathon that's pulling me. After all, this is his story as much as it is mine.
So, here goes. Back to the story which I wish I could forget, but can't stop thinking about or remembering. Friday came and went, and still no Clarice. One week had passed since Jonathon died at my hands. I marked the occasion by crying into my pillow half the night. Oscar tried to comfort me, but having my face licked by a sandpaper tongue was not very comforting.
The weekend that followed was a black hole that I hardly remember. It wasn't much better than the horrible weekend before. I honestly felt more dead than alive. I began wishing that our positions had been reversed, and that it was me that had been aborted, rather than Jonathon. At least then he would be alive.
Monday came and still no word from Clarice. However her Dad told me when I went to her house that her mom had called him over the weekend. But she didn't tell him much, just saying some vague thing about a dying relative. The poor man was starting to get really worried, not only about his daughter and wife and unknown relative, but about who was going to clean up the mess he'd made of his house since he'd thought she'd be back soon.
Life was going on for me, but it had NOT gone back to normal like Clarice said. Not at all. Like I said before, I felt more dead than alive. I had to drag myself through the days. I couldn't concentrate at school and completely stopped doing any homework. It all seemed so pointless. Mom was threatening to take me to another doctor, a specialist. I had little strength to resist her, even though I knew that could lead to real trouble. So she set up an appointment. Fortunately, it wasn't for another ten days, so I had some time to figure out an escape.
Meanwhile, I avoided Bob like the plague. The idiot was clueless as to why, and kept trying to text me. I finally shut off my phone. With Clarice gone, I hardly used it anyway.
And then on Wednesday my world exploded. And bad as I'd thought things were before, they suddenly got a whole lot worse. That's the way it is with life, I guess. Just when you don't think things can get any worse, they do.
April 25
I know I should have kept going when I wrote the above, rather than just leave things with the unanswered question of what horrible thing happened on Wednesday. But no matter. No one but me will ever read this idiotic journal, and I know full well what happened. I just couldn't keep writing yesterday. Even though it's been a year, the memory is still too painful.
But for my moron therapist's sake, I'll keep going with the story. I feel a little stronger today, and think I can write it now. Then I can shove this journal in my therapist's face and yell, "See? I wrote the whole stinking story, and it hasn't helped me one bit!"
The minute I walked in the door after school that day and saw both Mom and Dad looking at me, I knew they'd found out about my abortion.
"Kate!" my Dad said in a voice that scared me. He was clenching and unclenching his fists, as if he was fighting to keep himself under control. "We received a report from Doctor Jenkins today. He got the results of the blood and urine tests you had last week. He says they suggest that you've
recently ... had an abortion." He looked at me with eyes sparking fire. "Is that true?"
I could see his jaw muscles throbbing as if they would jump right off his face. The veins in his neck looked positively purple. The skin at the back of my own neck started to crawl, and I admit I was starting to feel downright frightened.
But when I glanced over at Mom, all of my fear melted away. If Dad looked scary, Mom looked out of this world. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was unkempt, and she was swaying on her feet as if she had been drinking or something. And she'd never touched alcohol in her life!
But it was her eyes that completely unnerved me. They were filled with more agony than I thought I could ever see in anyone's eyes. Those eyes which so often had loved and comforted me were now so swelled up with pain that I hardly recognized them. There was no accusation in those eyes, or anger of any kind. Just a deep and profound pain and horror that shocked me.
"Is this true?!" Dad repeated again, in a voice that sounded like thunder. I let my book bag slump to the floor and looked down at the carpet of our entry hall, fixing my eyes on the purple stain I'd caused at age ten when I spilled some grape juice. No matter how hard Mom had tried, she could never get that stain out. And it was starting to look like the stain of my abortion wouldn't go away either.
"Yes, it's true," I said softly. I braced myself for the nuclear blast I was sure would happen next. My Dad's temper could be a sight. He'd never struck me before, but it looked like that might be about to change. I closed my eyes for a second, waiting for the explosion to hit. And in the back of my mind, a stupid little voice sounded off like an annoying siren. "All that sneaking around to please Bob so that no one would know--and now they know! Was the abortion really necessary?"
But my surprises weren't over. To my shock, the only thing I heard next was my Dad letting out a long breath, as if he'd been socked in the stomach. Apparently my admitting the abortion had hit him harder than an actual fist. And as I looked up at him, I saw that his anger had died almost instantly. In its place was a haggard, weary look that made his face look a hundred years old.
What happened then was the longest, most awkward silence I had ever experienced with my parents in my life. No one said a word. We all just stood there, looking at each other. I kept waiting for Mom to rush in and offer comfort like she always had when I was hurt. But she didn't. And thinking about it, it was obvious why. THEY were the ones needing comfort, not
My Name is Kate and I Just Killed My Baby Page 5
