Look at You Now (11 page)

But the Morticia-looking girl, Elaine, the girl with the black hair almost to her butt, was leaning over the couch and cringing in pain. She grabbed her stomach and started crying. Wren got up off the couch and left the room, and so did a few others. Deanna just stared at her. Elaine was now doubled over. No one said anything, so I slowly walked over and asked what was wrong.

“My stomach, like really bad,” she said.

I ran to get Alice, and when we came back to the lounge—Alice taking her time, walking slow—Elaine was now lying down on the floor. When Alice saw Elaine on the floor, her annoyance turned to concern.

“What's the problem, Elaine? Is it that bad you can't stand up?”

“I can't move,” Elaine said. She was sweating badly and looked ashen. Alice called the paramedics from next door. A few minutes later, two guys came in with a gurney. They hoisted Elaine on and left.

I looked around and then asked, “How far along is she?”

A girl named Amy, who had a short blond pixie haircut, huge boobs, and a funky lazy eye, said, “Seven months, I think.”

Deanna sat up from the recliner, sucking on a Tootsie Pop. “Maybe she did something stupid. She's got a baby in there; she better not be doing no drugs and shit.”

“She doesn't do drugs, Deanna,” Amy said.

Their bickering went on for a while, until Alice came back in and told us to be quiet. She said, “I think it would be a good idea to get your lazy rear ends outside. I am going to take anyone who wants to come on a walk.”

“You shitting me? It's pouring snow.” Deanna pointed to the window.

“I see that, Deanna,” Alice said. “All the more reason to get out. The fresh air will do everyone some good.”

“No fucking thank you.” Deanna reclined back in her chair. Amy and Wren and Nellie and Tilly shook their heads too. But I got up and announced I was going.

They all looked at me. “What else am I going to do?” I said.

“Good, Liz, I'll take you. I can't get these girls out for the life of me.” But then Tilly changed her mind. She was coming too. Then Nellie said she would as well. Amy too, and finally Wren. Deanna and the others stayed where they were.

We walked to the entrance of the facility past Ms. Graham's office, and Nellie hollered to the guard her usual refrain: “Yo, Chief, hit it!”

“You got it, Mac,” the guard lady said, and buzzed the door open. We filed outside, behind Alice, who looked like the Michelin tire man from the TV commercials, with her puffy coat and round wobble. The grounds were wrapped in the new white snow. There was that just-after-a-big-snowfall thick silence outside, the kind that makes you want to whisper. For a second I felt something nice—peaceful almost—and then I felt a plop on the back of my head. The girls were throwing snowballs, kicking the loose snow up at one another, laughing and shouting. Alice stood and watched from afar with half a smile. I scooped up a load of snow and let it drop above Nellie's head. She tried to get me back but could barely move, she was so big and bulky. I lay down flat on my back in the soft snow and looked up at the sky. The sun was finally peeking through the dark clouds. Nellie came and nudged my side with her sneaker. “Get up, moron.”

“Nope, gotta make snow angels,” I said.

“What the fuck?”

“Come on, lie down.”

“Not gonna happen, too cold.”

“Wren, Tilly, come here . . . Amy. Who's made snow angels before?” I asked, but I was met with blank stares. Seriously? None of them knew about this? I decided to demonstrate.

“My God, okay, watch.” The other girls stood around me in a circle as I began moving my arms and legs back and forth through the snow. Then carefully, I stood up and jumped to the side so as not to mess it up. A perfect lone imprint of what looked like an angel with wings glistened on the ground.

Tilly laughed. “Cool.” She and Nellie lay down and started making angels. Wren and Amy watched for a second before they got on their backs too. We made more than twenty angels in a line, going almost all the way up the hill to the schoolhouse. Alice sat on the bench, watching. When we stepped back to view our masterpiece, we noticed that every fifth angel in the line looked twice as big as the others.

“I'm a fucking fat angel, all right?” Nellie said.

Alice looked over, and finally spoke. “You're a cherub, Nellie, a real cherub, especially with that mouth-a yours. Let's go. You guys are soaking wet.”

We headed back inside and hung our wet coats on the radiators in the lounge. The snow and the walk were a tiny reminder that there was life beyond the lounge. Deanna was standing by the window. I wondered what she thought about in those moments. The TV was off, and a few other girls were scattered around the room. I'd barely ever seen Deanna out of her chair. I stood warming my hands at the radiator when Deanna finally spoke, addressing the room.

“Elaine's baby died in her stomach,” she said. A long silence passed.

“What are you fucking talking about?” Nellie said.

“I'm fucking talking about that her stepmother came to get some of her things and told us that the baby died inside her.”

Tilly stared at the ground. “I didn't know a baby
could
die in your stomach.”

I thought, Me neither, and said, “How does that happen?”

“That's just the way, sometimes, is what the stepmom said.” Deanna was back in the recliner. She curled herself in a ball. Everyone was quiet.

“She hates that stepmother,” Amy said. “She told me she ran away for long enough so that lady wouldn't make her have an abortion. She lived on the streets waiting to get to four months. She really wanted the baby. She named it Angel. Are they coming back? Will we see her again?”

In my worst wildest imagination, I hadn't even considered a baby could die in someone's stomach. I made my way to the phone booth. The phone rang several times with no answer. I hung up, tried again, and let it ring more than ten times. Finally someone answered.

“Mom?” I said.

“Hi, sweetheart. How are you faring?”

“Do you know anything about babies dying inside people?”

“My gosh. Why are you asking me such a thing?”

“Because a girl here had a baby die inside of her, and it's freaking me out. Why, how does that happen?”

“I suppose there are a number of different reasons, but sometimes it just happens. God makes decisions that are difficult to understand. In her poor case, he decided to take the baby before it was born. It's rare, honey.”

“Well, I think that's terrible and mean of God.”

“You never know why and how things happen, Liz.”

“I want to come home.”

“I know you do.” We sat in phone silence a long time. I didn't want to make my mom feel bad—of course I couldn't come home. But I wanted to.

“I went to the doctor here today, it was horrible.”

“Well, sweetie, people in your condition must go to the doctor often, it's not pleasant but it's part of it. Liz—you have to try to make it work there.”

I knew that already. But I didn't like being reminded.

“Can I speak to one of the twins . . . please?”

“Yes, yes you
may
. Let me find them. Hold on a minute.” My heart panged as I heard the yelling and recognizable chaos of home in the background. After what sounded like the phone dropping to the floor, I heard another familiar voice.

“Hello?”

“Jen?”

“Liz? Hi, oh my gosh, how are you?”

“I'm okay, how are you?”

“Well, we had two snow days in a row. How do you think we are? It's fantastic.”

“I'm so jealous.”

“We took the toboggan and went sledding down the driveway out onto the street. It was totally empty. You should have been here. Leann from next door got her dog to pull her sled. It was hilarious.”

“Wow, sounds fun. How's Tory?”

“She's fine, she's soaking wet with snow right now. When are you coming home?”

“I . . . don't exactly know.” The lump emerged in the back of my throat. I wasn't coming home for a long, long time, but I couldn't tell her that.

“You feeling okay? You feeling sick?”

“I'm okay.”

“You sound different.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Well . . . I'm the same.”

“Call us again, okay?” My mom came back on and said she'd see me next weekend—only a week away, but it felt like a lifetime.

I stayed a long time in the phone booth, thinking about what my sister Jennifer said. I sounded different . . . because I was different . . . and I didn't want to be. I could feel myself changing, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I could visualize the happy, normal life I used to know in my mind, but I couldn't feel it. It was unreal now, fading away. So many things in life were bigger than me. I decided I hated change. It was like a frightening beast. The more I fought it, the harder it pushed its way in. All I wanted was to go back to the old, safe me. But the beast was winning. I was changing.

• • • •

The girls were quiet when I returned to the lounge, still in shock from the news about Elaine. I sat down and looked at the clock on the wall. It was just like the clocks at school. Big, with black hands and numbers, and a red second hand. The quiet was killing me. I watched the red second hand and listened to the hard click of each second passing. “Time passes slowly here,” I said.

“You want to see time
stop
, radio girl?” Deanna said. “Just take your lily-white ass over to juvie.”

I thought about it and said, “I don't want to see it stop, no, thank you.”

Deanna laughed a good, long laugh. “This is a fucking hotel compared to that shit.”

Tilly was biting her nails, looking around the room. “I feel so bad for Elaine. Angel, that's a sweet name for a baby girl, isn't it, Liz? I know the name of this little guy in here, but I ain't telling till he comes out.”

Nellie looked at her. “It's gonna be Rick Junior, duhhhh, right?”

“Maybe.”

Deanna chimed in, pointing to her stomach. “If this thing's a guy, I'm naming it Rubin, and if it's a girl and it better be, I'm naming her Tracey. T-R-A-C-E-Y.”

“You got a name for your baby, Liz?” Tilly asked.

“No.”

“I have a baby name book if you want to use it.”

“No, that's okay.”

“Then you do have a name?”

“No . . . I'm not gonna need a name.”

“You can't not name your baby.”

“I'm not keeping my baby, Tilly,” I said. Tilly stopped biting her nails and stared at me. I looked at the snow—it had started again—pouring outside through the window behind her.

“Why? Your parents won't let you?”

“No . . . I don't want to keep it.”

“Listen to this shit, she don't even want her own baby,” Deanna said.

Tilly put her arm on mine and asked, “What are you doing with it, then?”

“I'm giving it up for adoption. I'm too young to have a baby.”

Deanna snickered. “Says fucking who? If you were too young to have a baby, you wouldn't be able to get pregnant.” She was sitting up in her chair now, paying attention. Nellie took her taped glasses off her face and looked at me. They were all looking at me. Like I was some sort of freak. Someone who would actually choose to give up their baby? Deanna looked down at her belly and said,
“Yeah, well, I ain't going through all this shit to not have anything at the end. I ain't giving my baby to no one.”

Nellie chimed in. “Yeah, you are, you got more time in juvie, girl, you'll be giving that baby to someone when it comes.”

“I'm trying to get my sister to take the baby till I get out.”

“Your sister ain't old enough, Deanna. You know that.”

“Well I ain't giving it to some family I don't know and never seeing it again, not gonna happen.”

Amy turned and asked me, “Will you get to meet the people that adopt your baby? I mean, can you choose them?”

“I don't know. I think I get to know about them. I mean, they get to know about me. But I'll be finding out more when I talk to Ms. Graham this week.” Deanna scowled at the mention of her name.

“So you don't know who is adopting your baby, Liz?” Tilly asked.

“There's an adoption agency. They have all sorts of husbands and wives who can't have babies who might want my baby. My parents told me there are a whole lot of people in the world who really want to have kids and can't.”

“Do
you
know anyone who's adopted?” Tilly asked.

“Yeah, my three cousins, and my sister's best friend Carrie.”

“What are they like?” Nellie asked. Suddenly everyone had a lot of questions. “Are your cousins creepy? Do they seem like they don't belong there?”

“Why, because they're adopted? No, they're just my cousins. They're cool. I mean, I never even think about that they're adopted. My aunt and uncle got all of them when they were like two days old. So you know, they're family, just like the rest of us.”

“I wouldn't want to be adopted.” Deanna shook her head. “I'd want to know my people, see my mother, know where I fucking come from.”

Nellie looked deep in thought—it seemed like she might be starting to get it, how someone could choose to do this—and then she turned to Deanna.

“Would you rather be adopted into some family who wants you real bad, where you know you'll live forever? Or go from one foster home to another, waiting for your mom to come get you, but she never makes it?” There was a long silence. Deanna didn't say anything.

“Were you in a foster home?” I asked Nellie.

“Yeah, a ton of 'em. It fucking sucked. I moved from bad place to bad place almost every year till I was nine.”