Look at You Now (17 page)

“Is it true you're giving
your
baby away?” Gina said to me.

“I'm giving my baby up for adoption,” I answered.

“Is that what people like you do? Give their kids away?”

“Shut the fuck up, Gina. Don't answer her, Liz,” Nellie said.

“I don't know, Gina, that's just what I'm doing.”

“So you're gonna go through all this shit, and walk away without your baby?”

“Yeah . . . I am.”

“Stupidest thing I ever heard,” Gina scoffed.

“It's not stupid, Gina,” Tilly said. “She thinks it'll be better for the kid.”

“Yeah, maybe it's even smart,” Nellie said.

“Smart? What the
fuck
? How is that smart?” Gina said.

Then Amy chimed in—Amy who'd just been on her way to talk to Ms. Graham. She slammed her hand down and said, “Shut up, Gina, just
shut up
. You don't know shit, you don't even know what adoption
is
. It's not like throwing your baby away. They give the babies to families that can't have 'em, who have jobs and homes and shit. So
shut
up.”

“So a
stranger
takes the kid and fucking
pretends
it's theirs? That's
fucked
-up,” Gina lashed back.

“The kid won't think it's fucked-up when its life is all good, you moron!”

“What the fuck, Amy, like you're gonna give
your
baby up?”

“Maybe I will, Gina,” Amy shouted back. “I don't have a job or a dad for it, or a fucking place to live. I don't have shit, and what is it to you, anyway?”

“It's
your kid
, you can't just give it to someone,” Gina shouted.

“I can do what I want. It'll probably end up in foster care anyway, 'cause I'll fuck up. All these kids could get taken away from us, except for hers. Hers will be with a family that won't fuck up.” Amy pointed at me.

Deanna glared over at me. “See the
shit
you started, radio girl?” She stood up and walked out of the room. Wren was biting her bloody cuticles. Nellie was staring out the window. Tilly looked uncomfortable. Amy, still on fire, turned to Gina.

“Get outta here, Gina, just get out, you're pissing me off. Go fake your fucking labor pains somewhere else.” Gina flipped Amy off and left the room. Amy fell back onto Deanna's empty La-Z-Boy and sighed.

Nellie started slowly clapping, and said, “Thank you, Amy . . . that was good, I mean
really
good fighting, like no hits but still good.” Nellie was back to her usual self, crying no more. I guess the fight had distracted her. Tilly started to laugh, so did I, and so did Wren. Amy put her feet up in the La-Z-Boy and smiled.

“You're welcome, Nell. I guess I
coulda
hit her, she's stupid enough.”

“Talk about stupid, you better get outta that chair if you plan on living past today.” No one had ever touched Deanna's La-Z-Boy, let alone sat in it. Wren walked over and pulled on Amy's arm. “Come on, get off a there.” Wren and Amy wrestled until Amy got up out of the La-Z-Boy. Just then, Deanna returned. She cased the room and made her way to the chair. We were all quiet. Deanna looked over at me. “People don't need to hear that shit from you.”

“What?” I said.

“You know what I'm talkin' about. You can keep your bullshit ideas to yourself, just confuses people.”

“What people, Deanna?” Nellie said. “Don't fuckin' speak for us, did she confuse you? Anyone should think about giving a kid up for adoption it's you, I mean being
raped and all
.” As Nellie's words hit the air, I felt my body suddenly seize up, and almost forget to breathe. Everything stopped all at once. The only sound was the thumping hum of the ceiling fan, the fan above us that never
turned off. It took several long spins as Deanna stared at the wall in front of her. Then, a tear rolled down her face, then one after another. Nellie put her head down. She knew immediately how badly she'd messed up.

“
I'm sorry. . . . I'm so sorry, Deanna. Fuck me
, I didn't mean that the way it sounded,” Nellie said. Deanna was silent. I could not believe that inside that frighteningly angry, scary girl, there were these tears. My entire view of Deanna turned upside down in that one second. She was sitting still as a statue in the La-Z-Boy. Terrifying Deanna was just as sad as the rest of us.

I thought about what had happened to her. I mean I really thought about it, for the first time ever. To be raped by a man who was supposed to be taking care of you, and then find out you're pregnant with his child. Sometimes stories are just a bunch of words until you actually bring the words alive in your mind. Deanna's story was alive to me now, and it made me wonder about everything. I needed to get out of that lounge. But every time I felt the need to leave, or run, it wasn't until I got past the steel door and into the cold air that I remembered: There was nowhere to go. I would never be able to run from the truth of this part of my life. Outside, I stood and watched the sun set over the magnificent Indiana oak trees. I felt horrible and ashamed. I could feel the hope seeping in as I watched the sky. The faraway trees reminded me of the faraway life I had yet to live. The other girls might not be so lucky. I walked over to my mom's empty parking spot and sat down on the curb. There were so many different puzzle pieces floating around in my head. It felt like they were all waiting for me to fit them together, and I wasn't sure how. Life was not what I thought it was. People and things used to be what they seemed, and now they weren't.

• • • •

Later that night, according to Ms. Graham, we were having our first-ever movie night.

“It better be a good one,” Nellie said, sipping on an Orange
Crush. Alice came in with four packages of Jiffy Pop. Wren offered to help pop them on the stove with her. Deanna was nowhere to be seen. Ms. Graham was waiting at the door of the upstairs lounge when we arrived. She looked different. She had on blue jeans and a button-down shirt.

“Hello, Liz, how are you?” Ms. Graham said.

“I'm okay.”

“And you must be Jill, hello.”

“Hey.”

“Are you finding your way here?”

“Yeah, it's all good.”

There was a movie projector and portable movie screen set up in the back of the room. Alice and Wren arrived with the popcorn and bowls. Deanna came in a few minutes later. She looked like herself again, aloof and angry.

Amy came over. “That's her, right?”

“Who? Oh yeah. Ms. Graham. Yes, come here.” I grabbed Amy's arm, pulled her over, and told Ms. Graham Amy needed to talk to her. As I walked away, Amy seemed like she was getting along with her. I found a place on the couch and grabbed some popcorn.

Alice flicked the lights on and off to quiet us all down. Wren and Tilly were talking about what movie we might watch. Tilly whispered, “I hope it's
Alien
. Rick saw that movie and said it was trippy.” Ms. Graham made her way to the front of the room.

“Girls, it is so nice to see your faces. Tonight we thought it would be a good idea to get you together to watch an educational movie that documents a real birth, because each of you has this experience coming up, and we thought it would . . .”

Tilly stood up, shouting, “Are you kidding? We don't want to see that.” All the girls began moaning and complaining. Ms. Graham tried to continue, but no one would listen. Alice finally whistled a taxi whistle, and the girls quieted. Alice spoke loudly. She had more authority over us than Ms. Graham did.

“This is not optional. You have to grow up here, girls, and pay
attention. This is what's going to go on when you have your babies. Ms. Graham here is trying to help, okay? So pipe down.” Alice turned the lights off and started the movie projector. It reminded me of science or history class at school. The low, familiar whirring sound of the projector, and the weird beaming light shooting onto the screen. The movie opened with a sleepy-sounding narrator and a pregnant woman sitting in a hospital gown on a table in a doctor's office. This was our least favorite thing in the world. The lady opened the gown and we saw her big puffy boobs. The girls went crazy laughing; they hollered and whistled. The narrator in the movie was talking about the woman's breasts readying to become engorged with milk. The girls howled at almost everything that was said. Nellie covered her eyes with her hat, and Wren ducked under the coffee table. After a long, boring documentary-style what-happens-to-the-body-when-it's-pregnant half hour, we moved to the actual birth. The narrator was talking about the body readying for delivery, and the dilating cervix. The camera was close in on the unborn child's head, which looked like a hairy bowling ball pushing its way out of the woman's body. She was clearly in an enormous amount of pain.

It was too much. Nellie got up and left the room. Amy and Jill threw popcorn at the screen. The rest of the girls started yelling again. As the baby's head finally pushed through the vagina, all of us, including me, shrieked. Alice got up, turned the lights on, and stopped the movie. There was total chaos in the room. Wren was crying. Deanna was shouting at the screen, telling it it was full a shit. Ms. Graham turned the projector off. “My apologies, girls, you obviously are not ready for this.”

Alice was fuming as she packed the projector into its case. She and Ms. Graham left the room together. The girls were clearing out, cursing the movie. After a while, after everyone left, someone flipped off the light. I stayed on the couch alone, in the dark. The big white portable movie screen was identical to the one we had at home in the front hall closet. My dad spent much of our young
lives shooting movies of us, the seven kids, with his little black movie camera. He'd tell us to act casual when the camera was on: “Act like I'm not here.” He filmed us sailing and skiing and opening Christmas presents and blowing out candles and watching fireworks and eating turkey at Thanksgiving. Occasionally, on a Friday or Saturday night, he'd announce we were having family movie night. We all loved family movie night. We'd gather in the living room to watch the soundless black-and-white film, our lives playing out on the big white screen. We'd
ohhh
and
ahhh
at our parents when they were younger and collapse with laughter watching ourselves as little kids. I closed my eyes on the couch in the facility lounge and watched my favorite family footage in my head.

It was Easter. We were dressed up, playing in the backyard before church. My older sisters and I were wearing our Easter hats, with our fancy dresses and white gloves. My older sister Alex was standing on the grass pushing Kiley and me on the swings. It was obvious in the movie that she was trying to be fair—she gave us each an equal number of pushes, because that is who Alex was. You could see Kiley and me loving the wind in our faces. At the same time, you could see that whenever Alex pushed a swing she would look down and check the palms of her gloves afterward. The faster the swings went, the faster she'd have to check her palms. Eventually we figured out she was making sure her white gloves hadn't gotten dirty. The film was a little faster than real life, and the image was hilarious. If you looked closely, you could see Dorothy in the background, in her fancy church suit with her caplet hat and white gloves, smoking a cigarette. You could see my brothers messing around on the lawn. I played the image over and over in my mind, trying to erase the horror of the swollen boobs and the birthing vagina from my mind.

• • • •

“Are you lost?” I looked up and saw Ms. Graham standing over me, in the dark.

“No. I was just sitting here, I guess.” Ms. Graham walked over to the table, turned the lamp on, and plopped down in the chair next to me. She looked so different in her jeans and button-down shirt. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket.
Holy crap
, I thought,
she smokes?

“I don't know what I was thinking with that movie, what a bomb.” I didn't say anything; I just looked at her puffing on the Kent cigarette, taking in the strange sight.

“I thought with the loss of Elaine's baby being so difficult for everyone, I might try to prepare you girls for what you will be experiencing.” She ran her fingers through her short hair and laughed. “Boy, I mucked it up, huh?”

I thought about it. “Maybe it's better not to know things sometimes.”

“That's probably true.”

A moment later, the door to the room flew open. Tilly was panting. “Liz, you in here? Oh hey, well guess what? Gina's water broke in the hall, went everywhere, super gross. I guess she's
really
gonna have the baby.”

Ms. Graham got up and rushed out to attend to Gina. Tilly came and sat next to me.

“What was she saying? That we suck?”

“No. That she shouldn't have shown the movie.”

“Duh.”

“So Gina has to have the baby now 'cause the water broke, right?”

“Yeah, they're taking her over now.”

“Wow, so weird, isn't it?” She was looking at me funny. “What, Till?”

“Can I
pleeeaaasseee
meet your dad when he comes? I want to see what a real dad is like.”

“What? Yeah, you want to come with us wherever we go, we'll probably go to lunch.”

“Shit, yes. And Nellie can't come.”

“Tilly, Nellie can come if she wants.”

“No, just me.” She jumped up off the couch and headed for the door. “See you back in the lounge.”

I sat in the dark on the couch. I thought about Gina heading to the hospital to give birth to her baby. To go do what we were all there to do. Gina was the first since I'd arrived, and it felt strangely unexpected. Alice had told us many times, “You never know when the baby will come. When it does, your time is up.” Gina would have the baby and leave immediately afterward. We all would. In a few days' time, it would be as if she were never there at all. New girls would arrive, and all traces of the others would vanish.