Look at You Now (21 page)

I had another question. I couldn't look at him when I asked, but I wanted to know. And I finally felt the courage to say it out loud.

“One more question. Um, there's this weird liquid or something coming out of my boob.”

He rolled his eyes. “That's fine, you're getting ready to lactate. That happens in the last month or so. Some leaking from the nipples. You're planning to nurse this baby?”

“No, I'm giving this baby up for adoption.”

He actually
chuckled
, which shocked me. “Well, that's the most practical thing I've heard all year. Good for you, young lady. I'll write in your chart here that we'll also be giving you a medication after delivery to help stop lactation, dry you up, all right?”

He threw his gloves in the trash and left. I stayed on the table a long time, thinking to myself. What if my mom doesn't come when I'm ready to have the baby? What if it was just me and Dr. Dick? What if the baby doesn't come out? What if there's something wrong with it? What if there's something wrong with it, and the people don't want to adopt it? What if something happens to me, and Dr. Dick doesn't give a shit? What if my parents never come back for me? What would I do? The weirdo nurse came to the doorway.

“Doctor wants me to weigh you again.” I went along and followed her to the scale. She glanced at me as I got off the scale and said, “You're barely where you should be. You need to eat more.”

• • • •

We did a whole lot of nothing for two straight days, waiting for the big Easter brunch. I did double chores because of the stolen library book—triple actually, 'cause Tilly was so big, she could barely move. The day before Easter, the phone in the hall rang. Amy ran for it and told me I had a call.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“It sure sounds like your fancy mom.”

“Tell her I'm not available,” I said. The room went silent.

“What the fuck, Liz, I'm not saying that,” Amy said.

“Okay, then just hang the phone up.”

“You really don't want to talk to her?” Tilly said.

“Nope.”

Tilly got a determined look on her face, stood up, and said she'd do it herself. When she came back she announced, “Your mom wants you to
callllllllllll
her.” Everyone laughed.

But I didn't. I didn't want to think about Sea Island, Georgia, the beach, their trip, any of it. Instead, I thought about my older brothers and sisters. I wondered where they were, what they were doing, and where they thought
I
was. What about my grandparents and my friends? I'd been gone for months. I'd vanished completely and until that moment, I hadn't realized that no one—not a single
person—had reached out to hear my voice. No one had written a letter or demanded some kind of contact. It was as though I was fading into a mere speck of existence, in my own world, cut off from everything that came before. The realization almost choked me. Did no one miss me?

My mind wandered back to when I was a little girl. To all the nights I'd lain alone, on my back, on the deck of my dad's schooner. I liked to look up at the brilliantly lit night sky and the thousands of stars and planets. While everyone was sleeping down below, I'd play a game. I'd silently search and search and search for the teeniest star. I'd squint and scan the enormous sky. When I thought I'd finally found it, the smallest fading speck of a star, I'd say out loud, “I found you and I see you, smallest star of them all.”
I
was becoming smaller and smaller, and I was afraid I might fade and disappear.

• • • •

The next morning I woke to the sound of church bells chiming. The sound was beautiful and familiar. For a moment I forgot where I was, I forgot
who
I was. I looked out at the flawless blue sky, and saw the sun resting at the top of the trees, waiting to warm the day. And then I remembered. It was Easter Sunday. I closed my eyes and listened carefully to the chime of each beautiful bell and decided I wanted to matter. I didn't care how small I felt, how much I'd faded. I needed to matter, at least to myself. I let the bells fill me up. They got louder and louder until I could actually feel the sound inside me. The more I listened, the stronger I felt. I finally opened my eyes and looked over at Jill. She wrapped her pillow around her head to cover her ears, and then she shouted out to the window, “
Fucking
bells.”

I laughed and threw my pillow at her.

“
Motherfucking
bells, so loud.”

“Happy Easter, Jill.”

“Happy Easter, bitch,” she said. We got out of bed and dressed.
Jill smoked a cigarette out the window in the room. Of course she'd figured out a way to nudge it open just so, so the smoke would go out of the room and not come in. Smoking was forbidden in the bedrooms. She finished the cigarette, closed the window, and tucked her white gauze Mexican shirt with the red-and-yellow smocking into her tan corduroy pants.

“Easter-y enough?” she asked me.

“Perfectly Easter-y,” I said. We made our way to the lounge, where the girls were gathered, looking a lot more civilized than usual. Alice appeared at the door, wearing a puffy pink flowered dress and straw hat. The girls whistled and hooted. She twirled once around and then got to business.

“Okay, okay, that's enough. Happy Easter! Listen up. There's something I forgot to make clear to you girls about today—no church, no brunch! Got that? You all gotta go to mass.” Amy and Deanna moaned the loudest, but we all went along. We weren't going to miss brunch, not for anything.

We followed Alice, navigating the dirt path around to the back of the facility in our nicer-than-usual shoes. Tilly had her hair in a tiny ponytail in the back of her head, with a sad green ribbon tied around it. The maternity shirt I'd given her barely covered her stomach now. She turned to me and smiled. “We're going somewhere, who cares if it's church, right? We're out and about!” She looked up at the sky and laughed. None of the girls had been anywhere in a long, long time. We followed the path past the chapel and down a hill. There were a few small buildings and a nice church at the end of the small road where the hospital was. As the wooden doors opened, I felt everything in my body pause. There was the extraordinary sound of the organ, and the familiar smell of Easter lilies. The girls fought about where to sit, and who would go in first, and if they should kneel or sit. Finally, I knelt down, last in the pew, and crossed myself. I craned my neck around to watch the organ player up in the balcony. The music soothed what felt so cracked inside me.

There was a little girl, sitting in the row in front of me, with her parents and baby brother. She was wearing an Easter bonnet and white tights. She kicked her party shoes against the back of the pew in front of her, and each time her mom told her to stop, she'd do it again. The church was filled with
life
. The kind of life none of us had seen in a long time. In the aisle, next to me, I saw an enormous white statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. It looked almost suspended in air. The look on Mary's sweet face made me think of my older sister, who once asked my mom if she could pray to Mary instead of God because she was a girl. My mom said we could pray to any of them—to Jesus, to God, to Mary, and to all the saints. In that moment, I prayed to Mary. I asked her if she could help me give birth to the baby inside me. And then I talked to God. I told him I was sorry for all the things I had done wrong, for the mistakes I'd made, for being so careless about sex. I told him I would always be sorry for them, and then I asked him if he could help me be okay in the world, after all of this was over. If he could help make me feel like I mattered again. I hadn't cried in a while, in fact I was pretty sure I'd finally run out of tears, but as I asked God one last thing—to help me not be so upset with my mom for leaving me there at Easter—I felt the wet drops pouring out of my eyes.

• • • •

Afterward, Alice led us into the rectory dining area. It was a handsome room, covered in shiny dark wood, with light coming through the stained-glass windows. Tulips sat on each of the tables, and dozens of crepe paper Easter eggs hung from the ceiling. The girls found the candy egg table, and several of them began shoving chocolates into their pockets. Jill ducked out for a smoke. At that moment, a very strange-looking group of pregnant girls walked through the door. They were older than us, and I'd never seen them before. Amy came up and whispered, “
That's
the fucking weird-ass red-haired girl. Look, look at her!” Sure enough,
the girl with the red hair from the hall that day was in the group of girls. These must have been
all
of the over-eighteens from the other wing.

Deanna couldn't contain herself. She said out loud, for everyone to hear, “Holy shit. They let the crazy pregnant chicks out.”

Wren covered her eyes. “I can't even look at that one girl. I know something is wrong with her but she scares me.” There was a loopy-looking girl with wild frizzy hair who couldn't seem to walk straight. She moved her hands all over the place. She had a very low-hanging pregnant stomach and was making loud screeching noises.

“Nellie woulda eaten this shit up, sitting here with the whole crowd-a
Cuckoo's Nest
bitches,” Deanna said. The older girls apparently had their own table, but a few of them decided to sit with us. One of them was playing with a wooden toy paddle that had a rubber ball attached by a rubber band. She was trying to paddle the ball, but kept hitting things on the table instead. A saltshaker and then a glass of water toppled over. Deanna got up, walked over, took the paddle out of the girl's hand, and slammed it down on the table. The girl started crying, and then she started screaming. The resident supervisor from the other wing came over and tried to calm the girl. I took a long sip of water and felt my stomach go weak as an elderly priest approached the front of the room and tried to get our attention.

He cleared his throat and began in a raspy, tired voice: “It is our great pleasure today to share with you girls this grand breakfast feast in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that Jesus forgives all. To repent is how we free ourselves from wrongdoing.” He told us that we should all experience the glory of confession. He talked about the Resurrection. I liked the idea of a second life, or Second Coming or whatever it was. At the end, he asked us again to take advantage of the confessionals that would remain open for two hours after brunch.

We were served warm croissants, bacon, sausage, pancakes,
fresh orange juice, and hot tea. I sat and watched the crazy girls, and my friends, and Alice, and the priests. The food was delicious, but for some reason I couldn't eat. I felt like standing up and screaming as loud as I possibly could. So instead, I walked over to Jill and asked her for a cigarette. She handed me her Zippo and a Marlboro. With a mouth full of food she said, “You don't give me that lighter back, I know where you live.” I made my way outside, lit the cigarette with the Zippo, and puffed on the smoke. I thought about the confession booths inside of the church with the dutiful priests sitting in the dark. I'd always believed in God and tried to follow the rules of the church I'd been raised in, but I wasn't sure I believed I had to go to confession for God to forgive me. Or for me to forgive myself. I was having conflicting feelings about the things the priests so often said, and the things
I
believed about God. The only thing I knew for sure was that God was there somewhere. I could feel it. Maybe that was all that mattered.

I made my way back to the dining room. Everyone was gathered around our table, looking at something. I nudged my way through and saw Tilly on the floor.

Wren and Amy helped her sit up in a chair at the table. “Those pains are enough for me to send you over, Tilly, get you checked. You might be ready,” Alice said.

“Okay,” Tilly said.

Alice turned to me. “You know the way, you want to walk her to the hospital?” I nodded. Alice said she'd let them know we were on our way. Tilly and I walked out of the rectory, arm in arm, and headed down the road to the hospital.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“Yeah, but not that bad.” I smiled. “
Yet,”
she added.

We got to the entrance of the hospital and decided to sit down on the bench outside for a second. We were quiet for a while, and then I said: “Till, you think you can remember this? What I'm going to tell you?”

“Yeah, I don't think you lose your memory when you have a kid. What?”

“The name of my dad's company is
Pryor Corporation
. It's listed in the phone book in Chicago. You can always know where I am or get me by calling there, okay?”

“Got it.”

I looked at her carefully. “Are you scared?”

“Yeah, shitless, but, like you said, if everyone else can do it, I can do it, right?”

We walked into the hospital and made our way to labor and delivery. They were expecting Tilly. We waited in a small room until a nurse came and handed Tilly a gown, a barf bin, and some ice chips. Tilly changed, sat up on the bed, and waited.

“Now what?”

“I don't know, now you wait for more pains?”

The nurse came back in and told us a doctor would check Tilly shortly. Tilly sat on the edge of the bed. “Thanks, Liz, for everything. I mean
everything
. I'm never gonna forget ya, and I'm gonna call ya, I'll even call you at the facility sometime.” The nurse came in and told me to leave. She told me if Tilly wasn't ready, she'd be released back to the facility. I reached over and hugged her sweaty neck and kissed her head.

I sat down again on the bench outside the hospital. I looked up at the warm sun, and then saw someone standing directly in front of me. I put my hand up to my forehead to block the glare.

“I need my lighter,” Jill said, looking at me with a smile on her face.