The Girl Who Couldn't Say No: Memoir of a teenage mom

by Tracy Engelbrecht

  I didn’t know where to go, unsure how to go about this whole pregnancy-testing thing. I went up to a harassed and stern-looking nurse (they all looked harassed and stern).

  “Excuse me,” I whispered in my best Good Girl voice. No answer. She didn’t even look at me. Perhaps she didn’t hear me, I thought. I tried again. Cleared my throat this time, as it seemed to have become afflicted by a plague of frogs. “Excuse me, can you tell me where I should go for a pregnancy test?”

  This time she did look at me an" wook at d I know what she saw. She saw a kid in a school uniform (with a bright yellow name badge; we hadn’t thought to take them off) playing at being grown-ups with her kiddy friends. She looked bored, irritated, pissed off. With me. Not used to being in trouble, I was a little taken aback. Then I realised that from now on, everybody was going to be looking at me that way – I’d damn well better get used to it.

  “A what?” she boomed, louder than I thought necessary. Nothing for it, I’d have to announce it to the entire waiting room.

  “A pregnancy test, please.” I was beginning to get pissed off myself, but Good Girls don’t show it, oh no. Especially not when they deserve all the trouble they’re in.

  “See the sister down the passage, second door to the right,” she snapped. She turned away, and I imagined that she couldn’t stand to look at me any longer. A little melodramatic perhaps, but that’s how I felt then.

  Everyone turned to look at me – I felt the weight of their judgement on my back as I walked down the passage to the sister’s office. Or imagined I did. Same thing, really, when you’re fourteen and high on progesterone.

  The same routine played out at the sister’s office: “A what? Really? Ag sies, man. Sister Du Preez! This girlie wants a pregnancy test. Give her the cup, would you?” And so on.

  I was sure they were doing the whole scandalised, astonished thing on purpose. They must have seen hundreds of girls like me, many of them dodgier than me – but their job was to let me know what a fuck-up I was. What a failure. What a Bad Girl. As if I didn’t know already.

  Sister Du Preez handed me “the cup”, a giant plastic funnel-shaped thing that looked like a tacky picnic wineglass circa 1983. I stared at it dumbstruck, thinking, “Where the hell does she want me to put this?”

  “Shame, girlie”, she said, not entirely nasty. “Don’t worry, man. It’s only to wee in. So we can test, you know? The bathroom is next door.”

  The blush started somewhere around my knees and crept on up towards my face. This was the first time I’d felt stupid as a mother, but it sure as heck wasn’t the last. I felt tears prickling behind my eyelids, but I kept them in. There’s that, at least. I didn’t cry.

  I made my way back past my friends towards the bathroom. I saw them eyeing “the cup” with trepidation and more than a little awe.

  “Yes, look at me. Aren’t I clever? I know what this is for. And I’m not a bit scared,”ontt scare I thought. I tried to convey all of this to them with a knowing and superior look as I passed.

  Any sense of superiority I may have felt vanished as soon as I tried to wee in the cup. Only people who have done it would know how tricky this is. That glass was surely too tall for the job. I practically had to stand up to get it to fit under me. I obviously didn’t line it up correctly because somehow hand, sleeve and floor got soaked. Yuck. Nevertheless, after a small yelp and a bit of jiggling I got it right and continued, stoic and resolved.

  I was proud of myself, but my pride deflated a bit when I noticed my wet shoes and how little had actually landed in the cup. I spent the next few minutes trying to mop up the floor with six squares of government issue one-ply toilet paper (you just try it sometime). I may have been a disappointment to my family, a tragic example of wobbly morals and elastic virtue – but I’d be damned if I was going to leave a mess on the floor. I was still a Good Girl.

  I carried the enormous plastic thing at arm’s length in front of me, as you would the Holy Grail – or a giant cup of wee, for that matter. My future was in there, and I knew it. Quite a bit of my future was also squelching inside my damp school socks.

  I handed the sample to the sister and she told me to sit and wait – she’d call me once they’d tested it.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be negative,” twittered Amy, cheerily trying to be helpful. I gave her a look of utter disdain (probably unfairly), and she shut up pretty quick. I knew it would be positive. Of course it would be. My life was different from their’s now. It simply was. The look I gave her was the first sign of the separation to come. I should have felt sorry, I suppose. She was only trying to be nice. I just felt annoyed with her, as the horrible nurse had been with me. Annoyed at a silly child who just doesn’t get it.

  We seemed to be sitting around for ages. People were coming and going, being called in to see doctors, getting bandaged up by the sister. New patients arrived and left again, hobbling, oozing, expectorating. And still we sat. Getting a little worried, I could wait no longer. I approached the nurse who’d sent me to the sister.

  “Sorry, I know you’re busy. I was here for a pregnancy test and they told me to sit and wait. Are they finished? Where should I go now?” Ever so polite, I was. I should have taped a “kick me” sign to my back right then.

  The nurse looked me up and down, her eyes lingering on my name badge, which I now realised I should have taken off. I pictured her phoning the school principal during her tea break. I pictured myself being frogmarched off the school premises carrying a cardboard box of my stuff like fired employees do in the movies, running the gauntlet of jeering schoolmates and tut-tutting teachers, my humiliated parents waiting at the gate with a suitcase let a suitand a one-way ticket to a home for unmarried mothers in Klerksdorp…

  This was what raced through my head in the time it took for her to look at my badge and say, “Oh yes, you. You’re pregnant.”

  Just like that. In front of everyone in the waiting room, and as loudly as she possibly could without shouting. An she was loving every moment of it. Heads snapped around to check me out – this being a government hospital, there was no TV in the waiting room. They had to take their entertainment where they could find it.

  Well, then. That’s settled. I was calm, I think. Amy and Abigail were fussing and squeaking and doing those things that girls do. I didn’t hear them. I also didn’t hear Bitch Nurse From Hell when she told me to come back again the following week. Amy nudged me in the ribs and I woke up a little.

  “Did you hear me, girlie?” grumbled Gestapo Nurse, now impatient. She’d had enough of me. “Sometimes it’s a false positive. You should come back next week and do the test again to be sure.”

  I don’t think I answered her. I was in a daze, more than a little gobsmacked. My friends steered me out of the hospital like an invalid or a drunk. I remember giggling. It’s something I seem to do in times of extreme stress or shock. Giggle. No swooning, no violent tirades or even hysterical tears. Just daft giggles.

  We walked back to the library, where my mother was due to fetch me. I’d told her I’d been doing research for a project on geomorphology. Ho-ho! There’s a laugh. We didn’t talk much on the way, we just giggled. Then Amy said, all concerned-like, “Don’t go doing anything stupid now…”

  I looked at her puzzled, not sure what she meant. Then I got it. Oh, she thought I was going to jump off a bridge, or OD on Dynajets. Given my history, I suppose I couldn’t blame her. But suicide was the very last thing on my mind. My head was full of a million thoughts all twisted up together, pushing and shoving and fighting to be heard. How am I going to tell my parents-what about David-what about school-what about me-what do I do… What do I do…

  Among the confused jumble of panic, one thought was still. Lying curled up tightly underneath all the others was a tiny, quiet pink blossom of a thought, waiting for the fright to subside, waiting until I was ready to hear it.

  I did hear it, once my friends had left and I sat waiting on the grass. I wasn’t dazed anym
ore; everything seemed clearer, more real. The sky was brighter, the grass more prickly, the sounds around me sharper. More there, somehow. Like I was seeing everything for the first time. I watched ants marching up a lamppost for a while, and they were fascinating.

  Slowly my head started to empty a little, and that’s when I heard it – just a whisper:

  “This is it.”

  This was what I’d been waiting to hear all my life. It was real. I hadn’t been crazy all these years. I’d known there was something else and now it seemed to have found me. Later, when everybody knew and there was so much unhappiness and recrimination, I began to doubt myself and nearly gave up. I almost believed that I’d been wrong. But just then, there on the grass, I knew. I remember feeling gratitude: faith that everything would be okay. And I remember strength in me that seemed to come from somewhere else.

  “This is it.”

  ***

  As difficult as it was, I kept quiet while I waited for the second test. Because I’d been told to, I went back to the hospital, though I knew what they would say. I managed the wee cup much better this time, and in the months that followed, I became a pro. Not even a drop on the floor – I was ever so proud.

  Bitch Nurse From Hell was not there this time, but Sister Du Preez was. She didn’t seem so bad. When it was positive, as I’d known all along it would be, she told me to go and see the Family Planning Counsellor. Talk about shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted and is halfway to the glue factory! Nevertheless, you do as you’re told.

  “She can help you sort this out, lovey,” Sister Du Preez told me before bustling off to berate a stabbing victim who was leaking all over the floor.

  The counsellor was nice enough. As I sat down, she peered at my file, then looked back at me (school uniform again), and I didn’t see judgement in her eyes. If it was there, she hid it well.

  “So, you’re pregnant? You’re fourteen?” Nearly fifteen, I thought, but wasn’t going to push the issue. Only children deal in half-years, after all.

  “That’s very young,” she said, in case I hadn’t noticed.

  “Right,” I said, all brisk and business-like. No time for messing about, let’s get to the point. “And now what? What happens now, what are the procedures, where do I sign up?”

  “For what, dear?” she asked, a bit surprised at my lack of denial and histrionics, which I think are the usual reactions. She glanced encouragingly at thed aingly a box of tissues on her desk.

  Nope, no tissues for me today, thank you very much. Today was all about getting things sorted out, settled, organised. Today was the day for making a plan.

  “You know, sign up, for… um… whatever needs to be done…” I faltered. I thought I’d had it sussed: didn’t you go to the doctor, get checked out for… um, things… and then, I don’t know, learn breathing and stuff?

  Apparently not.

  The counsellor lady looked like she was trying hard to remember the extension number for the psychiatric ward. “The poor girl’s obviously in shock”, she must have thought. “She clearly doesn’t know her arse from her elbow, probably a bit simple, in fact. Or it could be drugs…”

  She spoke in the careful tones of one coaxing a stretchy-white-coat-wearing, bloody-scissors-wielding nutter away from the bodies. “Well dear, we’ve plenty of time for all that. You need to make some decisions first. Erm…” (Small hesitation here, choosing words carefully, not wanting to set off the looming nervous breakdown.) “…Do you know who the father is?”

  Yikes. I knew she thought I was bad, but I didn’t know she assumed I was such an abysmal loser. Visions of Appalachian hillbillies, dancing in her head.

  “Of course I know who the father is, you bloody rude cow!” I wanted to screech, but didn’t. What I did say was “It’s my boyfriend, he’s the only one it could be. It’s just he’s not here right now, because he… because…um, well…” My train of thought ground to a halt right there.

  Because I’d told him not to come, that’s why. Beats me why I did that. He knew where I was. He’d said he’d come if I wanted him to. We’d spoken about it and he was all about being supportive and doing whatever I wanted and “being there for me”. He told me he’d “put me through school”, though he was a little fuzzy on the details of exactly how he planned to manage that, or what it actually meant. He cried a lot. He was also all about waiting for the second test, in case the first was wrong. In other words, he was just hoping it wasn’t true. He hadn’t thought any further than that. He didn’t know like I did.

  I was all about being strong, being responsible, not needing him. And so I went alone. Still, he should have come with me, even though I told him not to. But at the time I thought it didn’t matter.

  The counsellor lady gave me an illustrated booklet about pregnancy and birth, and sent me on my way. She seemed relieved – I think I scared her a little. She told me to make an appointment at the antenatal clinic downstairs. I did so, self-consciously, although I didn’t keep the appon aeep theintment.

  I went back to the library and sat at a table reading my precious booklet – hidden inside a large atlas, of course, in case anybody I knew happened by. There was a whole new world in there – one I’d never known existed. A world of trimesters and haemoglobin and scary-sounding things like pre-eclampsia and placental abruption. All explained in easy-to-understand, mildly condescending terms. I wanted to know it all. I tried to absorb as much as I could there in the library, because I knew it would be a while before I could bring my booklet out into the open.

  I watched my mom as she drove up to fetch me shortly after. I smiled at her, and in my head I told her I loved her and I was sorry. I knew I had to tell her that night. I knew it would change everything, and there’d be no going back. For better or worse, my real life had begun.

  ***

  Thirteen years later, it’s still hard to think about that night. My friends thought I’d try to hide it. I mean, isn’t that what you do? Aren’t your parents supposed to kick you out, or send you to visit your “Auntie Cookie in Klerksdorp” (what is it with Klerksdorp?), or some variation on good old suburban skandaal theme? Someone even suggested I run away, rather than face my mom and dad. Apparently a life on the streets with a baby sounded terribly exciting. So made-for-TV-movie. Freaking Virginia Andrews again – she’s got a lot to answer for, putting stupid ideas into stupid girls’ heads. Although, call me Mary O’Flaherty and give me a job at the manor house, and it could even have made a passable Catherine Cookson.

  But Sensible Tracy was back in control again. Not an ounce of romance in her soul, God bless her; she’s practical and somewhat anal. She’d come back from holiday to find the place wrecked: cigarette burns on the carpet, vomit in the pot plants and strange people snoring on the couch. And she was not very fucking pleased, let me tell you. She bustled around angrily, picking up garbage and taking down names – and she decided there’d be no hiding the belly with giant jerseys or secretly giving birth in the bathroom. There’d be no more silliness. From now on, Tracy would be doing the right thing – you just watch me. From this day forward, for the rest of my life, I’d never give anyone the chance again to say I’d messed up.

  Famous last words.

  I called my mom to my bedroom after supper, saying I had to speak to her. I may have said I’d done something bad. Did she guess, or did I actually say the words? To be honest, I don’t remember. But it was over quickly. She didn’t shout or hit me or do anything dramatic. Maybe it would have been better if she had. The look on her face was terrible – shock, anger, fear and hurt. Lots of hurt. I imagined I saw hate there too – but I wer – buas too scared to ask. Some things you don’t want to know. I certainly hated myself – to think I was the cause of that anguish on her face was almost more than I could bear. For years afterwards, every time the images crept into my mind, I’d have to physically shake my head to get rid of them.

  Then she composed herself. I could see her take control, put her emotions as
ide and get a grip. I could see her mind working, making a plan, organising. I saw her remember that she was “in charge, damn it”, and that she was the one who’d have to sort this out. I saw her stop feeling so that she could think. It was like looking at myself in a mirror. We’re so alike – if it wasn’t so godawfully horrendous it might have been funny. I wanted to hug her, to tell her how sorry I was, to tell her I wasn’t bad, that I’d be good from now on, I promise. I wanted her to hold me and tell me it would be okay. I wanted to know that she still loved me.

  But I couldn’t ask her for those things. I knew I couldn’t – I’d just have to let her say and do whatever she needed, and I had to take it. Hugs? For me? Not likely. Sorry, fresh out of hugs tonight, my girl.

  I don’t remember what we said, but I know I tried so very hard to keep calm – to show her how grown up I was, that I wouldn’t resort to childish tantrums or tears. I remember biting holes on the inside of my cheeks and my fingernails digging into my palms until they bled. This is more difficult than you’d think. The marks on my hands were still there days later. Somehow I think my calmness made her even angrier. Maybe she thought I was proud of what I’d done – or worse, that I didn’t get it. But I got it alright. Boy, did I ever.

  “You tell your father,” she said as she slammed the door.

  Oh God.

  For some insane reason, I thought it might be easier to tell Dad. I thought that for all of five seconds – just long enough to tell him, “It seems you’re going to be a grandfather sooner that you thought.”

  Crikey. Whatever possessed me to try and be all light-hearted? What an idiot. Early onset preggie porridge brain, maybe – or just wishful thinking. I mean, can you imagine trying to be funny about it? Jeez, for someone who’s supposed to be intelligent, I can surely be thick at times.