Angel's Choice

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

“Well,” she’ll say, “except for those ridiculously loose pants guys wear these days. They’re just dumb. But,” she’ll add, “I sure do wish I’d kept all my Candies and platform shoes, especially the ones with the four-inch cork heels.”

  It is hard to think that everything you believe you and your friends are inventing now was invented by your parents, lived through by them long before.

  And it is also strange to think that maybe my mom and I are not so different after all. She loved cork heels. I love cork heels.

  “Oh, what the heck,” she says, asking the salesgirl to get the outfit that kind of looks like what I am already wearing, only better, down off the wall. “If you’re going to dress like that, it might as well fit properly.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  It has been a long time since we picked out clothes together. Usually, in the past couple of years before all this started, I would just ask my parents what the spending limit was and stand impatiently, enduring it while my mother reminded me yet again not to come home with any shirts that looked like bras. I can see now, from the brief smile that comes over my mother’s face, that she has missed this: the simple pleasure of making clothing decisions together.

  As we are leaving the store a while later, each carrying two shopping bags, I turn to my mom.

  “Are you sorry you had me?” I ask, a question that has been bothering me, aware as I am now of what a disappointment I have been to her.

  “God, Angel, what a question! Of course I’m not sorry I had you. I’ve never been sorry once, not since the first day I learned I was pregnant with you.”

  And I think that in this, for the most part, we are also not so very different from each other at all.

  Week of January 28/Week 22

  I have become the great Untouchable, the stupid girl who isn’t smart enough to get an abortion.

  At last Robin Keating understands my decision about not going to Yale.

  “So,” he sighs when I meet with him, “community college.”

  “It won’t be so bad,” I say to him, as though he is the one who needs reassurance. “And, anyway, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.”

  “And?”

  “What I want most is to be a writer, and I don’t really think someone can teach you how to do that.”

  “Tell that to all the MFAs out there,” he snorts.

  MFA is a term I am only passingly familiar with, but I know what I’m trying to say here. I’ve thought about it a lot.

  “I think you can become a writer through being a great reader, through reading widely, but I really don’t think it can be taught. At best you might learn schoolroom techniques for making transition sentences or stuff like that, and you might learn what your teachers think a writer should be, but no one can teach you your own voice. You either have one, or maybe you find one, but no one can give that to you.”

  “Huh,” he says. Then: “So why bother with college at all?”

  “I guess I just figure that while I’m working on my voice, I might as well pick up some useful skills, in case the voice I do find isn’t good enough.”

  “You know,” he says, and sighs, and I can see he can’t stop himself from saying what he says next, even if it is unprofessional. “This could have all been so much easier for you.”

  And, of course, he’s right. Certainly it’s what everyone else thinks.

  It’s not as though I’m the first pregnant teen in the history of the world. I’m not even the first pregnant teen in the history of our school. But it seems that every other girl who has walked these halls before me, if she got pregnant, she either (1) had an abortion or (2) went ahead with the pregnancy only if she had no future anyone else would think of as worthwhile or if she had parental pressure to go through with it for religious reasons. It feels, sometimes, as though I am the only girl with a solid future who has chosen differently.

  There is only one group of kids among whom my decision is popular: I have unwittingly and unwillingly become the poster girl for Students 4 Life.

  “We think it’s so cool you’re going through with having your baby,” says Kelly Bergstrom in the cafeteria.

  “It’s, like, maybe the coolest thing anyone in our class has ever done,” says John Paul Johnson, his eyes bright.

  Back in freshman year Kelly and John Paul founded Students 4 Life. It is an organization for determined virgins who promote an anti-abortion agenda. All of them have signed contracts with their parents, saying they will not have sex before marriage. They have even been known to publicly shun classmates they suspect of having abortions.

  “Well,” John Paul adds, “of course it would have been even cooler if you’d waited until you were married.”

  No matter how many times I try to tell them, they do not understand that their political agenda means nothing to me, that this is not about that.

  Finally, frustrated, I brush them off.

  “Please call us if you ever need support in what you’re doing,” Kelly calls after me.

  Over my dead body , I think, recognizing the unkindness of my thought while at the same time not caring about that unkindness at all.

  Whatever this journey I am on is, it is not their journey.

  I ask Karin if she will go to the basketball game with me, and she asks if it is okay if we just meet up there, that she told Todd she would drive over with him. I do not know why I even want to go to the game so much—it is not as though I am such a huge fan of basketball, after all, in and of itself—and it is not as though Danny and I have talked at all lately, Danny being the only reason I ever started going to basketball games in the first place. Still, there is something so reassuring about watching Danny Stanton’s easy stride as he runs down the court, as I sit in the stands by myself, having been unable to spot Karin as yet. There is something so familiar about watching Danny Stanton use his hand to brush his hair, slightly damp with sweat, off his forehead, watching him jump, watching him shoot, watching him score.

  It is as though he somehow lives in a place I used to be a part of.

  At halftime I notice something I haven’t noticed before: Seated not even a half dozen seats away from me is Tim O’Mara.

  Since our return from winter break, since I have started to show, I have noticed a change. The buzz that used to follow me around last September, after Ricky D’Amico’s party, now follows Tim, and he no longer looks cocky or sure. Instead he looks down or away whenever I pass him in the hall. And for the first time, sitting there in the stands, it occurs to me what is happening: People have done the math, they have figured the distance between September and now, and they have concluded Tim must be the father of my baby.

  I look over at him and realize that he is going through what I went through: the feeling, not quite paranoid because what you suspect is true, that everyone is talking about you.

  A part of me is briefly glad this is happening to Tim. I had to go through this, so why shouldn’t he? After all, if he hadn’t started rumors about me in the first place, this wouldn’t be happening to him now.

  But another part of me hates this, hates the idea of anyone still linking me with Tim O’Mara in their minds.

  I scan the crowd until at last I find Karin, sitting next to Todd. I climb over the bleachers, awkwardly, huffing and puffing by the time I collapse on the bench near her side.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “Make it stop,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t care what you do. Make up a rumor,” I say, realizing even as I say it that I’m letting Tim off the hook but not caring at all about that. “Tell people it was some guy nobody here knows, from some other school. Just make it stop.”

  february

  Week of February 4/Week 23

  I STUDY THE MENU AT THE DINER AS THOUGH IT IS SOMEthing important, finally settling on a grilled cheese sandwich with a side salad. I really have a craving for tuna fish, but the book Dr. Caldwell gave me says tuna fish is an item to be avoide
d while pregnant.

  “I’ll have the same,” Aunt Stacey says to the waitress. Then she smiles at me. “It’s been a long time since I had a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  Aunt Stacey is my mom’s older sister by five years. If Mom is the prettiest one in the family, then Aunt Stacey has always been the coolest. She wears her own dark hair in a short spiky cut I only wish I could look good in, wears clothes that don’t look much different from Karin’s. She’s a psychologist with two college-age kids and one divorce to her credit, and she has asked me to have lunch here with her today for I know not what reason.

  “How have you been feeling?” she asks, as the waitress sets our sandwiches down. “Is everything going okay with the pregnancy? “

  I don’t answer at first because my mouth is full with the first bite of sandwich, which tastes like bliss, all melted cheese and soft buttered toast.

  Now that I am well into my second trimester, the nausea is gone and it is incredible how much I enjoy eating. At first it was hard to give myself permission to eat whenever I was hungry. After all, I am an American girl living in the early years of the twenty-first century, meaning that I have been flirting with eating disorders all my life. But I know it is important for the baby to get proper nutrition, and so I allow myself to eat whenever I am hungry, without overeating, avoiding the foods Dr. Caldwell’s book says I should avoid. Still, it is amazing how good simple food tastes when you are not worrying every second about every calorie and what it’ll do to your body.

  “Great,” I say at last. “I’m feeling great. Everything’s going fine.”

  “I know it hasn’t been easy with your parents,” she says. “Helena does seem to be having a hard time accepting that this is what you choose to do.”

  Even though I know that Aunt Stacey and Mom talk a lot to each other—they are sisters, after all, and close—it is still a vague shock to think that when they are talking, sometimes they are talking about me.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I mean, I’m not sure I really expected anything different.”

  Aunt Stacey puts her sandwich down, studies me for a long enough minute that I start to get uncomfortable. Do I have gooey cheese stuck to my chin?

  “I was pregnant once,” she says at last.

  “Actually, Aunt Stacey,” I say, laughing, “you were pregnant twice. Remember?”

  “I’m not talking about Kim and Karl,” she says, naming her kids.

  I stop eating.

  “I mean before I had them,” she says.

  “What?” is the smartest thing I can think to say.

  “When I was in high school,” she says, “I got pregnant. Like you.”

  I feel my mouth drop open as if to say something, but no words come out.

  “Well, not exactly like you,” Aunt Stacey amends. “I was just fifteen at the time.”

  I close my mouth.

  “Don’t you want to know what happened?” Aunt Stacey asks.

  I nod.

  “I had an abortion,” she says.

  As shocking as what she already told me was, about being pregnant when she was even younger than I am now, this is more shocking yet. How peculiar it is to have someone be a part of your life for so long—my aunt has known me since before I was born, helped my mom get through the first stages of having a new baby in the house, has always been really like a second mom to me—and realize that you do not really know that other person at all.

  “Does my mom know?” is all I can think to ask.

  Aunt Stacey surprises me by laughing. “God, no!” she says. “And don’t you tell her either.”

  “Why are you telling me, then?” I ask. “And why wouldn’t you want Mom to know?”

  “To answer your first question, I’m not really sure. Maybe I just wanted you to know you’re not the first person in this family that this has ever happened to. As for your second, Helena has always been so sure of exactly what she wanted—she never slept with anyone before your father, and then they totally planned on having you—that I guess I always just figured if she knew, she would judge me in some way.”

  I’m not so sure about that. They are sisters, after all. But then I figure, it’s Aunt Stacey’s story to tell, to whomever she wants. Or not.

  “What happened?” I ask, suddenly really wanting to know.

  “I was young,” she says, “and stupid. No more stupid than most”—she shrugs—”but stupid enough.”

  “For having the abortion?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, “for getting pregnant in the first place. The guy who got me that way was certainly no one I really cared about. That was the stupid part.”

  “But what about the abortion?” I really want to know this. “Don’t you ever regret the abortion?”

  Aunt Stacey gives this more thought than anything I’ve said before.

  “You know,” she says, “of course I’ve wondered at times about what it would have been like. I’ve done the math and figured out how old the baby would have been at different times in my life. And I guess it’s always only natural to wonder about what the lives we’re not living must be like. I mean, don’t you wonder sometimes about what your life would be like right now if you hadn’t decided to keep the baby?”

  I nod. Of course I’ve wondered that. Certainly, things would be simpler. At least in some ways.

  “But, no.” She shakes her head. “I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever regretted it. I felt that I was doing the right thing for me at the time, and I just couldn’t see any other choice, being who I was.” She laughs. “Maybe I’m more like Helena than I like to think. We both set our sights on something and hold on tight. I wanted to go to college, I wanted to become a psychologist from the time I was twelve, and I couldn’t see how I could do all that if I had a baby at fifteen, and definitely not with a guy I didn’t even really care about.”

  I sit and I think about what she has been saying, about my mother and her and me and how it all somehow ties together in a single tapestry of fabric, and I begin to get a glimmering of an idea. It is so easy for people to look at someone else and think, “I would never do that” or “I would never let myself get in that situation” or “I would never make the choices you’ve made.” It’s a lot harder to simply sit and listen and allow other people the space to be who they are. Why do we have to judge people for not being us? Why do we feel judged by other people for not being them?

  “Okay” Aunt Stacey says, as though she can read my thoughts, “this is getting way too serious. Before, I said I wasn’t sure what I wanted to talk to you about today or why I told you what I told you, and now I think it’s simply this:”—she puts her hand over mine, holds on to my fingers tightly—”I think you’re going to be fine, Angel. And you and Helena are eventually going to be just fine together. We all do what we need to do, given who we are.”

  Week of February 11/Week 24

  “That’s a pretty top,” my mom says when I come downstairs. I hear the sound of my dad in the kitchen, singing some old Rolling Stones song while doing the dinner dishes. “Where are you going?”

  She’s right, it is a pretty top, dark red velvet with matching satin ribbon under the breast area, the sleeves belling outward. I went shopping for it myself after school yesterday, and I wear it now over one of my pairs of expandable-waist jeans. I have even put on some makeup for this occasion, the first I’ve put on in a long time.

  “I’m going to the Valentine’s Day dance at school,” I tell her.

  “Do you have a date?” she asks, surprised.

  I laugh at the very idea.

  “No,” I say. “I’m going stag, or whatever the word for it is when a girl goes alone.”

  “But … why?” she says.

  “Oh, come on,” I say, “what about all those times I’ve gone to dances with Karin? I don’t need a date to go to a dance.”

  “So you’re going with Karin, then,” she says, relieved.

  “No,” I say patiently. “I just told you, I�
��m going by myself.”

  She shakes her head. “I honestly don’t understand you, Angel,” she says, and it’s clear she doesn’t. “I don’t know why you need to make everything harder on yourself than it is already.”

  “Look, I’m tired, Mom. Okay? I’m tired of feeling like I’ve done something wrong, like I’m abnormal in some way. I just want to be able to do what everyone else does again. If this” —?I indicate my belly—“hadn’t happened, I’d be going to this dance. If no one asked me, I’d be going with Karin. If Karin weren’t available, I’d go by myself, just so I could be a part of what everyone else is a part of. There are bound to be other girls there who don’t have dates; I’ll just hook up with some of them. Why should I let this stop me?”

  It’s clear my mother doesn’t have an answer to this, which is good, because I intend to do what I set out to do. I don’t want to wait on the sidelines anymore for life to find me again. I’m a high school girl—okay, a pregnant high school girl—and I just want to have the experiences everyone else is having. I want what is coming to me.

  “Well, drive carefully,” my mom says, “and don’t be too late.”

  But of course I am not like everybody else, and that knowledge hits me in the face just as soon as I walk into the dance, the cafeteria hung with pink and red decorations. I am like no one else at all.

  If I had thought about it ahead of time, I would have realized that Ricky D’Amico would be at her usual early-evening post, taking tickets at the door. But I hadn’t given any thought to that ahead of time. And if I’d given any thought to Ricky being at the door, I would have realized that Danny would be there right beside her.

  Danny Stanton has now been going out with Ricky D’Amico for a longer period of time than I can remember him ever going out with anybody else. There have been many times when I have wondered, What does he dee in her?

  But as I walk up to the table, as I see her sitting there with her auburn hair swept back in a rhinestone clasp, the imitation so real it almost looks like diamonds, wearing a pink silk slip of a dress that looks more like something you’d wear to bed with someone you were really into than something you’d wear to a dance, I have to admit the truth. Ricky D’Amico, whatever else she is, is a stunningly pretty girl.