Nine Months

by Paula Bomer

  She takes her time, like she took her time getting to Indiana. The days bleed into each other and the driving is more and more uncomfortable, so she spends a lot of time watching movies in hotels. She spends Christmas in a Ramada Inn. She spends New Year’s in a Motel 6. Both days she feels sorry for the people who work at the desk. She’s always felt sorry for people who have to work menial jobs on holidays. You’re supposed to be with your family. And then when her thoughts go there, she doesn’t feel sorry for herself, but she feels ashamed. Then she watches more TV, the great thought killer.

  On her final stretch to Boulder, she develops an awful case of hemorrhoids. The worst. Truck driver hemorrhoids. So what does she do? She does what any self-respecting truck driver would do. She gets herself a donut to sit on.

  Sonia sits happily on her donut and starts the car. She sits still for a minute, the car humming, and feels her ass cheeks spread open because of the donut hole. This is the point of the donut, to free all pressure from her asshole. Does she feel relief? She sits there for a bit, in the parking lot of the Walmart in western Illinois. To figure out if the donut is really helping her. Her ass is smeared with Preparation H—which she did in the bathroom at Walmart—and now she has her donut. It seems to help, but it puts pressure on her lower back, which already ached a bit. She scoots around, finds a way of perching on her donut and resting her lower back against the seat that seems to feel the best. And then she backs out.

  Four hours later, and it’s dark. She’s not ready to stop at a motel yet. Her ass feels so great! She could drive forever! Tonight, she’ll drive late into the night, or so she thinks. She will drive, drive, drive! She is sick of all her tapes and CDs, or rather, she is taking a break from them before she gets completely sick of them, and she’s listening to the radio, listening to a classical station. Sonia doesn’t listen to tons of classical music, but she does listen to a bit of it. She listened to more of it in high school, with her dad, before she moved out, and rock ’n’ roll took over her life. And yet, she knows this music! How exciting! It is Ravel, the piano concertos. Her father played them on his enormous stereo. When she was a little girl, she danced around the living room, a terribly awkward ballerina, flapping her arms to the music. But the music was inspiring, soaring at times, perhaps even emotionally manipulative. But that is what she likes about it, perhaps what she likes most about all music. It can make you feel what it wants you to feel. It can take control. She turns it up and her heart clenches. Her boys. No, no she can’t think of them. Willing herself to think of something else, she thinks of her donut. Ah, the power of the mind. The mind can switch around, can move, can unstick itself. Her shiny, plastic, dark blue donut that is cradling the fat of her ass. She starts moving her ass around, and her lower back is enjoying it, too. She’s massaging her lower back against the back of the car seat, and her butt cheeks on the sturdy but cushiony curves of her donut. Now, in her mental vision, comes the sight of what is floating free in the whole of the donut. Her oversized, red, slightly angry pussy. The baby is pushing down on all of her organs and her vagina gets so much blood trapped down there. She remembers the thought she had during her first pregnancy—monkeys with their red swollen genitalia have nothing on me. And so it was, and so it is again.

  Sonia scoots her ass around so she’s gripping the sides of the donut with her ass cheeks. She manages to move the donut with the grip of her butt, so that she now perches on the side of it, rather than sitting on it as she’s meant to sit on it. No more floating in the hole. No more parts of her being suspended in free air. No, now she feels the lips of her crotch embracing the plastic of the donut. She swerves a bit during this maneuvering and looks in the rearview mirror. Her breath is coming a bit more quickly now. She’s nervous. No one behind her, no one immediately behind her. There are some lights far back, far, far back, as this Midwestern highway is so straight and flat she can see for what seems like forever.

  She begins grinding, back and forth, back and forth. God. It’s been too long since she last masturbated. During her first pregnancy, she masturbated every day. Like a guy. Like a fifteen-year-old boy. Hell, she was in her late twenties and still thought fucking and coming were the most important things in life. My, how things have changed. During her second pregnancy, she had little time to herself, what with her son running around. But when he napped in the afternoon, she sometimes got to masturbate. Sometimes, she read a magazine, or returned phone calls. But sometimes, she took a “nap”—which meant, jacked off. But this pregnancy, she could count how many times she’d done it, taken care of herself.

  It’s not easy to lift her body—she’s getting big and unmanageable—but she does it, lifts herself out of the seat, grunting to do so, and she takes one hand off the wheel and pulls her skirt up and her sticky panties down. The car is swerving, but she’s in control, she is, and she slows down, too. Indeed, she stops pressing the accelerator at all. She gets her panties to her midthighs and then falls back down on the donut. Now, from a more relaxed sitting position, she pulls her panties down to her ankles. First one side, then the other, until the panties drop down to her ankles, and she can kick them off, just by lifting a foot. No more panties! It’s just her wet, needy pussy and the cool, slick plastic of the donut. Back and forth, back and forth. God! Ravel is getting excited, too. Swirling around, quickly, wrenchingly. It’s painful music, but beautiful, beautiful. She feels tears come to her eyes—these concertos always made her cry, she remembers—but she can’t ever remember crying while masturbating. This is a new one. She also is pretty sure she’s never masturbated in a car, or at least not while trying to drive it. She’s given blow jobs in cars, been fingered and fucked in cars, once had her pussy eaten out in a car (that was Philbert Rush), but she’s never masturbated in a car, especially not while driving. Back and forth, around and around. Her ass tenses. Is she going to make it? Well, yes. Too soon? Perhaps there is no too soon in a car, on a highway. Perhaps quick is the point. She looks down at her body—it is the Venus de Milo. Round, wet, a bit smelly. She reaches down into her T-shirt to grab a breast and manages without too much trouble. Her breast is wet. God. With sweat, with that humid nipple sweat that happens when she’s in an excited state. God help her. She pinches her nipple, hard. A white drop appears on the edge of her nipple and then drips down. Soon, she’ll have milk. Her breasts when she is nursing are the most erotic thing to her. For a moment, she can’t see. This scares her. Should she pull over to finish herself off? She can’t look into the mirror, it would ruin it. She’s so close. She can do it. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, she says to herself, as she grinds against the donut.

  She puts her hand on her other breast and squeezes it, massages it, pinches that nipple. She loves loves loves her pregnant tits. Loves them. She thinks of the Almodovar movie, where one of his female characters says of women: “We’re all assholes. And a bit lesbo.” Anyone who’s ever masturbated is a bit homosexual, no? But just a bit. Because mostly, while she enjoys touching her body, she has to think of men fucking her to get to the end. She usually closes her eyes tight and thinks of men in and on and around her pussy.

  But she can’t close her eyes, unless she were to pull over, which it looks like she might have to do. Grinding, grinding, lifting her ass a bit higher so her pussy is barely grazing the donut, teasing it, and then slamming it down and grinding it hard. Oh, God! It’s a car. A red light glows on top of it. Oh shit, it’s a police car behind her! Maybe he’s driving past? To get some speeding villain? She’s not driving fast at all! Please Mister Policeman, don’t pull me over. His lights glare at her and she looks at him through the side view mirror. She’s right there … she’s so close. She slaps her breasts. Bad, bad, bad. She is a very bad lady. She pinches hard. Ah, ah, not yet. He flashes his lights at her. Fuck, fuck, he’ll see her pussy! He’ll know! He’ll smell her in the car! He’ll … fuck her. Come and fuck her. Through the loudspeaker comes the “pull over your car.” And she puts both hands on the wheel
and pulls over, grinding on her donut all the more quickly. She’s sweating now, her face is all red, her hair damp. She stops the car, she knows she has a minute or two, before the cop comes out of the car, she’s been pulled over before, she knows the drill, he’s doing a check on her license plate number, or at least writing it down, it’s exciting, shaming, shameful and exciting, and now that she’s pulled over, she has both hands free and she puts a finger inside of herself and with the other hands rubs herself and yes, yes! He’s coming out of the car to get her! Ravel has reached his crescendo, her heart is flying with the music and, and yes! He’s walking this way, and maybe he’s young, and mean, and strong and yes, yes!

  Sonia slumps forward and her hands come out of her dress. She wipes them on her thigh. She’s shaking, red-faced, her hair glued to her forehead in dark, wet clumps. Her lips are dry from the hot breath coming out of her mouth. There is a cop shining a light at her. She rolls down her window. “Can I see your license and registration, ma’am?”

  The room is dark, but it must be morning. Only the thinnest sliver of light can be seen through the motel’s shades. Blackout shades, and Sonia is grateful. It feels as if she has slept late. After a humiliating show of walking a straight line, which wasn’t easy, (without underwear, and her legs were jelly from her orgasm and when she’s pregnant her balance is off) and a breathalyzer test, the trooper finally understood that she was just tired and distracted. One good thing that pregnancy does is occasionally evoke sympathy. It took a while in this case, took a while for the cop to trust her. In the beginning, he had flashed a light into her car and she wondered if he saw her sticky panties. He most certainly saw the donut. Anyway, he escorted her to a nearby motel and that was the end of that.

  The next morning, she sends Dick a postcard from the motel, one that came in the stationery of the motel, a sad photograph of the motel itself, low lying and generically white, door after door leading all to the same rooms. She writes, “I’m OK, just so you know.” She leaves it at the front desk when she checks out for the clerk to mail. And then she gets in her car and keeps driving.

  In Boulder, she uses her credit card and is happy it works. Dick didn’t cancel it. She splurges even more than usual and stays at the St. Julien Hotel in downtown Boulder. It’s positively elegant, posh, full of fancy nuts in the minibar and plush robes and a fluffy bed with no less than six absurdly large pillows.

  She calls Nicky’s house and her husband Steve answers the phone.

  “Wow, Sonia, what a surprise.” Steve had always been friendly, ignoring the obvious lack of closeness between Nicky and Sonia. Sonia likes this about him, his laid-back character, his ability to tune out tension and pretty much anything else that’s irritating.

  “Yes, I’ve been surprising a lot of people lately.”

  “Nicky’s out right now, but I’m sure she’ll be excited to know you’re in town.”

  Sonia’s not so sure about this. She expects her sister might be perplexed, even annoyed. At best, she’ll be indifferent. She has no memory of Nicky being excited to see her. Probably at her birth, she wasn’t excited to see her, and things continued from there.

  “Well, I’d love to come over and see you guys. Unless it’s a bad time.”

  “No, no. It’s fine.”

  “I’m staying at a hotel so I won’t really impose.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Come by. Nicky should be home soon.”

  Sonia drives out to the new house Nicky and Steve moved into a few years ago. It’s just outside of Boulder, a twenty-minute drive from Sonia’s hotel where the land begins its endless dry, beige flatness. As beautiful as the mountains around Boulder are, the flat barren foreverness of the rest of the landscape strikes Sonia as ugly. She arrives at the house, a nice-sized house in a development that abuts a nature preserve, with mountains sprouting in the distance. Nicky and Steve are both there, as is their boy, Nathan, who appears to be seven or eight. They look alike to a creepy degree. Now, Sonia is very aware that married couples often begin to look alike, act alike, hell, even their dogs start to look like them. The power of living together for years? Who knows. But Nicky and Steve are special. They are both the same height, around five feet nine; they both have ropey muscular builds; they both have almond-shaped blue eyes; blond hair down to their shoulders; and petite mouths in their oval, sun-worn faces. And they dress the same—athletic gear, for the most part, outdoorsy athletic gear. Their son also looks just like them, which Sonia thinks lucky. The lack of genetic cross-breeding could easily have produced a mutant child with serious health problems. Good lord, she thinks as she walks up to the door where they all stand waiting to greet her, they could be identical twins if they only had the same genitalia.

  Hugs are exchanged, Sonia’s belly getting in the way. Cheek kisses are mistimed—Sonia ends up banging her nose into her sister’s ear.

  “Sonia, you didn’t tell me you were pregnant.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Congratulations,” says Steve.

  “It was an accident. But thank you,” Sonia says as they enter the house.

  “Accidents can be a blessing. Your first was an accident and look how great that was,” Nicky says. “We’re just about to have lunch. Come join us.”

  “I’ll sit with you guys but I had an enormous breakfast delivered to my room not long ago,” says Sonia, who can always eat more, but she examines the spread in front of her and decides against it. “May I ask what all this is?”

  “This is quinoa bread with a bean spread. That’s a dandelion salad and this here is my homemade venison sausage,” Steve says. “We try to eat local plants, mostly from our garden, and meat that Nathan and I kill ourselves. You’re not still eating wheat, are you?”

  “You really should not eat wheat,” Nicky says.

  The lectures begin. Well that was quick, thinks Sonia. Usually it takes at least a half hour before they start, not that she’s seen her sister recently. It was all a distant memory but wow, how fast it all comes back to her now. Nicky and Steve, both oldest siblings, both bossy as all hell. “I pretty much eat everything that tastes good. That’s my diet.” She changes the subject. “Nathan hunts?” Sonia asks.

  “I learned to shoot when I was six,” Nathan says.

  “How old are you now, Nathan?”

  “I’m eight. I got a shotgun for my birthday. Do you want to see it?” He beams. “I got a smaller gun, too, for my seventh birthday. I could go out back and shoot a squirrel if you want.”

  “Finish your lunch first, Nathan,” Nicky says.

  “Is that even legal?”

  “Colorado is pretty libertarian about these things,” says Steve. He takes a delicate bite of quinoa bread and then examines the piece in his hand as if he’s never seen it before in his life. “We think it’s great for Nathan, teaching him gun safety and instilling our values.”

  Nathan moves around his dandelion salad in a way that Sonia recognizes as a way to make it appear he’s eating. She envisions giving the poor kid a greasy piece of pizza, a bunch of Oreos.

  “He’s a good hunter,” says Nicky.

  Now, Sonia always knew that Nicky had become a full-on Western woman. She’d seen pictures of her on the occasional Christmas card, wearing a cowboy hat. Right now, she hears from another room, Good Lord, new country music playing softly. “Wow. That’s pretty amazing.” Sonia says. “My kids think guns only exist on television.”

  “We’re going out bowhunting after lunch if you’d like to join us,” says Steve before quickly correcting himself. “I guess in your condition that you might not want to.”

  “Steve, even if I wasn’t pregnant, I would not go out bowhunting, but thank you anyway.”

  “I can’t use the bow yet,” says Nathan.

  “It’s too heavy for him, but not for long,” says Steve. His pride is touching. He really loves his boy, Sonia can tell. She’s trying to focus on things like that, instead of the fact that she finds fathers bonding with sons ov
er killing things not only alien but unsavory.

  “So, Sonia. Do you have an art show here or something?” Nicky asks. Of course Nicky can’t imagine that Sonia would just come and visit her sister, and that’s understandable because under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t. But she’s not normal right now. And the way Nicky said “art show” was typical Nicky, her disdain for Sonia’s artistic ambition was a given. Sonia, the New York City artist. Except she’s not really an artist, but even if she tried to explain that to Nicky, it wouldn’t matter. Nicky’s opinions have more to do with these set, cliché ideas in her head and very little to do with reality. In fact, she’s never been to New York, so her idea of whatever it means that Sonia lives there is pretty much based on incorrect ideas that she holds dearly to herself. Not the most flexible person, her sister. Nor open-minded. Nor a good listener. But here they are.

  “No, I wish.” There’s a silence then and Steve seems to get that Sonia wants to be alone with her sister. He and Nathan excuse themselves to prepare for the hunt.

  “Let’s go into the den,” says Nicky, and Sonia follows her into a small room with a well-used beige couch, a rather dainty television set, a stereo, and an armchair in a Southwestern fabric, very Navaho-like. The walls are covered with pictures of Steve and Nathan smiling over the carcasses of dead animals. Sonia sinks deep into the armchair and her sister folds herself up on the couch.

  “This room is great. So homey,” says Sonia. “I’m loving my hotel, but it’s not a home.”

  “What’s going on, Sonia?”

  “I left my family. Sort of abruptly.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  “I feel nuts. This pregnancy is to blame.”

  “You’ve always been a bit nuts so I wouldn’t blame the pregnancy entirely.”

  “I just needed to flee. So I did. I don’t know. I’ve been frustrated with painting. Basically I haven’t been painting.”