by Julia Mayer
“Really?” she said, and I nodded. “Yeah, give me your hand.” I did. “Look, if my friends had just given up on me, where would I be now?”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Well, they’re the ones who turned me in. I know I told you that it was after I crushed my finger, and it was, sort of. I started wearing gloves all the time, but I took them off one day and a couple of my friends saw my finger and took me to the hospital. They talked to our school shrink. They made me go to our support group. That’s how we met.”
I looked down at her hands. She couldn’t paint her nails because of the bruise, but I could see it was almost healed. She saw me staring and pulled her hand back. They had done the right thing.
“Can I take a guess at something?” she asked.
“Shoot.”
“Was this the friend that got you into our support group?”
“Well,” I thought for a second, “she’s the one who turned me in to my dad. So I guess so. She’s the one who sent me to rehab.”
“Forgive her.”
I looked over at the mirror that was turned around behind the piano. “She won’t talk to me,” I said.
“Forgive her. She’s responsible for us meeting. If our friends hadn’t been watching out for us, we never would have met.”
“Fate?”
“Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “Other hand.” I gave her my other hand.
“But what if I think fate is telling me I shouldn’t talk to her again? What if fate says to give up? What then? What if my decision is to give up a friend?”
“Then you wouldn’t have had to ask me.”
Tanya didn’t know the whole story, though, and I wondered what she would’ve said if she did know the truth.
***
When Dad was home the next weekend, he suggested we go shopping. Being gone so much, he said he was worried about what I was eating all the time. And I was running out of shampoo too, so I agreed.
We had some trouble making conversation in the car. He told me more about the new—well, not so new anymore—job. It sounded like he was happy. It was a good fit for him. I told him I was taking an art class for my elective.
“I design in it.”
“Like when you were little? With your mom?” he asked, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
I nodded. “I think I’m okay at it. I’m going to try actually making a dress at some point. Right now, it’s just drawings.”
We pulled into the grocery-store parking lot. As we pushed the cart around the store, grabbing as much freezer food as possible, it started to feel more natural being together. Until we got to the aisle with home goods. I put the shampoo in the cart fine. But when I picked up razors, my dad shook his head. He took them and put them back on the shelf.
“Sam, do you really think that’s a good idea?” I noticed he was looking down at my arms. I picked them up and reached them out to him.
“Nothing,” I said. “I told you I stopped.”
“Then, what’s going on with the mirrors still? What happened to the one in the living room?” I had thrown it away after my talk with Tanya because I didn’t want to be tempted. I just couldn’t see Dee yet. “Do you really think you can handle having razors back again?”
“Dad, if I wanted to be cutting myself, I would. And if it makes me more comfortable, does it really matter what I did with the mirrors? Or why?”
“I’m trying to be supportive, Sam. I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying to understand.”
“Then understand that I want to shave my legs.” I said it louder than I intended, but he still looked skeptical. “Look,” I said, hearing my voice rise, “you’re gone all the time. You leave money under the plates. Great. Thanks. If I wanted to buy razors to break and cut myself with, I would.”
I was crying. In the grocery store. “I just want to be normal,” I said, leaning back on one of the shelves and covering my face with my hands. “I want you to stop treating me like I’m some crazy kid. I want to shave my legs like a regular teenager. I want you to stop looking at my arms instead of at my face. This is why I didn’t want to go to rehab. I knew it would be like this. I knew. I knew you would always see me like this, and I just want to be normal.”
“Okay. Okay, Sam. I’m sorry. Come here,” he said, and put his arms around me. Over his shoulder, I saw Eva backing out of the aisle, eyes wide. Great, another thing she can think I’m a freak for.
Everything wasn’t fixed. He was still hardly around; he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t quit his job. But at least he let me buy razors and shave my legs. At least he looked at my face when we got home.
***
It was a sunny, beautiful day. The trees on my block were all budding, and it was just warm enough that a T-shirt without a jacket was fine. Tanya was sitting on my porch in a neon green shirt and a long brown skirt with big blue stripes. I was on my way home from school, and I was thinking about how there were only three more days until I was done with this year. Until summer, when I could do whatever I wanted and not have to worry. Tanya jumped up when she saw me.
“Guess what!”
“What?” I asked.
“I’m leaving. I’m going away.”
“For how long? Where?”
“Forever. And Tucson, Arizona.”
“Why Tucson?”
“I’ve read all about it,” she said, pacing up and down the stairs. “I’ll get a job raising chickens. It’s hot and dry, so it won’t snow all winter. It’s not here. The people who know me here aren’t there, and the people there don’t know me. I can be anyone. I can do whatever I want.”
“But you can’t leave. I need you. You can be anyone you want here. You said never give up on a friend. I don’t want you to leave.” I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I felt myself getting worked up, getting scared.
“Why do you think I’m here? Come with me. We’ll raise chickens, and one day we’ll start our own farm. Imagine it. Leave all this behind. Forget rehab. Forget homework and parents who don’t listen to anything we say, who aren’t even around. Forget winter and muggy, horrible weather. Forget the support group. I just go to see you anyway.
“Forget it all. Come with me. We have the money between us. I’m eighteen so I’ll sign whatever needs to be signed. We’ll both close out our bank accounts and we’ll go. Let’s do it. Come on.”
“We can’t just up and leave. What about our lives?” I asked, but I could already feel a jolt in the bottom of my stomach. Would it be possible? Could I leave crazy Samara behind?
“What about them? Do you like your life that much? We can have new lives. We can have better lives. Lives that we start on our own, lives we start from scratch where anything can happen. I’m done with my finals, and you can get your GED instead of finishing high school next year. Do you really want to go back? You hate your school. Come on.”
I had never seen Tanya like this. She was sparkling. She looked happy, really happy, not just content that we had the house to ourselves for another weekend. Not just in bright colors. And she was right. What life were we leaving behind? I wanted to be happy the way Tanya was right then. But could I just leave?
“I need time. I need to think about it. When are you going?”
“I want to get out of here, but I can wait three days until you finish this year. There’s a bus that night at seven. Meet me at the bus depot at 6:30 if you want to come. And if you don’t, I’ll write you when I get there and you can come visit or something.
“Come on, we don’t need to rely on fate anymore. We can just make it happen. Make decisions, have convictions. Change everything or nothing about ourselves. It’s up to us now. Let’s just go!”
And with that she left, bounding off the porch and down the street. At the end of the block she turned around and called, “Come with me, Samara
. Come with me.”
“I don’t know,” I said, not nearly loud enough for her to hear. “I just don’t know.” Three days was hardly enough time. But, well, six weeks before, I had broken down in the grocery store begging my dad for a second chance. I could make my own second chance. I could make it happen for myself. Couldn’t I?
chapter 16
The Heartbeat
Dee
Jamie and I were sitting in my bedroom next to the door, listening to our parents talk. Jamie had told his parents what happened before they came over, and now we were sitting on the floor, leaning on the side of my desk with Jamie’s arm around me, listening through a crack in the door to what our parents were saying about us.
“Look, the kids made a mistake,” my mom was saying, “but they aren’t bad kids. They’re teenagers. And I know my daughter—she’s trying to fix things.”
“You have let our son run wild, and now look what’s happened,” his mom said, her voice breaking at the end.
“Honey, we don’t know what happened,” his father said.
“Of course we know what happened. First the drugs and the drinking. His schoolwork is falling. And now this. We know what happened. Can’t she just…get it taken care of?”
“Get it taken care of?” I heard my mother’s voice rise, and I could picture her eyes getting wider, even though I knew she wanted the exact same thing. She was fighting for me. And I hardly felt like I deserved it.
“She’s just saying that this doesn’t have to ruin anybody’s life,” said his dad. “There are ways to fix this. Whatever my wife says, we know that Jamie is a responsible young man. And he’ll want to do the right thing.”
“Oh, please,” his mother said. “Have you met your son?”
“She doesn’t mean it,” I whispered to Jamie. “She’s just upset. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Yes, she does.”
“I know our son,” his dad said stiffly, “and I’ve talked to him. And I know that he’s trying to do the right thing here.”
“Well, he’s obviously not ready to be a father,” his mom said, “any more than your daughter is ready to be a mother.” It sounded like she was spitting the words at my mom.
“My daughter didn’t do anything wrong. Teenagers have sex. Are they in a bad situation? Yes. But if they think having this baby is the right thing to do, then I don’t think it’s up to us to make that decision for them.”
“It is up to us. Look at what they’ve done. They’re children,” his mom said. “Jamie barely knows how to take care of himself, let alone a baby. He’s completely irresponsible.”
I couldn’t take it anymore, hearing them talk about us like that. I might be sixteen, but I wasn’t a child. And hearing his mother talk about Jamie like that…I got up and pulled away from Jamie’s hand that was trying to hold me back. I walked into the kitchen, screaming, “Don’t say that about him!”
“Excuse me?” said his mother.
“Do you even know your son? Did you see what was in the bag that he brought over here?”
“Dee, let it go,” Jamie said quietly, walking into the kitchen behind me and grabbing lightly for my wrist.
“No. She can’t talk about you like that.” I pulled away from him and walked back into my room to pick up the bag Jamie had brought with him. I took the first jar out. “Prenatal vitamins…” the second jar, “folic acid…” two books, “a book about pregnancy, and one about giving birth…” the third jar, “iron.” I turned toward him. “How do you even know I have low iron?”
I turned back to his mother, flipping open the book. “And here is the section of the book that he highlighted and flagged for me because he’s already read it. It says that women who have at some point had low iron need to be especially careful about their iron levels during pregnancy.
“Don’t say he doesn’t care. That he’s not smart enough, that he’s not responsible. That’s not fair. You obviously don’t know your son.”
Jamie stared at the floor, and his mom paused before asking, “You bought those things?” He nodded. His mom looked at him as though she was seeing him for the first time.
My mom put her arm out, and I walked over so that it would rest comfortably around my waist.
“This isn’t a whim, is it?” she said, looking back and forth between me and Jamie. “You both understand what it is you’re getting yourselves into?”
“Yes, Mom,” I said, “we do.”
***
Two weeks later, Jamie and I sat in the waiting room before my first sonogram. My mom was going to try to get there right before the appointment started. We knew she was going to have to take a lot of time off work later in the pregnancy and after I had the baby, so she’d decided to try to build up some credit now when I was just about four months pregnant. I looked down at my stomach and was amazed I was showing so much already.
As we sat in the waiting room, I thought about all of the people who had sat there before us. The happy young couples, the men nervous and sweating, the women rosy cheeked and excited. The older couples almost tired of the whole experience, having their sixth child.
Maybe my mother had sat in a waiting room like this with my father before I was born. I wondered what they’d thought about, what they’d talked about, and I looked over at Jamie, who smiled at me encouragingly, squeezing my hand under his.
Finally, a nurse came out and brought me into a small room with a chair, a screen, a table where I sat, and a lot of equipment I didn’t recognize. I looked at Jamie sitting in the chair next to me and took a deep breath to steady my emotions. I was lying on the table wishing my mom had made it in time for this. And even though we hadn’t talked since before I’d taken the letter she had written to her mom, I wished Samara was there. Jamie reached over and took my hand again, stroking my hair with his other hand. The ultrasound technician came in.
All I could think about as she put the goo on my stomach was how cold it was and how much I wished my mom was there holding my hand instead of Jamie. But all of a sudden, I heard a soft thumping.
“Oh, my God, is that…?” I whispered.
The technician looked at me and smiled. “That’s your baby.” I felt Jamie squeeze my hand and lean over to get a closer look. “The baby looks healthy. This is the head, and the feet, see, over here?” She pointed at the screen. Jamie kissed the top of my head. “I’d like to see you again at the end of the second trimester. There’s very little chance of anything going wrong at your age, but I’d just prefer to be on the safe side. Would you like me to print out the pictures for you?”
I nodded, unable to take my eyes off the screen. I tried to find the places she had pointed to again, but try as I might, I couldn’t find the baby in the picture. I looked at Jamie, and he made a slight face and shrugged at me. At least it wasn’t just me. The technician explained some of the things I needed to know about taking care of my pregnant body to me, and Jamie took me home.
The two of us sat on the couch staring at the picture, trying to remember what was the top and what was the bottom. He turned it over a couple of times, back and forth, upside down and right side up.
“Do you need anything?” Jamie asked. I looped my arm through his and put my head on his shoulder, still staring at the picture.
“No, just you. Look at this baby. Look at our baby.”
We both looked back at the picture. “I have to admit something,” he said after a minute and paused. “I don’t see our baby. I don’t see it. At all.”
I laughed. “Okay, good. Me either. I just see a blob.”
Jamie put his hand on my stomach and leaned down toward it. “Hi, Blobby. Can you hear me in there, little blob?” I laughed and heard the door open.
“Hi, sweetheart.” My mom put a bag of groceries down and then nodded toward us. “Jamie.” She looked at us. “What do you have there?”
“Ultrasound picture.” I heard her walking over behind us.
“So that’s my grandchild?”
“Yup,” said Jamie. She kneeled down behind the couch and put a hand on my shoulder.
“At least, we think it is. I’m not sure which part is the baby…”
“So this is really happening.” She paused, taking the picture. “See, there’s the baby. The little peanut-sized thing. I’m sorry I missed the appointment. I couldn’t get away.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it,” I told her.
“Can you come talk to me in the kitchen, sweetheart?” I got up and followed her. “Listen, I’m still not sure that this is the right thing to do. I know that I’ve been behind you and I trust you and I hope you know that I will always support you, but you’ve got to understand that this is hard for me. But as my birthday present to you, I’m going to stop bringing this up and stop having this discussion with you.”
I looked at her blankly for a moment and then realized that in the excitement of the baby and the first sonogram, I had completely forgotten it was my birthday. My birthday had always been really important to me, but that day, for the first time, my baby was more important than anything. My birthday included.
“Thank you, Mom,” I said, falling into her arms.
Jamie walked in, saying, “Hey, do you two need help with—” But seeing us, he cut himself off and quietly left the kitchen.
***
My next ultrasound was in April. I hadn’t really been hiding the pregnancy at school, but I hadn’t been showing it off either. As the weather got warmer, it was getting harder to wear clothes to cover it up. I would’ve looked silly in a sweatshirt with the temperature in the high 60s.
This time my mom was waiting at the doctor’s office when Jamie and I arrived from school. She was holding my hand while I lay on the table, having stepped in front of Jamie to be closer to me. This time, I wasn’t so surprised at how cold the goo was. We were all silent, listening to the heartbeat of my baby. The doctor turned around and smiled at me.