Five Minutes To Midnight

by C. B. Stagg

  Only everything had happened, and nothing was normal.

  Nothing would ever be normal again.

  A few short hours later, I showered and dressed for church, like any other Sunday, but secretly I wondered if my mom would notice a difference in me. Would she be able to tell what I’d gotten up to? Would she see what I’d done?

  All through the service—listening to a sermon about sin, sin, and more sin—I tried to feel something. I wanted to feel guilty, or ashamed, or embarrassed… to prove, even if only to myself, that I was a good person who’d made a bad life decision. But I was hollow and felt nothing, numbness coursing through my veins. After more than an hour of my father’s Bible beating, however, I had to wonder if his sermon was a diatribe aimed right at the heart of his sinful embarrassment of a daughter.

  Excusing myself after our church-wide Easter luncheon, I went home to reflect on the night’s events. I remembered the feelings: the warmth, the safety, the adoration. But despite my efforts to recall the play-by-play, I was drawing major blanks and tremendous gaps remained. Between fumbling around in Wade’s bedroom and his syrupy sweet words before leaving his bed a few hours later, I wasn’t positive how far we’d gone. And though the soreness between my thighs told its own foggy story, I wasn’t willing to listen. I refused to believe I’d lost my virginity in a strange town, to a strange—yet somehow familiar—boy. All while we were both drowning in beer, bourbon shots, and lustful confessions.

  Part 3

  “Pregnancy is getting company inside one’s skin.”

  - Maggie Scarf

  About six weeks after my rebellion, the story of the one night I decided to color outside of the lines became way too loud to ignore. I spent the morning of my graduation on my knees, sweating profusely, with my head hanging over the toilet in the bathroom attached to my room. My father was convinced it had been food poisoning from our celebratory seafood dinner the night before, but I knew better. My mother did, too.

  After assuring both my parents it was no big deal and I would still be able to walk across the stage in a few hours, my father left to do whatever it was he did with his time, satisfied, but my mother lagged behind. Sitting on the edge of my bed, waiting for me to come out of the shower with tears in her eyes.

  “Kaitlin, what have you done?”

  I burst into tears, and she held me close, sitting on the twin bed in the only room I’d ever known—walls covered in Maroon 5 posters and ribbons from various elementary art shows or writing contests I’d been in—for what felt like hours. Until that morning, denial had been my middle name, but one trip to the drugstore and the undeniable proof of exactly what had happened on my wild night in College Station stared me right in the face.

  “Mom, I just… ” I couldn’t continue. There were no words for what I had done.

  “It’ll be okay, Kaitlin. We’ll take care of this little… situation, and get you all settled in at school. He’ll never have to know.” She patted my back for a few more minutes. “No one will ever have to know.”

  I’d accepted admission to Texas A&M University in the Journalism department. I’d done so immediately following my magical night with Wade, and had planned to move at the start of August, giving myself time to get settled before classes started a few weeks later. By my calculations, I’d be just shy of four months along by that point. Though, given my current circumstance, I was starting to reconsider my future completely.

  “Don’t you worry. We’ll find a clinic in San Antonio and have this taken care of in no time. It’ll be like it never even happened.”

  My head popped up from where I’d been resting on her shoulder. “Clinic? What kind of clinic?” I scooted away from her, wiping my face dry using the back of my hand. “What are you even talking about, Mom?”

  My mother jumped up and started pacing the room. “Kaitlin, you can’t honestly be considering keeping this thing.” She stopped right in front of me at that last word, and her pinched face made my stomach roll.

  It was a baby.

  My baby.

  Her grandchild, and she’d referred to it like one would speak of a used tampon.

  “I will not get an abortion. If that’s what you think, you’re crazy!” I placed my hands over my still flat stomach, appalled. My parents were good Christian people… pro-life Republicans even. And yet my mother stood in front of her only child—one she’d struggled for years to conceive and carry—and spoke of killing this life as casually as one would swat a fly on the kitchen counter.

  “Of course you will. Don’t be stupid. You’ll get rid of it, and then we’ll never have to think of this again. It’s the perfect plan, Kaitlin. I’ll set it all up.”

  I opened my mouth in protest and was met by the slamming of my door and her heavy footfalls running down the stairs, no doubt to ‘set up’ the murder of my child.

  I fell back on the bed, letting the towel I was wearing fall open, and rested my hands on the flat, tight skin covering my baby. I stroked the place where my newfound love was growing as more tears flooded down my cheeks.

  “Well, you are an unexpected little surprise.” I smiled, thinking back on the night I’d conceived this little peanut, and sighed. I rolled to my side and drew my knees up to my chest, creating an additional barrier between my baby and the big mean world. Keeping him or her safe.

  “You were a surprise, but not a mistake, of that I am sure. Things happen for a reason, little one. I truly believe that, and I know in my heart that God gave you to me for a reason. I may not know anything else, but right now I can say without a doubt… I am your mother, you are my child, and I will love and protect you with such ferocity. Nobody will ever change that.”

  That night, I walked across the stage and received my diploma with a smile on my face, love in my heart, and a plan forming in my mind. After my parents were fast asleep, I packed everything that meant anything to me and loaded it into the trunk of my little Mazda. I was incredibly grateful that my summers spent waitressing at the country club afforded me my own car, registered in my name alone. With my task complete, I slept, my Post-it note clutched tight by my heart. I was prepared for the worst but still hoped for the best, knowing nothing about how the next day would end. It was a hard conversation I planned to have with my parents the next morning, but come hell or high water, I was keeping this baby.

  “Something smells good.”

  I heard my father’s deep rumbling voice before I saw him. Bounding down the stairs, sounding like a herd of elephants, he stopped short when he saw me at the coffee maker. Clearly, he’d been expecting my mother.

  “I made you coffee.” Placing the steaming mug at his usual place at the breakfast table, I motioned for him to sit. He did, but the hesitation in his step did not go unnoticed.

  “Where’s your mother?” Not even a thank you, though I wasn’t too surprised. I would never be good enough. I never had been.

  “She has Bible study this morning, so I thought we could talk.”

  He sat and opened the paper, but ignored the coffee and me. Giving him time to find his favorite section of the news, I readied my own mug of coffee before taking the seat next to him.

  “I’m leaving for school early.”

  “No, you’re not.” His tone was clear and concise, even from behind the newspaper.

  “Yes. I am.” I braced myself, ready for a fight. I wasn’t asking permission. I was notifying him as a courtesy.

  “No.” He turned a page of the paper he wasn’t really reading. “Where is your mother?” My father viewed me as an inconvenience. He had no patience for his petulant daughter and needed my mom to come handle me.

  “She’s not here, Dad. Sorry, but you’re going to have to deal with this without Mom serving as a buffer.” I took another long drink of my coffee. How long will he continue ignoring me? “My car is packed, and I’m leaving. Today.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have any money.” He kept his head in the paper, but his tone painted a picture
of the smugness I was sure his face was reflecting.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I do have money. I have lots of money.” I could be smug, too. Like father, like daughter. I’d saved almost everything I’d ever gotten as gifts throughout the years, and graduation had brought in a nice haul. Aside from my crappy little Mazda, an older model I’d purchased used, I’d never spent a penny of my wages from waiting tables at the club. I felt confident the few thousand I had would tide me over until I figured everything else out.

  “Well, I won’t allow it.” He shook the paper, no doubt dismissing me. But I wasn’t a fly. He couldn’t shoo me away.

  “What makes you think you have a choice?” I stood and walked my mug to the sink, collecting my purse from the counter. With my hand on the doorknob, I stopped when I heard his voice.

  “You’re just like her.” His sister. The one who brought shame and humiliation to his entire family. He always compared me to her, though all I knew was her name. I had no idea what she’d done to deserve to be ostracized, but I had an idea.

  “Did she get pregnant in high school? Because if that was her crime, then yes, I’m exactly like her.”

  “If you walk out that door, you’re dead to me.” He’d flipped the corner of his paper down and was staring at me through one narrowed, villainous eye. “I will denounce you, disown you, and erase any evidence of your existence.” The coward was still hiding behind the paper, but he couldn’t hide the tremble in his hands. Even after all these years, he was still in denial his family was anything but his definition of perfect.

  “Tell Mom I love her.”

  I closed the door on the only life I’d ever known and walked out to my car. From that moment on, I never looked back. Behind me were memories, but in front of me were dreams—my dreams.

  And my only dream was to look upon the face of the child growing inside me, tell them I loved them, and to make sure they knew they would always be worth fighting for.

  Part 4

  “Home is not a place, it’s a feeling.

  -Unknown

  I arrived in College Station three hours and five restroom stops later, bearing the weight of the decision I’d made by leaving home like Sisyphus’s stone, waiting for it to topple me. Regardless of how strained relations were between my parents and me, they were still my parents. They were my only family, my only permanence in this big, cruel world. But looking at things from that perspective was vomit-inducing. Instead, I chose to think of what I’d done as selfless, if not heroic.

  I left to save the life growing inside me, a life I’d come to love dearly in the hours since I’d first learned of its existence. I left for love, a mother’s love. I left because I loved my baby more than anything else in this world, a fact I would not apologize for. Ever.

  Thankfully, through all the drunkenness, I remembered Wade’s street name, so finding it hadn’t been a problem. It was what I saw when I pulled onto the road that left me speechless. His condo, along with the entire block, had been completely demolished, leaving me good and completely screwed.

  That same day, I found a dirt cheap room to sublet within a few blocks of the campus, and in a few days I’d settled in and took to the task of looking for Wade. Corynne and the twins were no longer on speaking terms. From what I could gather from her vague recollection of the evening, things hadn’t played out like they had in her fantasies. After begging and pleading, but without dropping the bomb of why it was of such importance, she tried calling them for me anyway. They either couldn’t (or wouldn’t) give her any information, stating they’d parted ways once their apartment had been torn down.

  Dead end number two.

  Discouraged, but not distraught, I continued to canvas his old neighborhood, or what little was left of it. I only found new private dormitories were being built on the land and almost all of the renters had been bought out of their leases. The few people who’d stuck around in the fringe areas not affected by the new construction had no memory of Wade and the twins. Dead ends all around and I felt my spirit start to fissure.

  Remembering how popular Wade had been at the Dixie Chicken on the night of his birthday, I often hung out, sipping water, while I waited for him to make an appearance to no avail. One random Tuesday evening, toward the end of the second summer session, I was reading a book over a burger and fries when I overheard a conversation.

  “Those boys were fine!” one girl was saying. “I’d like to find me a pair of identical twins like those two for myself.”

  “Yeah,” another one sighed. “Fine and completely gay. Totally disappointing.”

  Suddenly, Corynne’s steadfast unwillingness to give details about that night all became crystal clear. I spun around. “Are you talking about Jake and Josh?” The girls were startled by my abrupt intrusion into their conversation, but I had mere days left on my lease to find Wade, so propriety went out the window.

  “Um, yeah… ” Girl One looked at her friend, who shrugged. “Why?”

  “Oh, no reason, really.” I shrugged too, feigning disinterest. “I borrowed a book from their roommate last semester, and I’ve been looking for him so I could return it. Their damn condo is gone, so… ” Both girls stared at me, their wide eyes darting between each other and me.

  “What?”

  Girl Number Two spoke up. “Remember that fire a few months back? The really big one all over the news?” I nodded, having no clue what the girls were talking about. “It was theircondo that caught fire. The whole block burned, something about defective firewalls. It was their roommate whose body was discovered once the fire was put out. Their roommate, the cute blond one? He’s dead.”

  He’s dead.

  Two little words from a stranger in a bar and my world imploded right before my eyes.

  It was almost fall, and my sublease was practically up. So I’d packed and moved on, a drifter in my own life. My plan had always been to find Wade. I knew that, for everything I struggled to remember about that night, the way I felt when I was with him was real and special. I always assumed I’d move back to College Station where we’d pick up where we left off.

  After the baby news, plans didn’t change, they became more complicated. Even if Wade had moved on, or wanted nothing to do with me romantically, I knew in my heart I could rely on him for at least some sort of support. It was his child growing inside me.

  If plan A was finding Wade, plan B had to be setting up a life for myself and my baby alone. And I damn sure wasn’t doing it surrounded by the echoes of my memories in the drunken college town where this mess started.

  I drove southeast and hit Houston before continuing south, destination unknown. After living my life under a moral microscope, I was finally learning to be free and to be me. I answered to no one and planned to take full advantage. I pressed on, alternating between pitiful tears for what could have been and grim determination to make something good come from my sadness and despair, stopping only when I hit the grey-blue water of the bay.

  Hot, starving, and exhausted, I pulled into the crushed shell parking lot of a kitschy little diner a block off the main drag. I was well aware that if I planned to make my funds last, I needed to make more of a conscious effort to scrimp and save until I had a steady income. But opening the door to my car, I was slapped across the face with the smell of fried deliciousness, and all thoughts of frugality went by the wayside, replaced with thoughts of a big, juicy burger and seasoned fries.

  “Choose a table, I’ll be right out.”

  The disembodied female voice must have been alerted by the clattering of the bells attached to the door. Looking around, only a few people were peppered about the small dining room. So I chose a vinyl booth as far away from the door as possible, hoping to take full advantage of the cooler air at the end of the oblong diner. The menus were already on the tables, so I let my eyes feast, mouth watering, while I waited to be served.

  An older woman in jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt appeared from thin air. She placed an alread
y sweaty glass of water down in front of me and stood by expectantly, order pad and pen in hand.

  “What can I getcha to drink, hon?”

  “Oh, hi. You scared me.” My hand automatically covered my fluttering heart. “Um, lemonade would be great, thank you.”

  She nodded, writing, but never looking away from me. At rest, the lines on her face were faint, but when the woman smiled, and even more so when she laughed, the lines fully committed, a symbol of a long and happy life lived. She was breathtaking: tanned skin, sparkling eyes, and a long, whitish-blonde braid trailing down her back.

  “And are ya meetin’ someone?” She motioned to the empty side of my booth.

  “Oh, no ma’am.” I shook my head and yanked my feet down from where I’d perched them on the adjacent seat. “Just me today.”

  She smiled and nodded. A few minutes later, the woman returned with a tall glass of milk and a salad that must have required the entire head of lettuce, sprinkled with small bits of colorful veggies, meat, and slathered in creamy dressing. I licked my lips.

  “Um,” I looked from her to the food in front of me. I couldn’t afford that. I’d planned on a kids meal, if not a single burger. “I didn’t—”

  “I know you didn’t, but in case you haven’t seen a mirror lately, you’re a scrawny little thing. The babe needs vitamins, and from the looks of ya, it seems as if you could use a few too.” She scooted into the empty seat across from me and extended her arm. “Cara Jo.” I nodded, taking her wrinkled, calloused hand in mine. “My husband and I own this place.”

  Glancing at the front of the menu, I saw Perrilloux’s Diner written in script across the top. “So, you’re… ” I pointed to the restaurant name, eyebrows raised.

  Her smile warmed me inside. “Cara Jo Perrilloux.” She pronounced it Perry-O, and I was grateful she’d solved the pronunciation mystery for me. Cara Jo Perrilloux sounded like a cartoon character name. It suited her.