by KD Robichaux
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
With that, Jason seems to snap out of his stupor and wraps his arms around both of us, kissing his mom on the top of her head first before leaning down to kiss me on my lips. “Night, Mama,” he tells her, and then he lets go of her before leading me out of the kitchen and down the hallway to his room.
I plop down on the foot of his bed, pulling my feet up underneath me after I kick off my shoes. I don’t really know what to say. Besides the fact that went better than I could’ve ever imagined… I can’t believe it happened in the first place.
I’m pregnant.
I’m pregnant with Jason’s baby.
Jason and I are going to have a baby… together… that is ours.
Josalyn will be a big sister.
I’ll be a mother of two.
Jason sits beside me on the bed, putting one of his muscular legs behind me so he can pull me to him. “You want to hear that story I mentioned before we told Pop?”
“Should I be scared?” I ask, still a little dazed over everything. I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet that I’m pregnant… with Jason’s child… at this very moment. It all feels so surreal.
“Nah, it’s a funny story. Okay, you know the ‘awful girl’ my mom mentioned? My ex-girlfriend, Lainey, the one Chad said he much preferred you over?”
Now this gets my attention. I’ve never really asked Jason about any of the relationships he had while I was married to Aiden. Part of me tries to pretend they didn’t exist, but another part of me, a weird, sort of morbidly curious part, wants to know every minor detail of what went on during that time period.
“Yes, I recall,” I say sarcastically, and he squeezes me, letting out a chuckle.
“Well, she was a bartender up at Slick’s, the pool hall I used to go to all the time. We started dating, and she came over one night. Without going into too much detail, Mom walked in on us.”
My eyes widen and I jerk around to face him with a gasp. “No. Way.” But then a creepy feeling comes over me and I look down and around me. “Oh, God!” I jump off the bed, out of his grasp.
“What?” he asks, a worried look on his face.
“Here? She walked in on y’all… in here?” I say, dreading his answer.
“Well, yes, in here. But you are the only person I’ve slept with in this bed, babe. I swear. I got this furniture after I dumped her ass.” I don’t miss the bitterness that enters his voice on that last sentence. “But anyways, Mom walked in on us—”
“How? Like she just came busting in? And where were y’all? What were you doing exactly?” The questions come out rapid fire, and Jason gives me a funny look.
“You sure you want to know all this? I mean, you are the most jealous woman on the face of the planet. So jealous that even though the entirety of your giant family has blue eyes, yours turned green,” he jokes, but nothing he says will distract me from getting the information I’m now dying to get.
“Yes,” I state with a short, concise nod.
“All right, well come here and relax. You look like you’re about to attack me if I speak the wrong word,” he says, holding his arms open to me.
I make my way back into his embrace and snuggle against him as he restarts his story.
“We were on the floor, because the bed I had at that time squeaked, and she was on top of me,” he says.
“Like riding you?” I ask, biting my lower lip.
“Yeah. And Mom, being Mom, just came busting into the room without knocking.”
“Oh, jeez.” I shake my head. I would be absolutely mortified. Just thinking about it has my face heating up. “So what happened?”
“Well, there was this awkward moment where Mom just stood there, and it felt like a lifetime, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple seconds, and then she turned around and left. And then I heard my dad coming up the hallway, and he stopped outside the door, not looking in, and told us he needed to talk to us out in the living room,” he replied, and I can hear the smile entering his voice. What he’s smiling about, I have no idea. I’m embarrassed for him and this girl just hearing about it.
“What was Lainey’s reaction? I mean, was she absolutely dying? I would have wanted to off myself!” I question, my voice pitching higher and higher.
“She wasn’t fazed.” He shakes his head and shrugs.
“What?” I scoff. “What do you mean?”
“Lainey was a bitch. I mean, you know how when a girl does one thing, people will be like, ‘Oh, she’s a bitch’, using the term lightly just because she might have made one bitchy move? That’s not the case with her. She was. A. Bitch,” he states, emphasizing each word. “She didn’t just make a bitch-move every once in a while. She just was one. Twenty-four seven. To her core.”
“Wow, sounds like you picked a winner,” I snark.
“Hey, it was a rough time in my life. No judging. Anyways, so, we went into the living room, and Mom goes, ‘Well, this isn’t exactly the way I wanted to meet you the first time,’ and after a little bit of awkward conversation, Lainey left. And finally, I come to the funny part. The part I really wanted to tell you,” he says, his voice rising in energy as he shifts on the bed like he can’t sit still. “When she left, Pop goes, ‘Dang, son, looks like you’ve got yourself a sweller,’ and I was like, ‘What the fuck? What’s a sweller?’ and he said, ‘That girl might look good right now, but if you knock her up, she’s gonna swell right the hell up.’”
I can’t help it. I know it’s so super rude to laugh at someone picking on anyone for their size, but thinking about this super-bitch fucking my man and not even having the decency to be the slightest bit embarrassed about being caught doing the dirty in his parents’ house, I let out a laugh from so deep in my gut that I have to jump up, grab my crotch with both hands, and run out his bedroom door into the bathroom across the hall, barely making it to the toilet before peeing on myself.
When I come back into the bedroom, Jason has a shit-eating grin on his face. “You all right, beautiful?”
“Yep. Have I mentioned I love your dad?” I smile.
“Yeah, but I didn’t even finish my story before you high-tailed it to the bathroom,” he teases.
“The joys of motherhood. I can’t even sneeze without—never mind. Finish your story,” I say, cutting myself off.
“When you came over and brought Josalyn to see us the first time back in January, he told me, ‘See, son, that’s good breedin’ stock there. Definitely not a sweller.’”
“Oh, my gosh. You’re dad is hilarious. He just says the sweetest things.” I say the last part in a breathy southern belle accent as I start taking off my clothes, watching Jason’s eyes heat.
Before he gets any ideas, I quickly grab my pajamas off his leather couch against the wall and put them on. After our day of travelling, and then the emotional roller coaster I’ve been on since we got back home, I’m suddenly exhausted and would rather he just hold me while we watch some TV and fall asleep.
Taking the hint as I walk to the head of the bed and pull down the covers, he stands, only taking the time to let his jeans drop to his ankles, pulling his feet out of his boots and pants at the same time while lifting his shirt over his head, leaving him in nothing but his briefs.
“What?” he asks as he crawls up the bed and gets in beside me when he sees the amused look on my face.
“First thing I’m doing when we move in together is burning all your tighty-whities,” I say through a giggle.
“I like the sound of that.”
“What? Me burning all your old-man undies?”
“No, the moving in together part,” he clarifies, and my face heats.
“I didn’t mean… that just kinda came out. I didn’t mean to assume we’d be moving in together now that I’m pregnant. I just—”
“Babe,” he interrupts my rambling. “Of course we’re moving in together. That was going to happen whether you are pregnant or not. We’ve talked about this.”
“Maybe this is a sign,” he adds, sliding his arm beneath my pillow and tugging me closer, placing his other hand on my stomach. The feel of his warm palm through my nightshirt radiates through me, filling me up with his loving touch. “Maybe this little miracle was God’s way of giving us a little shove in the right direction, hurrying all this along when only the man upstairs knows how long it would’ve been dragged out.”
“You sure have been talking about God a lot since we got back together,” I point out, and he gives me a contemplative look.
“What do you mean?”
“When we first got back together, you confessed that you thought maybe God sent me back home to meet Aiden so I could have Josalyn for you and me. And now this,” I explain.
He thinks on that for a few moments, and then says, “I guess me finally getting to have you, it’s made me believe He’s got a plan for me. I’ve always believed He put you on this Earth for me. I was just stupid and let you go. And after I put that roadblock in its path, making you take a detour, He’s now set the course straight again and upped the speed limit to hurry us along.”
I can’t help but smile at his reasoning. Leave it to him to explain his renewed belief in God with a driving analogy. Jason’s always had a… different relationship with religion. He believes in a higher power; he just has a problem with organized religion, in the sense that he hasn’t found one that he fits into like a jigsaw puzzle piece. I’ve tried telling him that I don’t know anyone who believes and follows every single, solitary rule of whatever religion they fall into. But he’s bound and determined in his belief that it’s an all or nothing kind of deal.
He was raised Methodist, while I was raised Catholic. He still occasionally goes to church with his mom, and he participates in UM Army, a group from the church that spends a week somewhere fixing things for people in need. He did it last year, his first time as an adult leader instead of as a youth, and they went to Athens, TX and Alexandria, LA and built wheelchair ramps onto people’s houses. He said he loved the building part, aiding people who needed it and wouldn’t have otherwise been able to get the help, but said he was super uncomfortable at the end of the day when it was time for ‘all the Bible reading and singing shit’, as he put it.
Asking him one time what his biggest turn-off was from the Methodist church, which he had grown up going to every Sunday since he was born, he said, “It’s my African fisherman.” After letting out a laugh of surprise, I asked him to explain.
“My African fisherman. I was taught in Sunday school that the Bible says the only way into Heaven is through Jesus. My teacher said that if you don’t believe in him, then you can’t get into Heaven when you die. Even when I was little, my question was what if you are somewhere you never even heard of Jesus. Like my African fisherman. He’s just a sweet, little old man who spends his days fishing to bring home food to his wife he’s never cheated on, his kids he’s never raised a hand to. He’s been the epitome of a good man his entire life. Never stolen anything or killed anyone. Okay, are you telling me he doesn’t get to go to Heaven, just because he lives somewhere they might never have heard of Jesus before? But some asshole, who has murdered a bunch of people, suddenly finds religion in his prison cell and asks for forgiveness gets to? I don’t fucking think so.”
“Well, personally, I think we all believe in the same person; we just call him something different. I call him God, someone else calls him Buddha, another dude calls him… I don’t know… what’s another one? That turtle… Anyways. All the same dude, different name. Because if you look at the main set of rules in each ‘handbook’—the Ten Commandments in the Bible being ours—they’re all the same. Lying, killing, cheating, all that shit—bad. Kindness, generosity, helping fellow man—good. So getting back to your African fisherman. He more than likely has his own religion, which calls Jesus or God by a different name, but he’s going to end up in Heaven. It’s just going to be his Heaven.”
I thought I’d made a pretty damn good argument, but he still wasn’t having it, so I gave up on trying to make him feel better about his little African fisherman.
But now, lying in bed with him, his protective hand warming my belly, hearing him talk about us being on the right path God had set for us, it makes me happy he seems to have found a bit of peace with Him. It’s one less thing for my otherwise broody boyfriend to worry his over-analytical mind about.
We watch a little bit of TV, and soon, as my eyes get heavy, I roll over to be the little spoon, and he keeps his hand right where it is all night as we fall asleep.
Two days later, Jason stays home to watch Josalyn and to help his dad with a project in his shop while his mom takes me to Planned Parenthood for a ‘real’ pregnancy test, as she calls it. She wanted to take me to her doctor’s office, but since I don’t have insurance, it would have cost a fortune, so this was the next best option. I had never even heard of this place, but as I read the posters on the wall and the little brochure I picked up when I signed in at the window, checking the box for pregnancy test and paying the $30 fee, I learned it was a place you could get birth control, annual women’s wellness appointments, and STD and pregnancy tests at low cost if you don’t have insurance.
We were the first ones here, so it’s only a few minutes before I’m called back. I wanted Mom to come with me, but the nurse said she wasn’t allowed for the testing, but that she could for the results. She has me step up on a scale to find out my weight, and then I sit in a chair for her to take my temperature and blood pressure. After writing my name on a clear cup with a green lid in Sharpie, she hands it to me and points me toward the restroom, telling me to set it inside the metal window after I fill it to the line, and then I can go back out and have a seat when I’m done.
I’m only in the waiting room for five minutes before Mom and I are heading back to the nurse’s office to get my results. Even though I feel pregnant, and had my at-home test confirm I’m positive, I’m a little nervous. Yesterday, we spent the day talking and daydreaming about nothing but this little one growing inside me, Jason even taking a moment to get on his knees and kiss my tummy before I slid on my little black dress I was wearing to our Trans-Siberian Orchestra performance, and it gave me a chance for it to really sink in this was really happening. It would be absolutely devastating to find out that it was just a false positive and something else going on with my body.
With my heart pounding in my ears, I sit down in one of the two chairs facing the nurse’s rolling one, Mom sitting in the other, holding her purse in her lap. I watch as the woman in pink scrubs pulls out a piece of paper from the manila file folder in front of her.
She looks at it a split second before turning to me with a smile on her face. “Your paperwork says you have one child, a girl, who is twenty months?” She poses it more as a question, even though she can clearly see that’s what I wrote down.
My nerves are making me grumpy and impatient, so I have to force myself to leave the “Duh” out of my voice when I answer, “Yes, ma’am,” as I wait for her to get the hell on with it.
“Well, congratulations. In nine months, if all goes well, you’ll be a mommy of two little ones,” she says pleasantly, obviously gauging my reaction and purposely keeping a happy tone in her voice to offset if I were to have a bad one.
A gust of breath leaves me, and my face splits into
a grin as I look over at Mom, who nods at the confirmation, a small smile on her lips.
“So let’s find out your due date, shall we?” the nurse prompts, and I watch her take out some kind of paper wheel with a bunch of numbers and dates on it. “When was the first day of your last period?”
“Oh, hell. I have no idea. My cycle has been so screwed up since I stopped breastfeeding that I don’t know when it’s coming. But there’s only one week I could have possibly gotten pregnant in the last couple of months. My boyfriend and I date long-distance. I live in North Carolina and he lives here. In the last two months, meaning November and December, I only saw him for the week of Thanksgiving before coming to see him this past Friday. It had to have happened that week, because I had a period before he came, but not since,” I explain.
She nods and turns the wheel around on itself, and when she has it aligned the way she wants it, she looks at it closely and says, “Alrighty, that’s means this baby is due August 28th,” making a note on my paperwork. She checks a few things on the form and then tears the copies apart, handing me the top portion and keeping the bottom to put back into the manila folder. “The building directly behind us is where you’ll go next.” She smiles and stands, nudging the rolling stool out of our way.
“I’m sorry, what?” I ask, confused about why I need to go anywhere else, since we came to find out for sure I’m pregnant, and she already confirmed that.
She gives me a perplexed look before hooking her toe on the caster of the stool and pulling it back toward her to sit on. “Well, I assume since you’re here that you don’t have any health insurance, correct?” I nod and she continues. “Did you have insurance with your last child?”
“Yes, ma’am. I was a military spouse,” I clarify.
“Ah, okay. So since you don’t have insurance, the building behind us is where you will go to register for Medicaid. Once they see if you qualify, that will be your insurance provider, and then you’ll be able to find an OB.”