Finding Purgatory

by Kristina M Sanchez

  I love you. I miss you.

  The words blurred, and Tori’s eyes burned with tears she didn’t want to cry. She remembered planning what they would do together on her birthday and missed Raphe terribly in that moment.

  Tori shook her longing away and growled at herself. It was stupid to think of him, stupid to think like that. Stupid was what got her where she—

  Again, her thoughts shifted, and Tori gasped, her hand going to her mouth.

  In all her thoughts about turning eighteen and being back at school when her life had changed entirely, she’d sort forgotten she was knocked up.

  “Fuck,” she muttered loud enough to draw a glare from another patron. She made a face at the man but didn’t push it. She slunk down in her seat and rubbed her eyes.

  No doubt about it, she sucked at this. Anxiety made her heart speed, and her throat was tight with shame. It was so stupid that God or science or whatever was responsible for procreation made it so any asshole could make one of these things. She was pretty sure the kid wasn’t going to survive the incubation process intact at this rate.

  What kind of a stupid asshole forgot she was pregnant and got into a fight?

  She blew out a shaky puff of air, trying to get herself together. Nine months. Less than that. She’d been with Raphe almost two months ago. She could be responsible for another human being for the length of a pregnancy.

  Ani knew she wasn’t being as attentive as she should have been. She’d been trying not to think about Tori’s first doctor’s appointment, but now that she was sitting in the waiting room, she couldn’t escape the anxiety that tainted her bloodstream, making her jumpy and distracted.

  Just as she was about to turn to her sister, Ani heard a high-pitched giggle, and her head snapped in the opposite direction. She saw a head of bouncing brown curls streak by and the chuckle from the adult shape that followed her. Ani was struck breathless by the sight—a daddy sweeping his dark-haired daughter up into his arms.

  The ache at the center of her chest was so bad, Ani felt as though she would pass out from the spike of intense pain. It was all she could do to remember how to breathe.

  She tried not to remember, but the memories came anyway.

  It had been two weeks between her visit with Dr. Two-Pink-Lines and her appointment with her ob-gyn. Ani could hardly sit still in the waiting room.

  “What if the test was wrong?”

  Jett smirked. “All three of them, honey?”

  She made a face. “I know it’s not likely, but it’s possible.”

  “Mmhmm.” He leaned close, nuzzling the side of her hair with his nose. “So there’s another reason for your missed period, then?”

  “That could be anything.”

  Jett wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve passed out at the table the last three days. You almost face-planted in your soup last night. There’s another reason for that?”

  “So I’ve been tired.”

  His chuckle was warm on her cheek. “And last night, when you wouldn’t let me get near the girls because they ached too much? I assume you have an excuse for that, too?”

  Ani huffed. “What if—”

  He shushed her. “Baby.” He dropped his hand down to her stomach, pressing his palm firm against her shirt. “Baby, baby, baby. We’re going to have a baby.” His grin was so wide, Ani couldn’t help but smile back. Giddiness washed over her.

  “We’re going to have a baby,” she repeated in wonder.

  “Victoria Kane?”

  Ani’s mind vacillated between present and past. She tried to remain grounded. As Tori stood, she looked back at Ani, her expression a plea. Some part of Ani’s inner programming recognized her sister needed her. She wasn’t going to let Tori go through this alone, so she lurched to her feet, following the nurse into the back room.

  The nurse’s questions to Tori faded in and out as Ani’s mind wandered. On autopilot, she responded to the tension in the air. She squeezed Tori’s shoulders, hoping the gesture might comfort her sister. When the nurse asked Ani if they were friends, she responded late enough to make the silence in between awkward. “Sisters. We’re sisters.”

  Try as she might, Ani could not shake the image of the daddy and daughter out in the waiting room. Her thoughts spun a mile a minute, none of them settling for very long. The panic she’d begun to feel on Tori’s birthday, when she realized what she’d agreed to, began to flood into her with the violence of a ship taking on water.

  What she thought she was doing, Ani didn’t know. She hated being here in this office where so many other women had sat with their babies safe in their bellies. She couldn’t stop thinking about Mara and how hopeful she and Jett had been as they imagined all the wonderful moments and milestones. It had been a room like this where she’d realized she would be someone’s mother forever. She and Jett were parents—an irrevocable bond. Marriage, relationships, didn’t always last, but Mara would be her daughter for the rest of her life.

  Now her baby was gone forever. She had an ill-advised tattoo on her ankle she would take to her grave, but she would never see her baby again.

  She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t watch her sister’s baby grow, couldn’t take on this part of the journey, couldn’t promise to be some other child’s mother as long as she lived. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.

  “I can’t do this.”

  Ani snapped back into the present, the grip around her lungs easing as she was distracted by Tori’s sharp cry.

  They were in the ultrasound room and the strong, quick sound of the baby’s heartbeat filled the air. The technician pulled the wand away in response to Tori’s obvious stress, but it was too late. Her expression was twisted, and her breath came in too-quick gasps. She shook her head, tangling her fingers in her short hair and tugging. Hard.

  “Honey, hush. Hush, it’s okay.” Ani put her arms around her, surprised when her sister leaned against her immediately. She worked her fingers up under her Tori’s, trying to loosen her grip on her hair.

  Tori continued to mumble, “I can’t do this,” under her breath over and over and over again as she rocked back and forth.

  It was minutes before she raised her head and sniffled, looking the picture of misery. “It’s really alive, isn’t it?” she asked in a broken voice.

  Ani’s heart twisted. She remembered how fascinated and awed she’d been, hearing Mara’s precious heartbeat. This was the antithesis of that. Tori was terrified of the thing growing inside her. Ani wiped the tears from her face with tender strokes and told her it was going to be all right.

  “It’s going to be fucked-up. I’m fucked-up. It’s going to be just another fuckup like me,” Tori muttered.

  Ani caught her sister’s face in her hands. She tilted Tori’s head up and waited until she could look her in the eyes. “You’re stronger than you think.”

  Tori’s answering laugh was bitter, but she didn’t argue. “What do you know?” She pushed Ani away. The movement was feeble, an echo of Tori’s usual bravado. She turned her head to the side and wiped at her eyes.

  Watching Tori take a deep breath and call out to the technician that she was done having her dramatic moment, Ani knew she’d been right. Tori was so much stronger than she gave herself credit for. Ani was envious of that kind of strength. Right then, she felt weak. Tired.

  Clearing his throat, the ultrasound technician pointed at the screen. “That’s the baby.” His words were timid, and he watched Tori out of the corner of his eye to make sure she wasn’t about to freak out again.

  Looking at the tiny, alien, kidney-bean shape, Ani felt it was safe to assume she and her sister were thinking the same thing.

  Could either of them be enough for this new life?

  Chapter 7: New Routines

  “If anyone tries to shove Jesus down my throat, I’m hitching a ride out of there.”

  Tori hunkered down in the passenger seat of Ani’s car as th
ey pulled up in front of the church a week after her first doctor’s appointment. She was ticked off, but not for any concrete reason. She hated group, but for the first time in her life, she was in one of her own volition.

  “Or you could just call me,” Ani said. “You heard what the doctor said. The group just uses the church because it’s convenient. It’s not run by any priests or parishioners.”

  Tori grunted and got out of the car. She heard the window roll down and turned back to see what her sister had to say.

  “Eight o’clock?”

  This was something Tori had learned about Ani. She was obsessed with being on time. Though she knew damn well the meeting was only an hour long, she still had to verify again. Tori blew out a puff of air. “Yeah, dude. One hour. That’s the deal.”

  She started walking.

  The setup was pretty much what Tori was used to—a bunch of girls milling around, looking like they would rather be anywhere else, tepid water and crappy cookies, a circle of chairs waiting for the sharing to begin.

  Already regretting her decision, Tori sat down and crossed her arms. Still, after she freaked out hearing the heartbeat of the living, life-sucking little monster inside her, both the doctor and Ani had talked to Tori about getting some kind of help. They fed her the usual platitudes about how there was no shame in needing to talk to someone. Her life was upside down, and it was okay to feel scared. Tori chafed at the idea of personal counseling but grudgingly agreed to try a support group for pregnant teens.

  She was doing it for the kid, she told herself. She’d promised she would do whatever she needed to while the thing was dependent on her. At the very least, it would keep Ani off her back. That kind of annoyance had to be bad. Everything was bad for pregnant women. Which was annoying.

  It was a vicious cycle.

  Maybe it would be nice to have someone understand at least. That was the one thing Tori had liked about group before. At least the other kids knew what it was like being in the foster system. That was one of the weirdest things about living in Ani’s house—the way her sister just didn’t get certain things.

  No one in Tori’s current personal sphere understood how creepy it was to have something growing inside her like a parasite. Misery loved company.

  A few minutes to seven, a woman approached. She introduced herself as Dana Goulding, the group’s leader. Though Tori hadn’t asked, she spilled her life story. Pregnant with twins at seventeen, a girl and a boy she gave up for adoption. Third child at twenty. She’d kept that girl. And she and her husband had just had a baby boy last year. She was thirty-two now and had been running this group for going on six years. She asked Tori how far along she was and told her she was among friends.

  “Yeah, I know. No one believes me. Not the first time, anyway.” Her smile was friendly rather than condescending. “But it’s a break, you know? Anyway. Just stick around. Listen. If you want to jump in, that’s fine. If not, that’s okay, too. I’ve never heard a couple of the other girls’ voices except for a hello here and there.”

  Dana then moved off to call the meeting to order.

  They were only five minutes into talking—a girl who looked way too tiny to be carrying a belly that big was recounting a fight she’d had with her mother the day before—when the door opened. Another girl walked in with a proud smile on her face and a car seat dangling from her hands.

  It was obvious most of the group knew her. Tori caught up quickly. This was the first time the girl had been back since she’d had her baby.

  “It’s been hard,” she said. “But also good. I’m really glad I didn’t give him up. I’m glad I have Keegan now.”

  That was cue for one of the other girls to start crying.

  “Talk to us, Alex,” Dana said while the girls on either side of Alex rubbed her back.

  “It just that it makes me feel like a dick that I’m giving my baby up,” Alex said.

  Dana nodded, her expression understanding. “It’s important to remember there are no easy choices here. There are positives and negatives no matter what path you’ve set down.” She leaned forward, hands on her knees, so she could look at Alex head-on. “It’s not selfish to decide the baby is better off being adopted. There’s nothing wrong with making that choice. Nothing at all.”

  Tori scoffed before she could help it. “Sure there’s nothing wrong, if you’re lucky.” There was a bitter taste on her tongue, burning the back of her throat. “You can just leave it all to chance that the assholes you leave your kid with will keep their word."

  The minute she said it, when she saw the pained expressions of some of the others, Tori regretted opening her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say anything so bitchy. These girls hadn’t done anything to her.

  “What the hell do—” one of the girls began, but Dana held her hand out.

  “Meg.” There was warning in her tone. She turned back to Tori. “It sounds like you have some personal experience. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Tori felt bad enough about her callous comment that she thought she owed them some explanation. Disgruntled but resigned to the idea, Tori pulled her feet up on the seat. “It’s not personal. It’s just fact.” She paused and shrugged. “I was almost adopted once.”

  “And what happened that you weren’t?” Dana asked, ignoring the startled reaction of the other girls.

  Old habit had Tori reaching up to curl a tendril of hair around her finger. It was just long enough now that she could. “The couple I was with got pregnant with their own kid, and suddenly everything they told me about how they would love me like their very own went right out the window.” Tori hated the way her heart panged when she said the words. It made her angry. It had happened so many years ago, and she still wasn’t done crying about it. Disgusting. “It’s such bullshit. Once they found out they could have kids of their own, they didn’t need someone else’s baby.”

  Alex put her hands to the swell at her middle. “Serena and Richard, that’s my kid’s adoptive parents, wouldn’t ever do that.” Her words were vehement.

  Whatever. If they all wanted to live in dreamland, Tori wasn’t going to pull the wool off their eyes. She’d seen too much to trust other people to keep their word. Love wasn’t a promise anyone could keep. “If you say so.”

  “I’m very sorry that happened to you, Tori.” Dana’s words were soft and sincere. “But on average, most adoptions turn out well, especially with newborn babies. Alex, you were able to choose the adoptive parents you were comfortable with, right?”

  Tori was quiet for the rest of the meeting. She managed to keep her pessimistic comments to herself. If nothing else, it was interesting. The thirteen girls there each had a very different story. She didn’t hear them all that day, but the ones she heard were enlightening to say the least. Tori didn’t feel quite as dumb in comparison afterward. Some of these girls had gotten pregnant on purpose and been shocked when it didn’t go over well.

  She listened to stories of supportive parents, overbearing parents, and parents who’d sent them off to be dealt with by grandparents or aunts. Some of the babies’ fathers were in the picture, some weren’t. The youngest girl, a fifteen-year-old named Allison, had gotten pregnant by her twenty-six-year-old boyfriend. She was very indignant that he was doing time for statutory rape.

  As she got up to leave, Tori had to admit it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. Not once had Dana preached at the girls. She had simply reinforced over and over that it was a difficult position they’d found themselves in and that they deserved support without judgment no matter what their choices were.

  When the meeting was over, she hadn’t gone more than a few steps toward the door when she was stopped by a touch at her arm and a tentative, “Hey.”

  Tori turned, surprised to find the girl who had been sitting to her right all night staring at her with a nervous expression. “Uh. Hey.”

  Awkward much?

  “My name’s, um . . . Emily.” The
halting manner in which she spoke made it sound like this was a revelation not only to Tori but to herself. She recovered and held her hand out.

  “Tori.” She took the girl’s hand and gave it a small squeeze.

  “So, um, sorry. I guess I just wanted to say hi. And I wanted to ask . . .”

  “What?” Tori was trying to be patient, but this chick was drawing this conversation out way too much. Tori wanted to be out of this church.

  “You said you weren’t adopted by those people? Did you ever get adopted?” Tori must have had a harsh look on her face, because Emily backpedaled quickly. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. It’s fine. Whatever. No, I never got adopted.”

  “So was that, um, that lady who dropped you off your foster mom or something?”

  Tori turned to her. “Jesus, kid. Are you stalking me or something?”

  Emily’s eyes went wide. “What? No. I just saw you with . . . her. Before. Outside. I’m just observant.”

  For a long moment, Tori eyed the other girl. There was something very twitchy about her, but it seemed ridiculous to consider her dangerous. Her belly was already big enough she had that whole waddle thing going on. “She’s my sister.”

  “Your sister?” Emily ducked her head, clapping a hand over her mouth when she realized how loud that had come out. “Sorry. Just, errr. I mean, she looks a lot older than you.”

  “You’re kind of a spaz, aren’t you?”

  Emily pursed her lips, but then she rolled her eyes and grinned. “That’s exactly what my brother calls me.”

  “Oh. Well, yeah. My sister is a lot older than me. My parents had me when she was sixteen.”

  “That’s kind of the same as me and my broth—my brother.” A strange, sad expression came over Emily’s face for a moment, but it was gone the next instant. “But we don’t have the same dad.”

  “Ah.” Tori paused a beat more because she was curious what else was going to come out of this near-complete stranger’s mouth. But the girl only looked back with an expectant stare. “Anyway. She’s probably waiting for me.”