by Amy Huntley
me. She won't let me have any fun.
Cozy's still yowling, and Kristen's still demanding to
be let into the room. I try to hold the cat still as I crack the
door open. Kristen pushes her way through, and I slam the
door before Cozy can jump from my arms.
"What's going on?" Kristen asks. She stares in amazement
at Cozy. I think the cat looks great dressed in 1780s
clothing, but I can tell from Kristen's expression that she
doesn't. "You're going to ruin your doll clothes," Kristen
informs me in her best I'm-fifteen-and-you're-only-eightso-listen-to-me voice.
"Will not," I say, even though I can see perfectly well
that Kristen's right. The pretty blue hat ribbon I've tried to
tie below Cozy's chin is now in her mouth, and the sides of
it are getting all icky.
Kristen tries to grab the cat away from me, and now
we're playing tug-of-war with her. She yowls and scratches
Kristen on the cheek. Kristen screams and lets go of Cozy.
The cat slips from my hands, too. She somersaults end over
end and lands squarely on all four feet. Kristen opens the
door to let her out, and Cozy stumbles and trips over the
Felicity dress as she races through the door.
"You did that just to be mean!" I yell. Kristen's always
ruining anything I think is fun. Already today she's denied
me an ice-cream cone, refused to let me swim at the neighbor's
house, told me I couldn't watch TV because she wanted
to watch it, and now this?!
"Oh, stop being such a baby." Kristen snorts.
"I'm not a baby."
"You are, too. If you don't get exactly your own way,
you whine and cry. 'It's no fair,'" she mocks. "That's all you
know how to say."
"Well you stink as a babysitter," I tell her. "I hate vou.
I'm going to tell Mom on you when she gets home."
Kristen laughs. "Go right ahead. Tell her how I spoiled
all your fun torturing the cat. She'll give you a big lecture
about why the cat hates you and runs away whenever she
sees you coming."
"She doesn't hate me!" I yell louder, enraged. Kristen
spins around and leaves mv room. "But / hate you I hate
you, hate you, bate you!" I scream after her. When she still
ignores me, I charge from the room, yelling, "Everyone
hates you. You'll make a terrible mother! Your own kids will
hate you. You're—"
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
STILL TRYING TO figure out this pinecone thing . . . I try
imagining that I'm putting it on a Christinas tree.
Nothing. I used to paint them for Christmas. I try
imagining I'm doing that. But I'm still here in Is.
Mom used to spray them with cinnamon scent during
the holidays and set them out in baskets around the house.
There's no smell to this insubstantial ghostly pinecone, but
I imagine myself back in a body, back in a place where smell
is possible. And I try to imagine the smell of cinnamon and
pine. I even imagine myself holding the cone close to my
nose.
And I'm still here.
Maybe I played toss with it when I was a kid. I imagine
throwing it back and forth with Kristen. With Sandra.
With Tammy.
Sti/I here.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOI fOR SALE
r&Kti&uta£Ubft&S&
a penny for your thoughts
oge V
"I think I have enough money," I say, digging around inside
my wallet to check. I'm even counting pennies. I really want
to buy these Robeez baby shoes. They are the cutest thing
ever.
Too much in my hands . . . shoes, change, wallet, purse.
I drop my wallet on the floor, and change scatters everywhere.
"Don't you dare!" I tell Kristen just as she and her eightmonths-pregnant belly are about to btnd over and help me.
"Here, hold these instead," I say, handing her the baby shoes
116
and my purse. I get down on my hands and knees and start
crawling around on the floor, scrounging up my change.
Kristen laughs at me. "You look pretty funny," she
says.
"Yeah, well, so do you," I tell her, but not unkindly.
She grins down at me. "The pregnant body is a beautiful
body."
From down here her stomach looks even bigger. It's a
wonder she doesn't just explode. "One of your pregnancy
books?" I ask.
"Yeah" she admits. "I'm trying hard to believe it. Supposedly,
I can have my real body back someday. Hard to
imagine, though."
It is. But I don't tell her that. I have most of the change.
I can see a penny under the rack, but there's a dust bunny
with it, and I'm not touching that. I'm wealthy enough to
suck up a one-cent loss.
"Just remember—" Kristen starts to say as I stand up.
I've heard this so often I can finish the sentence for her.
"Take extra precautions when you're on an antibiotic."
Kristen wasn't planning on becoming a mother at
twenty-four with only a year and a half of marriage behind
her. She had been taking the pill, but then she had to take
antibiotics to fight an infection. Apparently, they reduce the
effectiveness of the pill, so . . . whammo, she was pregnant.
She's paranoid that the same thing will happen to me.
• l . '
Not that she needs to be.
Gabe and I aren't doing anything that would get me
pregnant. Don't get me wrong. I think we've tried everything
ese there is to try. We're having... well, a lot of fun.
So much fun, it doesn't seem like we're missing out on all
that much. Besides, just about the time we were thinking
about the whole sex thing, Kristen got pregnant.
All in all, watching your older sister puking every day is
a pretty effective form of birth control. One time when she
was at our house, she vomited so violently that she slammed
her head against the toilet seat and had a giant bruise on her
forehead for, like, a week and a half. Honest. And those first
three months, it seemed like she was in bed with a headache
whenever she was lucky (?) enough no: to be feeling nauseated.
"If you and Gabriel are—" Kristen begins. I know this
offer, too: She's willing to take me to the doctor, to help
make sure Mom doesn't know, yadda, yadda, yadda....
"We're not," I say. Then, to change the subject, I pull an
adorable green baby outfit off the rack "Isn't this cute?" It's
mint-colored and has a doggie and a kitty playing together
on it.
"Since when do dogs and cats play together?" Kristen
asks.
I roll my eyes. "C'mon. Children's clothes teach an
important lesson. This outfit is trying to tell the baby that
everyone can get along together if they just try."
I admire a pretty pink outfit on the next rack over. It
has beautiful combinations of pink and orange and yellow
flowing together in a floral print. "And I love this one," I
tell Kristen. "Too bad we don't know whether you're having
a girl or a boy."
In this day and age, who doesn't know that
before the
baby's born? I just don't get why Kristen doesn't want to
know what sex her baby is. I'm reduced to having to find
every possible cute outfit in green—the only color they
make unisex baby clothing in. Well, okay, that's not exactly
true. There are a few yellow outfits that can go either way,
too. But it seems like they all have ducks on them, and how
many ducky outfits can a kid stand?
"What's the point in knowing?" Kristen asks. We've
had this conversation before, so we both approach it a little
wearily.
"Uh .. . let's see . . . planning the baby's room, buying
clothes ahead of time, just knowing what to expect when
you bring the baby home."
"Madi>on, it's not as if I'd know the baby any better just
by knowing it was a girl or a boy. I'm going to have to get
to know ii after it's born anyway. Knowing the sex of the
kid wouldn't really help me know who the kid's going to
be. Sometimes I'll be driving along, and I'll wonder what
this person inside me is going to turn out like, you know?
ii'.
I'll be thinking about the kid riding around in the car seat
and wondering if it's going to fall asleep back there because
it likes the car. Or maybe it'll hate the car and cry. I wonder
what the kid's going to laugh about for the first time. And
none of that seems to have anything to do with whether the
kid's a boy or a girl."
"Yeah," I say, "but if we knew you were having a girl, I
could buy her this way cute outfit."
"Doesn't mean it would look good on her, anyway."
I ponder that. I never thought before about the difficulties
of fashionably outfitting a baby. I mean, hair color,
face shape, all that . . . I suppose you could become obsessive
about wanting the baby to look just right and have the
clothes match the kid's looks. But, I mean, what's the point?
The kid's just going to spit up on the outfit anyway. At least,
that's what's happened with any baby I've ever babysat for.
"You know what amazes me, though?" Kristen is saying.
"Huh?"
"That this person has never been alive before. There
was a time when he or she didn't exist. And now this kid does
exist. So much of its destiny is already being determined
from inside of me. How can that be? I mean, where really
does life come from?"
"Uh . . . too philosophical for me?"
"Doesn't it just blow you away? That someone can not
l , ;
"True. But you have to remember that even if there's no
one else in the world who loves you as much as I do, there's
also no one else who can possibly hate you as much as I've
hated you over the years. That makes me qualified to assess
the situation."
Kristen smiles at me. "Thanks, Maddy. Let's get the
green outfit. If you don't have enough money to pay for the
baby shoes, I'll get them. They are cute."
"I want to get them," I protest. "I'm sure I have enough
money. Wouldn't it be great, though, if I could convince
Mom and Dad to get me a credit card?"
"No way. I know what you'd spend your money on."
We start walking toward the registers. "Oh, come on . . .
I'm not that bad. And then I'd have the money to come back
and buy that cute little pink outfit in another month if you
end up having a gi—"
I,J
exist and then all of a sudden exist} Where was this person
before conception?"
"Is this another side effect of pregnancy?" I ask.
"What?"
"All this wondering about life, the universe, and everything
in it?"
"Maybe. I don't know. Some women start cleaning their
houses frantically. Not me. I still can't stand cleaning. But I
guess I do have some bizarre and deep need to understand
life now that there's another life inside me."
We're quiet for a moment, both looking at outfits.
There's another green one that's a possibility. I pull it out
and show it to Kristen. She suddenly asks, "Do you think
I'll make a good mom? You know, a lot of this kid's life has
already been determined. But there are some things chat I
can still influence. Wonder if I'll do it right."
Okay, I could come up with some kind of smart-ass
remark worthy of the younger sister.
In fact, it's tempting.
But there's something so serious in her expression, so
insecure, so at the whim of fate, that I can't do it. "Of course
you'll make a great mother," I tell her.
"I don't know."
"I do. I've been the understudy for the part of your child
several times. I know what I'm talking about."
"You're biased."
l.'l
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOH SALE
E
A NEW QUESTION OIERGES: Did my sister give birth to a boy
or a girl?
I'm convinced I would remember whether her child was
a boy or a girl, convinced I'd even remember its name—if I
ever knew. After all, so many other things have come back
to me through these visits home, and Kristen's baby is so
fundamentally a part of her that I know I would remember
this baby if I'd ever m e t . . . him? Her?
So what this means is . . .
I must have died before the baby was born.
Kristen was eight months pregnant, so I must have died
some time in the month following that trip to the store.
in
Without ever becoming an aunt.
I think of all the great mysteries that humankind has
made progress toward resolving: the Big Bang, human evolution,
weather prediction, the whole Einstein relativity thing.
The one little mystery I want resolved seems so small
by comparison. I just want to know who my sister's child is.
I want to know about one little person in the whole history
of the world. Why can't I?
Okay, so maybe that's not such a "little" mystery after
all. I mean, maybe that's the entire mystery of life: who we
are, why we exist.
Still, I feel cheated. My life was interrupted right in the
middle of an important plot element.
Back when I was alive, whenever I read ghost stories, the
ghost always haunted other people. It went into the future
to see what was happening in the world as life went on for
the living. It got to find out what happened to the other
characters in its story.
Yeah. Right. I'm imprisoned within my own life. I never
get to see beyond the boundaries of what I have already
experienced.
I can see why the vision everyone alive has of ghosts is
so . . . well, wrong. No one wants to believe life really does
end this way . . . interrupted, unresolved, and unfinished.
I think back to Kristen's musings about the nature of
existence . . . and nonexistence. Her wonder about who and
i,-UNCORRECrED E-PROOF— NOT FOR SALE
ISOMs£pjlinsBiWii!»H
rattled
16 Weeks
Aah, eee, eee, ooo. Aaa-aaa, iii, eee, e, oo-oo. Oh, oom,
heee, eee, ah-ah, eee, ah-ah, ooo, oh, oh, ah-ah, eee, uh, uh,
ooo, ah-ah. Ooo, uh, ah-ah. Hee-hee, oo, uh, ah-ah, eee.
Ennn, ooo, ah, eee, ooh.
• • •
Okay. That one was . . . creepy.
My journeys back to life have been mysterious before this, but
ivhen I've returned I've always I understood what happened. I've
remembered the events I experienced. But this time it is as if I
experienced nothing.
l r :
what her baby was before it existed. Now I wonder the same
thing. Who was / before I existed? Who am I now that I no
longer dor
It strikes me that this death thing is a lot like being in
utero. My niece or nephew was alive inside my sister when
she was eight months pregnant, but that baby didn't have
the freedom to set any of the boundaries of its existence. It
was locked into a small, dark place.
Just like I am now.
And before the pregnancy? Where was that baby then?
Did it e x i s t . . . at all?
Maybe that's the next stage in my trip.. .. I'm going to
arrive at being nothing at all. . . . Death might just be the
opposite of pregnancy... going through this dormant stage
before arriving back to where we started . . . nonexistence.
Where is God?
When I was alive, I wasn't very religious. I mean, I didn't
go to church and stuff like that, but I believed there was a
god.
Now I wonder if there is. I sure want one. I want more
than this . . . n o t h i n g . . . that I'm afraid I might be moving
toward. I want to feel like more than just some subatomic...
thing . . . that can't decide whether it's a wave or a particle
so it's both. Only in my case I can't seem to decide whether
I'm alive or dead.
I'm both.
IH
No, chat isn't right. I have a memory of definitely experiencing
something, but it is .. . s o difficult to put into
words.
Color, sounds, warmth, touch. And there's one word I
knew, even as an infant: ah-ah. It matches a voice and a smell
and a touch I know well.
Mama.
She's the rock and the foundation of this experience.
But what happened in that scene? I must have lost my
rattle. It's the object that returned me to life. Did I cry?
Did my mother pick me up? Comfort me? Soothe me? T h e
rattle is still here, so she must not have been able to find it
for me.
I'm disconcerted by the whole experience and its myriad