Look at You Now

by Liz Pryor

  “You look great, Tilly, you really do, you idiot. And here, give these to Nellie.” I grabbed a pair of the maternity jeans out of the dresser—one pair was enough for me, I didn’t need two.

  “Oh God, Liz, she needs them. Her stomach kills her, even in sweatpants. She’s gonna shit! Wow, I’m gonna walk around the lounge in my new designer maternity shirt.” She was smiling. She looked happy, and I felt somewhere close to happy too.

  I looked at her and said, “Yes, you fucking are; enjoy it.” She jumped up, hugged me hard, and left the room. It was quiet for a moment, and I was alone again. Then I heard, loud as hell, “Nellie, wake the fuck up, Nelllllllieeeeeee, you won’t believe it… .”

  chapter 6

  There was almost a foot of snow piled on the ledge outside the window when I woke up. It looked as though a white blanket had been placed over all of the trees, which were swaying back and forth in sync with the wind. For a second I forgot where I was … and then I looked down and saw the growing bump that was now my stomach. And it all came rushing back.

  I got up, got dressed, and found the soft cream fisherman’s sweater my dad had brought me, a long time ago, from one of his business trips, tucked away in the drawer. No matter where he traveled, we could count on our dad to bring back something, although he was clear that it was never just a thing. His gifts came with backstory: meaning, custom, teachings from some other life that was fundamentally different from ours. He’d gotten the fisherman’s sweater in a little village in England, where he was traveling for work. He always delivered the information as though it were top secret and we, his kids, were the only ones given clearance to receive it. The village fishermen originally wore the sweaters, knit by their wives, to stay warm during the winter fishing season. Their catch was so plentiful the first time they wore the sweaters, they were declared lucky. Every man who ever fished any season during the year from then on wore the sweaters. I pulled the lucky sweater on and headed to the cafeteria. Miraculously, somehow, I had almost made it to the end of my first week. I rounded the corner in the basement and spotted Alice, fast approaching with her weeble-wobble walk.

  “What are you doing, Liz?” she blasted in her loud midwestern voice.

  “Ummm … getting breakfast?”

  “It’s Friday. You know what Friday is, right?” In her singsongy way, she said: “It’s Dr. Lathem day. You need to go all the way down this hall and turn left, you have your first exam. Get goin’, girl.”

  What? The spread-your-legs exam Nellie talked about? I froze for a second.

  “Go on, git, girl,” Alice said.

  At the end of the hall, I saw Nellie standing in front of a big wooden door. She called me over: “Hey, Liz, look.” She lifted up her shirt to show her huge pregnant stomach inside the stretchy panel of the maternity pants; she looked like the fat lady in the circus.

  “Nice,” I said, smiling.

  She smiled back. “More than nice, I can breathe.”

  On the door next to Nellie, I saw a plaque that read Dr. Richard Lathem. Written over it in thick black marker, probably scrawled by one of the girls, was DR. DICK. My heart started to pound hard.

  “Nellie, what exactly are we doing here?”

  She straddled her legs wide on the floor and laughed. “What do you think we’re doing? Spread ’em bitch. You gotta go in there, take your pants off, and spread your legs for that prick. And then he sticks his hand all the way up your cooch and says everything’s okay. That’s what we’re doing here.”

  “I can’t do that, Nellie.” I took a few steps back from the door, “I’m not doing it.”

  “You gotta do it. No one wants to, unless you want to be like Deanna who got kicked out for a week when she wouldn’t go in there.” I started to feel light-headed and reached for the wall to steady myself. A woman with a weird beehive hairdo, wearing a nurse’s outfit and white Earth shoes, opened the wooden door. She shouted “NEXT!” There were other girls lined up against the wall in the hallway, all of them with their eyes cast down, pretending like they couldn’t hear the nurse.

  Nellie rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, I’ll just fucking go … whatever.”

  The door slammed behind her. I walked to the end of the line and stood behind the young girl with the scar on her face. She was scratching her hand so hard that a drop of blood rolled down her finger, but she just kept scratching. I watched as she mutilated her hand.

  Without realizing it, I whispered, “You shouldn’t do that.”

  She whispered back, “I know,” but still didn’t stop.

  Beads of sweat were gathering on my forehead, and a wave of nausea swooped over me. I wanted to fall through the wall, or better, break my legs, or smash myself into something. I would have done anything to get out of that hall and away from whatever awaited in that doctor’s office. There was a bathroom across the corridor. I went inside and steadied myself at one of the small sinks.

  “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” I said to myself in front of the mirror. Twenty times I said it, and then I leaned over and dunked my head under the faucet of cold water. I let it run for a long time, numbing the back of my neck, and finally I came up for air. I was unconvinced I was going to survive whatever was about to happen. I grabbed a paper towel, wet it, took a few more dry ones, and headed back out. Nellie was still in the office, behind that big wooden door. Why was it taking so long? I sat on the floor next to scar girl again and whispered, “I forgot your name.” She was still scratching her hand; there were drops of blood all over the floor now.

  “Wren,” she said.

  “Wren?”

  “Yeah, Wren.”

  “Oh yeah, well here, give me your hand.” I wiped the blood off her hand and fingers with the wet towel and wrapped the dry one around her scratched hand. Looking at the scar on her face made everything inside of me drop. None of these girls had had easy lives. The door flew open, and I finally heard Nellie’s voice booming through.

  “Thank you for nothing, fucker. Doesn’t do shit about my ankles, treats us like animals!”

  Wren looked up; she was four people from “NEXT!” She couldn’t stop herself. She kept scratching through the paper towel.

  A half hour passed. I sat in the hallway on the floor. I pulled a little on the linoleum tile that was peeling up at the corner. I thought about the sleek gray slate tile in the front entranceway of our old house in Winnetka. We played jacks on that tile for hours and hours, my sisters and I. I’d mastered the game all the way up from onesies to tensies, and through to triples. I could place all ten jacks on the flat part of my fisted hand, throw them up, and turn and catch them in that same palm, to skip to the next level. I closed my eyes and pretended I was there, with Jennifer and Tory on the cool slate floor, the sun shining through the windows. The door flew open—I was next in line. Wren came out, waved the hand with the paper towel still wrapped around it, and turned down the hall. The nurse with the beehive barked at me to get moving.

  It was a small room, with a table covered in dark orange plastic leather that had weird metal things at the bottom. There was a wooden stool, a sink, and a trash can. Everything looked miniature, except for the table.

  “Take your pants and underwear off, wrap the gown around yourself, and wait on the table for the doctor,” the scary nurse said. She slammed the door behind her, and I was alone.

  My hands and legs were trembling as I took my clothes off. I covered up the bottom half of myself with the gown and climbed up on the orange table with the creepy metal things. I bit the front of my lucky sweater and waited and waited. The doctor finally came in.

  He sat down on the stool at the end of the table, not looking at me, and said, “Lie down, please, and then scoot yourself as close to the end here as you can.” I did what he said.

  “Now put your feet in the stirrups.”

  I looked at him, confused, until he grabbed my left foot and put my heel in the cold metal thing. I slowly lifted my right foot and placed it
in the other metal thing and tried to close my legs. The doctor blew air into a pair of rubber gloves and then rolled them onto his hand.

  “Now hold still,” he said.

  I laid my head down, holding tightly to the cloth gown that was covering the front of me, and looked up at the cement ceiling.

  “Let go of the gown and open your knees,” he instructed.

  I closed my eyes and stopped breathing while he pushed his hands inside me. The tears were spilling down my cheeks as he jabbed and nudged my insides. It was such a weird, alien feeling. What was happening? I tried to scooch back up the table away from him.

  “Move back down, young lady, and lie still.” The doctor then stood up, with one hand still in my body, took his other hand and pushed hard on the sides of my stomach. I gasped in pain.

  “Relax, and for God sakes, breathe,” he said. But I couldn’t breathe. I’d forgotten how. Finally, he pulled his hand out of me, yanked the rubber gloves off, and threw them in the trash.

  He started to walk out, and I asked, “Am I going to be all right?”

  He grunted, “Probably.”

  And the door slammed behind him. Probably? What did that mean? Was something wrong? I buried my face in my sweater and cried like a two-year-old. Everything was sore as I got dressed again. The nurse came in a few minutes later.

  “I have to weigh you. Come with me.” I followed her out of the room as the spontaneous sobs continued to erupt. I still couldn’t catch my breath.

  “Stop that … and get on the scale,” she said. “The doctor needs to track your weight. You the one who fainted?”

  “Yes.”

  I stepped on the scale; she rattled the little bar back and forth, and then scribbled on a chart.

  “I’m trying to eat more,” I said. “Am I going to be all right?”

  Without looking at me, she answered, “Probably.” She took her cat-eye reading glasses off and began cleaning them with her handkerchief. She looked up at me, aggravated, and said, “Go on, then, you’re done. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph …”

  I made my way down the empty hall, past the rank smell of the bad cafeteria food. The girls were gone. I’d missed breakfast. I dragged my fingers along the warm painted radiators in the hall, trying not to pay attention to the hollow feeling I had inside. Could a teenager die during pregnancy? Was I gonna die?

  • • • •

  Tilly was waiting for me when I got back, outside my room. “I didn’t know where you were, so I thought I’d wait for you. You okay?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Fridays suck. I go down early, get it out of the way. Dr. Dick told me I might have my baby sooner than the date.”

  “He did? How does he know that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess how big it is and stuff?”

  “Well, when was it supposed to come?”

  “Middle of May, but now he says maybe early May. Can I come in?”

  She walked in, sat on the empty bed, and scrunched up her face as she looked at me. “You really don’t look okay… . Are you?” It tipped me over the edge—Tilly’s look of concern. Why did this always happen? The “you okay?” was like someone cutting the last tiny thread holding me together. I couldn’t say I was okay, even if I wanted to. I just couldn’t. Instead, the tears came, shoving the sadness out of me. Tilly’s sympathy had opened the floodgates. Kind of like when I was homesick at camp the first year, I called my mom, and when I heard her voice it made me miss home even more. Like their care somehow makes it harder to fake it, and you lose it completely. Tilly watched me with a glum look on her face.

  “You hate it here,” she said. I nodded between sobs.

  “I guess it’s not like what you’re used to, but you have a pass, you can go anytime you want.”

  “Go where?” I choked out. There was no escaping this.

  “I don’t know.” She walked to the dresser and picked up my hairbrush, then put it back down. Then she picked up my necklace, the one Daniel gave me for Christmas. It had a sterling silver chain and little charms of my initials hanging on the end.

  “‘L.P.’ Guess I can’t borrow this.” She laughed, and then turned to me. “You’ll get used to Dr. Dick, he has to make sure the baby is okay and you’re okay. He hates us. We think he got in trouble or something at a real hospital and had to come here ’cause nowhere else would take him.”

  Tilly picked up one of my headbands, pushed her short hair off her face, and looked at herself in the mirror. “You’re gonna get used to it here, Liz, and you have me.” She smiled a goofy smile and ran her hands over the flannel maternity shirt, which she hadn’t taken off since I gave it to her. “You eat breakfast?”

  “No, I guess I didn’t,” I said. I was beginning to calm down.

  “You have to eat. Be right back.” She left the room. Out the window, the snow hadn’t let up. It was still falling fast, and the trees were swaying in the wind. It was mid-February, and we had many weeks of winter to go. Tilly came back in and handed me what looked like a Pop-Tart, in silver paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “Strawberry, best you can get, eat it.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I take things from the cafeteria when I can. Just eat it.” I opened the Pop-Tart, took a bite, and then heard the door squeak open. It was Nellie, and she was wearing her hair in two silly-looking tiny ponytails on top of her head.

  “What’s up? Liz recovered?” Nellie said.

  “Not yet,” Tilly answered.

  “She will.”

  “Yeah, probably.” They were talking like I wasn’t there. I looked at Tilly, then Nellie, then Tilly again, like watching a tennis game.

  “She has to get used to it, I guess.”

  “Gonna take some time. She hates it here.”

  I interrupted them. “There you go talking about me like I’m not here.”

  “Sorry, but you make it so easy,” Nellie said. “Come on, Bewitched is on.” I followed them into the lounge. Bewitched was their favorite TV show. Samantha the mom and her two-year-old daughter, Tabitha, were in Tabitha’s nursery. Tabitha wanted her mother to hand her the doll that was on the shelf. Samantha told her she couldn’t have her doll until after her nap. When Samantha left the room, little Tabitha stood up in her crib, reached her arms out, and tweaked her nose back and forth, which gave her magical powers. The doll floated from the shelf through the air, all on its own, into the little girl’s arms. The girls in the lounge loved Tabitha. I listened to all of them laughing.

  But the Morticia-looking girl, Elaine, the girl with the black hair almost to her butt, was leaning over the couch and cringing in pain. She grabbed her stomach and started crying. Wren got up off the couch and left the room, and so did a few others. Deanna just stared at her. Elaine was now doubled over. No one said anything, so I slowly walked over and asked what was wrong.

  “My stomach, like really bad,” she said.

  I ran to get Alice, and when we came back to the lounge—Alice taking her time, walking slow—Elaine was now lying down on the floor. When Alice saw Elaine on the floor, her annoyance turned to concern.

  “What’s the problem, Elaine? Is it that bad you can’t stand up?”

  “I can’t move,” Elaine said. She was sweating badly and looked ashen. Alice called the paramedics from next door. A few minutes later, two guys came in with a gurney. They hoisted Elaine on and left.

  I looked around and then asked, “How far along is she?”

  A girl named Amy, who had a short blond pixie haircut, huge boobs, and a funky lazy eye, said, “Seven months, I think.”

  Deanna sat up from the recliner, sucking on a Tootsie Pop. “Maybe she did something stupid. She’s got a baby in there; she better not be doing no drugs and shit.”

  “She doesn’t do drugs, Deanna,” Amy said.

  Their bickering went on for a while, until Alice came back in and told us to be quiet. She said, “I think it would be a good idea to get you
r lazy rear ends outside. I am going to take anyone who wants to come on a walk.”

  “You shitting me? It’s pouring snow.” Deanna pointed to the window.

  “I see that, Deanna,” Alice said. “All the more reason to get out. The fresh air will do everyone some good.”

  “No fucking thank you.” Deanna reclined back in her chair. Amy and Wren and Nellie and Tilly shook their heads too. But I got up and announced I was going.

  They all looked at me. “What else am I going to do?” I said.

  “Good, Liz, I’ll take you. I can’t get these girls out for the life of me.” But then Tilly changed her mind. She was coming too. Then Nellie said she would as well. Amy too, and finally Wren. Deanna and the others stayed where they were.

  We walked to the entrance of the facility past Ms. Graham’s office, and Nellie hollered to the guard her usual refrain: “Yo, Chief, hit it!”

  “You got it, Mac,” the guard lady said, and buzzed the door open. We filed outside, behind Alice, who looked like the Michelin tire man from the TV commercials, with her puffy coat and round wobble. The grounds were wrapped in the new white snow. There was that just-after-a-big-snowfall thick silence outside, the kind that makes you want to whisper. For a second I felt something nice—peaceful almost—and then I felt a plop on the back of my head. The girls were throwing snowballs, kicking the loose snow up at one another, laughing and shouting. Alice stood and watched from afar with half a smile. I scooped up a load of snow and let it drop above Nellie’s head. She tried to get me back but could barely move, she was so big and bulky. I lay down flat on my back in the soft snow and looked up at the sky. The sun was finally peeking through the dark clouds. Nellie came and nudged my side with her sneaker. “Get up, moron.”