Look at You Now

by Liz Pryor

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. Something was going on inside of me, in my heart.

  Nellie took Rosie instead and sat down in a chair. The baby moved her little angel lips around. We stared, entranced.

  “So did you breast-feed and stuff?” Nellie asked Gina.

  “No, fuck no. I tried but it hurts bad, like someone’s pinching a clothespin onto your tit and turning it as hard as they can. I’m feeding her the formula milk stuff from a bottle, she likes it just fine.”

  “Gimme that sweet piece a sugar, will ya?” Alice said, wobbling in. Alice put the baby over her shoulder and walked to the window. She was a pro, you could tell. The little baby opened her eyes a bit. It looked like she saw the sky for the very first time. Alice rocked her and said to Gina, “I can give you two a ride to the bus station, sweetheart, but not until we get that phone call.”

  “Where you going?” Tilly asked.

  “Michigan, to stay with my aunt,” Gina said. She had a strange look on her face. “I called and left a message with her boyfriend to call here, so we’re just waiting for her to call back.”

  “You can’t stay here with the baby, Gina,” Alice said. “You know that. Child services can watch her while you figure it out.”

  “She’s gonna fucking call, Alice. Nobody’s taking the baby.” Gina took the baby back from Alice’s arms.

  “Gina, does your aunt know you had a kid?” Amy asked.

  “I don’t know, but I think she’ll call me back.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s gone, she doesn’t live in the same place as when I got here.”

  Alice looked over. “I think that little bundle of love needs a diaper change, mama Gina,” she said. Gina rifled through the baby bag for a diaper. She laid a blanket down on the couch and then placed the baby on it. We all stood by, slightly grossed out, as Gina undid the Pamper. There was green slime all over the baby’s legs and butt. Alice got a wet towel, came back, and cleaned the baby in two seconds flat.

  “Gina, put the diaper on,” Alice said.

  “You do it.”

  “No, sweetheart. You gotta do it.” Gina fumbled with the diaper but eventually got it on. The baby started crying as Gina tried to put her little outfit back on, and then the baby really started crying.

  “You gotta pull the clothing,” Alice said, “not the baby, when you dress her, Gina.” We watched as Alice stretched the fabric of the pajama and gently placed the baby’s arms and legs in.

  Wren said, “That’s scary, she’s too little.”

  Alice rolled the baby up like a taco in the blanket and handed her to Gina. A few minutes later, Gina’s aunt called and said she could take the bus to Michigan. When Gina stood in the doorway with Rosie, she suddenly looked as young as she really was. She had a brand-new baby in her arms, her mom was nowhere to be found, and she was getting on a bus alone to go somewhere she wasn’t sure she could stay. My emotions were heavy and tangled. I knew with certainty how my life would look in the weeks and months and even years to come. Gina didn’t. Standing in the lounge looking at Gina, I felt bad about that.

  Gina smiled an awkward smile, and said, “Well … bye, you guys.” We waited to hear the corridor door shut before we sat back down. Jill lit a cigarette, looked around the room, and said, “That’s gonna be all of us. Who’s next?”

  “Shit, I think I am,” Tilly said. “Then Nellie then Wren and Liz … right?” Tilly looked at Nellie. “Isn’t Gina supposed to go back to juvie for something?”

  “Yeah, she is, she gets a week after the kid is born, then she has to go back. She stole a car,” Amy said. “She had it for like ten days.”

  “No kidding, that’s pretty bad.”

  “She stole it to go pick up her mom somewhere. Her mom was sick, or strung out or something, the cops stopped her on the freeway. She didn’t even have a license.”

  “So she knows how to hot-wire?” Jill asked.

  “No. She followed some old lady into the grocery store from the parking lot, swiped the keys out of her purse, and then went back to the parking lot and drove off in her car.”

  “That’s balls,” Deanna said.

  “I’ve stole some shit but never a car,” Nellie said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Amy said.

  “One of my sisters stole something once and got caught. She stole some makeup from the drugstore,” I chimed in.

  “And what happened?” Jill asked, laughing.

  “She was in like sixth grade. The cops called. My mom had to go to the store. They didn’t arrest her or anything. She gave the stuff back, and then my mom brought her home and made her write this long paper about what happened and why she did it. That’s what my mom did when any of us ever got in big trouble. She kept a file in our basement. When we did a really bad thing, we had to write it down, say how sorry we were, tell every detail, and then my mom put it in the file. She said if we ever did it again, she’d show the papers to my dad.”

  “That is fucking funny,” Nellie said. “Did you ever have to write anything? You didn’t, did you?”

  “Yes, I did.” Maybe they would think what I had done wasn’t so bad, but it was pretty bad and I was strangely relieved I’d done something to go in the file in our basement.

  “What?”

  “Well, when I was in eighth grade, I babysat for these people down the street and had a party at their house, and spilled beer in their fancy car in the garage. The people called my mom and said I was a disrespectful hoodlum. My mom was so mad that she sent my brother to pull me out of school. Then she made me go over to the house, apologize, clean the carpets and the car, and then I had to write it all down and she put it in the basement file.”

  “Did she ever show your fuckin’ dad?” Deanna said.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Smart lady. Got her kids afraid to do bad shit.”

  We all sat in silence for a second and then Nellie said, “Maybe I’ll do that file thing with my kids, it’s a fucking good idea.”

  • • • •

  Ms. Graham’s office door was closed when I walked past a few days later. I knocked lightly and waited. I could hear her talking, so I peeked my head in.

  “Hi, Liz, come in.” I sat down and waited. “Sorry about that, I was actually talking to the adoption agency. How are things going?” Ms. Graham asked.

  “Fine, I guess. Gina had her baby, and we all got to see it.”

  “Yes, a beautiful baby girl. Was that hard for you?”

  “No.” Actually, yes, it was, but in ways I didn’t want to think or talk about.

  Ms. Graham went on. “Oh, we got some books from the public library. Two dozen coming, to go up to the school. They range from fourth-to twelfth-grade levels.”

  She was writing something again on the legal pad. I noticed on her desk a paper notepad calendar: Each day you rip it off to reveal the next. It read March 1. It was almost the twins’ birthdays. My little sisters were born on two different days. Tory was born on the second of March, and Jennifer came just after midnight on the third. They were about to turn fourteen years old.

  “Everything all right?” Ms. Graham asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  I thought about it for a while. “Is there any way a girl could have her baby and still finish high school while she takes care of it?”

  “There are a few different programs set up to help teenage mothers. So yes. The answer is yes.”

  “Tilly wants to finish high school,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Ms. Graham said. “I can let her know about what is available to help make that happen.”

  She cleared her throat and pulled out a file from her top desk drawer. “I wanted to let you know, Liz, after a lot of interviewing and checking on things, we’ve narrowed down the adoptive parents for your baby to two different couples. Both have waited a long time for a child. If it’s possible, they’d like to see
a picture of you. Do you have one I could put in the file?”

  I felt my brain pause, and my thoughts go slippery. I saw the image of Rosie, Gina’s baby, slowly rise in my mind. I’d written a dozen versions of a letter to my own baby in my mind.

  Dear little baby—

  I’m going to ask your parents to give this letter to you when you are 16. That is the age I got pregnant with you. I wanted to ask you to make sure to keep music around you if you can. Play the guitar, or the piano, or the drums, anything you can, to get out that stuff that’ll live inside you. That’s what I do. I’m Liz, and you’re the baby who grew in my stomach. My boyfriend, your dad I guess, is a nice, funny guy, who had nothing to do with any of the decisions made about you. We’re just kids. We’ve been together most of high school, but moving on and going to college, I doubt we’ll stay together. I love sports, running is great if you’re fast, I bet you will be, so be sure to run. What went on when I found out you were inside me is a long story, but I wanted to make sure you knew that even though I don’t know you, I know you’re probably a great person already. I hope you can understand about why I thought it was better for you to live with a real family rather than me, a kid. I hope your life is okay, I hope it’s really good.

  I looked up at Ms. Graham. “I can get some pictures of me to give you.”

  She was staring at me. She had a way of looking at me, like she could see straight through me. My tears were rolling, but I didn’t care.

  “Are you having reservations about giving up the baby?” Ms. Graham asked.

  I looked up at the ceiling, which sometimes felt like it was caving in on me in that little office.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, it’s understandable if you were.”

  “I’m not.” But the reality was beginning to hit me. All our babies had just been thoughts or ideas until Gina’s little girl came to the lounge. And we saw her. The baby was a real person. With a heart, and feet, and eyelashes, and a mind. My baby would soon be a real person too. Everything was shifting from thought to reality. I had stuff going on inside I’d never felt before. Almost as though I’d hit a layer I wasn’t supposed to feel for a long, long time—something I wasn’t ready for. Ready or not, it was here. Outside the small window in Ms. Graham’s office, the clouds passed over the sun and made the sky dark and then light again. I hoped I could handle what lay ahead.

  • • • •

  The next day, I headed into the lounge after a bad night of sleep. We didn’t have to go to school that day. There was something going on with the plumbing in the schoolhouse. Nellie kept calling it a shit day instead of a snow day. The phone booth was cold; I held the receiver with one hand and shoved the other into my coat pocket.

  “Hi, Mom, is Tory there?” I said when my mom picked up.

  “Hi, sweetheart, she is. How very thoughtful of you to call.” She sang Tory’s name through the house, “VICTORRRIIIAAAA …” My heart dropped as always at the sound of life at home.

  “Hello?”

  “Happy birthday, Tory.”

  “Thanks, Liz. How you feeling?”

  “Not bad.” This would be the first of their birthdays I’d missed.

  The Pryor birthday tradition was that the birthday boy or girl could pick any meal to be served that evening for dinner. Mine was always spareribs and artichokes. I heard the phone muffled again, and then Tory said, “I’m having hot dogs and potato chips.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Hold on, Liz, she won’t shut up.”

  I heard some muffle and then, “Liz, hi.” Jennifer came on.

  “Hi, Jen, happy birthday tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. You feeling good?”

  “Yeah. I’m good.” We chatted for a bit, and I got back on with Tory for a while. When I hung up the phone in the booth, my hands started to tremble. Life at home was moving farther and farther from my view, farther and farther away from who I felt I was. It terrified me. I began to wonder, as I straddled the two worlds, which world was the real one. I tried to tell myself what both my parents had told me: Once I got through this, life would go back to what it was. But I knew better now. I knew deep inside that having the baby and leaving the facility would never be behind me. None of it would ever be behind me. I looked up at the cracked dirty ceiling in the phone booth and thought about my favorite Saturday morning cartoon, Underdog. He was this goofy little dog, and when he stepped inside a phone booth, he could suddenly talk and fly. He’d zoom up in his cape, out of the top of the booth, and fly around his neighborhood helping people out of trouble. Too bad you have to grow up and find out that all the greatest things you learn as a kid aren’t really true.

  • • • •

  I made my way down the hall and back to my room. Jill was on the bed with her feet up on the wall. I lay down on my bed. She looked over at me.

  “You good?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you good?”

  “Not really. I’m getting fat,” Jill said.

  “You’re pregnant, not fat.”

  “Pregnant is fat. It’s also fucking annoying, my back hurts, my ankles are swollen, and my boobs are killing me.”

  “Complain much?”

  “All the time. Hey, you know any rock-and-roll songs on the guitar?”

  “Not really, wait, ‘Stairway to Heaven’?”

  “Holy shit, I love that song, play it, will ya?” Jill scrunched up her face and started singing, “And she’s buuuuying a stairrrway to heavvvven.”

  Just as I picked up the guitar, there was a knock at the door. Jill shouted, “Go away, Tilly!” The door opened and Alice stuck her head in.

  “Liz, your dad is here. He’s up at the guard gate.” I’d almost forgotten he was visiting today. My stomach turned. I grabbed my coat and handed Jill the guitar.

  “Here, practice the two chords I showed you, and when I get back you should be pretty good.” Jill just laughed. In the lounge I found Tilly and Nellie in their coats. They’d been waiting to go to lunch with my dad a long time now. Nellie had a little makeup on and her hair was wet.

  “You go first, Liz, and ask him. We’ll wait here,” Nellie said.

  “Okay, I’ll go first, but you guys come up in like five minutes, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  At the entrance near the guard booth I saw my dad and Kate. He was wearing a navy blue sweater over a white button-down and holding his camel hair overcoat. After we hugged, my dad looked around, surveying the scene with his hands in his pockets.

  “So we’re going to take you out for lunch and find something to do and we’ll have you back by dinner,” he said. He sounded and looked exactly the same as he always did.

  “Sounds good, Dad. I was wondering if I could bring a couple of the girls here with me, they don’t get out much … and …” I stopped. He gave me a look I recognized. You don’t tell Lee the plan; Lee tells you the plan.

  “That’s not a good idea. We’re just going to be us today,” he said.

  “Okay, but I told the girls …” Lee just looked at me. I should have known better than to promise Nellie and Tilly. He started to put on his coat. “Let’s go.”

  “Okay, I have to go tell them they can’t come. I’ll be right back.” I headed down the long hall and saw Tilly and Nellie at the other end. When I saw Tilly’s face, my heart dropped.

  “You guys, God … I’m, I’m sorry… .”

  Nellie rolled her eyes. She knew. “We can’t come.”

  “Yeah, no, you can’t. I guess he wants to be with me alone.”

  “Or he thinks we’re juvie heads.”

  I looked at her. “No, Nellie, that’s not it.”

  “It’s okay,” Tilly said. She shuffled her big shoes on the tiled floor and said, “We would have needed a pass anyway… .”

  I didn’t even think of that. It was so easy to forget that while we were living in the same place and were there for the same reason, they were locked in, and I wasn’t.

  We a
ll three turned and looked as Lee and Kate made their way to the door. My dad glanced down the hall at us. Tilly gasped out loud.

  “Jesus, he looks like a TV actor.”

  “And she really does look like Farrah Fawcett,” Nellie said.

  • • • •

  My dad’s hunter green Jaguar shined in the patches of sun that were sneaking through the trees. Spring was almost here; I could see the leaves finally filling in the branches. I climbed into the spotless backseat and smelled the familiar leather scent. Kate turned around and smiled.

  “I brought you some more stuff,” she said. “Food and all sorts of things.” There were several shopping bags next to me in the backseat.

  Lee pulled out of the driveway and grabbed a map from the glove compartment. He was a navigational professional, my dad. It was a gift. He could get anywhere with complete certainty. My mom told me once he was like a human compass; she said it was because he was born with Navy blood in him. His dad, his grandfather, and his great-uncle were captains, admirals, and other very important people in the Navy. Lee was obsessed with the blue-blooded Pryor lineage and keeping the history of his ancestors alive. My sisters and I were members of Daughters of the American Revolution. There were certificates to prove it. He was serious about his children having reverence for the notable line of Pryor history. In fact, as he told me, I was named after “Admiral Austin Knight, the commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic fleet in 1854, who wrote a book on modern seamanship which was used for reference for eight decades.” Yes, Elizabeth Knight Pryor the first. I’d say “the first” because I wanted that number after my name, like my older brother Bill had.

  It was just like Lee to be able to find an incredible restaurant in the absolute middle of nowhere. He put the map down and said, “I know where we’re going.” We drove in the quiet, air-sealed car for a while, until we pulled up to a beautiful old building. It was covered in ivy, and there was a valet standing out front. Inside, we were seated at a big booth with black leather cushions and beautiful brass lanterns hanging above. Lee ordered fish, salad, and French fries for all of us. Then, he looked at me carefully. “So, Diz, how have you been?”