Look at You Now

by Liz Pryor

  Nellie glared at Alice. “Well, it feels like I’m fuckin’ dyin’.”

  Tilly came skipping into the room from the phone booth, smiling from her call with Rick until she saw what was happening. “What the fuck? What’s happening? Nellie, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m fine, you moron, I’m fine.” And then she roared in pain.

  Tilly covered her eyes. “Is she … is she in labor?”

  “Yes, dear. Please, Tilly, calm yourself,” Alice said.

  “But, but, Nell, I’m supposed to have mine first, you can’t be going.”

  The wheelchair and two paramedics came through the door with a bag and an oxygen tank. Nellie howled in pain. Tilly and I let go of her hands as they lifted her to the chair and wheeled her out. Tilly stood frozen, her eyes on the door for several minutes. The girls were silent. Alice turned around to face us.

  “Girls, my gosh, such dramatics. Nellie is pregnant. When you’re pregnant, there is labor at the end. She is healthy and strong and will be fine. So stop acting like people are sick and dyin’, okay? And, listen, we’ve told you all dozens of times, when you feel pains, you are to tell one another and time them. Remember? Once they get to ten minutes apart or so then you are to tell us. Does anyone not know this?” We all chimed in that we knew.

  It felt easy sometimes to forget the reason we were all there together, passing the long hours and endless days. But today, the reason was shouting at us.

  • • • •

  It was three o’clock in the morning. I was awoken by a light tapping on the door. The door quietly opened.

  “Who is it?” I whispered.

  “It’s me, I can’t sleep alone. I miss her.” It was Tilly.

  Jill was snoring loudly. I got up and took one of my pillows and put it at the end of the bed and then undid the blanket at the bottom, like I’d done with my little sisters many times. “Come here, Till, get in and sleep with me on that end, and I’ll sleep on this side.”

  “Thanks, Liz,” she said, crawling into the bed.

  “She’s going to be all right, Tilly. She’s just having her babies.” I turned over and went back to sleep.

  • • • •

  When I opened my eyes, Jill was standing over me.

  “Look at the pregnant lezbos,” she said.

  Tilly’s foot was an inch from my face. She was still sound asleep. I rolled out of bed and sat on the floor.

  “Very funny. She couldn’t sleep.”

  “I already asked Alice early this morning. There’s no news about Nellie yet.”

  I made my way to the bathroom. The shower had become what seemed like the only true luxury left in my life. The warm soothing water could make me forget everything, just for a few seconds. There were no clean towels, so I grabbed my robe, wrapped it around myself, and wrung the water out of my hair into the sink. When I walked out of the bathroom, Tilly was awake. She was sitting up in my bed with matted bed hair, wearing what looked like a T-shirt for a giant and one sock. She scrunched up her face.

  “Sorry. Thanks for letting me sleep here.”

  “It’s fine, I gotta do laundry.” I got dressed and started trying to pile the sheets the way Tilly showed me. Tilly jumped out of bed.

  “I’ll help you. Jill, you got anything in that bag needs washing?”

  “You offering?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jill threw some clothes at her. Tilly grabbed change from my dresser and looked at Jill, proudly.

  “I taught Liz how to do laundry.”

  “I hope she does it better than she plays gin,” Jill said, smiling. I threw a quarter at Jill’s head and we left. We passed through the lounge where Deanna was asleep on the La-Z-Boy. It looked like she might have slept out there all night. When we were heading down the stairs to the laundry room, I turned to Tilly.

  “Does Deanna sleep all night in the lounge, Till?”

  “I think she does sometimes. Has something to do with small rooms and beds and what happened to her. I don’t know.”

  The laundry room was empty this early in the morning. Tilly made me do it myself this time. She sat leaning back in the folding chair watching to make sure I did it right, tipping far on the back legs.

  “Don’t do that with the chair, you’re going to fall,” I said.

  “Don’t put so much soap. You don’t need all that.” She put the chair legs back on the floor. “You think she’s all right?”

  “Yeah, she’s just having her kids. When she’s done she’ll be so happy.”

  “I don’t know, that’s the part she was the most scared about—after. Hey, did I tell you Rick said on the phone that he gave the money for our place? And he’s going to garage sales for baby stuff?”

  “No, that’s great. What else did he say?”

  “He ran into this girlfriend of mine at the store. She said everyone’s excited to meet my baby.”

  “Sounds good, Till. I talked to Ms. Graham. She said she can help you figure out a way you can go to school while you take care of the baby. There’s some program or something. You got to go talk to her, okay?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  She seemed excited by the idea, and I suddenly felt sure that Tilly would figure things out for herself, that things would maybe be okay for her too. I switched and folded and piled the laundry. After, we headed to the cafeteria for breakfast. The smell was eternally disgusting, no matter what they were serving. It was scrambled eggs with some sort of sausage that day. Tilly ate both hers and mine. I tried to stomach some milk and bread.

  • • • •

  “Hand me the damn hammer, will ya?” Jill was on the ladder with her arms stretched up to the ceiling. We were trying to get the Christmas decorations down in the lounge. I handed her a hammer. She pulled, and the garland finally came down. When we were done, Jill got off the ladder and sat down at the table in Nellie’s usual spot. Tilly and I looked at each other. Then Amy looked at Jill.

  “Too soon, Jill, sit over here,” Amy said.

  “Oh, shit, sorry I forgot about the everybody-has-a-seat thing.

  Where’s my seat gonna be?”

  Tilly pointed to Nellie’s chair. “Probably there, I guess, but not till we hear, okay?”

  Jill sat down in a different spot at the table and called to me, “Liz, get over here. Lemme teach you a little something, huh? You never know, even in that swanky life of yours, poker could come in handy.”

  She shuffled the deck like a magician. The only other person I’d seen handle cards like that was my grandfather Papa, who could count a deck of cards at his ear holding them in one hand. He’d put his thumb on the deck, let them rip, and in three seconds he could tell us how many cards were there. Jill looked at me with a serious expression. “I’ve changed my mind, let’s start with blackjack. I’m gonna teach you about the deck, and odds, and busting, double downing, stiffing, standing, sitting, holding, all that good stuff, and then we’ll move on.”

  “Fuckin’ A, Jill, you sound like a Vegas dealer,” Amy said. Jill smiled. She spent the next two hours trying to teach me cards. I couldn’t remember anything, couldn’t add fast enough, couldn’t sit still. But the thing that really put Jill over the top was that I couldn’t seem to hold a poker face. She claimed I gave away every hand with my face. I tried and tried again, but I couldn’t hide it, and she just kept knowing what I had. She was so frustrated. She banned me from playing poker or blackjack at our table ever again. Amy and Tilly laughed the entire time.

  Amy smiled big at the end and said, “We finally found something Liz really sucks at.”

  Wren read out loud from the TV guide that Carrie was on TV. We got our pillows, I brought out snacks, and we turned the lights off and sat transfixed by the movie. Just as the kids were about to dump the bucket of blood on Sissy Spacek’s head, Alice came in. She turned on the lights and said, “I have news.”

  Tilly jumped up and turned off the TV. “What? What is it? Did she have the
m? Is she okay?”

  “She had them and she’s okay. The babies are healthy, and Nellie has a bit of a recovery now, but everyone is fine.” The girls all clapped and started chatting and asking questions. Alice whistled to quiet us.

  “Tilly, I need you to pack up all Nellie’s things from your room. Liz, you can help her. They will be brought over to the hospital tomorrow.”

  “Why all her things? Isn’t she coming back?” Tilly asked.

  “No, sweetheart, her time is up. She’s going to go home with her grandma when she’s well. She’s starting her life with her babies.”

  “What did she have?”

  “She had a boy and a girl.”

  “Can we see her?”

  “Tilly, I want to talk to you.” Alice pulled her out in the hall, where the rest of us couldn’t hear them. I could see Tilly looking down at the floor, and then she came back in.

  “What did she say, Till?” I asked.

  “She just lectured me about why we’re here, that we’re here to have these babies so we can go home. I just wanted to say bye to Nellie. It’s not like I don’t get that when we have the babies, we leave. Duh.” Tilly seemed upset, more upset than I’d ever seen her.

  Tilly and I headed to her and Nellie’s room. I had never been inside before. The room looked like a waste pit. There was stuff everywhere, clothes everywhere, beds unmade, curtains closed, the room filled with crap all over.

  “Geez, Tilly, this is a mess,” I said.

  “I know, we’re pretty bad, but we’re both bad so it doesn’t matter.”

  “How do we tell whose stuff is whose? You don’t even use the dressers?”

  Tilly got Nellie’s suitcase out and started throwing things in it. There was so much trash. We weeded through and finally got Nellie’s stuff together in the suitcase. I checked under the bed and in the bathroom and all the drawers to make sure we didn’t forget anything. When I picked up her pillow, I saw the book Little House in the Big Woods underneath. I flipped to the first page, and then turned to the next, and the next and the next. Every other word, for twenty pages, was circled in pencil.

  “What is it?” Tilly said.

  “Nothing, just her book.”

  “We gotta give it back so they can take it to the library.”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll bring it back to Maryann. You going to be okay sleeping in here?”

  “Yeah, now I know she’s okay, I’ll be fine.” I wondered if Tilly was nervous, realizing she was next.

  • • • •

  Jill was lying in bed, reading, when I got back to our room.

  “You pack all her stuff up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good for her, right? It’s over.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Or was it just beginning? Nellie’s leaving felt so startling. I knew we were all going to have our babies and leave. Of course I knew. It was all I wanted since the day I arrived—to leave. But watching Nellie go hit me deeply. Like we were soldiers. People who’d grown to know and depend on each other, who’d built a shelter for existence together. And now part of the shelter would be gone. It felt like the war of survival was ending, person by person, until eventually all of us would be gone.

  • • • •

  The next morning I opened my eyes and saw on the Snoopy clock that it was 5:50 A.M. I tiptoed to the dresser and got dressed. As I stumbled my way through the hall, I tripped and dropped my boots loudly on the floor. As I was crouching down to pick them up, the door next to me opened. Tilly was standing in her bra, her stomach hanging out over her sweatpants. I dropped the boots again. She scratched her head.

  “What are you doing? I thought maybe Nellie was back.”

  “Oh no, I’m … Well, shit, I’m going over there to see her.” Tilly disappeared and came back in a second with her shirt on and a coat in her hand. “I’m coming,” she said.

  We made our way down the dark hall to the front gate, where the guard stopped us. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, where you two think you’re going?”

  “Shit,” Tilly said. It was the all-night guard. Chief wasn’t in for the day yet.

  “Um, here, I have a pass.” I pulled it out and showed it to her.

  “Ah, yeah, I know you have a pass, but she don’t have a pass.”

  Tilly looked at me like, Do something.

  So I turned to the guard and said, “She always comes with me on my morning walk. I haven’t been feeling well. Chief lets her come.”

  “You gotta work on your lying, girl. I know these kids can’t leave, that’s why I have a job. The rules are the rules. You can go but she can’t.”

  Tilly turned to me. “You go, tell her I said hi and I miss her and I hope everything’s okay, and I … I’m gonna wait right here till you get back.”

  I headed out the door into the brisk morning air. I buttoned up my coat and watched the auburn sun rising behind the trees. There were a few people standing around the entrance to the hospital, which was to the left and down about half a block from the facility entrance. Inside the hospital lobby, I found a sign with the names of departments on it. I followed the green arrows up an elevator, through a hall, and to a big desk that read Maternity. There was a chalkboard behind the desk, with patients’ names written in pink and blue chalk. Nellie’s name was written in both pink and blue with an asterisk next to it. As I walked down the too-bright hallway, I peeked into a few rooms. Balloons and baskets and flowers were scattered everywhere. People were whispering and laughing softly. Everyone on the floor seemed happy. I got to Nellie’s door at the end of the hall and pushed it open. It was pitch-dark, the curtains were drawn, and the lights were off. Nellie had an IV in her arm and medical tape all over the back of her hands, and on her chest going up her neck. Her big stomach was gone. She was sound asleep. There were two empty cribs, side by side near the bed.

  I opened the curtains a little. Dorothy always said sunlight makes people feel better. I could see the shiny roof of the facility nestled amid the trees. Then I walked back to the bed and stood over Nellie, asleep. Her hair was matted to her head, and her boils looked painful and swollen, but she’d done it. She’d given birth to a little boy and a little girl. I saw a notepad and pen on the table. I tried to write as simply and neatly as possible.

  Nellie, you will be a great mom!

  Love, Liz

  I pulled the Little House in the Big Woods book out of my coat, stuck the note in it, and set it on the table next to her bed. The smell of the hospital was making me queasy, or maybe it was just life. I stepped out of the room and leaned against the cold wall in the hallway. Sometimes I had to remind myself to breathe, and this was one of those times. I took a deep breath as I watched the world around me. There was a woman gingerly walking toward me, holding a new baby. People who looked like relatives and friends were bustling in and out of rooms. The hall was lively, with an impossible-to-miss joy. Across the way, I spotted a family in a sitting room. The mom sat in a hospital gown in a chair, as the dad paced the floor with the new baby. There were two little kids playing on the floor. One of the boys toddled up to his mom and kissed her on the cheek. The other one stood up and handed her a picture from a coloring book. The dad put the baby in the mom’s arms, and the two boys leaned in to pet it, like a baby kitten. Something inside me dropped. I turned and took a last look at Nellie and the darkness, and then quietly closed the door to her room. I made my way back through the hall, down the elevator, and out of the hospital. The amber sky had turned into bright morning light. I found a bench near the side of the road. I sat for a long time before I looked down at the big round bump under my coat. I slowly unbuttoned the coat and looked more closely at my stomach. There was a person in there, attached to me, with fingers and toes and a heart. For the first time, I truly felt it. The truth was suddenly bigger than me, and I knew it could never be changed. No matter how far away I was, no matter what I said or how hard I tried to forget, the truth is unchangeable. Maybe that’s why it’s so powerful.

 
chapter 12

  Nellie had been gone three weeks, four days, and a few hours. Jill had taken over her spot in the lounge. Tilly had to move to the couch—she was so big, she couldn’t sit comfortably in the chair anymore. Amy took Tilly’s spot. I sat in my chair and watched Jill methodically flipping cards for solitaire. I stared at the cards as they dropped flawlessly one on top of the other. I was lost in thought, thinking about the day after my mom found out I was pregnant.

  Dorothy had left my dad’s apartment in the city by herself that afternoon. I had driven down to the city in my own car and drove home separately, the long way. We didn’t see each other again until the next morning. I woke up and I heard the sound of the twins chatting in the room next door before school. I looked up at the origami swan mobile, hanging above my head, and watched the weightless birds bump into one another. And then a cold haze of doom rushed through me. I was pregnant. This was real. The thing living in my stomach, the going away, the lie, the ruin of my life, it was all really going to happen. Downstairs, Dorothy was at the kitchen table, looking at the yellow pages. I glanced down and saw an advertisement with a picture of Jesus on a cross and the words Teenage Pregnancy/Catholic Services. Dorothy looked up at me—it was the same look she had when we all returned on Christmas Eve from my dad’s house, to show her the piles of gifts that Kate had picked out for us. The look was there again when we left for the British Virgin Islands during the first week of January. It was stoic and silent, until you got up close and saw the crushing, palpable sadness behind it. It couldn’t be missed or ignored. Every time I saw that look, I shivered. She forced a closed-mouth smile.

  “Good morning, Liz.”

  “Hi, Mom … What are you doing?”

  There was a long pause. “Looking for a place for you to live.” I tried not to look at her. I couldn’t take it. Her words came out in a sharp staccato rhythm. “You have an appointment today in Wilmette at the photo studio for graduation.”

  My brain froze. I couldn’t think straight. “I can’t do that, Mom. I can’t have my senior picture taken today… .”