by Lulu Pratt
But how can I say those things when I don’t know if it’s true or not. I mean, I can make a lot of things better, but I don’t know shit about babies. Or raising them. All I know is they sound expensive and money’s the one thing I don’t have heaps of.
“Fuck!” I yell into the air.
I force my sorry ass out of the chair. What kind of piece of shit am I, letting her walk into the trailer by herself? I open the door and walk in.
Emily’s lying on the bed, flat on her back and staring at the ceiling. I lie down on my side beside her, and put my arm around her. Her temples are stained with tears, and I kiss the one nearest me. As if that can make this better.
“I love you,” I say, my voice soft, “You need to know that. No matter what, I’ll always love you.”
She turns her head, and our eyes connect. Her eyes are glassy from tears, and she’s breathing hard through her mouth.
“I don’t know what to do,” she says, rolling onto her side to face me.
Taking her hand, I grip it in mine and hold it between us, in the space between our chests. The air hangs heavy for a moment, because I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t know what to do either. More importantly, I don’t know what she wants to do.
“Whatever happens, I’ll be here for you,” I say, forcing the words past the lump in my throat.
Her eyes shut and she starts crying hard, her entire body shaking with her sobs. I let go of her hand and press as much of my body against her as I can. We’re so tight together that my body moves with her sobs.
“How did this happen?” I ask, my voice low.
“I don’t know. Maybe getting the prescription a couple of days late last month?”
“Does two days matter that much?”
“What are you saying? You think I didn’t take the rest on purpose? I don’t want a baby, I just turned twenty-one.”
Jesus, I didn’t mean it that way.
“I’m not saying anything, just trying to understand is all.”
“Are you blaming me for this?”
I tilt her head and stare into her eyes.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“Then what does it matter how it happened?”
“It doesn’t. I’m only trying to digest this. It’s a big of a shock, you know?”
“I’m not ready for a baby,” she says, sniffling.
“It’s okay, Goldie. Everything will be okay,” I say, stroking her arm.
“You won’t leave me?” she asks, her voice halting and weak.
“You’re my wife, I ain’t ever leaving your side.”
“Promise you’ll never walk out on me and the baby?”
“I made that promise on our wedding day. There’s no way I’d ever walk away from the best woman in the world. Especially not if she’s the mother of my child.”
Emily leans into me, and we lie in each other’s arms in silence.
Is she going to leave me because I’ll never be able to give our baby the life she had growing up? It’s one thing for her to shun that ritzy lifestyle she’s used to, but will she think it’s good enough for her baby? My baby?
Shit, I never considered that before. What if Emily doesn’t think I’m good enough to be the father of her child? Maybe she won’t want me in her life any more.
Our carny wedding on the Ferris wheel meant a hell of a lot to me, but I’m a carny, it’s my tradition. Not hers. It could all have been pretend in her mind.
What if she kicks me out of her life?
My mind’s racing now, and I can’t stop it. I hold her tighter, trying to calm myself.
“This is some pretty big news,” I say, “we don’t need to figure everything out right now.”
She doesn’t respond, instead she relaxes all her weight against me. I might be imaging things, but Emily’s not crying as hard and her breathing’s almost back to normal.
A baby in the carnival. Does she think that’s a good idea?
Hell, do I think it’s good idea for my baby? To grow up in a carnival, where the only people to play with are adults? Ones who are often either drunk or high?
I know what it’s like to grow up around booze and drugs. It’s not something I want for my own child.
Emily stays in the trailer all day, but I have to make sure the rides get put up safely. These assholes can’t handle one day without me, even though they might as well change my name to Zombie because that’s all the use I’m being.
All I can think of is a little me running around and my heart melts. Emily’s so kind and caring, she’s going to be the best mother ever.
And I sure as shit am not going to let her down. She deserves a husband who provides her and our baby the best life possible, and I’m going to make that happen. The baby may want for material shit, but no baby of mine is never going to want for love of its father.
There’s no way I’m letting my baby grow up the way I did.
At three o’clock, I decide enough of this shit, I need to be with Emily. I stop by the carny cafeteria, and buy her a burger and fries.
“Hey, I brought you some food” I say, entering the trailer.
She’s lying on the bed, and I wonder if she’s even moved all day. Emily sits up and swings her feet over the edge of the bed. I take a seat on the edge bed beside her.
“Thanks,” she says, and takes the fries from me.
I set the burger on the trailer’s little stove top. I rest my hand on her knee, wanting to do more but not sure what she wants me to do.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
Emily looks at me, her face long, and says, “Scared.”
“Don’t be. I’ll take good care of you.”
“I think I need to leave the carnival.”
“I think we need to leave it. But not before the season finishes. If we screw the carnival, there ain’t no way Papa Smurf would welcome us back. Besides, that gives us a month to figure out what the fuck we’re doing.”
Wind of Change (Emily)
It’s the end of October, and we left the carnival last weekend at a small town in the northwest corner of Mississippi. We gave Papa Smurf back the trailer, and headed straight over the Tennessee border to Memphis. We’re just over the border anyway, and Steel wanted to take me to Graceland.
They’re heading back south for a couple more dates in Louisiana, and Papa Smurf said he didn’t mind us leaving at all, given the circumstances.
Now we’ve been here three nights, and we’re sitting on the bed in our cheap motel figuring out our next move.
I figure I’m over two months now, and I still haven’t seen a doctor. Papa Smurf paid decent money, but he certainly didn’t provide any insurance benefits.
“Where do you want to live?” Steel asks.
We’d put our heads in the sand and avoided this question for the past month. Or maybe we’re each just trying to figure things out in our own heads.
“As far as I’m concerned, we should go where you can get a job you want,” I say.
“Well as far as I’m concerned, we should go where is best for you and the baby. You don’t need to worry about me finding work. I don’t want you to be somewhere all alone during the day. What if something happened?”
This is new, he’s never raised that point before.
“What are you saying? All my family is around Colmar. We don’t want to go there, trust me.”
“Not there, but somewhere not too far away. Close enough where you friends or your mom or someone could come help you out or come in an emergency.”
“My mom?”
I haven’t even told my mom yet. I’ve been avoiding it, but maybe it’s time to tell her, regardless if we move back to North Carolina or not.
“Yes, my baby’s grandmother.”
“But she was so rude to you.”
“She can treat me however she wants, all I care about it how she treats my child, and you.”
“But…”
Steel interrupts me, and says, “Family
is important to me. I never had one, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I want the baby to know what I never did. I never knew anything my father. My mother ran away to Niagara Falls when she was pregnant, so I never met my grandparents. Hell, I don’t even know if I had any aunts or uncles. I don’t want that for my child.”
His words break my heart. I move close to Steel, and sit alongside him, pressing my body into him. He’s never told me any of this before, no matter how much I’ve tried to get him to open up about his past.
“You didn’t know your family?” I say, my voice low.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Why did your mother run away?”
“She never told me.”
I don’t know how else to ask this, I take a deep breath and blurt, “Is she still alive?”
“Don’t know. Don’t fucking care, either.”
“Don’t you want the baby to know her? After what you just said about family and all.”
“It’s different.”
“How? You ran away from your mom, I ran away from my parents.”
“I didn’t run away from her, I ran from my foster parents.”
“Oh, sorry, of course.” I feel like an idiot. I knew that, it just came out. His mother mustn’t have been a part of his life if he lived with foster parents.
“Did you live with your foster parents long?”
“Long enough to know I wanted out of there. Couple months.”
“I don’t want to go back to my parents.”
“We wouldn’t. We can live in Woburn or somewhere like that. We’d have our own place. That’s not going back to them.”
“But they were jerks.”
“You haven’t even spoken to them in over six months. How do you know what they’d be like now? They might’ve gotten over everything and are waiting for you to call.”
“Why are you defending them when they were so rude to you?”
“Because they might be a bit crazy, but they ain’t bad people.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, they aren’t criminals, they aren’t drug addicts. They’re judgmental and rude, but that’s not grounds for banishing their grandchild from knowing them.”
“You’re pretty forgiving,” I say, my voice steeped in sarcasm.
“It’s not for me, it’s for my baby.”
“Stop it!” I snap.
I don’t know why I snapped at him, hormones probably. All this talk about what he wants for the baby, but that clashes with what I want for me.
Steel puts his hand on my belly, and all the tension vanishes from me.
“I’ve never felt so lucky in my life,” he says, capturing my eyes in his. “At first I was freaked. But now I think that you carrying my child is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s also the most daunting, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”
“You really think it’s the best thing?”
“I know it is.”
I look away, breaking our eye contact. What he says makes sense. Life isn’t just about the two of us anymore. I have to think about the baby’s needs.
“Maybe.”
He kisses my cheek, and says, “Plus, we’re going to want the free babysitting, for all the times I want to take you back to the Motel 6 and fuck you senseless.”
Laughing, I say, “I’ll try calling my mom and see how she is.”
The minute the words leave my lips, my laughing stops and my chest fills with butterflies.
“Should I phone now?”
“No reason not to.”
The butterflies triple. I know. I fish out my phone and turn off the airplane mode. It’s the first time I’ve taken it off airplane mode since the day I arrived at the carnival. There wasn’t a need to call anyone there, we all lived and worked together. The only thing I used my phone for was playing Candy Crush.
It beeps and chimes and vibrates like crazy. The number eighty-two shows in the bubble on the messages symbol. Somehow I manage to pretend I didn’t see it, and scroll through my contacts. My thumb stops on Courtney, and I hit dial.
“Emily,” she shouts, her voice bursts out the earpiece on my phone.
“Hey, how are you?”
“How am I? How are you, Courtney?”
“I’m good. Really good.”
“And Steel?”
“Yeah, he’s great too.” I look at Steel and shrug.
“You’re still together?”
“Absolutely.”
“Where are you?”
“Is this twenty questions?”
“Are you kidding me, you took off in the night months ago, and you don’t think I have some questions?”
“Fine, but I need to ask some first, then I’ll be able to tell you what’s going on.”
“What’s going on?”
“I said I’d tell you after.”
“What do you want to know? How berzerk your parents went after you left?”
“Have they calmed down?”
“I don’t know. They stopped talking to a lot of people. All the gossip was about you and they got tired of listening to it.”
That’s hardly surprising.
“Because they disagreed with it?”
“No idea. I saw your brothers at this year’s carnival and asked how your parents were doing. They said your parents are heartbroken.”
“That could mean a lot of things. Like they’re heartbroken because they miss their daughter, or because their daughter ruined their reputations.”
“I wish I could tell you. Why call now anyway? Everything okay?”
“Yeah, um, if I tell you you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“Of course. I’m no gossip, you know I hate that about this town as much as you.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Courtney gasps. “No,” she says.
“Yes, and Steel and I got married.”
“Holy crap, I can’t believe all this.”
“Believe it, it’s true. We’re thinking about moving back to the area, for the sake of the baby, but I’m trying to get a sense of how my parents would react.”
“I’m sure they’re rather have you here than somewhere else. Especially if you have a baby.”
“That’s me. What about Steel? Because he’s never leaving me, and if they can’t accept that, then there’s no point in me moving back.”
“What do you want, me to ask around or anything?”
I sigh. “No, I’ll phone.”
Into the Void (Steel)
We left Memphis a couple days ago. For the past two nights, we’ve been staying at a cheap motel in the Cherokee National Forest. It’s real pretty here, and I’ve taken Emily hiking.
She still hasn’t phoned her parents.
The idea was that we’d leave Memphis and go back to Woburn. We can meet up with her parents there on neutral territory. The problem is, she hasn’t phoned them yet. Which is why we stayed in the forest a second night.
Now I’ve told her not to phone at all until we get there. If she phones now and they freak, she won’t want to go back to the area at all. And I want my baby to have a family.
“Ready?” I say, holding open the passenger car door for her.
“As I’ll ever be,” she says and gets into the car.
I take her hand and bring it to my lips. “You got nothing to be nervous about. You want to move to be near family with your husband and soon-to-be baby.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Why? What do you think’s going to happen? That they’ll lock you in your room again like a little kid?”
“No. Yes. If they could, I’m sure they would.”
“That ain’t going to happen, Goldie. I’ll bet they’ve grown up since you’ve been gone.”
We drive the next five hours, talking about all sorts of things, but avoiding the issue of her parents.
Mostly, I’m wondering how I’m ever going to get a regular job. How can I?
“I think we should get married for real,” I say.
“We are,” she says.
“I mean in the eyes of the law.”
Emily turns her head, and after we pass a transport truck, I glance at her.
“You’re right,” she says.
“Awesome,” I say.
I flash her my smile, and rub her thigh. I never thought I’d ever suggest a legal marriage, but then I never thought I’d be living outside the carnival. I’ve got to do this right for my kid, and right now, it’s the only way I can figure to be able to get a good enough job.
When we arrive in Woburn, I drive straight to the Motel 6. We check in, and out of pure coincidence, we’re given the same room I stayed in all those months ago. The familiarity is nice, and it almost feels like coming home to me.
We unload our stuff, and watch tv for a bit. Emily finally seems like she’s relaxed. Her phone is on the bedside table, ignored.
“You can’t keep avoiding this, Goldie. You might as well get it over with.”
“I just need some time to figure out what I’m going to say.”
“You had days for that.”
“Well I need more.”
“Fine. Let’s go out and get something to eat.”
I don’t want anything to eat, I just want her in the car. Following road signs, I drive to Colmar.
“What are you doing?” she asks, anger in her voice.
“The phone just isn’t working. So we’re going to see them in person.”
“What the fuck? No way.”
“Yes, way.”
“What happened to seeing them on neutral territory?”
“It doesn’t matter where we see them, I’ll be standing beside you.”
Emily flings her head back against the headrest but does nothing to try to stop me from going to Colmar. I’m still going to need her to tell me how to drive to her parents’ house though.
I don’t say anything else, and we drive in silence. I want her to prepare herself for this.
It’s late Sunday afternoon, and I’m counting on her parents being home. Though maybe it’s better if it’s just her mother.
To my surprise, she directs me to her parents’ house without hesitating.
It’s huge, with a big, white veranda around it. I put the car in park, and get out. Emily gets out and walks straight to the front door. She knocks.
“It feels weird knocking on the door of my own house,” Emily says.