by Holly Cupala
“But Mom, what about my application—” Six empty slots still stood in my portfolio. Without them, I might as well kiss Baird good-bye.
“You can do art at home. And for that matter, we’re going to have to seriously reconsider whether you’re even going to art school.” I opened my mouth to protest, but I only seemed to be swallowing dust. “As for your friends, you aren’t going anywhere. As for Kamran…”
She continued the diatribe of what I would and wouldn’t be allowed to do. An image flashed through my mind of Xanda’s suitcase, bursting at the seams, found in the trunk of Andre’s Impala. The safety-pin dress spilled out like a chain-link fence.
My dad scarfed down his peas and rice until Mom was silent. “I forgot to mention,” he said quietly, “I need to go over some plans for tomorrow’s job. I’ll be in the basement if anyone needs me.” He got up and brushed off the seat, just in case he had left any dust.
Eleven
After dinner there was nothing for me to do but hide in my room. I tried dialing Delaney’s cell. She picked up on the fourth ring, right before I was about to hang up. The speaker caught the tail end of laughter, cut it off with a breathy, “Hello?”
I caught a snippet of a male voice, then everything but the white noise stopped, right there with my heartbeat. “Rand?”
I could hardly hold the phone. “Delaney,” I said. “Is Kamran there with you?”
“Kamran? No, honey. Why would you think that? You must have heard the radio.”
I knew what I heard, and it wasn’t KEXP 90.3.
“What’s up?” she continued.
I was silent.
“Hey, listen, Rand,” she said cheerily. “I can’t talk now, but can I call you when I get home?”
I moved my mouth, but no sound came out. If it did, it might bring the house down on me.
“Okay, Rand,” she continued, “I’ll call you when I get home. I saw you guys out there in the parking lot. Hope everything’s okay.”
Click.
Kamran’s words still echoed in my head. You called to inform me we were getting married? When, exactly, is that supposed to happen? When I’m at MIT? But we had talked about it—the two of us moving to Boston, going to school, being together, having a life. When he wasn’t focused on tests and applications. When I wasn’t filling my portfolio. When I wasn’t partying with Delaney and grasping at memories of my sister. When I imagined our future. Was I the only one?
I thought about calling Chloe—unwitting party to my secrets, grafted friend. Already she’d been emailing me angel wishes and personality tests without actually writing a word. She would probably unload her cutesy best friend–ness on me, tell me everything would be okay and that she would be there for me, too. As I lay there on my bed thinking about her and Delaney, I got more and more angry. For all I knew, she was in on it, watching Kamran and Delaney flirting all summer and never saying a word.
Then there was the person I’d always talked to, intertwined with my family for more than half our lives and now separated by a span of mixed emotions. No, I definitely couldn’t call Essence.
I needed to talk to someone, and Xanda wasn’t around to meet me at midnight, right after she had been out with Andre and smelling of dampness and leaves and French fries and skin. All I had was a safety-pin dress.
Mom retreated to the bedroom and anesthetized herself with her scripts. Maybe she’d change her Brenda character from the prodigal daughter to the prodigal pregnant daughter. I would look the part in a few months.
“What are you doing?” she demanded when I tried to slip into the office, as if Kamran lurked outside and we were going to have sex right there.
“Homework.”
“You’d better be.” And she went back to her steady drip of imaginary characters.
The internet window popped open and I plugged in my search. The results for “teen pregnant dumped completely screwed” didn’t look promising. On the BabyCenter website, the question of the day cheerfully asked, “My pregnancy test showed positive. Am I pregnant, or could it be something else?”
I plugged the date of my last period into the little due date calculator, though I couldn’t even really remember anymore. Right when school got out. The week after, maybe. Definitely before the cabin trip. If my guess was right, I was fifteen weeks—almost four months—pregnant. Fifteen out of forty.
I reached for the snack I’d raided from the kitchen, some crackers and an apple. I followed the thread, where people gave advice, suggested courses of action, and offered varying levels of medical-babble. The “community” section promised boards for every possible fertility contingency. I couldn’t help it—I was sucked in.
I clicked through some links to the list of bulletin boards—advice for dads, grief and loss, first-time pregnancy, teen pregnancy. Foods to avoid, like tuna. I wondered how my mom knew. Questions like, “My chest hurts. Is this normal?” populated the board in a limitless spiral of subjects under discussion. There didn’t seem to be one for my situation: how could I go back to before everything began?
The Teen Pregnancy section was mostly filled with fourteen-year-olds panicking about what to do when their parents found out. I already had enough panic in my life.
But there was something appealing about the First-Time Moms section. They were newlyweds, or trying for so long they’d almost given up, or surprised by babies completely disrupting their lives. What they had in common, though, wasn’t fear or resentment. More like joy. They had handles like “babyfairy” and “soon2Bmom” and “stacy+one.” They wrote about morning sickness and tests and ultrasounds and their spouses, putting in smiley faces and baby meters to show their growth. Babyfairy was the fantasy-philiac. Soon2Bmom was the executive. FemmeNikita stood out as the leader, or at least the most outspoken, who wrote stuff like, “This is the most fun I’ve had since sperm met egg.”
After an hour reading through their posts, they felt like friends. They made pregnancy seem like fun, even freedom. Out in the ether, I could make things the way I wanted them to be. The way I hoped they still could.
I didn’t sign up, but I had already thought of the perfect screen name:
XandasAngel.
Twelve
Delaney didn’t call me back. Suddenly she had a million errands to run and couldn’t look me in the eye, except to stop after our History class and say, “I heard about you and Kamran. We’ll have a chocolate night soon, okay? Gotta run now—French is kicking my ass this year. À bientôt!” Chloe’s communiqués were limited to cute quotes and warnings to add an ICE—in case of emergency—number to my cell phone. Not that I had any idea who that might be.
I didn’t have to worry anymore about everyone finding out, because now they knew. Between my parking-lot fight with Kamran, my so-called friends, and Essence’s big mouth, the information spread like a virus. Instead of “Did you see Cross Your Heart today?” it was, “Did you see that wicked fight?” and “I heard she got pregnant on purpose.”
Kamran could avoid me everywhere but English—we existed in separate, parallel universes. But his anger was palpable, impenetrable. I had to wonder if I’d seen the fear at all.
At lunch I headed to the library or computer lab, reading up on the halcyon pregnancies of FemmeNikita—aka Nik—and her peers. In that world, Kamran still loved me. Keeping the baby meant keeping hope.
Things at home might have seemed normal if I were Xanda—the dark looks, the disapproval.
I should have known the second I saw the sleek, black car in the driveway that something was very, very wrong.
Mom rose to her feet when I entered the house, and so did a strange woman, coiffed and stiff as our living-room cushions. Brenda the Good would stay and greet the visitor, maybe even offer her some ladyfingers. Before my fall from grace, I would have done that, too. Now, what was the point?
“Mandy, I’d like you to meet—”
“—Miz Wrent,” the woman cut in as she held out a hand shiny with moisturizer. My mo
m took a sip of tea. The two of them seemed to have formed an uneasy alliance.
Miz Wrent spoke. “Your mother has been telling me all about you, Mandy.”
“Rand,” I said. I felt my body start to slide into a state of panic—imminent hypoglycemia. In case of emergency, carry snacks. Even better: Pack a suitcase.
“Can I get you something to eat?” I asked, hoping my politeness veiled my desperation. “A cookie or a sandwich?” She declined. My body growled in protest.
“No, I’m here to ask you a few questions before we start the pro—”
My mom cut in. “Miz Wrent is here from Social Services. She wants to help you make some decisions.” Miz Wrent looked like there was a lot more she’d like to say, but instead she turned to me with a waxy smile.
“Are you sure I can’t get you a snack?”
“No, no,” she began, then suddenly the light bulb turned on. “Oh, but you must be starving. Get yourself something before we get started.”
As I slapped together a sandwich, the two of them whispered. I strained to hear.
“Ms. Mathison—”
“Call me Hillary.”
“Hillary. Does she know who the father is?”
“Yes.”
“And will he want to be involved in this process?”
“Not if we can help it,” my mother snorted. He will if I can, I said to myself as I dumped a glob of raspberry jam in the center of the peanut-buttered bread.
Miz Wrent’s voice shifted. “It’s a shame, seeing what a lovely home you could—” Then she stopped herself. Shifted back. When she spoke again, it was all business. “Has she been having any problems so far?”
“Oh, no,” my mom responded, as if she even knew. “If only we could all weather pregnancy as easily as a teenager. Do you have children?” I didn’t catch the response, but they laughed conspiratorially. I wished I could wring my mom’s stupid, haughty neck.
“What is her due date?” asked Miz Wrent as she recovered from the shared joke.
Yeah, Mom, tell her about the date. I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to see her squirm. But Mom evaded—damage control was her specialty. “Mandy, tell Miz Wrent about your pregnancy.”
“I’m not exactly sure.” I made a show of counting. “Beginning of summer…nine months, right? June…July…this spring, maybe?” Who said I wasn’t an actress?
Miz Wrent shored herself up. “Not exactly sure? Hasn’t your doctor given you a due date?”
“I haven’t been to a doctor,” I said innocently.
“You haven’t been to a doctor yet?” she demanded, giving my mom the “what kind of mother are you?” look. I couldn’t help but feel a little smug.
“We haven’t found the right doctor yet,” my mom said, convincingly enough for a Tony. Behind the triumph, though, was a note of panic. Miz Wrent looked doubtful.
I smiled shyly. “Maybe you have a recommendation?”
“Of course. I’ll leave you some information when I give you the paperwork I’d like you to fill out. Now.” She gave my mom an unsure look. “I need to ask Rand some questions. Do you have any medical conditions—STDs, high blood pressure, diabetes—that could complicate delivery or endanger the health of the baby?”
“No, I’ve never—”
“Have you taken any drugs or alcohol since becoming pregnant?”
“No!”
My mother leaned forward, gobbling up my words as soon as they left my mouth.
“Would you be interested in meeting the parents in an open relationship, or would you prefer your information to be classified?”
I was turning a dangerous corner, about to step into a covered pit. “Why are you asking me all of this? What do you mean, meet the parents?”
The pieces slammed into my head like a puzzle of broken glass. The only thing to do is put it up for adoption.
I couldn’t believe my mother had done this. I hated her. I wished I could kill her. And more than anything, I wished for Xanda’s help. She had left me to grope in the darkness by myself.
Miz Wrent’s relentless gears ground to a halt. “Excuse me, Ms. Mathison. You led me to believe your daughter wanted to give this baby up for adoption.”
Adoption. I could see the path stretched out before me. I couldn’t turn back now that they knew. There would be no art, no escape if I crossed this threshold and took what they offered. My parents would tighten the chains until I could no longer breathe. Like they did to Xanda. The only escape would be death.
If I said no? I could pack that suitcase and plan that escape and maybe, just maybe, Kamran would come. If I said no, there was still a chance for everything to change.
“I’m keeping it!” I shouted, upsetting the teacups. “You can’t force me to give it up. I won’t!”
Miz Wrent never did leave a doctor recommendation.
Thirteen
Before she spent her days and nights with Andre, Xanda and I would climb out the bathroom window to the side roof under Mom and Dad’s bedroom window. Xanda would smoke while I drank one of Mom’s contraband diet sodas. She dangled her feet over the edge, flicking her ashes into the garden below. I sat as close to the house as possible, always afraid of falling off. There we would listen to our parents’ latest strategies for keeping Xanda in line.
Now I availed myself of the next best thing: hiding in the bathroom with the window cracked.
They were arguing. Or rather, Mom was yelling, and Dad was listening. Their voices were like jackhammers—my name, said over and over. Mandy…Mandy…Mandy.
They were arguing about me. More precisely, what to do with me. The options were limited.
“We could send her to stay with my parents,” Dad was saying.
“Oh, no we won’t,” seethed my mother, as if he had suggested parading me around with a big red A. “You want her spending time with your sister? The one who can’t keep a job and is still living with your parents in a trailer?” I knew the next part by heart: I didn’t have to see Dad wince to know it happened.
“Well, if my parents aren’t right, then how about yours? They could—”
“You can’t be serious!” she countered. “I can’t send a pregnant girl to go live with my family….” She was as ashamed to send me to the white collars as she was to send me to the white trash.
“Fine,” said Dad.
“There’s only one thing to do. We’ll stick it out, let her finish the school year, and then after it’s all over, maybe we can move—”
Move? We didn’t move because of Xanda, but they would move because of me?
“Hillary, we are not moving.”
But Mom was not listening. “After this is all over, we could move back to Connecticut, or we could go to New Jersey…”
“Hillary.”
“…Nobody there would know, and then we could send her…”
“Hillary!”
Silence. Then: “What? You would let her ruin our lives here? Ruin everything we have worked for?”
You have worked for, I wanted him to say. The status, the money, the house on the hill. It was all about her, the rest of us be damned.
But he said nothing. A groan of disgust came from my mother. “I am not going to let you ruin everything again. I won’t.” I thought she was finished. Then, in a much smaller voice, she said, “I’ve done everything different with Mandy. Where did I go wrong?”
Her words trailed away from the window, footsteps stomping into the hall before I could escape. I was trapped there in the dark, with only a night-light to guide me.
“Mandy?” The shrillness startled me. “Are you in there?”
What would Xanda do? I thought in a panic. Under other circumstances it might be funny, like I should have a WWXD bracelet on my wrist or tattooed around my ring finger.
I flushed.
Silence, for my mother, spoke volumes. It stretched out between us like hairs pulled from my head. She could control me with a few strands.
“Just going to the b
athroom, Mom. Sorry I woke you up.”
“Hmmmf,” she said through the door. “Well, I’m going back to bed, then.” Her feet shuffled away. The door of their bedroom shut.
As I crept down the hallway, their bedroom door sprang open and my mom pounced.
“Your father and I have decided something.” As if Dad had anything at all to do with it. “Since you have decided to keep this baby,” she said with something clearly resembling revulsion, “you are going to stay in school until you have it. After that, we’ll decide what to do.”
“Um, okay,” I said.
“But don’t be surprised if we decide to move after the baby is born. In fact”—she looked down at my stomach—“you might think about starting to pack now.” With that, she spun around and left me standing in the hallway with a slam.
She still had me caught by the hair, her hands straining to keep control.
What would Xanda do? That wasn’t hard.
She would cut the hair off.
Fourteen
More and more, I spent my free time either in the art room or in the computer lab. Mrs. Crooker had pulled me aside after class one day and said, “Whatever happens, you finish school.” Even the lab tech must have heard by now, but he still only nodded sympathetically when I told him I was researching teen pregnancy for a class project. Which meant I could spend as much time as I wanted reading the BabyCenter boards.
According to the profile I submitted (code name XandasAngel), I lived in Seattle with my husband, was twenty-one years old and finishing my fine arts degree. Most of the other mommies had ultrasounds by now, and for all they knew, I was no different.
The morning after my parents’ argument, I found a piece of paper slipped under my door in my dad’s handwriting. “You’ll probably need this to make a doctor’s appointment. Love, Dad.” The note was wrapped around an insurance card. The hormones raging through me now made it impossible to hold back tears. It would have been even better if he’d offered to go with me. The last thing I wanted was to go with Mom.