Me, Him, Them, and It

by Caela Carter

  “But you see, not everything is going to go back. I don’t think you’re actually going to be able to forget this baby.”

  “I can’t do it, Maryellie. I’m not like you.”

  “I’m not saying you should raise it, but I really think you should meet them.” The words hang like a curtain between us until I pull back into the driving lane and drive her home. She’s right. That’s why I’m crying. But I just can’t.

  1 Month Till Normal

  Chicago is still cold, but the air loses its teeth. You can walk out the door without immediately hugging yourself and holding your breath so you don’t get cold from the inside as well as the outside.

  Lizzie starts calling me every day before she comes. Her bouncing words fill the space between my ears with plans to explore Chicago and stalk her absentee dad. Adrenaline races through my veins every time I see her name on my phone and I imagine it makes bean smile as well.

  “You’d like her if you met her, bean,” I tell it in the moments I forget I’m ignoring it.

  A week before she’s due to arrive, she says “Okay, let’s go through the plan day by day.”

  “Okay,” I say. I’ve started looking forward to her visit. Without school for the week, it would be much harder to ignore bean without her around.

  “So I arrive Friday night. I don’t think we should go looking for him right away, do you? Maybe I’ll just meet your little cousins that night? We can all watch a Disney movie or something.”

  “Or something. Remember that I’m not telling any of these parents that we’re really spending our break stalking a middle-aged man neither of us has ever met, for obvious reasons. We’re going to have to come up with two plans—our real plan and our cover plan.”

  “Yeah, okay, good idea,” Lizzie says. “So Friday we’ll just hang out at your place. And Saturday, I guess we can’t really do anything because you have your thing, right?”

  “What thing?”

  “I ran into your mom in Publix yesterday. She said y’all have to meet the baby’s new parents on Saturday. Oh my God, do you want me to go with you to that? That would make so much sense: you help me find my dad, I help you find your baby’s new dad and mom.”

  “No! I’m not going to that.”

  “What do you mean you’re not going to that?”

  “I’m not going. I told them and you and everyone I’m done making all these decisions. Aunt Linda picked the people. I’m sure they’re fine. I don’t want to meet them.”

  After a long time, Lizzie says, “I really think you should meet them, Ev.”

  My God, not Lizzie. “Why would I want to meet them? All that will do is turn this thing into a real person.”

  “It’s a person anyway. Don’t you want to make sure they’re not crazy?”

  “They’re not. Let’s start the hunt on Saturday while all those parents are away at that meeting.”

  Lizzie laughs. “How do you suddenly have parents coming out your ass?”

  “I don’t know!” I join in, and we’re both laughing. “Apparently all it takes to find your parents is to get pregnant.”

  “If that’s how it is, I better have a lot of sex before next Saturday.”

  We let the fact that she told me to go to the meeting disappear. We talk about shopping on Michigan Avenue and whether or not Lizzie will get to see snow. We talk about sneaking into a club, even though I won’t drink and I look like a hippo and it sounds terrible, but I’ll do it if she wants to. It’s a relief to have her in my life again.

  Twenty minutes go by before she says, “You know it’s okay with me if you go to that meeting, right? Like, don’t skip it just ’cause I’m there and I said this is how you make it up to me.”

  “Lizzie, I’m not going.”

  “I really think you should, though.”

  Lizzie’s not saying that I should meet bean’s parents so bean isn’t like her one day—searching for any clue of who Todd and I were and are, wondering all the time why we disappeared. But I know that’s what she’s thinking.

  When we hang up all of their voices swim in my mind: Lizzie’s, Mom’s, Dad’s, Aunt Linda’s, Aunt Nora’s, Maryellie’s. It won’t go back to normal ever. It is a real person. Think about open adoption. Meet these people. You need to meet these people. You won’t be able to forget about this baby.

  But the thing inside me is just as much a stranger as the people who will raise it.

  I can’t stand it, so I’m ending it.

  As I’m shuffling through Aunt Linda’s papers in her night-table drawer, my heart hammers Morse code in my brain: this is a mistake. As I’m pulling out the driveway heading toward the address on the envelope, the mistakeness of it grows, ready to stop my pulse. My elbows go stiff as I make the turns and sit through the traffic into downtown. Even though the freeze is out of the air, my hands shake when I accept the stub at the parking garage. My stomach is trying to climb past bean and into my mouth when I finally step out of the elevator and push the door open to the agency.

  This is a mistake.

  I enter the office for Marcia Cooper. “My name is Evelyn Jones,” I say. “My aunt Linda and my mom and my dad have been working with you to place my baby for adoption.”

  She nods. Behind her eyes I see that she’s afraid I’m about to take the baby back.

  “I’m ready to sign these papers.”

  It’s that easy. Bean isn’t mine anymore.

  I cry the whole way home, but it’s just relief rushing out of my eyes.

  Right?

  I don’t tell anyone but Lizzie by text: I signed the papers. Baby is adopted. I’m all yours next week.

  Waiting

  It will be the worst explosion ever. There will be four adults yelling. And they will be yelling about me. At me. And I guess I know that in some way, they’ll all be right.

  24 Days Till Normal

  Wednesday, when I’m refilling Cecelia’s milk at dinner, Aunt Linda slams open the front door, making Tammy hide behind her hands.

  “What is this, Evelyn?” She waves around an envelope. “You tell me, what is this?” She isn’t yelling, but she’s using a scary voice, like the voice of a very calm murderer on a movie.

  “Baby, calm down,” Nora says.

  “Tell her, Evelyn. You tell her and then you can call your parents and you can tell them. Tell her what you did.”

  Nora’s eyes go wide and she turns to me. My eyes are on my plate.

  “What did you do?” Nora asks

  I shake my head.

  “Tell her!” Now Aunt Linda yells.

  “Linda, let’s … come on, girls, I’ll let you watch The Little Mermaid,” Nora says, but Tammy is already in the other room. Cecelia follows Nora, and I hear the volume go up.

  Aunt Linda is standing above me, daggers in her eyes, flames shooting out her nose. Nora comes back.

  “Linda, this isn’t like you. What’s going on?”

  “Tell her what you did!” Aunt Linda yells and I feel my body betraying me yet again with tears. One fat, salty drop rolling down my cheek.

  “I signed the papers,” I whisper.

  Nora sits and holds my hand. She must have no idea what’s going on.

  “What papers? Linda, please just tell me.”

  “You’re going to have to tell your parents, Evelyn,” Aunt Linda says, back to her calm-murderer voice. “She went to the agency and signed away her baby. It’s done.”

  Nora throws herself back in her chair in disbelief. “Why would you do that, honey? Why would you do that?”

  “I didn’t want to meet them.”

  “You’re still going to have to meet them, my dear.” Aunt Linda’s breath comes down hot on the top of my head. “I just talked to them and, thank God, they agreed to meet with us all on Saturday anyway. But really, Evelyn. What if you don’t like them? Now you have no choice. What were you thinking? Huh? What were you thinking?”

  I meet her gaze as Nora quietly says some lawyer-talk about it no
t really being over because I’m a minor, quiet words I don’t have to hear if I don’t want to.

  I say, “Maybe I was thinking that I just trust my aunt. Ever think of that?”

  “No,” Aunt Linda says. “Don’t you throw this back on me, little girl. I didn’t sign up for this. Taking care of you is one thing but watching you completely ruin your life, finding a place for you to just throw your child away, that’s not what I was planning on.”

  The tears on my face go hot. “Well, I’m sorry I’m such a burden.”

  “Just because your little friend is coming, after Nora and I graciously agreed to squeeze her in here, you’re going to turn this into the biggest mistake of your life. What’s wrong with you, Evelyn?” Aunt Linda’s voice gets louder and louder and Nora’s hand gets tighter and tighter, and I guess she’s trying to be sympathetic but it starts to feel like a trap, like a handcuff anchoring me to the table. “Why do you go through life turned off? As if talking to the people who love you will threaten your very existence? As if the only thing that matters is your grades and not people? Wake up, little girl. You better wake up before it’s too late.”

  I yank my hand away from Nora and slam up the stairs, flying from the door to my bed and burying my hot face in my pillow. I am a four-year-old who’s about to have a baby.

  But when I still hear voices over The Little Mermaid, I sneak to the top of the stairs to eavesdrop.

  “You’re forgetting there are two children involved here,” Nora is saying. “She’s a kid. A pregnant kid, but she’s still a kid. How is she supposed to make a decision like this?”

  “What kind of kid is she?” They aren’t arguing. They’re having one of those loud work-it-out conversations. “She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t play. She doesn’t have friends. She just seals herself in a cocoon and she’s going to rot in there if she doesn’t come out.” Aunt Linda might be crying. I picture them sitting at the table, Nora’s arm draped across her shoulders.

  “She will. And when she does, she’s going to miss that baby and it’s going to hurt more than even her favorite aunt biting her head off.”

  They’re quiet for a while, then Aunt Linda says, “Thank you, Nora.”

  “Thank you?” Nora laughs. “I was too horrified to even say anything.”

  “No, thank you for loving her. I know you didn’t want her here, but thank you.”

  I feel the tears coming on again, but their meaning changes quickly when Nora says, “I was crazy. I’m wild about that niece of yours. And you see how great she is with Celie and Tammy, especially Tammy. It took someone with a shell as thick as Evie’s to get Tammy to take even the smallest chisel to her own.”

  “They are two peas in a pod,” Aunt Linda says. “I’m so scared of the day when she regrets this. And what is Judy going to say?”

  “Let me tell her,” Nora says. “Judy and me … we’re two peas also, aren’t we?”

  Yes, Aunt Linda. Let Nora tell her.

  She says, “Okay. You might be right.”

  “And as for when she regrets this, you and me, we’ll be here. Okay? When you take a kid in during the worst year of her life, you commit to her forever. I see that now.”

  I’ll take them up on that, even though I’m not going to regret it.

  The Next Day

  It’s my dad who calls me. I’ve been responding to most of his daily e-mails but I haven’t actually spoken to him since Christmas.

  “Is Mom going to call me too?” I ask when I answer the phone, before even saying hello.

  “Only if you hang up on me. We decided to let me handle this one.”

  “Oh, so what, now that you’re divorced, you guys are a team?” I snap, but I’m actually relieved. vzyl

  Then he knocks my guard down completely by laughing. “It’s amazing how much easier it is to get along without all the pretending. And neither of us are ever pretending when we love you.”

  I stay silent.

  “Listen, everyone is done trying to force you. You are both too old and too young for that much pressure. But we really think you should go this Saturday, meet these people, and find out if they will negotiate something so that if, one day, you really want to know what’s up with that person inside you, you can find out.”

  “I’m not going to want to know, Dad,” I say, with a certainty I don’t feel.

  “It’s not like it’ll be too late on Saturday. But if you walk out of that hospital without a plan, it might be too late.”

  Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to what I say? “I want to walk out of that hospital and never think about this again.”

  He sighs. I’m getting used to people sighing into my cell phone. “Think about it, Pumpkin. That’s not going to happen. You really aren’t thinking.”

  21 Days Till Normal

  Friday after school, it’s finally spring break. Maryellie and I walk through the school parking lot talking about Lizzie, who’s arriving in a few hours.

  “Hey,” I say. “Do you and Mario and Emanuella want to come over tonight? Aunt Nora is cooking a big lasagna for everyone because my parents are going to be there too. And you could meet Lizzie.” And everyone will be less likely to keep talking about what a mistake I’m making by refusing to go with them tomorrow if they’re meeting Maryellie for the first time.

  “Oh my God! Yes! It’s like now that I have a baby I can never hang out anymore, you know? But Mario got his car back last week, so yes. Yes! What time?”

  “Seven thirty?”

  “Yes. So fun!”

  I look at her, picking up her enthusiasm. “And the girls haven’t met Emanuella yet. They’ll be so thrilled.”

  And so we’re all crammed into Aunt Linda’s little living room. Cecelia, Tammy, Maryellie, Mario, and Emanuella at the kid table. Aunt Linda, Aunt Nora, Mom, Dad, Lizzie, and me around the big table. My dad is telling a story about one of his students making up an entire ancient community for a class presentation on native peoples. He gets out of his seat to demonstrate the “rain dance” the kid fabricated, and everyone doubles over with laughter when my dad hops up and down, waving his hands over his face. Even Cecelia, who has no idea what he’s doing. Even Tammy, who’s still afraid of her uncle Jim. Even Emanuella, who just learned how to laugh. Even Mom.

  There are six parents in the room—Mom, Dad, Aunt Linda, Aunt Nora, Maryellie, and Mario—and they’re all here because of me. Everyone in this room is here because of me.

  It’s enough to make me think about going to their stupid meeting tomorrow.

  I get up to go to the bathroom and it rushes down my legs, soaking my socks before I can even get to the toilet. I’m mortified, thinking I peed myself, until I realize what this really is—my water broke.

  “Mom,” I say, waddling back into the room. “I need to go to the hospital.”

  Waiting for Normal

  They finally have to tear him right out of my middle.

  Then there he is: a bloody, slimy, screaming, miraculous creature writhing around on my chest.

  Oh, I think, there you are, Bean. That’s you.

  He’s beautiful.

  There is night and day and he is here and not here and here and not here and they keep shoving words in our room—healthy, eight pounds, male, healthy—but I don’t talk or think. I just take in his weight in my arms, his feet cracked and red and kicking, his hairless eyebrow muscles bouncing like kittens, his red hair in my nose and so many lips on his head—female lips, male lips, Chinese lips, Latina lips, white lips, black lips. He goes around and around like a hot potato and it rips the scar on my gut deeper every time the eight pounds leaves my elbow pit and everyone, everyone—Mom and Dad, Aunt Nora and Aunt Linda, Lizzie and Maryellie, Celie and Tammy—crying and apologizing and showering tears on me like a baptism.

  Him

  When my eyes open, all the kissing, crying people are gone, and it’s just the two of us—Bean fastened tight in the crook of my arm. His nose is a tiny white-chocolate Hershey’s kiss. His
mouth is a pink oval, opening and closing with each breath. He has a shock of red hair on top of his white head. He’s beautiful.

  “I love him,” says a voice from the chair next to my bed.

  My head whips to the side. Todd. His eyes are big and round and pleading. I can’t hate him because his eyes are just like Bean’s. I’m too tired to be angry right now. And I can’t be in love with him because I’m too in love with my baby.

  “Lizzie and your friend Maryellie called while you were in labor last night. Told me to get my butt over here,” he says, though I haven’t had enough active brain cells to wonder.

  He puts his arms out and, instinctively, I hand the warm bundle of baby to his father. To say hello. And good-bye.

  I look at Todd. His eyes are glued to Bean’s sleeping ones. “I even had to tell my mom,” he says over the red hair. I hadn’t thought to wonder about this either. Todd leans over the bed, holding Bean right next to his face. “E,” he says. “He’s perfect.”

  Todd puts Bean on my shoulder but keeps holding him. We stare at our baby. A family. A pathetic little family, but a family. For a day or two.

  The nurse comes to give me more meds and I fall asleep with Bean on my shoulder.

  When I wake up again my arms are empty, like my uterus.

  The room is full, so full it looks like a party. I remember visiting Maryellie and Emanuella, thinking that my hospital room would be as empty and lonely as the other side of her curtain. What was I thinking?

  Mom and Aunt Linda are in the corner with their arms around each other; Aunt Nora and Lizzie and Dad play cards in front of the window; Bean yawns in Todd’s arms in the chair, his mom looking over his shoulder.

  Todd’s hand is on Bean’s forehead. “I’m your daddy. You’re my little man,” he says.

  My body has been strained and torn and stretched to its limit, but the pain doesn’t register through the fog and the love in the room.