by Carrie Jones
Checkout Darlene stares at the box. She glares at Mr. Dow like he’s a dirty old man. Her mascara clumps around her eyelashes, which is not something I should be noticing right now, but it’s hard not to notice. Poor Mr. Dow has eyes like a deer about to be run over by a logging truck with the name Darlene painted in loopy letters across the front.
“No,” I say, trying to rescue him. “It’s not him. I mean, it’s not even for me. It’s for … ”
I can’t say that though. I can’t say it’s not for me because then everyone will know it’s for Em. Well, not Darlene, who doesn’t know us at all, but Mr. Dow. Because he’d tell his wife who is on the school board and…
Darlene turns her back and starts pressing in numbers. Her fingernails have dolphin decals over rainbows.
Mr. Dow’s face turns white because the fact that I’m buying a home pregnancy test has finally registered.
“I’ll just mosey on back here,” he says. “Good seeing you Belle.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, heart falling into my stomach.
“Yeah, figures you’d just up and leave her to do this herself,” Darlene says. “Some man you are!”
Mr. Dow clutches his hose. “What? What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Taking advantage of a pretty young girl like this,” she shoves the pregnancy test into a blue bag and then tosses the bag at me, still spitting at Mr. Dow. “You should know better.”
“I—I—You’ve got the wrong idea,” Mr. Dow says. He turns, frantic, looking at me for help. He shoves the hose over the scanner at the next aisle. I do my best to press the finish and pay button and shove the twenty dollar bill in the machine. It takes forever. “She has a boyfriend.”
“It wasn’t him!” I say, meaning Mr. Dow not Tom.
Darlene pulls me into her chest, squishing the pregnancy test box in between us. “It’s okay, honey. You don’t have to protect him.”
“It’s not even me,” I squeak out into her super huge boobie things.
She puts me an arm’s length away. “You’re a good girl, don’t you forget that. One mistake does not make you bad. Okay? You promise me you’ll remember that.”
I nod.
“Say it, say, ‘I am a worthy person,’” she demands, her dolphin fingernails cutting into my upper arms.
Mr. Dow shoves his credit card into the machine. I glance at him for help. He does not look my way and I can’t blame him.
“You can say it, sweetie,” Darlene says. She has obviously watched too many women-centered talk shows featuring low self-esteemed guests and the book-writing, publicity-adoring psychologists who love them. “I’ll say it with you, ‘I am a worthy person.’”
“I am a worthy person,” I mumble, because right now I’m willing to mumble anything. Right now I would mumble “I have sex with gophers” if it would get me out of Darlene’s clutches.
“Good. Good girl,” she kisses me on the top of the head like she knows me, like she’s Mrs. Darrow or my mom and not some random Wal-Mart worker from Cherryfield. “You say that every day, every hour, until you believe it. Words have power you know. You repeat them enough they come true. ”
She lets me go.
I run as fast as I can through the automatic doors, but Mr. Dow beats me by twenty seconds and flies into his truck.
I swear, right now we could both run three-minute miles.
In between the Alabama RVs waits a giant empty space where Em’s car once was. And I have no idea what to think about that. I stare at the space. I stare at the backs of the Alabama RVs and the little maps of America on them. Every place they’ve gone is colored in. They haven’t hit Utah or Arizona. They haven’t hit Idaho.
I whirl around.
Mr. Dow’s truck comes thundering down the lane and zooms by. He doesn’t wave. This is the first time in my entire life that Mr. Dow has not waved at me.
I start walking down the rows of cars. One row after another. Mrs. Darrow offers me a ride home in her Subaru with the bumper sticker, NOT MY PRESIDENT.
“Thanks anyways,” I say and keep walking.
Tom’s dad stops in his cruiser and asks me what I’m doing. He knows I don’t drive. He smiles at me.
“Looking for Em,” I say. “She parked in between the RVs while I ran in and now she’s gone.”
“Practical joke?” he asks.
For a second, I think maybe it is, maybe she’s just being a total jerk-off and this is some elaborate scheme, but I know it isn’t. Still I say, “Maybe.”
He leans over and opens the passenger door. “Hop in. I’ll help you look.”
The inside of the police car smells like Subway’s Italian subs and pine tree air freshener. Is this the smell Tom associates with his dad? Would my dad smell like this? I hope not. How about Shawn, what if he’s a dad? Will his smell change?
Chief Tanner waits while I pull on my seat belt. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he cruises slow like we have all the time in the world. “Tommy treating you okay?”
I nod. I put the Wal-Mart bag between me and the door, so Chief Tanner can’t see what’s in it. “Yep.”
“You tell me if he gives you any trouble,” Chief Tanner says. He lifts his hand up to wave to Mr. Jones, who is back at Wal-Mart again. He’s as bad as I am this weekend, Wal-Mart regulars. “Tanner men have a reputation of being good to their ladies. He’s got to uphold that, you know. It’s a big responsibility.”
“Uh-huh.”
We cruise down another aisle at a super slow pace. Some seagulls hop out of our way. They were munching on something that was in a McDonald’s bag.
“How are you doing, Belle? You and your mom getting on okay?”
“Yep. We’re good.”
“She must be sad about you leaving her and going off to college next year.”
I’m not sure what to say. I hate to think about that, hate to think about that part of college, just like I hate to think about the whole financial aspect of college, so I just go, “Yeah. She is.”
“She’s had a hard time, your mom.”
I swallow. He turns down another aisle. He drives with one hand, just like Tom. Would my dad drive like that? I don’t know. I imagine he would. I like it, sort of casual. I am obviously trying to not think about what is in my bag. I am obviously trying to not think about where Em went off to. Damn Em.
“Your dad was a good man, a little wild at times, but good.”
I lift my eyebrows up. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that about my dad. “Wild?”
He laughs. “Nothing big. A little like Shawn, you know, a little bit of the devil in him, just enough to keep life interesting, but his heart … that was all good.”
He points to a glimpse of red car that’s peeking out from behind the back corner of Wal-Mart. “Looks like Emily.”
He drops me off and pretends like he doesn’t see her head bent over the steering wheel, her shoulders moving up and down as she sobs.
He grabs my hand as I open the door and says, “You’re a good kid, Belle. Don’t try to handle too much on your own. Remember you’ve got Tom. You’ve got your mom. And me and Mrs. Tanner, anytime you need us, you just give a holler, okay?”
I nod and resist the urge to kiss him on his super clean shaven cheek. “Okay.”
Em doesn’t lift up her head when I get in the car, but her voice, weak and broken from crying says, “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t stay there. Between those RVs. I felt like everyone could see me. Like everyone knows.”
I tuck the plastic bag in between my feet on the floor and rest my hand on her shaking back. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” she hiccups, lifts up her head from the steering wheel, straightens her back. “I’m such a bad friend.”
“Yo
u’re the best friend I’ll ever have,” I say.
She pulls her hair out of her face. “I’m just so scared.”
I nod. “Me too.”
We go back to my house.
Not hers.
We go back to my house and she pees in the bathroom, runs the wand under it. My mom is in oblivious boyfriend talking land with the phone attached to her ear. I do not witness Emily in the bathroom with the wand. I stay in my room, strumming Gabriel, a thoughtless song, just chords progressing from one to another, endless variations on the same notes.
There are ways to play the chords that always sound good. There are progressions that are meant to flow. You don’t resolve a V7 into a IV. It just doesn’t work. There’s an order to chords. It matters.
That’s what life is isn’t it? We all deal with the same things—love, death, need, babies, failure, hope, leavings—just in different orders and in different ways. Sometimes we strum hard, loud and fast, sometimes quiet and slow, sometimes so softly we don’t even realize we’re playing the notes.
We look at the results together. Two lines.
Her face whitens and blanks like the ghosts of people we barely knew, like chords that are all played out. “I knew.”
“I know.”
I toss the stick in the trash.
CB said: Sex is kicking
kicking death
in the ass
It’s a kick in the ass
It’s a kick
Ass
Ass
Ass
But it’s all kinds
all kinds of death
It causes all kinds of death
Crap.
Em and I take off because my mom’s there.
I wave goodbye to her, this woman who used to be my mother. She’s painting her mom toenails black (!) while chatting to Mr. Jim Shrembersky. She never paints her toenails. We live in Maine. Only people my age and TV anchor people paint their toenails in Maine. Most of the year our feet are hidden in wool socks. She is not the sort of person who paints her toenails.
And black?
Black!
She’s over forty years old. People in Maine over forty do not paint their toenails black, unless it’s Halloween or unless they’re that cool lady at the shoe store.
Everything in my life is shifting into another key. It’s like I think everything is all C major, and common and normal and then—boom—we’re in B-flat minor, and life is full of crazy.
My mother’s shoulder and head wedge the phone in place. She looks like me. She should not look like me. She should look like her.
My mom grabs the phone, pulls it away from her mouth and says, “You girls okay?”
“Yep, just taking a walk. Be back soon.” I try not to shudder, pushing Em along.
“You want to stay for dinner, Em? We’re having chicken dinner,” my mom says. The nail polish applicator dangles from her finger.
“No, thanks though,” Em says.
My mom doesn’t stop. The polish drips onto her thigh. “We could invite your mom.”
Em puts on a fake smile but backs away towards the stairs, twisting her fingers. “Oh, thanks. But we can’t. Big plans.”
My mom nods and puts the phone back to her mouth. “Well, maybe next time.”
Muffin scoots in the door when we open it. She runs inside the house like a horde of angry squirrels are chasing her with radioactive acorn bombs. We rush out, the same way, but not the same, because nothing is the same now.
Emily’s just earned herself a new label: pregnant teenager.
Or better yet: unwed mother.
I do not like how that sounds.
There’s this old cemetery that Dylan and I used to go to. It’s just down the road from my house, an easy walk. It’s not the one my dad is buried in. It’s a lot closer.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Em says as we wander amid the headstones. Some have sunk into the earth. Some, like Faith Alley’s, are half covered with lush green moss that seems to expand over the stark white of the old stone. It covers half of the writing, so we can only read the date of Faith’s birth and not her death.
“I’m not ready to have a baby,” Em says. Her eyes are blank like the back of gravestones. I think she’s in shock. What do you do for people in emotional shock? Do you make them plop down on the ground, elevate their feet, give them blankets? “I’m really not ready.”
“I know.”
Blue sky gives way to clouds. Stone gives way to moss. Em keeps wandering lazily in between the graves, stopping every once in a while. She hands me her camera and lifts her shirt up a little bit. “Take a picture of my stomach, okay?”
It’s still flat and smooth. Her belly button is an outie. I forgot about that even though I’ve seen it a million times. I zoom in, take a picture of just her stomach then I zoom out and take a picture of her small hand holding up her shirt, a dark gravestone next to her, the fear on her face. The wind lifts her hair and blows it out.
I hand her back the camera.
“I want to remember my pre-pregnancy belly,” she says. She checks the shots. “These are good. You could be a photographer.”
“I could never be as good as you,” I say and I swallow, touch the cold granite headstone of Charity Meyers. I’m afraid to ask the question, but I have to. “You’re going to have the baby?”
She nods. Tears come to her eyes but her mouth is a line, a determined straight line. Above our heads is a jet trail that is just as straight.
“You don’t want to think about it?”
“Sometimes people just know what they’re meant to do,” she says.
Emily has already decided what chords she’s going to play.
A million questions rush through my head like what she’ll do about college, what she’ll tell her mom, what she’ll tell Shawn. But I know Em, and I know she doesn’t really have those answers yet.
I bend down and finger a tiny white flower. My mom and I used to call these fairy flowers and when I was friends with Mimi Cote back in grade school, we’d pick them, weave them into delicate rings and wear them around our heads pretending to be princesses. We’d leave the fairies notes on tiny pink paper and my mom would write us back, disguising her handwriting. She just wanted us to believe in magic, to believe in fairies, to believe in dreams.
I pick up a flower and hand it to Em. She smiles, a slow, sweet Em smile that makes me smile back.
Then I bend down and say to her stomach, “Hello little baby.”
My words make her choke or sob or laugh or some sorrow-heavy combination of all three. My words make it real, maybe. Three little words. Hello. Little. Baby.
Everything has changed. I was so worried about graduating, and the seizure thing, and losing Tom to anybody and the whole Problem. I was so worried about needing anyone. And here it is … true need, total dependence, full and real.
I stand up again and tell her, “We’ll do this. We’ll do this together.”
May + nine months = February = first year of school.
I can’t see my lips, but I know what they look like. They are a determined line.
When I get home my mom tells me dinner’s ready.
She has made a huge dinner full of stuffing and potatoes and eight hundred million vegetables. We place the leftovers in containers, seal them up and put them in the fridge. Everything is controlled, has a place.
“There,” she says, rubbing her hands together. “That should do it. You should have enough to eat.”
“Mom,” I say, stacking a broccoli casserole container on top of a mashed potatoes container. “You’re only going away for a couple of days.”
She rubs at her face with her hands. “I know that. I just want to take care of you. Be a good mom.”
<
br /> “You are a good mom,” I say for the five hundredth time. “We’ve gone through this.”
I reach out and take a piece of mashed potato out of her hair. I run my fingers under the water trying to imagine Em having this conversation in eighteen years. My stomach lurches and I bend over the sink for a second, just staring into the shiny metal.
“I know we’ve gone through it.” My mom pulls in a big breath as I wipe off my hands. “I’m a little worried about that condom mention this morning.”
I do not turn around even though I am done wiping my hands. If she only knew …
“Really?” I manage.
“Yes, really.”
She waits for me to say something. I don’t. Muffin jumps onto the counter. I take her off and set her on the floor. She wraps herself between my ankles.
“Are you going to have Tom over when I’m gone?”
“Mom!” I turn around, cross my arms over my chest.
“Wanting to have sex is normal, Belle. I just want you to be careful,” she says in a clipped, even, rehearsed tone.
I roll my eyes, not literally, obviously. I can’t just pluck my eyes out.
“Sex is a big thing,” she says. “Not a bad thing, but big.”
Can she really not have known I was having sex with Dylan? This is so hard to believe. Or is this because she’s somehow psychically figured out about Emmie. Oh, God.
I decide to deflect her whole “topic of conversation.”
“Have you had sex with Jim?”
“Belle!” Her cheeks pink right up. She grabs the dish towel and snaps me with it. “You’re changing the subject and you think I’m stupid enough not to notice.”
“Yep.”
She takes a big breath. “Have you ever thought about how old Tom’s mom was when she had him?”
I shake my head. “Why would I?”