by J. A. Wright
“I’ll have to call you back and let you know because I have a couple of job offers already and I want to make sure I pick the best one,” I replied.
“Well, don’t wait too long,” she said just before she hung up.
I don’t know why I lied to her. I guess it was because I thought she was going to ask me to go to church with her and John, and I really didn’t want God to know all the stuff I’d been doing. I waited a couple of days before I called her back to say I’d like to interview for the job. She didn’t sound as happy and enthusiastic when I called, and told me I’d have to talk to John because she wasn’t sure the job was still available.
I was pissed off with myself for disappointing Tammy. She’d always been nice to me. For a year or so after Mom and I ran into her at the grocery store, Tammy and I had gotten together every month to have dinner or go to a movie. She even took me to her mom’s house once. I tried to convince her not to tell her mom who I was because I thought she might not want me in her home if she knew.
“Don’t you think it will be harder to explain why I have a thirteen-year-old friend, not to mention someone with the same name as my father?” she asked.
“Yeah, I suppose,” I replied.
“Honesty really is the best policy,” she said, smiling.
I stood in the doorway with my eyes closed while she introduced me to her mother. Tammy was right about the honesty thing, because her mom said, “I knew who you were the second I saw you . . . even with your eyes closed,” and laughed.
John talked the manager of the rec center into giving me the job but I don’t think he was happy about it, especially after I asked him if it would be okay for me to get to work at 8:30 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. “I’ll have to get up at 6:30 a.m. and that’s too early,” I said.
“No, it’s not okay. Get an alarm clock. That’s what everyone else does!” he growled.
I sold the rest of my pot and made enough to pay off and pick up my new car the night before I started my job as the front desk clerk. I felt pretty grown up driving my own car to my job that day. And it wasn’t a hard job at all. I just had to answer the phone, hand out locker keys and towels, do the laundry, and sign people up for the classes the rec center offered.
I must have met at least a hundred people my first day, including Juan Perez. He came up to the front counter with a couple of other guys who practiced basketball there every afternoon. Juan was cute, and when I handed him his locker key he purposely touched my hand and mentioned how lovely my skin felt. He started hanging around the front counter, and I started to think he might make a good boyfriend. He was cute and he told some pretty good jokes.
We had sex for the first time five days after we met. I let him in my bedroom window after Mom and Olive left for the evening.
Juan had his clothes off within a minute of arriving. I couldn’t believe how eager he was, or how big his dick was. He was all over me, kissing and pushing his hand down my pants and under my shirt. I told him to slow down because we had all night, but he just kept going. He didn’t even get his dick inside of me before he finished. I didn’t make a big deal out of it because he promised to do better next time, and the next time was about ten minutes later. He did last a bit longer, but not much. I had to get up to use the bathroom right afterward because I didn’t like the goo in me or on me. When I returned he was dressed and putting his shoes on.
“I have to get home before my mom notices I’m gone,” he said.
After he left I asked myself why I’d let it happen it again. Why did I let myself get a big crush on someone I hardly knew? I went downstairs and poured myself a vodka and orange juice. After I drank it, I went searching in Mom’s room for her new script of Valium. I helped myself to four of them and slept most of the weekend.
Juan was waiting for me when I arrived at work on Monday morning. He brought me lunch and a little bunch of daisies. “I’m the happiest guy in the world,” he said, smiling. “When can we do it again?”
I was surprised and happy to see him again and when he leaned over the counter and kissed me really quick I said, “We can do it in the laundry room during my lunch break.”
And that’s what we did, and we did it every day that week and the next week, too. It was toward the end of the following week when my boss opened the laundry door and found us. I knew I was going to lose my job because of it, but I didn’t know I could be arrested too as well.
When my boss told me Juan was only fourteen years old I almost fell over. “Are you sure? He doesn’t look fourteen,” I practically screamed.
“Yeah, I’m sure, and I’m pretty sure you’re eighteen, which makes your relationship illegal,” he said.
How could that be? I thought to myself. Juan had a little moustache and a much bigger dick than any of the other guys I’d had sex with, and I was sure they were all much older than him.
John called my mom, and then Mom called Robbie. Robbie had just started his job in the office of a state senator, and even though he hated me, he told Mom he’d drive down the next day to sort it out.
Mom handed the phone to me.
“What?” I said.
“Listen, you worthless piece of shit. Just stay home and don’t talk to anyone until I get there.” He slammed the phone down.
Juan’s parents, my mom, and Robbie weren’t as upset about the sex as my boss, sister, and John were. After Robbie talked to Juan’s parents, they agreed not to call the police, but only if I stayed away from Juan and the rec center. I wanted to say something in my defense, but I couldn’t think of anything. I saw Juan sitting in his parents’ car when I was walking with Mom to our car. I gave him a little wave but he turned his head and looked away.
I took 5 milligrams of Valium and drank two wine coolers before I went to bed that night. Mom saw me take the wine coolers from the fridge and I’m pretty sure she heard me crying too, but she didn’t come into my room, and she didn’t say anything to me about it the next day either.
CHAPTER 15
With no job and nothing to do, I slept in for an entire week. It felt good to do nothing, and I could hardly bring myself to get up at 3 p.m. to take a shower, do a few chores, and start dinner. When my paycheck from the rec center arrived in the mail, I bought myself twenty Xanax and I bought Mom a bottle of White Diamonds perfume and a small bunch of pink carnations.
“I love the perfume and the flowers,” Mom said as she sat down at the kitchen table for dinner. “And I know you’re sorry about what happened. But you’ve got to pick yourself up and get a job. You can’t just hang out and hide the rest of your life.”
We ate our fish sticks and fries in silence, and I promised myself I’d start looking for a job the following Monday. I even spent the weekend looking through my closet for something decent to wear. I finally decided on a plain blue blouse and black jeans. On Monday I was up before Mom left for work and spent the day handing out my résumé to anyplace I thought would take it, including McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, but no one had any work available. All the summer jobs were gone.
After I told Mom about my horrible day looking for work, I asked if there were any jobs at her bank that I could apply for.
“You don’t want to work at my bank. That’s not a good idea.” She said it so quickly and quietly I hardly caught a word. From then on she stopped making employment suggestions and began leaving educational brochures on the kitchen table and talking to me about enrolling at the community college.
One night, toward the end of July, Mom put a pamphlet about a medical receptionist course under my dinner plate. When I picked it up she said, “I’d be more than happy to pay your tuition. What do you think?”
“It doesn’t sound like me. I don’t like school. I’m thinking about applying for a job with the state, on a road crew, as one of those people who hold up stop and go signs on highways.”
“That’s an old man’s job,” she said.
“So what? It pays well, and I wouldn’t have to do much ex
cept stand on the road with a sign in my hand.”
“I was hoping you’d have better plans for your life than standing on a road,” she huffed before she got up and left the table.
The next day, a large envelope from Robbie arrived. It was full of information about the military. I read it over, filled in a few things, and left it on the coffee table with a note for Mom before I went to bed. “I’m going to sign up for the Navy. I’ll go to the recruitment office tomorrow.”
In the morning Mom bolted into my room and yelled, “You want to go to Iraq?”
“Well, no, but I could I suppose. Robbie thinks it’s a good idea and I don’t have anything else to do,” I replied.
“It’s not a good idea!” Mom replied.
She threw the Navy recruitment forms in the trash and called Robbie. “If you think the war is such a good idea, why didn’t you sign up?”
I pretended to eat my cereal while Mom spoke with Robbie over the phone. They went on talking for a few minutes and then I heard mom say, “Well, she’s not your kid, so you don’t need to worry about her.”
Things calmed down a bit between Mom and me after that—until the next weekend, when Robbie arrived with his new girlfriend.
“How’s it going, cradle snatcher?” Robbie said as he walked in the front door.
I didn’t answer.
His girlfriend, Sam, walked over to the couch where I was sitting and stuck out her hand for me to shake. I didn’t move. She pulled her hand away and introduced herself, all the while talking really loud, really slow, and in a very deep voice. I stared right into her face, trying to figure out if she was a boy or a girl. She was a dead ringer for the dark-haired guy on Full House, and I was pretty sure she was a man until I saw her red fingernails.
“Hey, no matter what Robbie told you, I’m not officially a moron or a retard, okay?” I said, smirking.
She turned around and looked at Robbie, but he only shrugged his shoulders and said, “She really is. She just doesn’t know it.”
They headed out to Dad’s big garage and didn’t come back in until Mom got home from work at 6 p.m. I was in the kitchen cutting tomatoes for a salad when she walked in with a loaf of French bread and carton of chocolate ice cream. “Thanks for making dinner, honey. I brought the dessert.”
“Robbie is here with his new girlfriend—or boyfriend, I’m not sure. Do I have to make them dinner too?” I asked Mom just as the back door opened and Robbie and Sam walked in carrying bags of Dad’s old car magazines.
“Sam’s a bit of a car wizard and she wants these,” Robbie said as he squeezed past Mom and me to put the bags down by the front door.
“That’s weird, because that other girlfriend you had was some kind of mechanic too,” I said under my breath, just loud enough for Sam to hear, but out of Robbie’s earshot.
“Robbie says your car isn’t running so well. I can have a look at it if you want,” Sam said.
“That would be great. It’s the starter, I’m sure,” I replied.
“An easy fix. I’ll do it tomorrow,” Sam said as she grabbed a few plates from the counter and put them on the kitchen table.
I hadn’t planned on making dinner for four people, but it was obvious they were staying, so I dumped a jar of canned tomatoes into my basil and mushroom sauce and took a few more chicken and parmesan raviolis out of the freezer as I listened to Robbie talk about a high school reunion they’d come to town to attend that weekend.
As soon as we were seated at the table, Mom poured herself and Sam a glass of white wine and Robbie started in about how lazy I was. “You’d better get yourself enrolled in school, because it’s obvious you can’t get a job. It’s August 5th and you haven’t done a thing all summer except become a criminal!”
Sam threw a surprised glance my way, and I put my head down and ate while Robbie went on talking. I heard Sam clear her throat a couple of times, but Robbie didn’t pay her any attention. “She’s a lazy cow, Mom, and you’re not much of a mother for letting her get away with it,” he roared.
That’s when Mom kicked Robbie under the table, hard enough for him to yelp and to shut up. Both Sam and I let out a nervous laugh.
“We have a guest, Robbie, and she doesn’t need to hear how you feel about me or your sister, so let’s just eat,” Mom said.
By Sunday afternoon, Mom was in tears and I was ready to kill Robbie. Before he left, I agreed to fill in the form for the medical assistant course at the community college, just to shut him up. I didn’t want to be a medical assistant, didn’t want to be around sick people or clean up anyone’s puke or shit. But the only other course I could have signed up for was a three-year cooking course, and I couldn’t think of anything worse than going to school for three years.
I made a beef stroganoff dinner for Mom and me after Robbie and Sam left, and I threw up a few hours later, and the next morning and evening too. I thought I had the flu until I remembered I hadn’t had a period for a while. I helped myself to twenty dollars from Mom’s wallet and went to the pharmacy on Tuesday morning to buy a pregnancy test. The instructions said it was best to get a urine sample first thing in the morning, so I had to wait all night and I didn’t sleep a wink. At 6 a.m. I peed on the stick, and while I waited for the results, I vomited so hard I thought my guts were going to come out. Pink equals pregnant. Fuck!
There was no way I was going to have a kid, and there was no way I was going to tell Mom I was pregnant by a fourteen-year-old.
I counted the days from the last time Juan and I had sex and figured I could be eight weeks pregnant. I sat on the bathroom floor waiting for my stomach to settle and thinking about how I could make myself miscarry. I’d heard somewhere that taking three packs of birth control pills all at once would do it, but I didn’t have any, and I didn’t know where to get any. I called a Planned Parenthood help phone number that I found in the phone book and asked the girl who answered if it was true that poking yourself up there with a knitting needle would do it.
“You could injure yourself or even die from doing that. Don’t do it! I can refer you to someone here who can help you,” she said.
I said yes because I was too scared not to, but I didn’t want anyone’s help. I just wanted it to go away. I didn’t know anyone who’d had an abortion, and I didn’t know how to go about getting one, either, but I knew that was what I wanted. When the receptionist put me on hold, I hung up.
I decided to tell Mrs. Benson after she stopped by with a bag of lemons from her tree the next morning and asked me how my job at the recreation center was going.
“I lost it,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t know. How come?”
I bowed my head and tried to hide my teary eyes from her, but she kept looking at me until I had no choice but to look up. “I’m in big trouble, as usual,” I mumbled.
“I’m pretty familiar with trouble, so why don’t you tell me about it. Maybe I can help?” she said.
“I’m pregnant,” I replied.
“Oh, is that all? Well, don’t cry, honey. It’ll be okay. There are people in this world that can take care of that. I once had an abortion in the back room of an old doctor’s house. I was scared and it hurt, but things have changed since then, for the better.”
She told me she had a niece who worked at a women’s health clinic and she’d go home and call her right away. “Save those tears. You’ll need ’em later.” She smiled as she grabbed my hand and gave it a big squeeze.
I got an appointment at the women’s health clinic the very next day. I had to borrow five dollars from Mrs. Benson for gas, and I drove myself because I didn’t want her to come with me, just in case they asked me about the father. I didn’t want her to know I was a criminal.
I gave them some pee and blood and waited in the reception room for more than an hour before they called my name and took me to an exam room. “You’re about seven weeks along, and you’re a little anemic too,” said the nice old lady doctor.
She asked if I’
d thought about what I wanted to do or if I’d told the father about it. “I haven’t told anyone and I’m not going to. I just want to get rid of it as soon as I can,” I said.
“I understand,” she said in a soft, calm voice.
She handed me a leaflet with information about termination. “You’ll need to make an appointment to have the procedure done, and it’s not likely you can get in until next Monday. The procedure costs four hundred dollars, and it would be good if you got someone to drive you home and look after you for a day or two.”
I felt my chest clench and heard myself gasp when I heard that. “I don’t have any money right now. It might take me a couple of weeks to find someone to borrow it from,” I sobbed.
I felt like running away, and scooted off the exam table so quick I almost knocked her off the stool she was sitting on.
“Don’t wait too long, and let me know if you have trouble raising the money,” she said as she patted my arm and handed me a card with her phone number on it.
I went to the twins’ house to talk to them about borrowing money. They’d stopped selling pot after they got busted just before graduation. I hadn’t turned them in, but I think they thought I did because they both quit talking to me at the same time.
Their mom answered the door. She told me they’d left for Colorado the week before for college. Next I went to the car dealer who’d sold me my car and asked him to buy it back. “It’s got a brand-new starter, two new tires, and the oil has just been changed,” I told him.
“I don’t want it. Wouldn’t give ya fifty bucks for it,” he said.
I couldn’t ask Mom for the money because she’d given me money for the new tires the month before. Besides, if I asked her she’d want to know what I needed it for, and I wasn’t about to tell her. I knew Mrs. Benson didn’t have any money because she only got a little bit of a retirement from her job at the shirt factory. I thought about Aunt Flo. But I hadn’t spoken to her in two years, since Dad died, and I thought she was still mad at me for telling her I wrote the lyrics to Tyler’s song. I was afraid she’d hang up on me if I called, so I didn’t.