Around the end of March it occurs to Lou that she hasn’t had a period in over a month. She’s not worried. The one time she isn’t certain that Tom pulled out is New Year’s Eve, and she’s had a period since then.
In the middle of April she urinates into an empty pickle jar and takes the bus to a drugstore that has a big, hand-painted window sign announcing
“PREGNACY TESTS! RESULTS IN2 HOURS
!” The misspelling of pregnancy and the exclamation
marks suggest to her someone easy-going and grateful for business. Not that she gives a shit what an illiterate pharmacist thinks.
She waits the two hours in a restaurant, drinking coffee in the booth by the window. Every other passerby seems to be a mother with a baby or young children. Most of the babies are crying, and all the children that aren’t acting up look miserable. All the mothers that don’t look vindictive look tranquillized.
When she goes back to the drugstore, the pharmacist flips through a tray of cards and reads aloud last names: “Ferguson, Farquar, Feldman …” Are these all women having pregnancy tests? “Field,” he says finally. “Negative.”
“Oh,” Lou says. “Oh, shit.”
The pharmacist doesn’t look much older than she is, and his hair is long for a pharmacist, curling over his collar. “Negative,” he says, giving her the once-over,“is good news.”
She misses another period. Her breasts are swollen and attracting second glances, and in the morning she craves Twinkies so badly she skips school to go to the store and buy them.
“I’m obviously pregnant,” she tells herself. And yet she’s obviously not. Even if the urine test was wrong, and even if Tom didn’t always pull out soon enough, she can’t imagine her body letting that bastard’s sperm in. It’s not some romantic idea she entertains that babies have to be born of love. It’s that her insides seize up at the thought of him. It’s that thinking of him and Sherry together, she has brought up bile.
On the third of May she goes for another test. Having failed to find an empty or near-empty jar or small bottle, she has urinated into a whisky bottle. “Believe it or not I think this is the second today,” the pharmacist says, checking out the Canadian Club label.
She tests positive. It’s the young, long-haired pharmacist who gives her the news. He says positive is always a sure thing, and
the reason she came up negative before was probably a combination of it being too early to tell and her urine being diluted.
She nods. Although there are people lined up behind her, she can’t move away. She stands there looking at the pharmacist, waiting for the entire textbook explanation of how she has come to this point in her life.
The pharmacist reaches for a pad and jots something down, then rips off the page, rolls it up and hands it to her like a joint.
“Give this guy a call,” he says quietly. “This guy’s cool.”
As if what he wrote might fall out, as if the piece of paper contains her one hope, which it does, she continues holding it the way he gave it to her. Suddenly she feels nine months pregnant. There is a baby inside of her, but what it feels like is a malignant tumour. She’s in shock at the thought that with every second it is replicating its cells.
A pay phone is in the restaurant, outside the washrooms. The abortionist’s name is Dr. Dickey. She pictures a homo. Twice she gets a busy signal, and then she is struck by a wave of nausea and has to go into the Ladies and sit on the toilet, her head between her knees.
How can she be pregnant? That bastard. She should tell him. Scare the shit out of him. At school he strides right past her. The only time he has even looked at her was last week. He was coming toward her, outside the cafeteria, and because he slowed down and shook his head, she was sure he was gathering the courage to finally speak to her. But when he was a few feet away, she knew that he was stoned, that’s all, that he hadn’t seen her yet. She went up to him, forcing him to stop. God knows what got into her, but she grabbed one of his hands, yanked it up and down a couple of times, as if she were cranking an engine, and called him an asshole. He looked worried and annoyed. A few hours later they passed in the hall again, and he threw her that mad-eyed, sideways glance you get from a dog in a hurry.
She should tell him. Watch him sweat. The idea grows on her and banishes her nausea. She leaves the cubicle. In the mirror above the sink she investigates her face. Somewhere she’s read that pregnancy is good for your complexion. She bets Tom would marry her, do the hypocritical thing. When they stole cigarettes (“liberated” them, he said) and had to get out of the store fast, he held the door open for ladies. An English gentleman bullshit revolutionary.
What if she married him? She steps back and stares at herself, imagining herself with white, milk-huge breasts, a little baby in her arms, and Tom compelled to love her.
She can see that. Yes, she would like that. She leaves the washroom and the restaurant. On the sidewalk she brushes against a man who growls,“Watch where you’re going!” The effect is like a hypnotist snapping his fingers. She hurries back into the restaurant and down to the phone. What’s happening, she tells herself, fishing in her pockets for the dime, is that her hormones are sending up tempting messages. Her hormones are trying to trick her.
The abortionist’s line is still busy.
“God fucking damn it,” she says, banging down the receiver. She regards her stomach. It looks twice as big as it did fifteen minutes ago. It looks evil, like a punishment. It looks like the great multiplication of her sorrows.
That Sandy doesn’t have the flu or swollen glands but is pregnant strikes her from out of nowhere and as the truth at last. There are other facts she could face. Two weeks ago she bled, and she’s never had an orgasm, which up until now she thought you had to, to conceive—she could go on believing that—but the minute the idea of a baby enters her mind, she knows that her body has been claimed. All she wants to do is cup her stomach. She goes home early from school to cup it in private.
The next morning she pees in a whisky bottle and takes it to a drugstore that she’s noticed from the bus on account of its big pregnancy-test sign. She isn’t uncertain, and she doesn’t need confirmation. She goes to the drugstore because she assumes that you’re supposed to. Then you go to a pediatrician. From here on in she is dedicated to doing what a mother-to-be is supposed to do.
Already she loves her baby so much! The first thing she intends to tell the pediatrician is, if you have to chose between the baby and me, let the baby live. Having it inside her feels exactly like a miracle, as if an angel touched her stomach and a baby began to grow.
She can hardly think of Dave being involved. Of course she’ll marry him now, but there’s no reason she has to tell him why right away. It’s hard to connect him, grunting and pumping and sweating on top of her, either with a baby or with herself. When she was a virgin, she didn’t know how that felt. Now she knows. Now, with a baby inside her, she feels clean through and through.
“Miss Jones?” the pharmacist says.
Sandy gave a false name. “Yes,” she says.
“Positive. You’re pregnant.”
“Yes, I know.” She stands there until it’s clear he’s not going to tell her anything else.
Except for lying on her bed with her hands on her stomach, she doesn’t want to do anything. The truth keeps overwhelming her. Her eyes fill, and she swears to God she’ll be a good mother. She’d like to tell Norma. After she has the pregnancy test, that night, she longs to climb into Norma’s bed like she used to and whisper the news.
But what if Norma is shocked? Sandy’s pretty sure that Norma hasn’t even kissed a boy yet. And what if Lou wakes up and demands to know what the two of them are talking about? Lou will call her a stupid idiot for not being careful. She won’t
say “pregnant,” she’ll say “knocked up.” She might start yelling and wake their father. Phone up Dave, yell at him. Who knows what Lou might do?
Near dawn Sandy hears their mother in the t? room, and she gets out of bed and goes in to join her. Their mother gives her a sleepy smile and lifts the blanket for her to cover herself. A strong smell of their mother is under the blanket. It’s like an old picture of her, or seeing her tap shoes. Tomorrow night is her bath night. Wednesdays after dinner she brings her coffee mug and the kitchen radio into the bathroom and soaks in the tub, listening to a big-band program. Over the years the night and length of her bath have changed a couple of times because the program has. Sandy remembers that when she was little, their mother sang along with the music.
“Can’t sleep?” their mother asks, squeezing Sandy’s hand.
Sandy shakes her head. Their mother doesn’t let go of her hand, she’s so glad to have company. None of them sits with her on the couch anymore, Sandy realizes guiltily. When they watch t?, they sit on one of the chairs, or they lie on the floor. The couch seems to be their mother’s, Sandy tells herself, their mother’s private place—that’s the reason.
On the t? the test pattern flickers off, and the words “
THIS IS ONLY A TEST
” appear, accompanied by a pulsing beep sound.
“In case of emergency,” their mother explains, releasing Sandy’s hand and picking up her mug from the side table. “Such as nuclear war.”
Sandy sees herself running with her baby through fiery explosions to the bomb shelter. She slips her hands under the blanket and gently presses her stomach.
When their mother was pregnant with her, did she love her this much? Sandy can’t bear to think so, can’t bear it for their mother’s sake, because if she did, no matter how much Sandy ever loved her, their mother’s love was unrequited. Sandy lays
her head on their mother’s shoulder. When was the last time she even
thought
of their mother? “Mommy?” she says.
“Hmm?”
“You know what? I’m pregnant.”
The beeping on the t? stops. Sandy straightens to see their mother’s face. Their mother is still looking at the t?. She is frowning, and for a second Sandy is confused. Then she remembers that their mother doesn’t like talk about babies, and she is more confused. There must be exceptions. Her baby isn’t just any baby.
Their mother looks at her. “Are you going to have an abortion?” she asks sternly.
“No,” Sandy says. She is shocked.
Their mother pats Sandy’s leg. “Good.”
“I have a boyfriend. I’m going to marry him. Daddy met him. Did he tell you? Daddy likes him.” Their mother smiles. “But don’t tell Daddy anything yet,” Sandy adds anxiously. “Okay? I haven’t told him.”
“When you have an abortion,” their mother says,“your body goes into mourning.” Her eyes are back on the t?. Her voice is back to being kind and soft.
“But, Mommy, I’m not going to have one.”
“Your heart breaks. Your tear ducts won’t close. Your hair follicles act up. Your hair just gives up.” She looks at Sandy again. “You can’t trick nature. You can’t dance to the music and then kill the piper.”
On Saturday morning Sandy is being sick to her stomach in the fabric store washroom, when she is overcome with a superstitious feeling that not telling Dave will rebound on her baby. That her baby will be born deformed! She leaves work and goes straight to the hardware store, right through to the back, where Dave is fixing a toaster.
“Princess!” he greets her happily.
His big jaw drops at the news. He nods that they should keep
it a secret and that they should marry sometime in July and tell everyone afterward.
“I’ll make all its baby clothes,” Sandy says, talking to herself. “I’ll buy the material now. As long as I’m still working at the store, I can get a twenty percent discount.”
At home, as she’s hanging up her coat, she sees Lou lying on the living-room chesterfield. Just lying there on her back, without a book and with her hands folded across her chest, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Are you sick?” Sandy asks her.
Lou slowly turns her head. “I almost died.” She sounds proud.
“What?” Sandy goes over to her.
“A quack almost killed me.”
“What do you mean?”
Lou looks back at the ceiling. “But here I am. And this is my room. And you’re all here. And there’s no place like home.”
Sandy sighs. “I don’t get this joke,” she says. “Because you don’t look very good, you know. You’re white as a ghost.”
“But I
feel
good,” Lou says fiercely, smiling. “Why did Dorothy leave Oz to go back to Kansas? I’ve been lying here trying to figure that out. What’s she got back in Kansas? A wrecked house, poverty, no friends for miles. And Almira Gulch is still going to take Toto to the pound. That hasn’t changed.”
“Auntie Em,” Sandy says. “She misses Auntie Em.”
Lou throws back her head. “Ha!” Her thin white throat reminds Sandy of how frail her baby is. “That old bitch,” Lou says. She imitates Auntie Em’s voice. “I know three farm hands that’ll be out of a job before long.” Her eyes are so eager, so rapturous that Sandy walks away from her, over to the window. “Auntie Ems,” Lou cries,“are one of the biggest weapons the mortal coil has!”
Sandy looks out the window, aligning herself with the green grass, the little red maple covered in buds, the robin on the fire hydrant—all the signs of spring in their front yard.
N
o one hears their mother leave the house and push up the creaking garage door. All the windows are open, but everyone sleeps through the clanging of the aluminum ladder being carried to the other side of the house and dropped against the eaves.
Pigeons running around on the roof sound like gangs of women in stilettos. How did their mother move so quietly up there? On the day of her funeral the three girls argue about it. Everything—the mystery of their mother’s whole life—seems to boil down to how she crossed right over their heads without waking them. She just tiptoed. She crawled. She slid, seated along the peak. She walked along the peak like a tightrope walker. She could have, she was a dancer! In that wind?
“She floated,” offers the drunk, their father, and this shuts them up because naturally they don’t believe it, but they can picture it, their mother’s long white billowing nightgown. Because it’s an angel image.