Harvesting the Heart (30 page)

"Don't,"
I warned him. "You'll catch it."

Jake
had smiled. "Me?" he said. "I'm invincible."

On
the fifth morning I had the flu, I stumbled into the bathroom to
throw up, and I heard my father walking by the door. He paused, and
then he went down the stairs. I looked into the mirror for the first
time in days, and I saw the thin, drawn face of a ghost: pale cheeks,
red eyes, cracks at the corners of my mouth. And that's when I knew I
was pregnant.

Because
I was not sick, I forced myself to get dressed in my school uniform,
and I went down to the kitchen. My father was eating cornflakes,
staring at the bare wall as if there were something there he could
see. "I'm better, Dad," I announced.

My
father lifted his eyes, and I saw a flicker of something—
relief?—as he gestured to the other chair. "Eat
something," he said, "or you'll blow away."

I
smiled and sat down, trying to block out the smell of the cereal. I
concentrated on my father's voice, laced with the sounds of his
homeland.
One
day, Paige,
he
used to say,
we'll
be takin' you to Ireland. It's the only place on God's great earth
where the air is pure as fine crystal and the hills are a green magic
carpet, streaked with blue-jewel streams.
I
reached for the cornflakes and ate several out of the box, knowing I
had learned the lesson he hadn't: there was no going back.

The
cornflakes tasted like cardboard, and I kept staring at my father,
wondering exactly how much he knew. My eyes began to swim with tears.
I had been his biggest hope. He would be so ashamed.

I
went through the motions of school that day like rituals, numbly
going to my classes and taking notes from teachers I did not hear.
Then I walked slowly to Jake's garage. He was bent over the hood of a
Toyota, changing spark plugs. When he saw me, he smiled and wiped his
hands on his jeans. In his eyes I could see the rest of my life.
"You're all better," he said.

"That,"
I told him, "isn't quite true."

I
did not need parental consent for an abortion, but I did not want my
father to know what I had done, so I committed the greatest sin of my
life one hundred miles away from my hometown. Jake had found the name
of a clinic in Racine, Wisconsin—far enough from Chicago that
no one would recognize us or pass along rushed whispers. We
would drive there early on Thursday, June 3, the first available
appointment. When Jake had told me of the wait, I had stared at him
in disbelief. "How many people," I whispered, "could
there possibly be?"

The
hardest part was surviving the weeks between when I first knew and
when we left for Racine. Jake and I did not make love, as if this was
our punishment. We'd go outside every night, and I would sit in the
valley of his legs, and Jake would cross his hands over my stomach as
if there were something he could truly feel.

The
first night, Jake and I had walked for miles. "Let's get
married," he said to me, for the second time in my life.

But
I did not want to enter a marriage because of a child. Even if Jake
and I wanted to marry someday, a baby would have changed the entire
reason behind it. After every argument and every petty disagreement
in years to come, we would both blame the child that brought us into
the mess. And besides, I was going to college. I was going to be an
artist. This was the reason I gave Jake. "I'm only eighteen,"
I said. "I can't be a mother now." I did not add the other
reason that ran through my mind: I
don't
know if I ever can be one.

Jake
had swallowed hard and turned away. "We'll have others," he
said, resigning himself. He lifted his face to the sky, and I knew
that traced among the stars, he saw—as I did—the face of
our unborn child.

On
the morning of June 3 I got up before six o'clock and slipped out of
the house. I walked down the street to Saint Christopher's, praying
that I wouldn't see Father Draher, or an altar boy who went to Pope
Pius. I knelt in the last pew and whispered to my twelve-week-old
baby. "Sweetheart," I murmured, "Love. My darling."
I said all the things I never would get to say.

I
did not enter a confessional, remembering my old friend Priscilla
Divine and her knowing voice: "There are certain things you just
don't tell a priest." Instead I silently recited a string of
Hail Marys, until the words all ran together and I couldn't
distinguish the syllables in my mind from the sound of my pain.

Jake
and I did not touch on the way to Racine. We passed thick rolling
farmland and fat spotty Holsteins. Jake followed the directions the
woman on the phone had given him, sometimes pronouncing the names of
the highways out loud. I unrolled the window and closed my eyes into
the wind, still seeing the rush of green, black, and white; the flat,
level land and its ornaments, tassels of new corn.

The
small gray building had very little to mark it for what it was. The
entrance was at the back, so Jake helped me out of the car and led me
around the corner. Surrounding the front door was an angry, snaking
cord of picketers. They wore black raincoats splashed with red, and
they carried looming signs that said
murder.
A
s
they
saw Jake and me they thronged about us, crying out gibberish I could
not understand. Jake put his arm around me and pushed me through the
door. "Jesus Christ," he said.

The
tired blond woman who served as a receptionist asked me to fill out
my personal information on a white card. "You pay up front,"
she said, and Jake removed his wallet and, from it, three hundred
dollars he'd taken from the cash register at his father's garage the
night before. An advance, he'd called it, and he'd told me not to
worry.

The
woman disappeared for a moment. I looked around the white walls of
the room. They were free of posters; there was only a handful of
dated magazines for people to read. The waiting area held at least
twenty people—mostly women—all looking as if they'd
stumbled in by mistake. In the corner was a small paper carton filled
with plastic blocks and Sesame Street dolls, just in case, but there
were no children to play with them.

"We're
a little backed up today," the blond woman said, returning
with a pink information sheet for me. "If you want to take a
walk or something, it will be at least two hours."

Jake
nodded, and because we'd been told to, we shuffled outside again.
This time the picketers cleared a path for us and started to cheer,
assuming we'd changed our minds. We hurried out of the parking lot
and walked three blocks before Jake turned to me. "I don't know
anything about Racine," he said. "Do you?"

I
shook my head. "We could walk in circles," I said, "or
we could just go straight and keep track of the time."

But
the clinic was in a strange area, and though Racine wasn't all that
big a town, we walked for what seemed like miles and all we saw were
sectioned farms and a waste-water treatment plant and fields empty of
cows. Finally, I pointed to a small fenced-in area.

The
little playground was oddly misplaced in the middle of this town; we
hadn't seen any houses. It had a string of swings, the cloth kind
that hugged your bottom when you sat down. There was a jungle gym and
monkey bars and a hexagon of painted wood that you could spin like a
merry-go-round. Jake looked at me and smiled for the first time that
day. "Race you," he said, and he started to run toward the
swings.

But
I couldn't. I was so tired. I had been told not to eat anything that
morning, and anyway, just being there made me feel as heavy as lead.
I walked slowly, carefully, as if I had something to protect, and I
picked a swing next to Jake's. He was pumping as high as he could;
the entire metal frame seemed to shake and hump, threatening to come
loose from the ground. Jake's feet grazed the low, flat clouds, and
he kicked at them. Then, when he'd gone higher than I'd thought
possible, he jumped from the swing in midair, arching his back and
landing, scuffed, in the sand. He looked up at me. "Your turn,"
he said.

I
shook my head. I wanted his energy; God, I wanted to put this behind
me and do what he had just done. "Push me," I said, and
Jake came to stand behind me, pressing his hands at the small of my
back every time I returned to him. He pushed me so forcefully that
for a moment I was suspended horizontally, grasping the chains of the
swing, staring into the sun. And before I knew it, I was on my way
back down.

Jake
climbed on the monkey bars, hanging from his knees and scratching his
armpits. Then he put me on the merry-go-round. "Hold on,"
he said. I pressed my face into the smooth green surface of the wood,
feeling the sheen of warm paint against my cheek. Jake spun the
merry-go-round, faster and faster. I lifted my head but felt my neck
get whipped by the force, and I laughed, dizzy, trying to search out
Jake's face. But I couldn't make sense of anything, so I tucked my
head back down against the wood. My insides were spinning, and I
did not know which way was up. I heard Jake's labored breathing, and
I laughed so hard that I crossed the fine line and started to cry.

I
did not feel anything, except the hot lights of the clean white room
and the cool hands of a nurse and the distant suck and tug of
instruments. In recovery, they gave me pills and I drifted in and out
of sleep. When I came to, a pretty young nurse was standing next to
me. "Is there someone here with you?" she asked, and I
thought,
Not
anymore.

Much
later, Jake came to me. He did not say a word. He leaned down and
kissed my forehead, the way he used to from time to time before we
became lovers. "Are you okay?" he asked.

It
was when he spoke that I saw it: the image of a child, hovering just
over his shoulder. I saw it as clearly as I saw Jake's face. And I
knew by the storm of his eyes that he saw the same thing near me.
"I'm fine," I said, and I realized then that I would have
to get away.

When
we arrived at my house, my father was not yet home; we had planned it
this way. Jake helped me up to bed and sat on the edge of the
comforter and held my hand. "I'll see you tomorrow," he
said, but he made no move to go.

Jake
and I had always been able to say things without words. I knew he
heard it in the silence too: We would not see each other tomorrow. We
would not see each other ever again; and we would not get married and
we would not have other children, because every time we looked at
each other the memory of this would be staring back at us.
"Tomorrow," I echoed, forcing the word past the lump in my
throat.

I
knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of
my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and
He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He
had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart. That was
the day I lost my religion. I knew that I could no longer pass away
in a state of grace, no longer make it to heaven. If there was a
Second Coming, Jesus would no longer die for my sins. But suddenly,
compared to everything I had been through, it didn't matter much at
all.

Even
as Jake was stroking the skin of my arm, making me promises he
knew he would not keep, I was forming a plan. I could not stay in
Chicago and know that Jake was minutes away. I could not hide my
shame from my father for very long. After graduation, I would
disappear. "I won't be going to college after all." I spoke
the words aloud. The sentence hung, visible, black printed letters
stretched across the space before me. "I won't be going."

"What
did you say?" Jake asked. He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw
the pain of a hundred kisses and the healing power of his arms around
me.