Pregnant Pause (2 page)

My mother should have known by now that I wasn't about to let her have her way. I'm way too stubborn for my own good, and I know this, but I couldn't help opening my big fat mouth. "That's what you think," I said. "You can't
drag
me all the way to Kenya, or California, and even if you could, I'd only run away." I crossed my arms and stood pouting in the kitchen like a little kid. My dad jumped up from his chair. He looked like he was about to throw me over his shoulder and march all the way to Kenya right that second. I saw him start to open his mouth, but before he could yell at me, I shouted, "And anyway, Lam asked me to marry him and I said yes, so there, we're getting married."

My mom yanked her silky scarf from around her neck and I thought for a moment she was going to wrap it around mine, but she slammed it and her hand on the kitchen counter and looked purple-faced at my dad for help.

"Is that so? Well, you can't get married at sixteen without our consent," Dad said, his voice firm, as if to say,
So that's that—end of discussion.

"Fine," I said. "Then we'll just live together, but I'm not going with you."

I knew this would get my missionary parents good. There's nothing like adding the sin of living together on top of the sin of sexual intercourse. Only in the end, my parents got
me
good, because they agreed to the marriage. They insisted on it even, and the way they insisted made me feel like they were tricking me somehow. I just couldn't figure out how. Maybe they and the Lothrops had decided to let us get married and all because they figured we'd mess it up so royally that we'd finally come to our senses and give up the baby and then go our separate ways. Oh, yeah, I could just see the four of them hatching up some kind of scheme like that. My parents had talked it over with the Lothrops before I even had a chance to tell Lam what I had said. And I needed to talk to Lam because the truth is, I lied. Lam had never asked me to marry him. Who knew my parents would actually go for that idea? Luckily Lam knows me pretty well, and he said he knew what was up as soon as his mother jumped on him about it.

"Don't worry. I was cool about the whole marriage thing," he said when I did call him. "I was like, yeah, I asked her, so what? We love each other and we're going to have a baby, so why not get married?"

***

So, it ends up Lam's parents and my parents decided marriage was the best solution if we were so hell-bent on keeping the child. They acted like the whole thing was their idea in the first place. They had it all reasoned out. A child should have both parents, and by getting married I'd have a home, because my parents are only renting the house we're in and the lease is up today, and both sets of parents agreed that this baby was Lam's responsibility, too, so it was the right thing to do. If I got married I'd live with Lam and his family. We didn't know what we wanted, me and Lam, but it sounded a lot better than either Kenya or California, so we agreed to get married.

Now I'm in court again, only this time it's not for stealing anything, it's to get married, and I'm seven months pregnant, but I look and feel like I'm nine and ready to give birth any minute. My sister, Sarah, flew in from California for a couple of weeks, more in support of my parents than me, and she's looking at me squeezed into this orange maternity dress that makes me look like a pumpkin, and she's shaking her head. I think she's still wondering how I, the loser/moron/geek/freak/coffee-addicted, cigarette-addicted, booze-addicted, food-addicted, shopping-addicted younger sister ended up in this family in the first place.

My mom is dressed in beige and she's got her soft brown hair all knotted in a bun, and both she and Dad are looking so calm, maybe even a little pleased, and I know they're probably just so relieved to be getting rid of me. No more playing police or grounding me for the rest of my life. No more court dates and juvie sentences. I'm someone else's headache now.

Lam's parents are here, too, and it's a good thing they love babies, because they hate me for supposedly ruining their precious son's life. Who do they think pressured me to have sex in the first place? Who do they think got me onto dope and shit? Oh, don't worry, I'm off of everything except food and water and vitamins for the baby's sake. And believe me, getting clean was no walk in the park. Anyway, the Lothrops think they're so noble 'cause they run a camp for fat kids, but what's so noble about starving children for a living? They charge extra for the camp because it's specialized, with nutritionists and weigh-ins and such, and then they feed them half as much as any other camp, so they've got to be making big bucks at this fat camp. Since they love babies, and since they had always wanted two children but had lost their first child before it was a year old, and since they love Lam, and since we're getting married, and since my parents are leaving for Kenya, they've offered to take the baby if things don't work out with me and Lam, and they've offered us one of the cabins at the camp.

The camp is another reason why the Lothrops agreed to us getting married instead of just living together. We have to set a good example for the kids. I have to pretend I'm twenty (yeah, lying—what a great example), and we have to be married and pretend the marriage came before the baby, so that it doesn't look like I got knocked up by accident or anything. Also, I have to tell the campers not to take drugs, not to smoke or drink or have sex, should these topics come up, because they might think I'm cool, and that would be wrong. So—fun—I'm going to be living deep in the back of beyond, surrounded by pine trees and starving fat children, giving birth and raising my baby in a one-room cabin heated with wood, with the kitchen up the hill in the main house, and the bathroom a hornet-infested latrine six cabins away.

***

Now here I am, standing in front of the justice of the peace, trying really hard not to give birth right here on the courtroom floor, but really something feels like it's about to burst down below, and I'm trying to figure out if I really even love Lamont Lothrop—I mean, enough to live with him the rest of my life, forever and ever, amen. For two and a half years I thought I did. That's why we tried to run away together, that's why I climbed out of my bedroom window at three in the morning—to be with Lam, my soul mate, my prince of a guy, my knight in shining armor, only right now, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he looks more like a dude and nothing else.

I hear something about husband and wife, and Lam leans over and kisses me—leans way over. He's six-two, and I'm five-two; he's a hundred and ninety-nine pounds, and I'm not quite ninety pounds (well, usually). He's all muscle, and I'm all bones. I don't know how this marriage is going to work, but I kiss him and shout, "Yahoo!" and my dried-up, laced-up, thin-lipped sister comes forward with her ramrod-straight, penny-loafered husband in tow and says, "Don't expect us to cheer about this, Eleanor."

"I don't expect anything from you," I say, rubbing my belly, wishing I could put my feet up somewhere.

Lam puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes me, and I'm so proud of him for doing this in front of Sarah that I almost forgive him for showing up stoned.

"Well, I think once you see how hard it is to take care of that baby, you'll give our offer another thought. It still stands. We'll take your baby. We'll raise it as our own. Won't we, Robby?"

Robby, Sarah's husband, nods, but his sour expression tells me he doesn't want anything to do with anything coming from me, and that's another reason why I haven't agreed to Sarah taking the baby once it's born.

"Yeah, well"—I rub my stomach some more, because it comforts me and maybe comforts the baby and it definitely annoys Sarah—"it's my baby, mine and Lam's, so we'll see."

"Don't cut off your nose to spite your face," Robby says.

"Yeah, okay, whatever
that
means," I say. He talks like that all the time. He says things like "Don't beat a dead horse," and "Don't kill the messenger," and "When pigs fly." I guess he's got to borrow someone else's expressions because his own don't amount to a hill of beans. Ha! Take that expression, Robby boy.

My new mother-in-law comes forward to join us while my parents and Lam's dad talk over "future plans." I hear the words "cabin" and "when the baby comes," but then Mrs. Lothrop is speaking to me, so I turn my attention to her.

"I guess some kind of congratulations are in order," she says, frowning, and I wonder what the hell I'm supposed to say to that. I look her up and down. She's tall, sturdy, and beautiful, in a rustic, country-woman sort of way, and she's got herself all dressed in black. Black pants, sleeveless black shirt, and black gardening clogs—you know, rubber clog things—a real funeral outfit, I figure.

"I guess so." I sorta smile.

"I'm so stoked, Ma," Lam says. "I can't believe I'm married."

"No, none of us can believe it," she says, and her sarcasm goes right over Lam's head.

He gives her a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for everything, Ma. I mean the cabin and furniture and junk."

We all jabber for twenty more minutes or so, but then my parents have to go because they have to finish packing and cleaning. They leave me their car, a hunk-a-junk they named Rambo, bought cheap and well used, and only to last them the three years they'd be in the States. I'm grateful for it, though, because I can't drive Lam's stick-shift Jeep, and I need it for my days off from the camp. I'm grateful, too, for the baby stuff they bought—crib and car seat and baby carrier and stroller.

Mom hugs me and kisses my cheek, and I see tears in her eyes. "I do love you, Elly," she says. "Anytime you want to join us, we'll get you a flight and take care of everything. Remember that."

I nod and feel ashamed for the millionth time that I'm pregnant. Yeah, I admit it, I'm ashamed. I talk a good game and my big talk gets me into all kinds of messes, but I know I've been stupid, and I know, too, that most likely, after I've made my sister jealous long enough and she's suffered some as payback for always being better than I am, I'll give in and hand her the baby to raise.

Dad pats my back and kisses the top of my head. "You're still my li'l gal," he says. "We're gonna miss you."

I nod and feel queasy in my stomach. I can see they're so anxious to get going, to fly far, far away, and get back to feeding the bodies and souls of people who really need them. I want to say, "I need you, too. I need you, Mom and Dad. I just have a crappy way of telling you." But it's too late. When it comes to me and my timing, it's always too late. Too late to get an abortion, too late to say I'm sorry, too late to say I need you, and I'm scared, and I don't want to live in a cabin in the woods. It's just too late, or maybe too hard to admit that I don't want a husband and baby, and that I'm just so tired of being me.

HERE'S what I hate about all the pregnancy books I've been reading. They're meant for perfect people who are going to have perfect babies and live perfect lives with their perfect husbands. Everything sounds so simple and orderly—even emergencies like miscarriages and preeclampsia and terrible stuff like C-sections and edema and having to stay in bed for the whole nine months. The writers make it sound like this calm, easily managed, well-behaved problem that we will all handle rationally. And I hate all the parenting magazines with the beautiful people and children on the covers, and all the bright toys and pretty living rooms and baby bedrooms in the photos inside. I'm thinking I'm going to put out a teen pregnancy magazine. Why not? And it will be real. Real people on the covers, and stories about how real people are dealing with being pregnant, and working and going to school, and parents and friends who are no longer there for you because you just don't fit in anymore, or they're too busy—and so are you, but in a different way—and how it feels to be left out of everything. Yeah, I really ought to start that one up. Right now, though, I'm making my way through the throng of fat kids who are moving into camp today, climbing the steep mountain slope thick with pine trees that leads to my humble new home, while Lam's in front of me telling me to hurry up because it's not just his wedding day, it's his graduation day, and he's anxious to get to the parties. All I'm anxious to do is to sit down. I notice kids hugging their pillows and their parents dragging trunks and staring at me as I huff it up the slope, and I can see their little minds working:
Is she fat or is she pregnant? She looks pregnant. Am I/is my kid in the right place?

The camp starts at the base of a mountain where there's a lake that smells like wet logs and ducks. Canoes are stacked on a rack at the edge of the water, two tall lifeguard chairs dug into the sand, a long dock with a ladder going down into the lake, and a rope with little plastic buoys marking off the shallow and deep parts. The dirt parking lot is down by the lake, and on the far side of the lake sit eight boys' cabins and four latrines dotted about the woods. The rest of the camp is tucked into the mountain itself, with the large red main cabin in the center, and the girls' cabins, latrines, activities huts, and the Lothrops' cabin/ office scattered in the woods on either side. From the parking lot, most of the buildings are hidden by the trees, and by the fact that they're all made of logs so they just look like part of the mountain. The climb to the cabins is steep and rocky, and black flies are nipping at my calves. I'm trying to swat at them and walk at the same time.

"Come on, Eleanor," Lam calls to me, his voice sounding impatient. He's reached our cabin. It's set back a ways from the others and is slightly bigger, too. It once housed the older kids, but this camp now only goes up to age fifteen instead of nineteen, and the older kids have become the camp counselors. Even I'm supposed to be a counselor-in-training, or CIT, and I've got two jobs, one to help out in the crafts cabin, and the other to help out in a dance class. What I know about crafts can be said in one word
—nothing!
What I know about dance is next to nothing, but I had to fill out a CIT application just like any other counselor here, and when it asked what training or experience I had and gave me a list to choose from, dance and crafts seemed like they might be the most fun. So I lied and said I had taken dance for six years. Really I had only had dance lessons for two, when I was six and seven. I also lied and said my mother and I did crafts all the time, because I thought the Lothrops might like me better if I said I did something homey like crafts with my mom. I mean, really, what was I thinking? Oh, and I had to have an interview, too, only it wasn't with Mr. and Mrs. Lothrop. Mrs. Lothrop was in some meeting in Boston, so it was with Mr. Lothrop and this crazy old bat of a lady with a witch's nest of wiry gray hair who sat in her wheelchair like it was a throne and who, it turned out, used to own and run this camp way back in the dark ages. I could tell by the way her evil black eyes squinted at me, she didn't believe a word I said about knowing how to dance and do crafts. She saw
liar
written all over me, and I knew it, but she didn't let on to Mr. Lothrop, and the only question she asked me was, "What would you do if a camper came up to you and told you she was homesick?"