Pregnant Pause (30 page)

"Thanks," I say. I turn to leave, and Elizabeth tells me to wait.

"We have one more award for you," she says into the microphone. She holds up a handmade plaque. For Eleanor Crowe, the Counselor Most Like Our Mothers (But in a Good Way) Award."

She hands me the plaque while everybody cheers, and then when the cheers die down, a group of girls from the back sing out, "Yes, Mother!" and everybody laughs. I head back to my seat, and another group calls out, "We love you, Elly!" and I'm so touched and embarrassed and happy and miserable at the same time. I wave and laugh to show them I'm grateful, but really, of all the awards to get on the day I give my baby away. If they only knew. I sit down, and my parents and the kids behind me all pat me on the back.

I want Emma Rose. I want to be her mother. I should be her mother. I
am
her mother.

The talent show is lots of fun. Most of the performances are funny skits or singing, and of course, there are my dancers. I'm so proud of them. They look really good up there. They look so pulled together. In class they'd argue about whose idea they should use, and who gets to be in front for this part, and who gets to be in front for that part, but onstage they're all together, dancing like the whole thing came to them so easily. Of course I'm thinking about Banner, because her dance was special, and I wish again that everyone could see her. I feel for her necklace around my neck and hold the clay thumbprint with the heart on it in my hand. I press my thumb into the heart.

When the talent show is over, I think we're through, but then Leo gets onstage and announces that for the grand finale, as with every year, he will play the video montage.

The lights in the cabin are turned off, and everyone is talking and excited. The montage opens with the Camp WeightAway sign and Mr. and Mrs. Lothrop greeting the campers. Then we see kids falling out of canoes at the lake, and parts of a swim meet, and Bo Winkler doing a belly flop—ouch! We see kids playing softball. Everybody in the lodge cheers at one point because there are like six shots in a row of Joe Trumbell missing the ball and finally he hits one. Joe stands up in the audience and raises his fists in the air. We see kids taking a shortcut through the woods in the morning running class, and in the cooking class Leo catches kids sneaking bites of food when the Lothrops aren't looking. There are scenes from cabin life, the weigh-ins, and a food fight in the dining hall, and shots of disgusting-looking globs of food. We see sick kids at the nurse's cabin, and all the different sports and classes, including my dance class. Leo has strung together several shots of me saying, "Who's going next?" over and over, and there's even a bit of footage where the MIL is standing behind the old bat in her wheelchair just outside the open doorway of the dance hut watching me with the girls. I don't remember them being there. I never saw them. I was so into what the girls were doing with their new dances that I never saw them. It makes me wonder how many other times those two were spying on me that I didn't know about. Leo captures me with my arm around little Bruce Whelan in the crafts hut, and sitting out on the porch of the hut talking with a group of knitters, and me working on my dulcimer, and I have my tongue stuck out to the side like a goofball. There's even one with Banner and me. Leo is shooting from behind us, and we're walking away with our arms around each other's waist. I don't remember that time, either. Then the screen goes blank, and I'm grateful that Leo didn't show the film he took of Emma Rose and me. I couldn't bear it. Not now. We all start to clap and cheer, but then the screen lights up and we see a shot inside the main cabin. There is Banner standing on the stage. Everybody gets really quiet.

Banner takes position in the middle of the room and poses as if she's about to dance. She's got her arms folded across her chest and she's facing sideways and her back is rounded and she's looking at the ground. She has one leg crossed behind the other, her foot pointed, and the top of it resting on the floor. Her leg is bent. "Okay, I'm ready," she says. Then we hear the music, this tragic
Madame Butterfly
music that Ziggy had made a copy of for her. Banner starts to move, but then she stops. She looks into the camera. "Wait," she says. "I forgot my dedication."

"Oh, right," Leo says. We don't see him; we just hear his voice.

Banner giggles and wipes at her eye with the back of her hand. "Okay, so, um, this is dedicated to Eleanor Crowe, because she's the best counselor ever, and I love her." She pauses. "Did I sound okay? I sounded stupid, didn't I? I should do it again."

"Banner, you're doing great. I know everyone would love to see you perform this for the talent show if we have one."

"I can't do it live. People will laugh at me. They always do. Anyway, I'm too fat to really dance." She pauses again and looks down for a minute. Then she looks back into the camera. "Eleanor is going to be so disappointed in me, isn't she? I should have done this for class, but I just couldn't." She bites down on her lip.

"She's proud of you. She thinks you're a good dancer. She told me so, and I know she would want everybody to see your dance, but she'll understand if you choose not to do it in front of everyone."

Banner nods and just stands there looking lost in thought.

"From the top?" Leo says, and she nods again and gets into position.

Yeah, I'm crying again, but so is everybody else. The whole audience is in tears, and the dance is so—so sad, her hurt comes right through the camera at us. She's just so tragic dancing around the room, but she's good, too. I mean you can't stop watching her. The expression in her eyes and her arm movements just hold you in a trance. She grabs at the air and you feel yourself being pulled into her neediness. She pushes away and you feel her anger. Her arms curve around her body and you feel her sorrow. I can see by the looks on the other campers' faces seated around me that they are feeling it, too. She lunges and turns and wraps her arms around herself, then reaches out to us as if she's begging for something, grasping, straining until it's too much and she falls to the floor. Then slowly she pulls herself up again, and she's spinning and flinging herself to the four corners of the room, searching for something, pausing in each corner, standing on tiptoe suspended, waiting, then falling back and spinning off in another direction, but none of them satisfy her, and she spins herself into the center and winds down until she's on the floor again all tucked and wrapped up inside herself.

The music fades and it's wicked quiet in the room, and I'm so touched by her dance and her dedication. Dear Banner. Poor, dear Banner. She really could have been a dancer when she grew up. I know she could have. What a waste of a beautiful life. What a loss for us all. I think this, and I think of myself. I don't want to waste my life. I want to make something of it. She dedicated the dance to me. I was important in her life. I'm not sure I've ever felt important to anybody. My parents have always made me feel that the AIDS orphans in Kenya are more impor tant than I am. I've always felt guilty for even needing them at all when they have so many other kids needing them. But Banner, and some of the other campers, they needed
me.
I've been important to them. And I'm important to Emma Rose. Or I could be. I should be. I'm her mother. I created her. I want to make her the most important person in my life.

I stand up, and I feel my mother's hand on my back. I turn around. "I'll be back. I just have to—to get a breath of fresh air. I've just got to..."

I don't finish. I leave before the lights come back on.

I GET OUTSIDE and I take several deep breaths. It's cool out and the air smells clean and icy and it reminds me of a winter's day snowboarding in the mountains. It's so pure and cool. There's a good breeze, and after a few minutes I get to feeling chilled. I decide to go for a walk. I step off the porch of the main cabin. I hear all the voices behind me, all those campers' voices, and all the counselors' voices. I love this place. I love living on the mountain, and the view to the lake, and all the pine trees, and the stone paths everywhere, and the cabins dotted about here and there, and all the kids, even the snotty and bratty ones. I never expected this. I never gave it a thought. All I thought about was myself and Lam. I hardly even thought about Emma Rose. Not until I met her. But now, as I walk along one of the paths, I feel like a whole world has opened up to me—a world beyond just myself. And I like it. It's better than just being me, and just thinking about who I am, and whether or not I'm being cool, and if Lam loves me.

I see a light on in my cabin, and I go over and open the door. I find Lam on the couch, leaning over my trunk/coffee table, sniffing cocaine.

"Great, really great, Lam," I say.

He holds out his rolled-up dollar bill to me. "You want? You're not pregnant anymore. You're free. You can have anything you want now. I've got some beer. It's kinda warm but—"

"What I want is our daughter," I say. "I want Emma Rose."

Lam leans back over the trunk and finishes his line. Then he blinks at me. "You shouldn't have named her," he says. "She's going to get a new name, anyway. Someone will rename her."

"I think I hate you."

"No, you don't." He smiles and flips his bangs out of his eyes. "That social worker called here. She said I have ten days to decide if I want the baby." He leans back on the couch.

"I want her," I say. I take a step farther into the room.

Lam spreads his arms out on the back of the sofa and stares at the ceiling. "Go ahead. I'm not stopping you. Figures we'd create a damaged baby, huh? I never thought of that happening, but I should have guessed."

"She's not damaged. She's perfect. Did you and your parents even look at her? Did you even meet your daughter? She's beautiful, just like we thought she'd be, and she does have your eyes and she does have my mouth, so there. She's us, you—you..."

I just want to kick him, but he's too stoned to care, so what's the use? I march past him and go to his ugly chest of drawers. I yank open the drawer and pull out all my clothes. "And by the way, this is the ugliest piece of furniture I've ever seen in my life!"

"Hey, don't knock it," Lam says. "I found it at the town dump. I got it for free."

"Town dump? Well, it smells like it, that's for sure. What a loser, Lam. You're such a loser."

Lam nods. "Yeah, so my parents keep telling me."

That makes me stop. I feel for Banner's necklace and press my thumb into her thumbprint. "Hey, look, I didn't mean it, Lam. You're okay. You just have to get off the stuff. You need to get clean. You're great. All the campers think you're so hot. And you know I'll always love you. You're my first love and the father of Emma Rose—you'll always be important to me. You're important, Lam. Your parents think so, too, and that's why they're so upset. They need you, even if you never take over this camp. They need you."

Lam acts like he hasn't heard me. He turns his head and checks out the skin around his thumb. "So I guess we ought to get a divorce and move on to the next exciting chapter of our lives," he says, sounding bored.

I don't know why it should, but it makes me sad to think of divorcing Lam. What a disaster our marriage has been from day one. What a total mess.

"Yeah, okay." I go over to the couch and dump a pile of my clothes onto the seat. "I'm sorry how it turned out, Lam," I say. "I don't blame you, you know. It just was never right."

He turns his head and looks at me. "So, I guess it's you and Ziggy, huh?"

"No. No, it's me and nobody. Ziggy was never really interested in me. I was just some kind of fantasy trip for him." As I say this, I realize it's true. It's one of those truths I know deep inside before I realize I know it. It's only speaking it now that I understand.

"Sorry, El." Lam sniffs and runs his finger through his bangs to shove them out of his face. "So, I'll have my peeps get in touch with your peeps, okay? For the divorce?"

"Sure, Lam. Okay, well"—I look about the room—"I'll come by tomorrow and pick up everything, all right?"

"Okay by me," he says.

I go over and kiss him on the cheek, and Lam's hand brushes mine. We both smile, and I know we've forgiven one another. For what? For marrying, I suppose, and making such a mess of it all. Then I turn and leave.

I GET BACK to the main cabin, and everybody's hanging around having a snack of the usual carrot and celery sticks, apple slices, and iced Red Zinger, but the night is winding down. I find my parents and tell them I want to say goodbye to the campers. Then I go around saying goodbye and thanks, and I love you, and be good, and I'll miss you, and all that, and I mean every bit of what I'm saying. I want to keep all the campers with me. I want to see them grow up and find out what happens to them all. I want to come back next summer, but I doubt the soon-to-be-ex-ILs would be too thrilled to hear that.

It's a big tear-fest for everybody as we all go around saying our goodbyes. I look for Ziggy, but I can't find him. Finally I go over to Leo. I've saved him for last.

"Thanks for everything, Leo," I say. "You've been so good to me. You
are
the best counselor and the best kind of friend."

Leo hugs me. "We'll keep in touch, Elly, won't we?"

"Yeah, I'll let you know my address when I know it. I'll tell the Lothrops. Oh, and Leo, I haven't told anybody, but I'm going to keep my baby."

Leo looks surprised and maybe happy. He pulls me over into a corner so we can talk better. "Elly, how? That's wonderful. Are you sure?"

I laugh. "Yeah, I'm sure. I don't know how. I mean, I know it sounds impossible, but I've got ten days to get a job and find a place to live, and I'm going to do it. I am. If I can do that, then maybe my parents will realize I'm not just being contrary or stubborn. I'm serious about this. Tonight has reminded me of something I've only just realized this summer, that I'm really good with kids, and I like that I matter to these campers. I want to matter to Emma Rose, too. I want to give her a good life."