Scar Girl (9 page)

Seeing that freaked me out. But the paddle wasn't for hearts. It was for sonograms. Agnes, Theresa, and I watched the grainy black-and-white TV monitor as the doctor moved the paddle all around my stomach. The room was quiet, and my attention wandered from the monitor to the doctor's face.

Every muscle in her jaw and neck had pulled itself tight, and her forehead was scrunched. After one last go-round with the paddle, she bit her lower lip, pushed her stool back, and looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

The doctor put the paddle back in its holder and took my hands. She looked me straight in the eye.

“I'm sorry, Cheyenne,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “There's no heartbeat. You're having a miscarriage.”

One of my sisters gasped—I'm not sure which one—and at first, I didn't know why. Dr. McCartney kept holding my hands and watching, waiting for me to catch up.

I did.

No heartbeat.

My baby was dead.

HARBINGER JONES

I'm a socially awkward, disfigured, guitar-playing coward. Try to tell
that
story in two hundred and fifty words or less. It can't be done. I mean, it literally can't be done. I know. I tried. At least twenty times I tried.

I finally decided that I should just ignore the word count in the Scranton essay instructions and get everything I could think of down on paper. Then I could go back and edit later.

I had this English teacher in high school who liked to say that “all good writing is rewriting.” I didn't know what that meant at the time—if she hadn't taken pity on me, I think I would have failed her class—but now I understood. The musical equivalent is “We'll fix it in the mix.” When you record music, you try not to worry too much about equalization or effects when you're laying down basic tracks. You just need to make sure the performances are good. Anything else can be corrected when you mix all the tracks down to the master. Fix it in the mix.

I didn't know where to start my story, so I started with the obvious: the day I got these scars, the day I was tied to a tree during the thunderstorm. At first it was hard to drag those memories back to the surface. I'd spent a lifetime trying to bury and forget them, like they were the bones of someone I'd murdered. But the more I wrote, the more I needed to write.

I filled pages with details of the storm and the aftermath of being severely burned: the endless medical tests and procedures, how other kids treated me, all that time I spent with Dr. Kenny.

By the time I got to the part of my narrative where I met Johnny, in middle school, the pencil was flying across the page. I remembered every detail like it was yesterday. I could still see the bully—Billy the Behemoth—who Johnny stood up to on my behalf. I could still see Johnny's eyes staring Billy down.

I finished writing that scene and put the pencil on my desk.
Maybe,
I thought,
the story of my life is really the story of my friendship with Johnny.
I never had any siblings, and Johnny was like an unofficial brother. And like all brothers, we loved each other as much as we resented each other.

But did our relationship really define me? Was I so dependent on Johnny that my life didn't have meaning without him?

No. There was something else besides Johnny. Something bigger. Much bigger.

I smiled as I picked up the pencil again. It felt good to write. Felt good to get so much of it out of me. After a while, the writing wasn't even about Scranton. The exercise became its own reward.

CHEYENNE BELLE

A late-term miscarriage was what the doctor called it. Anything before twenty weeks—and we figured out that I was sixteen weeks—is a miscarriage. Anything after is a stillbirth. That's what they told us.

I just lay there and cried. The doctor left the room so my sisters and I could have a few minutes. I don't know how long I cried, but it was a long time.

I had only just decided to keep the baby, but maybe I'd been leaning that way all along. I mean, I'm definitely pro-choice and all—who am I or anyone else to tell girls what to think or what to do with their bodies—but given who I am and how I was raised, I don't know if I could've made any other decision. It was my
choice
to keep the baby. I mean, think about the words to “Lullaby.” Of course I was going to keep the baby.

By that point, though, none of that stuff mattered.

The doctor's words—
There's no heartbeat—
were stuck in my brain like a skipping record. What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

Once I calmed myself down enough, I had only one thought. I squeezed Theresa's hand and said, “Get it out of me.” She nodded and went to get the doctor.

An hour later, after more paperwork, after Agnes went home to get her money and had come back, the doctor was administering a local anesthetic.

The procedure for getting a dead baby out of you is pretty much the same as for an abortion. Either way, it's fucking awful. It's called a D & C. I didn't want to know anything about it, but Agnes kept asking questions.

“What does that stand for?”

“Dilation and curettage.”

“What do you actually do?”

“We'll dilate Cheyenne's cervix and then remove the entire contents of her uterus.”

“How?”

The doctor was explaining all this while she was doing other things to prep for the procedure. She reminded me of Richie's dad, Mr. Mac, who never seemed to have a moment when he wasn't doing something.

“We use something called a cannula tube. It creates a gentle suction that allows us to draw out any tissue.”

I couldn't help but notice that she never referred to what was inside me as a baby.

“Wait,” Theresa said. “You mean you, like, use a vacuum cleaner to suck the baby out of her? Gross!” Agnes looked at Theresa like she was going to kill her.

“Okay, girls, time for you to go to the waiting room,” the doctor said abruptly. “This will take about thirty minutes, and the anesthesia is going to make Cheyenne feel a bit woozy. She'll need your help getting home.”

“Of course, Doctor,” Agnes said. Theresa rolled her eyes at Agnes's perfect way of speaking, and then the doctor and I were alone.

“Does the father know?” she asked me as she started the process of dilation.

“What? Oh, no. I can't tell him.”

Dr. McCartney looked at me. “Did he hurt you?”

The sedative was starting to kick in, and it took me a minute to understand what she was getting at.

“Hurt me?”

“Is that why you can't tell him?”

“No, no, it's not like that at all. He was in an accident a couple of months ago and lost his leg. He's dealing with his own shit. Sorry.” I corrected myself, “Stuff.”

The doctor smiled at me and went back to her work.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked.

“Shoot,” she said.

“Johnny, the dad, stood up without his prosthetic leg, lost his balance, and fell on top of me yesterday. We landed on a bed. It wasn't too hard or anything, but could that have made this happen?” I couldn't keep the fear out of my voice.

“No, Cheyenne,” she answered. “I don't think so. It would have to have been a pretty big trauma to your body, and what you're describing doesn't really fit the bill.”

“Then why did this happen?” I started crying again.

“Look.” She held my hand. “There could be lots of medical reasons, some of them hereditary—”

I chuckled under my breath, but loud enough to cut the doctor off. “My mom has seven children, all girls,” I explained, and then remembered that wasn't the whole story. “But my sister Theresa lost a baby last year. It was a stillbirth, at home, in bed.”

“That could be an indicator of the hereditary nature of what's happening here. Is your sister okay?”

“Actually, she's usually a pretty big bitch.” Dr. McCartney smiled but didn't play along with the lame joke I was trying to make. Given how nice Theresa was being, I knew it was a pretty crappy thing to say. “Maybe that's harsh,” I added, trying to redeem myself. “I mean, she's here now. That's more than I've ever done for her.” I paused before adding, “Maybe I'm the bitch.” Dr. McCartney chuckled with me at first, but noticed almost right away that my laughter was morphing into sobs. I was totally losing it.

Squeezing my hand one more time and letting it go, the doctor went back to work while she talked to me. “There are genetic markers that we're only just now beginning to understand. But like so much of what can go wrong with the human body, sometimes there is no rhyme or reason. It is what it is. That doesn't make it better or easier, but it also doesn't preclude you from having children someday in the future—far in the future. Speaking of which, you should probably make an appointment to come back and talk to me about birth control.”

I nodded and was quiet.

Other than little words of explanation (“You might feel a little pinch”) or encouragement (“You're doing great, Cheyenne”), Dr. McCartney didn't talk again until it was finished.

“Your body's been through a lot, and I want you to get rest. I'm going to give you a prescription for pain medicine and one for antibiotics. Take the pain meds as you need them, but be sure to finish the entire flight of antibiotics.” She took my hand, squeezed it, and looked me square in the eye. “You're going to be fine, you understand? You have a good family. Let them take care of you.

“Stay here for a few minutes,” she said as she stood up. “I'll send your sisters in.”

She left the room. I muttered, “Thank you,” to an afterimage of Dr. McCartney and started crying again.

HARBINGER JONES

I told my parents I wasn't feeling well and ate dinner in my room. I wanted to keep working on the essay, and I didn't want them to know what I was doing. I was pretty sure they would both completely freak out, especially my dad, and that wasn't what I needed just then. I wasn't even sure that I actually wanted to go to college. I mean, the idea was more and more appealing, but I wanted to keep my options open. For now this would stay my secret.

I wrote until my vision was blurred and my hand was so cramped I could barely hold the pencil. It was 3:00 a.m. when I stopped, and dozens of notebook pages were filled, front and back. I got all the way to the moment in the story of my life when Johnny suggested we start a band.

The more I thought about that moment, about me and him in his house, listening to records and talking about music, the more I realized that was the moment my life really began. So I used my cramped hand to scratch,
And that was how it all began,
onto the page before finally stopping for the night.

Take that, admissions professional,
I thought.
I'm already so far over your word count as to be ridiculous, and now I'm telling you that I haven't even started yet.

For some reason, I thought that was really funny, and for the very first time in my life that I could remember, I fell asleep giggling.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I took one of the pain meds, took my antibiotics, and slept that night at home like I'd never slept before. When I woke up the next day, a Sunday, my parents and most of my sisters had gone to church. Only Theresa and I were in the house.

She was in bed when I rolled over and opened my eyes.

“Am I still cool with Mom and Dad?”

Theresa was lying there with her Walkman on, listening to God-knows-what-awful pop music—Debbie Gibson or Madonna or something. Her favorite song, which she played all the time, was “All You Zombies” by the Hooters. It has to be the dumbest song ever recorded. Did you know that that band put it out as a single not once, but twice, and that they included it on two different albums? Way to beat a dead horse, guys.

Anyway, Theresa didn't hear me, so I took off my sock to throw at her, you know, to get her attention. Only when I bent over, my midsection really hurt.

I knew I'd moaned, but I didn't realize how loud until Theresa sat up and dropped her headphones to her neck.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so,” I said, out of breath. “Is it supposed to hurt this much?”

“Yes,” she answered, slid the headphones up, and lay back down. I guess things were back to normal between us.

I still had a sock in my hand, so I threw it at her anyway.

“What the fuck, Cheyenne?” She was back up, and the headphones were back down.

“I don't know, maybe a little support?” It was the wrong thing to say.

“A little support? Are you kidding?”

“Look, I—”

“No, you look. Aggie and I talked last night after you passed out. This cost us a lot of money.” I hated that people called my sister Aggie. I knew she didn't like it, because when people outside the family used that nickname, she always set them straight. But it was too late with Theresa; that ship sailed when Agnes—which is such a pretty name—was three.

“I'm gonna pay you back.” I don't know what I'd expected when I woke up, but it wasn't getting yelled at.

“With what, the money for your little band of weirdos and cripples?” When she wanted to, Theresa could be the biggest bitch on the planet. I was too weak to fight back, so I laid my head down and closed my eyes. The connection I'd had with my sisters the day before felt so real and so nice, but it was like a temporary tattoo that had worn off overnight.

“I'll get a job,” I said without any emotion. Theresa snorted.

I lay there for another minute before the sock I'd thrown at Theresa came back and hit me in the face. I sat up and looked at her. Something in her face had softened a little.

“Look, if there's anyone in the world who knows how you feel, it's me, and I'm sorry if I sound like a bitch.” I didn't answer. I think maybe she was waiting for me to tell her that it was okay, that she wasn't a bitch, but that wasn't going to happen, so I just kept my mouth shut until she finished. “But you'll get over this. You're not the first girl to lose a baby, and you won't be the last.”