Jersey Angel (13 page)

“I know, right?” She uncrinkles one and pops it in her mouth.

“I miss my grandma too,” I say.

“Oh, my little granny!”

“Mine made the best gravy.”

“There’s nothing like a grandma.”

“There really isn’t.”

Carmella dabs her eyes with a tissue. “We have good stuff to look forward to. We do,” she says, the Starburst bulging in her cheek. “Like Miss Merry Christmas. We’ll get nominated. You and me and Inggy. Of course, Inggy’ll probably win.…”

“Christmas!” I say.

“It’ll be here before you know it.” It seems so far off, but yeah, she’s right. Every year the senior class nominates four pretty girls and the town votes. All the girls ride on a float in the Christmas parade, but the winner sits high on top of the float wearing a crown. And she gets a hundred bucks.

“I should get going,” I say. I look in at Joe curled on his
side. “It’s hard, isn’t it? You break up with someone and then you can’t know them anymore.”

“I don’t always want to know them after I ditch ’em.”

“I do,” I say. “Sometimes, at least.”

“Well …”

“I didn’t mean to butt in.”

“Be his friend, by all means. I can’t be his
everything
.” She takes a pocket mirror from her bag and gives herself a once-over.

“Carmella,” I say, “what do you think it is about Inggy? That she’ll win?”

She yawns, blowing fruity Starburst and cigarette breath my way. “She’s got that
thing
. But,” she says, digging in her bag for another cigarette, then pointing it at me, “I’ll give her a run for her money.” She lights up, and smoke curlicues above our heads.

I jog back to 7-Eleven and my bike. The moon is bright in the dark sky, and I’m nice and warm inside my hoodie, my breath coming out in little clouds. Miss Merry Christmas. They’ll take our pictures and hang them all over town. Next to interest rates, pizzas, calzones, and
Super Savers
. Everyone will vote and crown a winner.…

Inggy’s beautiful, true. Cool and blue-eyed and queenly. Maybe that crown would look right on her head. Maybe
beauty trumps sexy. In theory it does. Beauty is better, I admit. But sexy is the body. It’s the eyes. It’s electric. It’s willing. I look at myself in the chrome of the doors of 7-Eleven. My long, curly hair blows all around my face and the 7-Eleven sign shines brightly in the reflection. There are lots of guys who might vote for me. I could win. Maybe.

In World Problems, Mrs. Crisp is talking about the Middle East when Sherry’s water breaks and trickles under her desk. “Shit,” Sherry cries, heaving herself up. “People, I’m having a baby.”

“Holy crap!” someone yells.

“Ew,” the kid sitting next to her says, inching his desk away.

Sherry clutches her stomach. “Shouldn’t I, like, feel something?”

Mrs. Crisp looks annoyed and then hurries over, sees the little puddle, and escorts her to the office. “Angel, tell Tony,” Sherry yells from the hall.

I hustle to the gym, where the boys are playing basketball, and wave Tony over. “Her water broke.”

“What am I supposed to do?” He’s for real. He stands there sweaty and panting and looking a little freaked.

“Call her. Go to the hospital.”

He thinks about this. “Yeah, okay.” And he runs back into the game and keeps playing, if you can believe it.

Inggy and I get updates throughout the day. Sherry’s home. Her contractions haven’t started, so she’s lounging on the couch with a diet soda and TV.

Then at seven-thirty I get a text from her. “Shithead won’t come to the hospital!!!”

Inggy gets the same text and calls me. “Can you believe him?”

“I know!”

“Maybe we should go,” Ing says.

“You think? Okay.”

Inggy drives us to the small Catholic hospital by the bay. Out in front there’s a statue of the Virgin Mary with her hands outspread. She’s standing in the middle of a thorny little garden with a blue spotlight shining on her. I’ve always liked the Virgin Mary because she’s a complicated woman, from what I remember from the stained-glass windows when my grandma took me to church. Even this particular Mary under the blue spotlight looks like she’s been around the block and could handle anything. I make the sign of the cross.

We wander for a while and finally wind up in a small maternity waiting area. Sherry’s still in labor, so we sit on the plastic couch and I watch an episode of
Police Women of Memphis
while Ing thumbs through a magazine. Things
aren’t exactly great between us, but they’re not terrible either. I buy us Junior Mints from the vending machine.

Ing pokes me. “Can you believe the next time we see Sherry she’s gonna be a mom?”

“Freaky.”

She shakes her head. “A whole new life is beginning for Sherry right now.”

I nod. “So weird to think your life could change instantly.”

“Yeah.”

I text Sherry: “ing and i r here. did u have it?” It’s nearly nine o’clock, and the place is quiet. A couple of nurses walk through, and one looks at us curiously.

My phone rings, making us jump. “It’s dead!” Sherry cries.

Ing and I huddle together, the phone between us.

“Dead?” I say, fingering a Junior Mint out of the box.

“Yes!”

“Where are you?” I ask, but she hangs up. Inggy turns pale, if that’s possible. “Dead,” I mouth.

We stare at each other for the longest time until a young nurse with many tiny braids and a gap between her front teeth stands over us and says, “Girls, you can stay for a few minutes, okay?” She brings us down the hall to Sherry’s room.

“It’s really dead?” Inggy whispers to the nurse.

“Stillborn, yes,” she says.

Sherry is teary, her hair sweaty and pushed off her forehead, and Mrs. Gulari is weeping in the corner, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe.” She wasn’t thrilled about Sherry having the baby, but you’d never know it now.

“Get a grip, Ma,” Sherry says. “It’s dead,” she tells us.

“Why?” Inggy says, and blushes. “I mean, how?”

“They don’t know. Stillborn. Do you guys think I should see it?”

I ask, “Was it a—”

“Girl.” Sherry swipes her eye with the sheet and smears eyeliner across it. “I didn’t really want it, but still … I have the worst luck, don’t I?” She smiles and bursts into tears, which gets Mrs. Gulari rocking and wailing louder. “I can see her if I want. They think I should. I don’t know.” She looks at us with big wet eyes. Inggy sits beside her and holds her hand. “It’s that bastard Tony’s fault. His genes are all screwed up. He drinks too much beer. Eats too many hot dogs. Man, it’s no good.” She sniffles.

“Geez, Sherry.” I sit on the bed. “I’m so sorry.”

“You think I should see her? The nurses say so, but I don’t know. Maybe you guys can take a look and if it’s not too bad I’ll take a look. Ma doesn’t want to.” Mrs. Gulari shakes her head and makes the sign of the cross.

I nod. “I’ll go see her.”

When the nurse comes back in the room Sherry says, “My friend here is going to take a look for me.” But the nurse says no, shaking her little braids, and goes on and on
about how Sherry should see the baby, that it helps with the healing process, but Sherry just looks at her, glazed. “Please,” she whimpers, a tear running down her cheek. “Can my friend look first, and then I will.”

The nurse sizes me up. “You’re eighteen?” she asks.

“I am,” I lie.

“Just for a minute,” she finally says.

I nod and follow her. “How did it happen?”

She shrugs. “These things happen sometimes. Congenital, maybe.” And again she talks about how we should encourage Sherry to see the baby, how it’ll help her deal with this.

She brings me into a small room where the baby’s lying wrapped in a blanket in a plastic crib. She’s the only baby in the room because she’s dead, which makes me feel a little shaky. I get cold feet for a sec but then step up and look at the little thing. It’s so weird. She’s beautiful and could be perfectly asleep except for being so still, which really dawns on me the more I stare at her. She has eyelashes and soft hair poking out of the edge of the blanket. “What happened?” I whisper to her.

Someone opens the door and the nurse turns away for a few seconds. I want to touch her, see that she’s real. I reach into the blanket’s fold and take out her hand, her hand with five little fingers and teeny fingernails. She’s not cold, not exactly, which is what I would have thought. I hold her hand for a second, and my heart is breaking a little.

This might be the most grown-up thing that’s ever happened to me, and I don’t like it. I wish I could rewind the last ten minutes and tell Sherry no. Now I’ll always know this baby. I don’t want to know her.

“Okay.” The nurse comes to my side.

I say something dumb then. “Could you maybe be wrong? Could she be not quite dead?”

She sorta smiles and tilts her head. “It does seem like she’s sleeping, the sweet thing.”

I walk down the hall with the nurse, feeling dazed. When Mossy was just a baby and I babysat, I’d carry him around in his little seat, even taking him into the bathroom with me because he was so little. He would watch me closely, drinking me in with his big eyes. Even though I was only eight, and he was so small in his feety pjs, I could see that he was already himself, that he was already a little person, just like I could see that Sherry’s baby was already inside there, even if she wasn’t going to get a chance to come out.

“Just another minute or two,” the nurse says to me outside Sherry’s room.

When I go back in Sherry looks at me closely. “Tell me,” she whispers.

“You don’t want to see her.”

“I don’t?” she asks. Her face morphs from relief to shock and back to dazed.

I shake my head. She can’t have that picture in her
head. Of that perfect baby. That glimpse of what might have been. She just can’t.

“Okay, thank you, Angel,” she says after a minute. “I’m going to name her Angel the second.” We sort of laugh. “Well, Giavanna Angel Gulari.” She swings her legs out of bed. “Okay, I’m going home.” She peeks at the clock. “
Millionaire Matchmaker
is coming on.” The nurse, lingering in the doorway, hustles her back to bed and tries again with the healing stuff, but Sherry just shakes her head.

When Ing and I leave, Mrs. Gulari is sitting at Sherry’s side holding her hand.

We walk through the hospital, which is quiet except for an occasional ding or beep. “That’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Inggy says.

I nod. “Me too, kinda.”

“What was she like?” Inggy says, touching me.

I really want to tell her, I do, but it just might get back around to Sherry if I tell anybody at all. Not that Inggy would blab, but it might be too hard to hold in. There are so many secrets between us now and that was never what I wanted. I wonder how it happened. “You don’t want to know. Really, Ing.”

“Oh! Was it terrible?”

“No, no,” I say, pushing through the lobby doors into the night dark. “Please, Ing.”

She puts an arm around me. “I love you, Angel.”

“I love you too.” It’s that kind of night, and my heart is
still breaking. Outside, the Virgin Mary’s arms are still open and I look at her calm face and think
Why?
“I can’t go home yet.”

“You’ll sleep over.” So we go to her house, and I change into one of her nightshirts and borrow a toothbrush. I climb into a twin bed, with the dust ruffle, and feel safe. Inggy sits at her desk gathering her books and homework for the morning. Then she clicks off the light and kneels by my side. “You’re so brave, Angel. I wish I was more like you.”

“You do?” I say, surprised.

“Yeah.”

“You have so much more than me,” I tell her. She leans her head against the mattress and I touch her fine, silky hair. “Ing, what’s going to happen to us?”

“You always ask me, you know that?”

“I do?”

“Yup.” I can hear a smile in her voice.

“Remember,” I whisper, “how tonight you said Sherry would become a mom and her life would change forever? Will anything happen to change us forever?”

“We’ll always be friends,” she says.

“Promise me,” I say.

“I promise. You’re my very best friend.” And nothing about tonight feels disingenuous at all. She kisses my forehead and climbs into the other twin.

Life goes on. Funny and sad how that is. At first, Ing and I talk about that weird black-magic night almost to remind ourselves that it really happened. Then we don’t talk about it at all. Nobody else does either. It’s almost unreal. There was Sherry’s huge stomach, then there was a baby for a half a second and then—poof—she was gone. Sherry asks us to come to the funeral, a mini funeral with Sherry and some of her family, but I say I’m sick. Inggy goes to the cemetery and tells me the coffin is tiny and Sherry still looks glazed and hasn’t washed her hair in days. And apparently it costs too much to get
Giavanna Angel Gulari
etched on the gravestone, plus there isn’t much room with Sherry’s great-grandparents already on there, so they settle for
Gia Gulari
, but Sherry says she’ll always be Giavanna Angel Gulari. I probably should have gone, but I just couldn’t.

•   •   •

I eat pizza at Fat Sal’s with Danny from 7-Eleven. We talk about fishing and school and how much we both love Boar’s Head pastrami. Nothing too scintillating, but it’s an okay date and the slices are perfectly cheesy. After, he asks me to come over and a watch a movie, and I say why not.

His place, a little apartment over someone’s garage, is pretty depressing, I have to admit, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He gets us beers from a mini fridge, and we sit on his sagging couch, practically on top of each other, the couch pulling us toward the center, and watch an action adventure. About ten minutes into the movie he says, “You like this?”

I shrug, a little bored. “What do you want to do, then?” I ask.

He’s still for a minute and then lies down on the mattress on the floor. It’s covered in light green sheets and a gold plaid blanket. He looks up at me. I take in the skanky apartment and say, “I don’t know.”

“Okay,” he says. I join him on the mattress and we talk for a while, staring up at the ceiling. Then out of the blue he asks if a candle would be nice.