Look at You Now (10 page)

I asked them, “You guys want some food? Please take anything.”

They both grabbed for the candy. Nellie talked while she chewed. “So what's the real story, Liz? Why are you hiding?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, so big deal, you got pregnant. Why hide?”

“Well . . . my parents think if people find out that I'm pregnant, it will ruin my life.”

They thought this was funny. Tilly said, “Everyone I know knows I'm pregnant. Guess my life is ruined.”

Nellie laughed, and then asked, “Why? Rich people don't get pregnant?”

“I don't know if we're rich people.” I said.

Nellie almost spit her food out. “Oh no? Think again, Liz. You are soooo fucking rich people—it's not funny. Except most rich people suck, but you're a nice rich person.”

Tilly smiled. “Yeah, you are. I mean, I don't know any rich people, I only see them on TV.” She thought for a second. “What's it like to be rich, Liz?”

“I don't know, Tilly. What's it like to be . . . whatever you are?”

“Poor? That's easy; it sucks, makes everyone pissed off.”

Nellie laughed. “Just so you know, Liz, poor, super poor, sucks cocks in hell. Not having enough makes people ugly and . . . tired.”

Tilly laughed. “And pregnant.”

They both cracked up—they'd moved on to the raisins by now. Nellie kept talking. “My mom is always mad about everything. I remember feeling so sorry for her, trying to help when I was little, but she was such a fuckup, got fired all the time and drank too much. . . . Why am I talking about this shit?” She went silent.

I looked at Nellie and then at Tilly and suddenly felt so stupid. I had never given an ounce of thought to people my age—kids—whose lives might be so different from mine, so insanely hard. Until that very moment, I truly imagined everyone knew their mom and dad, and had food, and a home, and love, and someone in the world who knew where they were, and paid attention to who they might become.

Nellie pulled a man's brown billfold out of her pocket. “I wish I could remember when I was a baby. Seems like my mom was so much happier. She looked happy, didn't she?” She pulled out of the
billfold a worn picture of an adorable little baby in the arms of a young girl—a girl even younger than us.

“
That's
your mom?” I said. Holy crap.

“Yeah, why?”

“How old was she when she had you?”

“Just a little younger than me.”

Tilly looked at the picture. “She's pretty, Nellie.”

“Yeah. I must look like the asshole who fucked her.”

What?
What did she just say?

I asked her, “What do you mean, Nellie, you mean your dad?”

“Yeah. It was a one-night stand. My mom says she doesn't remember him; only thing she remembers is that he was an asshole. When she's super mad at me, she says I must be like the asshole who fucked her.”

I was in shock. Nellie's words made me feel something way too deep and dark. It was so sad that Nellie could ever think or say those things about herself. My throat was tightening as I fought more tears back.

Tilly asked her, “So you never even met your dad?”

“I don't have a dad, Tilly.
No
dad, get it?”

We all sat there until Nellie said, “You got a picture of your mom or dad, Liz?”

“What? Um, no, but . . . I think I have a picture of my sisters and brothers when we were younger . . . I think.” I went over to my journal, which I kept slightly hidden beneath the two books I'd brought,
Great Expectations
and
Terms of Endearment
. I opened the journal to the last page and pulled out a black-and-white family photo of the seven Pryor kids. At that moment, I almost didn't want to show it to them. I felt bad that I had a family . . . and a dad I knew, and food and love. It was as though I was seeing the real view of myself for the first time. What must the girls think? How could I never have known until now the luckiness of my life? The picture was a Christmas card photo taken by a professional photographer when I was younger, about six years old. My brothers
were dressed in their Brooks Brothers button-downs, my older sisters and I in our knit dresses, and the twins were babies, sitting on my brothers' laps. We all dutifully stood in our places on and around the piano bench. Jennifer, one of the twins, was crying in the photo; I remember they couldn't get her to stop crying. In the dozens of pictures they took, she just kept crying. Dorothy, in her inimitable style, figured out a way to make it all work. On the Christmas card that year she had inscribed, “All the Pryors wish you a very merry Christmas . . . Well, almost all.” I turned around and hesitantly handed the photo to Nellie. She was as shocked as I'd been a minute ago, for a different reason.

“Get the fuck outta here, no way. That's your family? Is that you? You're richer than rich. That looks like a picture in a goddamned magazine.”

“Let me see.” Tilly leaned down. “Holy cow, that's so cute. There are so many of you. And you all have the same father?”

What? “Yeah, we have the same dad,” I said.

Nellie looked carefully. “Those are the twins?”

“Yeah.”

Tilly softly said, “Liz has a real family.”

“She sure fucking does.” Nellie looked out the window and then said, “Play a song, will ya? And not those sad songs you like: fun ones.” Tilly handed me the guitar. Nellie took off her cardigan and hollered, “Look out, 'cause I can sing.” I jumped on the bed and started with “Sweet Home Alabama,” while Nellie sang along. We laughed so hard Tilly almost peed her pants. We had missed lunch, so we fired up the new hotplate and ate Campbell's chicken soup with saltine crackers, a lot of saltine crackers. And a hundred SweeTarts for dessert. I looked over at Tilly and Nellie, and something felt different. Something let up inside, like a release. I had the feeling I get when I'm with my friends. Nellie and Tilly weren't strangers anymore, and I felt less like a stranger too.

Nellie stood up and stretched. She got so tired in the afternoons, she could barely keep her eyes open. Her ankles were even more swollen than the other day, and the boils on her face looked
raw and painful. She took a handful of SweeTarts and left to take her afternoon nap. I looked over at Tilly and asked, “Can I ask you for a favor?”

She darted up. “Oh my God, yes. Fuck yes, please. What do you need?”

“Will you walk over there to the trash, take that damn art smock off, and throw it away?”

She looked at me, furrowed her brow, and asked, “What? Why?”

I walked over to the dresser, reached in the drawer, and pulled out one of the three new maternity shirts Kate sent: the one with the white Peter Pan collar and navy blue smocking over the green-and-blue-checkered flannel fabric. It was soft and warm and adorable. “Here, take this and keep it, please,” I said, handing it to her.

“Don't fuck with me, Liz.”

“I'm not. It's not my color and it's too small on me, so just take it and keep it, okay?” Tilly's round eyes filled with tears. She peeled her smock off, revealing her scraggly bra, huge belly, and thin little toothpick legs. She walked over, put the smock in my trash can, and laughed as she put the new shirt on. She stood in front of the mirror, wiped her eyes hard, and then ran her hands over the flannel and said, “I don't know what to say.” She looked again in the mirror and then softly said, “It almost makes me kind of okay to look at.” Holy hell, that was a sad, sad thing to hear her say.

“You look great, Tilly, you really do, you idiot. And here, give these to Nellie.” I grabbed a pair of the maternity jeans out of the dresser—one pair was enough for me, I didn't need two.

“Oh God, Liz, she needs them. Her stomach kills her, even in sweatpants. She's gonna shit! Wow, I'm gonna walk around the lounge in my new designer maternity shirt.” She was smiling. She looked happy, and I felt somewhere close to happy too.

I looked at her and said, “Yes, you fucking are; enjoy it.” She jumped up, hugged me hard, and left the room. It was quiet for a moment, and I was alone again. Then I heard, loud as hell, “Nellie, wake the fuck up, Nelllllllieeeeeee, you won't believe it. . . .”

chapter
6

T
here was almost a foot of snow piled on the ledge outside the window when I woke up. It looked as though a white blanket had been placed over all of the trees, which were swaying back and forth in sync with the wind. For a second I forgot where I was . . . and then I looked down and saw the growing bump that was now my stomach. And it all came rushing back.

I got up, got dressed, and found the soft cream fisherman's sweater my dad had brought me, a long time ago, from one of his business trips, tucked away in the drawer. No matter where he traveled, we could count on our dad to bring back something, although he was clear that it was never just a
thing
. His gifts came with backstory: meaning, custom, teachings from some other life that was fundamentally different from ours. He'd gotten the fisherman's sweater in a little village in England, where he was traveling for work. He always delivered the information as though it were top secret and we, his kids, were the only ones given clearance to receive it. The village fishermen originally wore the sweaters,
knit by their wives, to stay warm during the winter fishing season. Their catch was so plentiful the first time they wore the sweaters, they were declared lucky. Every man who ever fished any season during the year from then on wore the sweaters. I pulled the lucky sweater on and headed to the cafeteria. Miraculously, somehow, I had almost made it to the end of my first week. I rounded the corner in the basement and spotted Alice, fast approaching with her weeble-wobble walk.

“What are you doing, Liz?” she blasted in her loud midwestern voice.

“Ummm . . . getting breakfast?”

“It's Friday. You know what Friday is, right?” In her singsongy way, she said: “It's Dr. Lathem day. You need to go all the way down this hall and turn left, you have your first exam. Get goin', girl.”

What? The spread-your-legs exam Nellie talked about? I froze for a second.

“Go on, git, girl,” Alice said.

At the end of the hall, I saw Nellie standing in front of a big wooden door. She called me over: “Hey, Liz, look.” She lifted up her shirt to show her huge pregnant stomach inside the stretchy panel of the maternity pants; she looked like the fat lady in the circus.

“Nice,” I said, smiling.

She smiled back. “More than nice, I can breathe.”

On the door next to Nellie, I saw a plaque that read Dr. Richard Lathem. Written over it in thick black marker, probably scrawled by one of the girls, was DR. DICK. My heart started to pound hard.

“Nellie, what exactly are we doing here?”

She straddled her legs wide on the floor and laughed. “What do you think we're doing? Spread 'em bitch. You gotta go in there, take your pants off, and spread your legs for that prick. And then he sticks his hand all the way up your cooch and says everything's okay. That's what we're doing here.”

“I can't do that, Nellie.” I took a few steps back from the door, “I'm
not
doing it.”

“You gotta do it. No one wants to, unless you want to be like Deanna who got kicked out for a week when she wouldn't go in there.” I started to feel light-headed and reached for the wall to steady myself. A woman with a weird beehive hairdo, wearing a nurse's outfit and white Earth shoes, opened the wooden door. She shouted “NEXT!” There were other girls lined up against the wall in the hallway, all of them with their eyes cast down, pretending like they couldn't hear the nurse.

Nellie rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, I'll just fucking go . . . whatever.”

The door slammed behind her. I walked to the end of the line and stood behind the young girl with the scar on her face. She was scratching her hand so hard that a drop of blood rolled down her finger, but she just kept scratching. I watched as she mutilated her hand.

Without realizing it, I whispered, “You shouldn't do that.”

She whispered back, “I know,” but still didn't stop.

Beads of sweat were gathering on my forehead, and a wave of nausea swooped over me. I wanted to fall through the wall, or better, break my legs, or smash myself into something. I would have done anything to get out of that hall and away from whatever awaited in that doctor's office. There was a bathroom across the corridor. I went inside and steadied myself at one of the small sinks.

“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” I said to myself in front of the mirror. Twenty times I said it, and then I leaned over and dunked my head under the faucet of cold water. I let it run for a long time, numbing the back of my neck, and finally I came up for air. I was unconvinced I was going to survive whatever was about to happen. I grabbed a paper towel, wet it, took a few more dry ones, and headed back out. Nellie was still in the office, behind that big wooden door. Why was it taking so long? I sat on the floor
next to scar girl again and whispered, “I forgot your name.” She was still scratching her hand; there were drops of blood all over the floor now.

“Wren,” she said.

“Wren?”

“Yeah, Wren.”

“Oh yeah, well here, give me your hand.” I wiped the blood off her hand and fingers with the wet towel and wrapped the dry one around her scratched hand. Looking at the scar on her face made everything inside of me drop. None of these girls had had easy lives. The door flew open, and I finally heard Nellie's voice booming through.

“Thank you for nothing,
fucker
. Doesn't do shit about my ankles, treats us like animals!”

Wren looked up; she was four people from “NEXT!” She couldn't stop herself. She kept scratching through the paper towel.

A half hour passed. I sat in the hallway on the floor. I pulled a little on the linoleum tile that was peeling up at the corner. I thought about the sleek gray slate tile in the front entranceway of our old house in Winnetka. We played jacks on that tile for hours and hours, my sisters and I. I'd mastered the game all the way up from one-sies to ten-sies, and through to triples. I could place all ten jacks on the flat part of my fisted hand, throw them up, and turn and catch them in that same palm, to skip to the next level. I closed my eyes and pretended I was there, with Jennifer and Tory on the cool slate floor, the sun shining through the windows. The door flew open—I was next in line. Wren came out, waved the hand with the paper towel still wrapped around it, and turned down the hall. The nurse with the beehive barked at me to get moving.

It was a small room, with a table covered in dark orange plastic leather that had weird metal things at the bottom. There was a wooden stool, a sink, and a trash can. Everything looked miniature, except for the table.

“Take your pants and underwear off, wrap the gown around yourself, and wait on the table for the doctor,” the scary nurse said. She slammed the door behind her, and I was alone.

My hands and legs were trembling as I took my clothes off. I covered up the bottom half of myself with the gown and climbed up on the orange table with the creepy metal things. I bit the front of my lucky sweater and waited and waited. The doctor finally came in.

He sat down on the stool at the end of the table, not looking at me, and said, “Lie down, please, and then scoot yourself as close to the end here as you can.” I did what he said.

“Now put your feet in the stirrups.”

I looked at him, confused, until he grabbed my left foot and put my heel in the cold metal thing. I slowly lifted my right foot and placed it in the other metal thing and tried to close my legs. The doctor blew air into a pair of rubber gloves and then rolled them onto his hand.

“Now hold still,” he said.

I laid my head down, holding tightly to the cloth gown that was covering the front of me, and looked up at the cement ceiling.

“Let go of the gown and open your knees,” he instructed.

I closed my eyes and stopped breathing while he pushed his hands inside me. The tears were spilling down my cheeks as he jabbed and nudged my insides. It was such a weird, alien feeling. What was happening? I tried to scooch back up the table away from him.

“Move back down, young lady, and lie still.” The doctor then stood up, with one hand still in my body, took his other hand and pushed hard on the sides of my stomach. I gasped in pain.

“Relax, and for God sakes, breathe,” he said. But I couldn't breathe. I'd forgotten how. Finally, he pulled his hand out of me, yanked the rubber gloves off, and threw them in the trash.

He started to walk out, and I asked, “Am I going to be all right?”

He grunted, “Probably.”

And the door slammed behind him. Probably? What did that
mean? Was something wrong? I buried my face in my sweater and cried like a two-year-old. Everything was sore as I got dressed again. The nurse came in a few minutes later.

“I have to weigh you. Come with me.” I followed her out of the room as the spontaneous sobs continued to erupt. I still couldn't catch my breath.

“Stop that . . . and get on the scale,” she said. “The doctor needs to track your weight. You the one who fainted?”

“Yes.”

I stepped on the scale; she rattled the little bar back and forth, and then scribbled on a chart.

“I'm trying to eat more,” I said. “Am I going to be all right?”

Without looking at me, she answered, “Probably.” She took her cat-eye reading glasses off and began cleaning them with her handkerchief. She looked up at me, aggravated, and said, “Go on, then, you're done. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . . .”

I made my way down the empty hall, past the rank smell of the bad cafeteria food. The girls were gone. I'd missed breakfast. I dragged my fingers along the warm painted radiators in the hall, trying not to pay attention to the hollow feeling I had inside. Could a teenager die during pregnancy? Was I gonna die?

• • • •

Tilly was waiting for me when I got back, outside my room. “I didn't know where you were, so I thought I'd wait for you. You okay?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Fridays suck. I go down early, get it out of the way. Dr. Dick told me I might have my baby sooner than the date.”

“He did? How does he know that?”

“I don't know. I guess how big it is and stuff?”

“Well, when was it supposed to come?”

“Middle of May, but now he says maybe early May. Can I come in?”

She walked in, sat on the empty bed, and scrunched up her face
as she looked at me. “You really don't look okay. . . . Are you?” It tipped me over the edge—Tilly's look of concern. Why did this always happen? The “you okay?” was like someone cutting the last tiny thread holding me together. I couldn't say I was okay, even if I wanted to. I just couldn't. Instead, the tears came, shoving the sadness out of me. Tilly's sympathy had opened the floodgates. Kind of like when I was homesick at camp the first year, I called my mom, and when I heard her voice it made me miss home even more. Like their care somehow makes it harder to fake it, and you lose it completely. Tilly watched me with a glum look on her face.

“You hate it here,” she said. I nodded between sobs.

“I guess it's not like what you're used to, but you have a pass, you can go anytime you want.”

“Go where?” I choked out. There was no escaping this.

“I don't know.” She walked to the dresser and picked up my hairbrush, then put it back down. Then she picked up my necklace, the one Daniel gave me for Christmas. It had a sterling silver chain and little charms of my initials hanging on the end.

“‘L.P.' Guess I can't borrow this.” She laughed, and then turned to me. “You'll get used to Dr. Dick, he has to make sure the baby is okay and you're okay. He hates us. We think he got in trouble or something at a real hospital and had to come here 'cause nowhere else would take him.”

Tilly picked up one of my headbands, pushed her short hair off her face, and looked at herself in the mirror. “You're gonna get used to it here, Liz, and you have me.” She smiled a goofy smile and ran her hands over the flannel maternity shirt, which she hadn't taken off since I gave it to her. “You eat breakfast?”

“No, I guess I didn't,” I said. I was beginning to calm down.

“You have to eat. Be right back.” She left the room. Out the window, the snow hadn't let up. It was still falling fast, and the trees were swaying in the wind. It was mid-February, and we had many weeks of winter to go. Tilly came back in and handed me what looked like a Pop-Tart, in silver paper.

“What's this?”

“Strawberry, best you can get, eat it.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“I take things from the cafeteria when I can. Just eat it.” I opened the Pop-Tart, took a bite, and then heard the door squeak open. It was Nellie, and she was wearing her hair in two silly-looking tiny ponytails on top of her head.

“What's up? Liz recovered?” Nellie said.

“Not yet,” Tilly answered.

“She will.”

“Yeah, probably.” They were talking like I wasn't there. I looked at Tilly, then Nellie, then Tilly again, like watching a tennis game.

“She has to get used to it, I guess.”

“Gonna take some time. She hates it here.”

I interrupted them. “There you go talking about me like I'm not here.”

“Sorry, but you make it so easy,” Nellie said. “Come on,
Bewitched
is on.” I followed them into the lounge.
Bewitched
was their favorite TV show. Samantha the mom and her two-year-old daughter, Tabitha, were in Tabitha's nursery. Tabitha wanted her mother to hand her the doll that was on the shelf. Samantha told her she couldn't have her doll until after her nap. When Samantha left the room, little Tabitha stood up in her crib, reached her arms out, and tweaked her nose back and forth, which gave her magical powers. The doll floated from the shelf through the air, all on its own, into the little girl's arms. The girls in the lounge loved Tabitha. I listened to all of them laughing.