The Untelling (14 page)

Chapter Eight

T
here was so much
explaining to be done. The very idea of it burdened me, causing a tenderness in my joints, the achy way I feel when I am coming down with the flu. I went into the bathroom, my favorite space in the house. It was a common area like the kitchen or the living room, but it was intensely personal, a space that Rochelle and I shared. The bathroom is a place where you find yourself naked and wet from the shower, standing on the scale to see if you have gotten too fat. Every month I stood in the room examining my breasts, anxiously kneading the fatty tissue, feeling for hard knots that might mean that I was dying.

Standing before the sink, I turned my attention to the faucets, old-fashioned and shaped like daisies, the flowers that make you worry whether he loves you or loves you not. I twisted the left faucet, filling the sink with hot, cloudy water. Plunging my hands in up to the wrists, I concentrated on the throbbing in my fingers. Pain was good like that, cleared your mind.

I pulled open the mirrored front of the medicine cabinet. All Rochelle’s supplements were there. Ginkgo biloba. She took this every day to preserve her memory. Sweet primrose oil was supposed to be good for her disposition. Dong quai to make her sexy. Then there were her birth control pills, fitted into a plastic compact like face powder. Hermione used to stash hers in the linen closet, between the folds of the fancy towels that we never used. My things were in the medicine cabinet too. Allergy tablets, bandages that didn’t match my skin tone. Condoms. Tampax.

On the top shelf was the prescription bottle Rochelle’s mother had left behind after shopping for wedding dresses. I followed the instructions on the childproof cap, pressing and turning, and found fifteen blue pills in the vial. I eased the top off and borrowed only one. I liked the shape of it, perfectly round and scored in the middle. Alprazolam, the label read, but Rochelle called it Xanax. She saved them for special occasions. “These,” she had said, “are for
high
drama.”

Were fifteen tablets enough to kill yourself? Not that I was going to. I just wondered in the way that people wonder about things.

I chewed the tablet while running my bathwater. It was bitter, worse than Tylenol, but I liked the way it felt in my mouth, the taste brackish and utterly distracting. How would it make me feel? Xanax was a drug you heard about on talk shows. The new Valium. Something rich people take when they can’t cope.

I stripped myself naked, mashing my dirty clothes into a ball. Balanced on the edge of the tub, I could see my body in the scarred mirror of the medicine cabinet. I held on to the towel bar scrutinizing my nude self like a used car on the lot. Things that I had taken for granted as just part of me were now symptoms, evidence of my malfunction. The skin on my legs was so dry that it was flaky, scored, and gray. Dry skin is a sign of estrogen deprivation. The pleats at the corners of my eyes. Weight gain. I slapped my thigh and watched the ripple travel down to nearly my knee. There were things happening, too, under the skin. My bones were likely hollowing out, especially at the hip. I had never wondered why old ladies broke their hips when they fell. Menopause. My body was aging, fast and sudden, like those little kids who start to wrinkle before they can walk, and fall over dead in third grade.

I always wanted to be special. When I was little, I’d fantasized about contracting illnesses. I wanted to be admitted into the hospital, be fed by the nurses, and receive plush toys as gifts. I would have loved to be stricken with something serious, so that a famous person would come to my bedside and my picture would be in
Jet
. My fondest wish had been to almost die, to come so close that everyone would regret being so mean, but would still have an opportunity to make it up to me, to show the love they’d hidden. This was a complicated fantasy involving handsome, quick-thinking doctors and beeping equipment. But I would have settled for a raging case of tonsillitis and a three-day diet of peppermint ice cream.

In real life I’d always been healthy. Horse healthy. I hadn’t even needed to go to the hospital the day of the accident.

So now I finally had something. A sickness that would get me more attention than I could have ever wanted. It was embarrassing, really. The end of my menstrual cycle turned out to be as humiliating as the start of it. I remember how frightened I’d been that someone could somehow look at me and see that I had my period. I hid my supplies in the zippered compartment of my book bag, and even within that compartment I sealed them inside a makeup case. Now I worried that people would look at me and know that I was still different from other girls my age. That my body had stopped working in the way that a woman’s body works. Female trouble. Has there ever been a phrase more shameful?

There was quite a lot of explaining to be done. Dwayne would have to be told. He had called three times, wanting to know what the doctor had said.

“We’ll talk later. Tomorrow?”

“At least tell me if you’re okay.”

“I think I’m okay. I won’t know for sure until tomorrow.”

The lie had come easy, surprisingly so, like fast labor. I knew I would have to tell him. Some things can’t be faked or pantomimed. It was only a matter of time before he realized that my stomach was still flat, that my breasts were still tight and small like sour apples. He’d soon know that although I looked the same as I always had, things would not be the same again.

The bathwater was not quite hot enough; it was only as warm as my body. It felt like slipping into a wet nothing. It would have to do. My mouth was still bitter from the pill, mashed bits of it jammed into the crevices of my teeth. I turned off the faucet, but the water still dribbled into the tub. I held my breath to feel the medicine working, to see if I felt like a rich lady who needed help to cope. I felt a little drowsy, but not different, transformed, or carefree. With wet feet I returned to the medicine cabinet and read the bottle. How many tablets did the doctor advise Rochelle’s mother to take? Only one for problems like hers. So I took another one, bit it in half, and chewed.

“Are you depressed?” Rochelle had wanted to know after dinner. She was concerned in her genuine and sincere way. “Because if you are, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Behind me the toilet ran like Niagara Falls. A place to get married, a place to drown in a barrel. Up to my chin in murky water, I’d forgotten to rinse the tub or add bubbles. A greasy brownish ring remained from the last time Rochelle had soaked. A film settled on my skin as I studied the mildew patterns in the grout.

I felt heavy and sleepy. Not relaxed. Was this coping? I felt pushed down and down, as if a man pressed his big hand on the crown of my head.

There were so many things that needed explaining. I was going to have to tell my mother. I wished I could hire a lawyer who could send everyone complicated letters via certified mail. Party of the first part, party of the second part, until everyone got the picture: no babies, nobody was liable. It was just the way things were.

This would be easier if Dwayne and I were already married. Then the matter of my ovarian failure would fall into the territory of “in sickness and in health.” We could have gone together to visit a specialist, holding hands, explaining that we had been “trying really hard.” Married, we’d be an “infertile couple.” Now, without the benefit of a wedding and shared name, this was my problem. It was me.

Rochelle tried all morning to convince me that this crisis wasn’t as serious as I figured it to be. She called it “an obstacle.”

“Penny, Dwayne is not going to leave you,” she promised.

I was sitting on the floor between her knees as she parted and twisted my hair. “You don’t know that,” I said. “He might.”

“Dwayne’ll be shaken,” she said, “but he won’t care. If he loves you, he won’t care. Look at my parents. They’ve been together thirty years. It will work out.”

I leaned into her promise, resting my head on the inside of her thigh as she separated the kinks of my hair. “But what if he does care? What if he wants his own biological children?”

She rubbed her finger, slick with hair cream, onto my scalp. “I know that Dwayne is sort of
literal.
But still. I think people are becoming more flexible about these things.”

I closed my eyes and enjoyed the tug of her hands. I climbed into myself then, pretending to be a little girl, pretending that this was the afternoon that my mother combed my hair and everyone in my family was still alive. “But will he still want to
marry
me? That’s the question.”

“That shouldn’t be the question. Love is the main thing.” Rochelle’s hands were fast in my hair, her ring casting rainbows on the wall.

Dwayne promised to come over after work; he left The Lock Shop over an hour ago, but I wasn’t worried. It always took him a long time to reach his destinations, due to his choice of vehicle, a Crown Victoria, the same make and model of your average police car. Whenever he drove on the expressway, other drivers tapped their brakes, slowing to below the speed limit, frowning in their rearview mirrors as they tried to figure out if he was a state trooper or not. I would have thought that one benefit of this association would be that the car was off-limits to carjackers and other crooks. But to be on the safe side, Dwayne had the car decked out with all manner of antitheft devices—from a handheld remote that deactivated the engine to a metal club which he locked over the steering wheel. All this for a boxy white car for which he had been the only bidder at the police auction.

My handsome Dwayne arrived just after seven. He wore loose-fitting jeans and a stiff-ironed shirt with “The Lock Doctor” stitched on the pocket. Perched on his head was his favorite maroon baseball cap. It said the same thing. He looked comfortable and clean in his work clothes, like a local boy made good. Like the sort of man who would buy a big house for his mother were he to win the lottery.

Cynthia knelt in the driveway, furious with her searching, her face flecked with orange mud. She didn’t even look up as Dwayne stood behind her, close enough to kick her hard in her hunched back. Shaking his head, he touched his pockets, feeling for his stereo faceplate, and bounded up my stairs, two at a time. I opened the door for him and he brought the heat of June into the cool living room.

“How can you live over here?”

“The same way you live anywhere, I guess.”

Dwayne moved into the kitchen and helped himself to a beer, popping the top with his car key. He lifted his foot from the puddle of water in front of the fridge. “You and Rochelle are a trip. Most people work hard to get
out
of bad neighborhoods. I don’t know why y’all like living with a bunch of crackheads, refrigerator leaking, and shit.” He took a drink of beer and looked at the orange foil label. “What’s this?”

I shrugged. “Something Rochelle and Rod like to drink.”

Dwayne took a dainty sip. “Probably expensive. I’ll drink it slow.” He held the bottle out to me and then took it back just as I reached for it. “I forgot. No drinking for pregnant people.”

“Let’s go to the living room,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

Dwayne set the half-empty bottle down with a concerned look. He took off his maroon cap and shaped the bill with a quick motion of his heavy hands, then put it back on. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“I’m not mad,” I said. “It’s nothing like that.”

He relaxed a little and I knew I’d misled him.

Dwayne sat on the futon and ran his hands over the green and tan cover. “It trips me out to think that your mother made all of this.” He waved his hand to include the matching drapes, throw pillows, and runners.

“She was on a sewing binge.” These days she was on a crocheting kick. My throat tightened as I pictured her hooking an entire wardrobe of baby booties, sweaters, blankets, and tasseled caps.

Dwayne patted the space beside him. “Baby, what’s the matter?”

I got up from Rochelle’s leather recliner and sat where he wanted me to. We both faced forward like we were watching a movie together. The dirty window across from the futon was topped with a tan valance, stuffed with newspaper. From where we sat we had a panoramic view of the backyard, carpeted with crabgrass and ornamented with cinder blocks and litter. A stray calico sat, licking itself, on top of a dead television.

“Hey,” Dwayne said. “Where’s Rochelle’s cat? What’s his name?”

“Kitten. He’s gone to the groomers for a clip-and-dip.”

“Bourgie Negroes.”

When there was nothing else to say, he took his hat off again, shaping the bill with careful squeezes of his palms. The cardboard core showed at the lip of the hat, where he had worn down the maroon fabric. When I spoke, I would talk to Dwayne’s cap, timing my words to the slow, regular rhythm of his busy hands.

“Well?” Dwayne said over the scrape of cloth against his callused hands.

“Things didn’t go well.” I aimed my words at his fingers, his nails, his wrinkled, scarred knuckles.

Dwayne kept his hands on his hat. He cupped the bill, forcing it to mimic the shape of his palms. We were still sitting side by side on the futon, hips touching. He couldn’t see my face and I couldn’t see his.

“They ran all these tests and everything,” I started again. “Blood tests. And they didn’t come out right.” There was a hitch in my voice. The pitch rising in my own ears. I breathed deep, tried to relax my throat enough to let the words out.

Dwayne rubbed his palms on the knees of his jeans, then he took the hat in his hands again. “Is the baby all right?”

The phone let off a shriek and we both snapped our heads in its direction. Dwayne and I were both old enough to remember when phones simply rang, they didn’t sound alarms. When I was a kid, our kitchen phone actually had bells inside of it. I remember peeking into the plastic shell and catching a glimpse of dark metal. The memory hurt somehow; I touched my throat to feel the flutter of my pulse.

Rochelle’s recorded voice spoke from the plastic answering machine. “Breathe and you will know peace.”