WORTHY, Part 2 (14 page)

With a warm thrill of love, I knew that I would do anything for my unborn child. I would change anything about myself, climb any mountain necessary to ensure it had the best life possible. I’d go vegan if it meant anything, eschew cars, beat up people who tried to light a cigarette in my presence.

I’d reconcile with Jonathan if that was what it took.

Should I simply admit to something I didn’t think I’d done? The thought gave me pause. If I confessed outright to sleeping with Brock and lying about it later, would Jonathan divorce me on the spot? Would we separate for a time, each licking our wounds? Or would he thank me for being honest and tell me we’d work on this to move forward?

I didn’t like the idea of living in that kind of lie, but if it brought my family back together, maybe I could live with it.

My only hang up was Violet. There were so many photos of them having intimate moments together. Did I really want my child to grow up with a father who couldn’t come clean about that? Could I try to look past it?

It had been so hurtful when Jane had shown me all the photos — physical evidence of Jonathan not being faithful to me. I knew that I had been at fault, too, having never told him about my drunken night with his sister and friend. But without any memories of that night, and the photo evidence to prove otherwise, I couldn’t honestly say what had happened.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” I mused to my baby. “You’re going to be born in a world of drama. I will be your drama mama.”

I laughed derisively at myself, shaking my head. Talking aloud when alone was for crazy people.

But then again, I wasn’t alone anymore. I had my child, growing inside of me, depending on me to make the right decisions for it and myself.

I was living for two now, and I couldn’t fuck it up. I just couldn’t.

“You know what?” I told my baby. “I’ll talk to you whenever I want. I’m going to talk to you all the time. That way, you’ll know you aren’t alone. You’re never alone.”

Maybe I just imagined it, but my stomach settled a little bit, like something inside of it snuggled in. The baby couldn’t be that far along, could it?

“I’ll bet you’re hungry,” I said. “The thing is, you’ve been an awfully picky eater lately. I feel like I can’t have anything I want to eat without you booting it right back out.”

It was a silly thought. I knew that the baby resided in my womb, not my stomach, and had no responsibility as to what I could keep down and what I couldn’t keep down. I knew it probably wasn’t good to only feed my child string beans and coffee. That was going to be remedied immediately.

I examined my supplies and settled on a chicken soup. That should go down pretty easily and stay down, if we were lucky. Preparing the kitchen, turning on the stove, and boiling some water, I realized how much I’d missed taking care of myself, including doing my own cleaning and cooking. The thing I’d liked least about living in the Wharton compound — besides Amelia — was how idle I remained for most of the day. I’d never found my purpose, not even with the online courses, and always felt as if I were in the way or just a useless part to the well-oiled machine that was the Wharton family.

I soothed myself by humming tunelessly, just humming for the sound of it, and chopping vegetables. I added carrots and celery and onion to the boiling water, sniffing at the fragrant steam as it rolled off the surface of the pot.

“We wait until all the vegetables get tender,” I said for my baby’s benefit, “and then we add the chicken. That’s my secret. Lots of people do it the other way around, but I like it best this way.”

I waited for that special moment, then added the frozen chicken. It would thaw and cook simultaneously. It was the best I could do out here without any fresh meat. That was something I was going to have to remedy. I missed those damn chickens following me around everywhere, pecking for feed out in the field.

“You’ll like the chickens,” I said. “They’re fun to chase. You’ll like the eggs, too, and everything I can make with them. You’ll learn to make things. And you’ll learn your first lesson about death when we have a fried chicken dinner.”

Fried chicken was one of the things I couldn’t do with the frozen variety. It just didn’t taste the same.

After about an hour, the chicken I’d added to the rich broth was so tender it fell apart. I gave myself a modest portion, not sure what my stomach would be able to handle, and sat down to eat. I ate three bowls before I was satisfied, convinced that it was the best thing I’d eaten since I left the cottage to live in Chicago with Jonathan.

“And that’s how your mama cooks,” I told my baby, patting my full stomach with my hand. “Sorry about all that trash I’ve been feeding you. It’s going to be all natural from here on out, got it? And I hope you didn’t get used to the taste of alcohol. That’s not for us anymore.”

I cringed every time I realized that I’d exposed my unborn child to that poison. I only hoped that everything would be all right. That was why I knew I needed to settle on a doctor — so I could start making sure that I was healthy and the life within me was healthy, too.

I stowed what little was left from the soup in a dish in the refrigerator and cleaned up, feeling better than I had in days. The simple dish was just what I had needed, and I felt like I was slowly regaining my strength.

It was the power of being home again. I’d been away from the cottage for far too long.

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As the weeks passed, I got more and more used to life back out in the woods. I took stock of the barn, bought some new chickens for fresh eggs, and got everything in order out there. I even got a goat — a funny and friendly little creature I named George. I figured a little fresh goat’s milk never hurt anyone and would probably be a little better than the powdered milk I usually fell back on out here.

Plus, if he ever pissed me off, I’d have an excellent fresh tikka masala or cabrito dish to try.

The garden had sprouted all on its own, but it had come in wild and unruly, full of weeds and uneven rows of vegetables. I straightened it out as best I could, apologizing for leaving it to fend for itself. The bird netting had seen better days, but it had still kept the majority of pests from feasting while I was away.

“This is how our garden grows,” I said. “We treat it with loving tender care, and it loves us in return. See all these ripe tomatoes? We can tell because they’re red, just a little bit soft, but still firm. Taste. There’s nothing better than a ripe tomato picked straight from the vine.”

I took a bite of the juicy tomato as if it were an apple, enjoying the flavor and the idea that I was giving my baby little bits and pieces of knowledge about how the world around us worked.

I reordered the netting and set to my repairs. I even patched the roof, keeping a running commentary to my baby the entire time.

“We’re not afraid of heights,” I told it, sitting on top of the roof with a nail sticking out of my mouth, going to town on a broken bit of shingle with the hammer. “The barn roof is even higher than this one, if you can believe it. Once, I climbed a tree so high out in the woods that I could see over the tops of all the other trees.”

Of course, coming back down had been another thing, and I’d decided that that was going to be my very last tree to climb. I’d nearly broken my neck.

I thrived in rediscovering my active lifestyle, always kept busy by my various chores. I used the goat as a sort of field control, moving its stake around each day I let him out of his little stall in the barn. That way, George always ate from a different part of the field, keeping the grass trimmed a little shorter than it usually stayed during the summer. I had to keep him away from the convertible, though, especially since he’d noticed his reflection in one of the gleaming panels and dealt a devastating blow with his hard little head against the hapless BMW.

“George!” I scolded as the goat staggered around in a daze. “This is why I can’t take you to nice places, George! You’re going to be such a bad influence on the baby. Come here. Let me look at you.”

The goat was just a little off kilter, and I supposed he’d eventually get back to normal. Until then, though, no cutting grass near the convertible. I wondered if Jonathan would laugh at the idea that the goat had thought the car was a rival.

I canned vegetables and started looking ahead toward winter, saving what produce I couldn’t use for the changing of the seasons. I took long walks in the woods, touching the tree bark like I used to, amazed at how everything looked the same even as I looked at it with different eyes.

“This is where your mama met your daddy,” I said, standing at the spot where I’d waded across the swollen, flooded creek and come upon Jonathan, unconscious and gravely injured. “He was lying right there, right at the base of that tree, and his head was bleeding very bad. I did the only thing I could think of. I picked him right up and carried him home, and that’s the story of you.”

As often as I wished that I’d never even met Jonathan, especially when I got blue thinking about how he’d betrayed me and turned his back on me, I wouldn’t have this spark growing inside of me otherwise. Everything happened for a reason, and if my time with Jonathan was coming to a close, at least my time with our child was just beginning.

Another day, I walked all the way to the pool, the last bit of the creek before it became the river.

“This is where you’re going to learn how to swim,” I said, taking off my clothes until I was naked as the day I was born. There was no one out here but me, and I loved knowing that. The water was cold and a shock to my system — perfect for the hot day. I swam out to the middle, where I could only just barely touch the mud at the bottom with my big toe, and reclined, letting the water cushion me as I floated.

“You’re not going to be afraid of the water like some brats,” I said, moving my arms and legs lazily through the pool, staring up at the white puffy clouds drifting across the sky. “You’re going to take to the water like a fish. Swimming is going to be one of your favorite things to do. This is, incidentally, the first place your daddy ever saw my goods. We skinny dipped out here. I snuck a few peeks, too.”

It was bittersweet to talk about, but still somehow cathartic. Bit by bit, by telling my baby about different parts of my life, I was able to analyze them and move on.

“This is how we catch our own fish,” I said, tying a bright lure onto my hook another day at my favorite fishing hole. “Fish are delicious to eat, and I have so many recipes to show you. We could eat fish for an entire week and have a completely different dish every night.”

I cast my line out into the pool, satisfied when I heard the telltale plop of the lure on the surface of the water.

“We wait for as long as it takes, now,” I said. “But ever so often, we give the line a little jerk. We’re playing a game with the fish, you see? Fish are like little cats down there, waiting for something to play with. If we play well enough, they’ll take our bait and we’ll catch them.”

Just as I said the words, a fish hit the lure, and I jerked the pole in response.

“You have to pull hard,” I said excitedly, feeling the weight of the fish on the line. “When you pull hard, you set the hook. The hook that we tied the lure on is how we catch the fish. It doesn’t hurt him.”

It was a nice bass, and we ate like kings that night.

When I wasn’t taking care of the chickens and George, or gathering bouquets to decorate the cottage with, or romping through the woods, or doing my endless lists of chores and projects, I continued with my coursework in my online classes. Having so much to do now helped hone my focus, and I was able to breeze through the courses like I never could do in Chicago at the compound. There had been too much idleness there, too much to think about, too many distractions.

When I finished my classes ahead of schedule — by almost a month — I enrolled in more. There was one class that caught my interest considerably: Homeopathic Solutions in an Antimicrobial World. From the course description, it covered different herbal and natural remedies for everything from rashes to illnesses. It would be the perfect class for living out here, and if I knew how to soothe a bee sting for a child with plants and things I already had on hand instead of using a tube of chemicals forced into a cream, I’d be that much of a better mother.