Untitled part eleven

Lying flat on my back I stared at the ceiling. His body rested between my legs, his head hovering over my naval. There seemed to be a slight bump down low now, below the place my body hollowed out when I was on my back. I thought it might be my imagination, and tried to picture the life growing in there. With my eyes closed I always saw a universe bursting out, expanding and contracting with every pulse of my heart.

 He was kissing my stomach, telling me the way everything could be, how beautiful this child would be - a combination of the two of us. "We could be so happy, Dew(ed). We'll get a house, have a couple kids. I know you're scared. I can do this. I've done it before." His mouth moved lower and if he knew I was crying, hot tears that burned all the way to my ears he chose not to acknowledge them, wanting to celebrate the life created between us. It isn't as though I couldn't have said no. It's more that it would have required more effort than simply flipping him over and finishing him off so he could pass out.

A fog had lifted, it was replaced by a strange new sensation, probably equally as slanted. All his lies, the drug use, the anger management issues, seemed ridiculous. He wasn't an adult with an interesting history who was now in recovery. He was a thirty-one year old convict drug addict with three kids he didn't take care of. It's one thing to sleep around with crazy people, it's another to raise babies with them. Especially a baby I wasn't  even ready to have myself, didn't even know if I WOULD have. I made plans to move out, asking Crispy and Amigo for boxes and slowly transferring most of my stuff to my Mom's. Then I just gathered up the rest one afternoon and moved out.

Communication between us was scattered and rare. He was staying with a friend but rarely actually there. I heard bits and pieces through Amigo who actually spoke to him more often. First that he was spending most of his time at Tweakers, then contact ceased for a few weeks. Next I heard he was in jail for parole violations, they picked him up at Tweakers after a brief struggle. Then he was waiting for sentencing. Never had the entire story but near as I ever picked out from second hand stories and  reading the records at the courthouse he stole a car and was stopped at the border to Canada with a joint in the glove box.

He found ways to contact me anyway. A steady stream of "love" letters from jail began to arrive. Then the three-way phone calls. Amigo would call and tell me he was on the line.  He would scream at me that I better not even be considering abortion, that he would raise the baby himself if he had to, I would end up bawling and hang up on him.

I spent long days in my moms tiny apartment trying to sort out where I ended and this other life began.

The life I had before.

The life I had right then.

The life I had growing in me.

The life I had wanted for my future.

The life I couldn't give my baby.

There were long bus rides to government offices getting health care coverage, to clinics with blood stained floors with my feet in stirrups facing the awkward shame of getting the early check-ups from doctors who had seen enough to make their judgment and too much to feel anything anymore, and the dark day I scheduled the abortion.

Lying flat on my back I stared at the ceiling. My legs were wide apart, feet resting in the stir-ups, waiting for the doctor to come in and insert the reeds that would swell, opening my cervix over the next hours and the bump on my lower abdomen was unmistakable to me. "It won't be the life I thought I would give you." I told her. "There won't be a house and there won't be a Dad. And I'm scared." And I knew it didn't matter. I knew there would never be a good time to have her. I knew I was already calling her she. I knew I had no choice. What was before would never be again with or without her. I wasn't going to be the Mom I had hoped to be. Nothing was going to be anything like I had ever dreamed. I knew I could do it anyway.

I was up and off the table, flinging the paper blanket out of my way in a flurry of crinkles. I shoved my already swelling self back in my beat-up levis. I pulled my t-shirt with the silly saying over my softest long john shirt and shrugged my florescent vest on. I ran from the exam room, down past the lobby full of pregnant women with the receptionist yelling after me, I slipped into the elevator and rode all the way down to the lobby with cool tears sliding down my face, just making it to a restroom to puke my guts out.