Page 53 of Wounded Dance
I stop in my tracks. “What?”
He turns back to me and reaches for my hand. “Sorry, that was a really bad joke. I think all the lactic acid in my worn-out muscles has gone to my brain.”
We head for the gray Mazda. My head is spinning. One, that Blitz wants a kid. Two, with me. And third, has he forgotten what we’re going through right now?
I buckle in, not sure what to say. Blitz starts the car, then realizes I’m still quiet. He takes my hand and lifts my fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry, Livia. It was a boneheaded thing to say. I really wasn’t thinking.”
I nod at him and look out the side window. How easy it is for him to forget where I’ve been, the things I’ve had to do.
Gabriella’s birth was the best and worst day of my life.
~*´`*~
Dad went to my first prenatal visit, where we confirmed the pregnancy. He hadn’t spoken to me in the weeks since he sent Denham back to his aunt. He acted like I didn’t exist.
Dad transformed completely. Angry. Quick to judgment. I was forbidden from going to school. My mom had to do the homeschool paperwork and get me unenrolled.
During a television show one night, two teenagers kissed and he grossly overreacted, yanking the plug from the wall and declaring no one in the family was going to watch that trash. He shoved the TV into the hall closet and took away my ancient desktop computer I once used for homework.
When the doctor suggested that I was still eligible for a first-trimester abortion, Dad stormed out. Within two days, he had resigned his job and ordered my mother to pack the house. We were moving.
The computer and television didn’t move with us.
In San Antonio, Dad chose an elderly man to oversee my prenatal care, but he didn’t come to appointments. Mom and I heard the heartbeat and saw the blips of the baby’s shape on my sonograms.
Dad had ordered Mom to sit outside while I saw the doctor, but on this, she didn’t listen to him and came in the exam room with me. They did, however, instruct everyone in the office not to tell me if I was having a boy or a girl. I didn’t argue. At fifteen, I had no voice.
I was utterly alone for most of that year. Mom bought homeschool materials and expected me to be self-paced. I fell behind, but nobody pushed me right away. Andy was still young, of course, and stayed at home as well, but he kept calling me “fat” and nobody corrected him. I understood that he wasn’t to be told the truth.
I’m sure other mothers feel wonder at the baby moving inside them, and there is a quiet joy in the kicks and the progression of their bellies from flat to beach ball.
But I had no one to be happy with. Only two upset parents and a little boy who didn’t know. I sometimes thought of Denham and how differently I could have handled that night. But now we were in a new town, and I couldn’t go anywhere. I was to be seen by no one.
I remember when my water broke. I’d felt contractions for weeks, random cramps that rippled across my belly. At first I was terrified, but when I told my parents, my father told me I deserved every pain I felt. Mom explained they were just for practice. I only hoped when the time came, I could tell the difference between those and the real ones.
I did. When the first labor contraction came three days after I was due, I called Mom in. It was mid-afternoon, and Dad was at work. She sat by me to time them, but it was almost half an hour before another one came. She said we’d wait until Dad came home to watch Andy, and then she’d take me up to the hospital.
With the third one, I felt warm and wet. I tried to stand up to avoid drenching my bed, but the pain was sharp and intense. I started huffing like I’d seen on sitcoms. I hadn’t done a birthing class, as my father wouldn’t let me out of the house other than for doctor visits. And even then, he’d always stood guard on the porch, making sure none of the neighbors saw me as I hurried from the house to the car. He ensured nobody in our new city knew, especially the neighbors.
Mom called him to come home early, but he said I could damn well live with the pain until he was good and ready to get there. He stayed an extra half hour, just to spite us.
I was crying with the pain by then. I barely weighed one hundred pounds even at nine months pregnant, young and small. I had trouble gaining weight. The whole ordeal was more than I could bear, and I was terribly scared.
Mom had finally loaded Andy in the car. He was whimpering with fear every time I cried out, when Dad drove up. They got in an awful fight over her disobeying him, but he took Andy and let us leave.
By the time we got to the hospital, I was too close to delivery to get an epidural. And still, the pushing went on and on. Mom wiped my forehead with washcloths. The nurses clucked over how young I was, so even between the rounds of pushing, I cried from embarrassment and shame.
When the baby’s head started to come out, the nurse got the doctor and he sat at my knees to deliver the baby. I noticed another woman in the room, tall and sharp nosed, holding a folder flattened against her chest. She waited like a hawk.
The moment the baby was out, she stepped forward. I was trying to listen to the baby’s first cry, to sit up and get a peek, when the woman’s deadpan voice said, “Your parents have informed me you don’t want to see the baby or know the gender.”
My vision was a red haze of pain and exhaustion and relief. I ignored her. “Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked the doctor.
But the woman stepped forward again. “We really recommend you not see or hold the baby or know the gender prior to transfer to the adoptive parents. It makes the transition easier.”
I looked over at Mom. She was biting her lip.
“Mom?” I asked her.
