An Order of Coffee and Tears (18 page)

Another explosion of tomatoes landed in front of us, and I saw fear striking Jessica’s eyes. The confidence and the all-knowing expression that helped me get to the clinic disappeared as she mouthed a curse. The crowd of protestors chanted “Baby Killer
”
and bounced the posters up and down. The chanting was deafening, and Jessica yelled in my ear to hurry up. We huddled together, arm in arm, and made our way into the swarm of protestors.

She yelled in my ear again, telling me to keep my head down, and to just follow the lines in the pavement. She said the protestors would move as we pushed forward, and that they wouldn’t hurt us. But they did hurt us. I felt the first jab in my back, and turned to see an older man whose beard hung loose above his shirt collar. Long hairs waved around in the breeze, as he shouted,

“Bitch – Baby Killer,” and then spat at my feet while pulling back the end of his sign. Another jab of a signpost hit Jessica, and she wheezed a cough out and then barely choked that we needed to move faster.

I kept my eyes on the lines in the pavement. We moved toward our car. It was slow, but we were moving. Another jab hit my side as I watched the legs and feet in front of us part to the left and right. I remember starting to scream, and Jessica held me tighter. The “
Baby Killer, Baby Killer”
chant grew to a roar, and the smell of rotting food lingered from the tomato bomb we wore on our clothes. At one point, Jessica decided to yell back, and grabbed a protestor’s sign when they lunged for a strike on my leg.

“You Baby Killer!” they shouted at her.

“What the fuck is wrong with you people? You don’t know us! You don’t know why we’re here,” she screamed back at them, and threw the sign to the ground. I hung onto her arm and winced when a heavier jab pierced the skin of my leg. My knees started to feel weak, and a hot wave of nausea choked my breath as the sedative wore away. I had to stop, but only for a second. Jessica pulled on my arm, and we pushed forward.

“Baby Killer, Baby Killer,” echoed in my ears, and a sudden urge to cry hurt more than the sign posts. I glanced at the sky, trying to pull the tears in, the sun was still napping, and I wished I could hide up in the clouds with it. When I looked over the sea of colored posters, as they continued to bump up and down, another fear came to me. What if they were moving with us? What if they formed a circle around us and were walking all the way to Jessica’s car? Jessica yelled for me to put my head down. And I did, but not before someone grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled it out of my head. Screaming, I put my head down and followed the lines in the pavement.

The legs and feet continued to part ways and move to the sides of us. Relief began to settle in place of the nausea. The “baby killer, baby killer
”
chanting was softer. I could hear my own breathing, and realized I was crying, after all. We were passing the worst of the crowd. The remaining protestors continued to move around us, but then a pair of shoes stood in front of me. They didn’t move. A black shoe, and a burgundy shoe. And then I heard my Daddy’s voice.

“Donut?” My heart sank, and all I could do was look up into his face. His eyes were filled with confusion as he shook his head back and forth like the poster boards’ dance.

It was a moment we shared, a terrible moment, and it ended who we were. “Daddy,” I cried, and reached for him. He extended his hand, just enough to touch the paper and plastic medical bracelet the nurse had put on my wrist earlier. The confusion drained from his face. Deep lines emerged above his eyes, and his face turned red like the tomato remains on our clothes. He raged and cried and screamed at the sky, and pushed my hands away.

“But, Daddy,” I pleaded with him, reaching my hands to him, and again he pushed me away.

“I don’t know you. My God… Gabby, how could you consider
this?
” He sobbed. “I don’t know who you are – I can’t know a person that could do
this
! Who could do
this
to an innocent life?”

He stepped back into the pack of protestors, and screamed their chant.

“But, Daddy,” I cried out to him, stretching my arms to reach him, “I didn’t do…” and a hit came from my other side, and it was deep and under my ribs, and stole my breath. I gripped Jessica’s arm, and thought I was going to black out, but the stars that raced in front of my eyes rose up to the clouds.

By the time I could see clearly enough again, my Daddy was walking away from us and holding his face in hands. “Daddy!” I screamed after him. “Please, Daddy!” I screamed some more. But he only shook his head and kept walking.

My heart ached. My heart broke! I wanted my Daddy, I needed my Daddy, and he turned away from me. Jessica got me to my home later that afternoon, and then wished me luck as I got out of her car. When I went to my room, it wasn’t my room anymore. It wasn’t my home. How could I face my Daddy? How could I face my momma, or anyone? I wasn’t thinking, not at all. A voice in my head said to run, get on the road, and run.

My dog sat on my bed, his eyes were big, and his ears were pressed flat against his head. He whimpered, and I believe he knew there was something off, something wrong. Dogs know. Sitting next to him, he nuzzled my arm, as if trying to ask what happened. I wiped the silliness away from my eyes, and kissed him on the snout, and told him I had to leave. He whimpered some more, and nuzzled my chin. I kissed him again, and kept the tears in my eyes.

Run
, I heard in my head, and poured the books out of my school backpack. My life as a teenager ended, and any evidence of it was dumped out onto my bed and remained there. For all I know, it may still be there. I raced around the house and gathered a few pieces of clothes, another pair of shoes, and whatever cash I could find. That is all I had with me. And that is all I left with. From the road, I looked back once to see my dog watching me through the window. I cried for the first mile, but then wiped that silliness away, too.

Ms. Potts and Suzette never interrupted. They never asked a question, or passed a look to one another. I didn’t remember seeing Clark come from around from the grill, but there he stood, a cup of coffee in his hands, and his eyes on me.

“Gabby, that is horrible…” Suzette started to say, and then an awful thought rushed though me, and it scared me. What would they think of me now? What would they think about what I did, or planned to do? A crash of feelings filled with pain and fear and sadness hit me, and I shook.

“Please, please don’t judge me,” was all I could get out before Ms. Potts pulled me into her arms.

“Shhhh, ain’t nobody here gonna judge anyone. That ain’t our place to do. You done nothing wrong in my eyes. What was done to you is unspeakable,” she finished. I passed a look to each of them.

“G-Gabby, your family – we love you,” Clark added.

Suzette leaned in when my eyes reached hers, and asked, “Gabby, but what about the baby?”

Images of Tommy and the baby chick raced across my eyes, only to be replaced by memories of a dank and musty motel room and a filthy bathtub.

“I lost the baby a few days later,” I said, and pushed back another wave of hurt. “The first cramps started the next morning. I had coin-sized bruises on my legs and around my back and my front,” I started, and circled my finger and thumb to show where the bruises landed. “They were a deep color, just sickening bruises. The protestors left their marks on me that morning, and, by that afternoon, I was losing my baby.”

I could only tell them some of what happened next. The images were still in my mind, and I suppose they would be the rest of my life. The cramping didn’t pass. Instead, a burning started inside of me. That is when I considered that my baby and I might be in trouble. My skin felt warm, and, with the blankets pulled away, I laid on my side and prayed for the pain to stop. I told myself it was nothing. I told myself it was stress, and that the cramping was normal. I prayed that my baby would be okay. My skin got warmer and sweaty, and I began to feel cold. That’s when the vomiting started. Something was wrong.

So much pain came then, and it was from deep inside. It was a pain like I’d never felt before. I prayed, and cried through some of it. I didn’t know if my baby would stay alive. I didn’t know if I could stay alive. I kept praying. Praying that we would be okay. I remember sitting on the floor against the bed, cold beads of sweat under my eyes and above my lip. I remember holding my belly and talking to my baby, and saying to hold on, to please hold on. But when I felt the wet between my legs, I knew it was blood, although I hoped it was sweat. I remembered hearing about bleeding in early pregnancy, and that everything could be okay. I prayed harder.

A hot twist of pain pulled me to the floor of the room, and I remember digging my fingers into the carpet and clutching fistfuls of shag, trying not to scream. But I did scream – pain pushed me on my knees and elbows with fistfuls of carpet as a run of sweat dripped from my nose. I felt lightning spasms inside, pulling me apart and holding me on the floor of that motel room. At some point, I blacked out for a few minutes. No time travel this time. When the room was in my eyes again, the spasms were worse, and a heavier flow started. I grabbed a towel and held it under me, and then started to shake. My baby was leaving me.

By the time it was dark outside, I had to lie down in the bathtub. I held the towel between my legs and waited to die. It was a white bathtub, but dirty and old, and it had a drain that was caked in black mildew. But I didn’t care, I couldn’t save my baby. I remember pushing my fingers along cracks in the lip of bathtub and into some of the holes where porcelain used to be. I remember waiting as the sweat ran down my face and the blood spilled out of me. The tub felt cold under my skin, and my teeth chattered. The pain that pulled my insides didn’t stop, it didn’t get better. A few times, I thought I’d pass out again. I wanted to call out for someone. I wanted them to get my parents, to get Tommy. But then I felt my baby leave me, and I shut my eyes and prayed that I would keep bleeding. That I’d bleed until there was nothing left of me.

There was a familiar pain in the eyes of Ms. Potts and Suzette. They knew this pain; they’d been where I’d been. It wasn’t the same, but, then again, it was. I didn’t realize it before, but we shared something, a loss. I felt closer to them for it. Looking at their faces, I wondered if there was something bigger than us, greater than us. Something that had brought the three of us together. Could there be? I’d like to think that maybe there was.

“But I didn’t die in the tub. I cried when it was over. I lost our baby. I don’t know if I was going to lose our baby anyway, or if the visit to the clinic was what caused me to miscarry. But I couldn’t go back. It wasn’t just my Daddy – I could never face Tommy again. And I think maybe I might have killed Tommy, too.”

Suzette pulled her hand to her mouth after I mentioned Tommy. She considered what I said, and I’d considered it more than a few hundred times since seeing his parents. If we had our baby, would Tommy have joined the Army after college? If we had our baby, would he have even gone to college? A blend of questions haunted me after hearing about his death. I didn’t dare explore more, or speculate what might have been if the decision I made had been different. One decision, a decision I made on a breezy afternoon while sitting in my yard changed our lives forever.

14

Some days at the diner start out busy, and then stay busy. Today was one of those days. The bell above the door, ringing every couple of minutes, had me lifting my chin to see who was coming and going. Sounds of our busy diner played back a tune of dishes and dinnerware, and people talking and laughing. I loved that sound, and would never tire of hearing it. As for my feet, I wish I could say the same, but that was a different story. Like Mrs. Quigly’s doggy slippers, my feet were barking. I kept a steady pace of back and forth to pick up plates of food from Clark, and was certain a rut of footprints, just my shoe size, were fixing a path from the booths to the counter, and to the grill.

Even Mr. Thurmon was pitching in to help where he could. He’d donned a waist apron to clear and setup the counter when bussing was needed. I liked having his company, but found that I was keeping an eye on him, hoping he was okay, while trying to keep an eye on everything else. He struggled through his pain, but was surprisingly quick in working the counter; he’d obviously done this a few times, maybe even a few thousand times. It especially helped having him with us when he chased out a few campers who’d held onto one of our booths for more than an hour. Just kids having fun, but not ordering anything, they cursed him some, and he scoffed a laugh as he told them to please come again. The counter was busy that night, and we wouldn’t have been able to manage the floor without him.

While you might think the counter would be the easier section to work in a diner, it wasn’t. Not at Angela’s. Quite a few of our regulars were singles, meaning they were here for a meal, and then out the door. No socializing; no need to. So, the counter not only saw more faces, they were inclined to move fast, very fast. When Mr. Thurmon’s neck started to pink up, I knew he was already beginning to tire. Soon after, the pink crept into his cheeks and darkened to a near purple, and, at times, his leg seemed to drag behind him like a dead limb. When he caught himself falling into the counter’s edge, I told him he should take a break. He was working into his second hour, and looked as though it had been a full day. He knew it, too. The stumble in his step and the cramping in his hands fought him constantly. A few times, I saw him try to shake out the dysfunction in his fingers, as though conjuring a spell to rid himself of the disease. Whatever relief there was to have remained fleeting as his expression soon turned to disappointment and sadness when he looked at his hands.