Fancy White Trash (7 page)

Nail-polish chips gather on the shelf of her belly. “Of course that Steve. At the pig roast, he said some stuff.”

The jerk. “What stuff?”

“How when the baby came, he hoped we could all be a family. A real family like on TV.” She reaches under her pillow and brings out one of the books she bought at the mall. She taps the cover of
Dr. Patty's Guide to Peaceful Parenting
. “Dr. Patty says a child creates an immutable bond between a man and a woman that lasts for life. Don't you think that's what Steve means? That we're tied together forever and we have to do our best to make a happy home for our kid?”

I try to think of a happy family on one of my soaps. Drawing a blank. “Are you sure he was talking about
your
baby?”

Kait glares at me. “What else?”

“Um, Mom's baby?”

She starts to say something back, but gasps and grabs her belly instead. Her face contorts and I think she's going to cry again.

“Hey, I didn't mean—” There is liquid dripping down Kait's leg. “Kait, what's happening?”

She pants. “Too early, this is too early. . . .” She cries out and tries to stand. Her legs collapse, and now she is lying on our hardwood floor, tears pooling beside her head, something else pooling under her legs.

I shove aside the sheets hanging on our window and check the driveway. No Mercedes. Kait's car is there, but I don't know how to drive a stick yet. She was supposed to teach me but always managed to blow off our plans at the last minute.

“Ooh,” she moans, and squeezes her thighs together. “She's not due until
September
—how can this be happening now?”

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.

“Abby, help me.” Her eyes are glazed with pain.

I pick up the phone. Mom's in Phoenix with the Guitar Player at a show, and Shelby's at work. I call Cody, even though I'm not exactly sure what he can do. Only it's not Cody who answers on the first ring.

“Jackson, I—” I can't get the words out. “It's Kait, she's—I think she's . . . oh God . . .”

“Hang on, Abby. I'll be there in three seconds.” Jackson hangs up.

“He's coming.” I see my sister on the floor, both hands gripping her stomach, legs shaking. “Can I help get you on the bed?”

“N-no.” Her teeth chatter. Her body is still, knees curled against the bottom of her big belly.

There are a lot of surprise labors on
Veterans' Hospital
, so I know that I should rush off and get towels or boil water, but I don't want to leave my sister. I whip the comforter off Kait's bed and tuck it around her. Then I do the only other thing I can think of. I get down on the floor, pillow her head in my lap, take her hand in mine, and hang on.

Chapter
6

We are born in pain.

It is a great first line for Kait's
Bell Jar
essay. Too bad there is nothing to write on in the waiting room. Cody and Jackson are camped out in the stiff plastic chairs closest to the muted TV. They are the only ones here with me.

On
Moments of Our Lives
, when someone is in the hospital, all the characters gather and pace the corridors, drink coffee, and rehash all the plot threads. Emotions run high. There is arguing and beaucoup drama. My family won't even come to the hospital.

“I can't leave work,” Shelby said when I called her on Cody's cell phone. “You know evenings are my busiest time at the store.” Apparently, most people like to buy their booze after five p.m. Before hanging up, she added one more thing, which I just can't seem to get out of my head.

“Abs,” she said, “going into labor today doesn't necessarily make the baby premature. Think about it.” But I really don't want to dwell on August birthday versus September due date, or who the baby's dad is or isn't. I just want someone to meet me at the damn hospital!

Mom and the Guitar Player are unreachable. I left messages on their cells and on our home phone. Now, I pace the entirely too small room. FAMILY AREA, the sign on the door says. It's better than when we first arrived two hours ago and had to sit in the ER waiting room with twenty other people, most of them coughing or bleeding, trying to keep Hannah from eating an old bag of chips someone'd left behind. Thank God Barbara showed up after a quick call from Cody and took Hannah off our hands. The Family Area is private, quiet, but after another tense hour of waiting, I want to break down the door, run screaming down the halls.

“How long does it take to have a baby?”

“Relax,” Cody says. “Shelby took hours, remember?”

Hannah's birth was a big deal, like everything Shelby does. Kait was her breathing coach since Hannah's dad was out of the picture long before the divorce was final, and Shelby insisted we all be in the room for Hannah's arrival. Cody was spared the sight, but I will carry that bloody, slimy memory to the grave. They really should wipe a baby off before they show it to anyone. I totally respect Kait's desire to be alone in the delivery room.

I squeeze myself into the empty chair between Cody and Jackson. Leaning my head on Cody's shoulder, I breathe deeply and slowly. He shifts and readjusts us until he gets an arm around my shoulders.

“Better?”

“I hate this.”

“We're here with you,” Cody says. “We're not going anywhere. ”

I keep breathing, try to think about Kait's essay. Will her adviser believe she wrote it before the labor hit?

Jackson stretches his legs out in front of him and toes off his Nikes. “Might as well get comfortable. We could be here for hours.”

It feels late. Jackson drove us here at approximately the speed of light, but I haven't seen the time since they whisked Kait to a back room just after eight thirty. No one else is in the room with us. It's like we're in a bubble, out of time and place. Only Cody's arm around me feels real, the sound of Jackson's raspy breath beside me. I feel Cody's fingers comb through my hair, which usually relaxes me but isn't working tonight.

Sitting, waiting, is driving me nuts. Cody, too. In the first five minutes, he straightened all the chairs, rearranged the fake plants according to height, and adjusted the blinds on the one window so they were level. Now he's stuck with nothing to do but pick imaginary—I hope!—flecks of dandruff out of my hair. I want to do something, anything. The first line of Kait's essay rolls through my head again. I sit up.

“Do you have a pen?” I ask. “Or any paper?”

“Nope.” Cody's chin bumps my forehead when he talks.

Jackson fishes a pen out of his front pocket. “No paper, though. Sorry.”

“This is great.” It's a felt-tip, much better for writing on skin than a ballpoint. I click it open and start. It's good that I'm wearing a tank top. The first line goes on my upper arm.

“Not too bad.” Jackson is done reading. My left arm and both legs are covered in sentences.

“It's a little rough,” I say.

Jackson rubs the two-day-old shave on my legs. “No kidding.”

I slap his hand away. “Hands off the masterpiece.”

“That reminds me,” he says. “You still writing poetry? Like the ones you showed me? They were really good.”

Breath hitching, I stare at my ink-covered knee. He's not supposed to remember
that
, the
me
that was such a sap I actually wrote poems about us. And everything else, too. Friends and enemies, the environment, politics, my favorite shows. The truth is, I still do write poems. Usually late at night, in the journal I keep under my bed next to Mr. Manly. But I don't say yes to Jackson's question.

“You ever gonna return that book?” I ask. Not only had I shown him my poems, I'd lent him my favorite book,
The Essential Rumi
, a translation of writings from the thirteenth-century poet Jalal al-Din Rumi that I never cease to find completely amazing.

“Maybe I'm rereading it.” He flicks hair out of his eyes. His eyes shift away.

Like I'm supposed to believe that. “If you lost it, just say so.”

“I love Rumi,” he protests.

I'm not impressed he remembers the name. It was in big black letters on the cover. I am about to tell him I want a new hardcover, that he won't get away with some used bookstore paperback replacement, when the door from the hallway opens.

I pop out of my seat, hoping for news. But it's Mom, thin body wrapped in a tight black dress that shows off her long legs. Her hair is curled and flows down her back in layered waves.

“Kait's still in labor,” she announces as if we don't know why we're here. She paces the room just like a
Veterans' Hospital
character would. “Three weeks early! My goodness! And can you believe that nurse wouldn't even let me in the room? Said Kait doesn't want me there. Me, her own mother!”

And rival for the affection of her baby's father. I don't say that, though. Unlike everyone else in my family, I've outgrown the need to stir things up. Slumping onto the floor, I take the pen and design a tattoo for my ankle.

“She's been in there for over three hours,” Cody says after checking the time on his phone. “Did the nurse give you any more information?”

“No, no—just told me to take a seat in the maternity ward Family Area and they'd let me know. Not an easy place to find, this little room,” Mom says.

I look up from my swirling vine. “Where's the Guitar Player?” The father.

Mom totters on her extra-high heels. “You know he had a gig down in Phoenix. That's where we were. I took the car. He's staying with a friend tonight, and she'll drive him up here tomorrow.” She manages to look both annoyed and pathetic as she settles on the edge of one of the end tables.

Not even here for the birth of his child. Living, breathing proof that I am dead-on accurate when it comes to Rules #3 and #4, Looks Aren't Everything and Don't Need Him. You should never
need
any guy, especially one as good-looking as the Guitar Player. I'm only guessing, but my bet is the friend he's staying with is a gorgeous Guitar Groupie.

“Where are Shelby and Hannah?” Mom asks, just now noticing that it is mostly the neighbors waiting it out in the Family Area. You'd think there'd be another family crowded in here with us, waiting for their own good news, but Tuesday's apparently not a big night for deliveries in Cottonwood.

I tell her and watch as her mouth thins into a tight line. She thinks that all of us crammed into three bedrooms makes us close, but that's only geography. Her eyes take in the writing on my arm and legs. “What's this? You're not getting a tattoo, are you?”

“Yes, I'm having Kait's English essay tattooed on all visible parts of my body.” I add more inky swirls to my ankle and a few angry dots.

Mom sighs like I'm the problem child in this family. “It's not flattering.”

“It's not supposed to be. Got any paper in your purse?” If I don't transfer the essay soon, accidental brushes against other people or even a little sweat could destroy my work.

She tosses her purse to me. I rifle through it. Gum, crackers, wallet. “Can I use this receipt?” It's a long one from the grocery store. If I write tiny and abbreviate, it could work.

The door opens and a nurse enters. “Ms. Savage?”

“Yes?” Mom and I say together.

The nurse talks to Mom. “Your daughter wants to see you now.”

I am the one who held her hand until Jackson got to the house and helped her to the car. I am the one who filled out the twelve hundred pages of medical forms. I am the one who sat for hours on the uncomfortable waiting-room chairs. I am the one dying to know how my sister is.

“Oh, thank God.” Mom puts a hand to her heart and hurries after the nurse. The door closes behind her. It's the three of us again, back in our bubble. Another hour passes while we discuss what is or is not worth watching on TV this season.

“I'm gonna find a vending machine.” Cody stands and stretches. “You want anything?”

I shake my head, but Jackson gives him a dollar, asks for a soda. Cody leaves. Now there are only two in the bubble.

“You don't have to do that now,” Jackson says. “I mean, Kait does have a pretty good excuse for not handing it in on time.”

I am scribbling out the essay on the receipt, checking my arm for details, squishing up letters tight on the page. “I know.”

“You could tell me what's bothering you.”

I scribble. He waits. Ignoring him, I finish transferring words from my arm and move to the first leg. It's hard to see the side of my thigh, so I twist myself around.

Jackson kicks back in his chair, turning sideways so he can throw his legs over the side. “Or not. I could tell you what's bothering me.”

I raise my head and our eyes lock. I don't want to know, but I do.

“There was this girl,” he starts. Disgusted, I turn away. He goes on. “This girl, she lived next door and I was crazy about her.”

I am slightly more interested. I live next door to him, but then I remind myself he could easily be talking about one of my sisters. Or, God forbid, my mom.

“But my brother was in love with her. I tried to stay away, but I couldn't. I was always hanging out at her place, doing stupid stuff to make her laugh.”

True. He used to be at my house as much as Cody. And he did act stupid, bragging about his football season or how much some other girl liked him. He was pretty insufferable, actually.

“So this girl, she had an older sister. Not as hot as she was, but my age. We ended up at the same party right before Thanks-giving break where we both had a few too many Wild Turkey shots. She was cute, friendly, flirty—a little of this led to a little of that. I thought maybe it could work, but after we saw each other a few more times, she acted weird. All mysterious. Said what happened between us didn't mean anything because she was in love with someone else. You know who that was?”