Giftchild (6 page)

I shook my head slowly.

But once again, Athena didn't look convinced.

When I got home that night, Dad's truck wasn't in the driveway. At this point he might just be working late, but another twenty minutes would push it over into clear avoidance territory.

So that made all of us.

I walked through the door to find a stack of brown paper bags lining the floor of the living room. In the bags were stacks of onesies, diapers, even the mobile that had been hanging above the baby's bed. I could hear noise coming from upstairs, and I went up to find Mom lying on her back on the floor of the nursery, ratchet in hand, disassembling the crib.

"Mom," I said. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" she asked. I'd expected anger in her voice, even tears, but she sounded calm.

I steadied one side of the crib for her. "This isn't what Dad meant for you to do."

She sighed. "So you heard."

"Yeah," I said. "Let's put this back together before he gets home, okay?"

"I already talked to your father," she said, pulling the side off the crib. "He's fine with it."

I slowly lowered my side of the crib, so the pieces rested on the floor on either side of Mom. "Okay," I said. "We can put everything in the closet, and you can put it back up when you're ready."

Mom shook her head decisively. "No. Your dad's right. I have to deal with reality. I have two daughters, and that's enough." Her jaw set, like she was determined to believe that, even though she didn't. And with good reason. If Mom could really just give up on a child so easily, she would have done it years ago.

"Reality can change," I said.

Mom gave me a hard look, like she didn't believe that, and didn't think that I could, either. And I felt a sudden stabbing of guilt that I hadn't thought about getting pregnant earlier. If I had, could I have saved us from these last few years of pain? Would Mom already have a baby in the nursery? Would she have been spared waiting so long that she felt the need to take apart the crib?

Even in the bright light of the nursery, long shadows stretched across her face. If she gave up now, I'd be looking at them for the rest of our lives. If I had children someday, I'd know she wished it was her.

And
I'd
know that it could have been her, if I'd just tried harder to help her. I sank against the doorway, and that's when I knew.

I had the power to change my mother's life. It would be selfish of me
not
to do it. "Please, Mom," I said. "Let's store it in the garage. For now."

Mom hesitated, and a flicker of hope crossed her face—not for long, but long enough for me to know that this is what she wanted. She didn't want to give up hope. She just didn't want to live with the pain anymore.

I could fix that. I could make it better. And if the last years were any indicator, I was the only one in the world who would.

"Please?" I said again.

Mom looked around at the remnants of the crib, and nodded. "At least then it will be out of the way."

"Exactly," I said. Mom's dreams, tucked quietly out of sight—far enough away that the reminder wouldn't sting, but not so far as to be out of reach.

Chapter Five

Week Two

The next morning I caught Dad in the hall, looking at the empty nursery. When he heard me behind him, he shut the door and turned toward me, rubbing his forehead.

I stood in my doorway and leaned against the frame. "I convinced her to leave everything in the garage."

Dad's eyes looked tired, and it was only seven AM. "That's probably for the best." His eyes caught on one of the baby pictures hanging in the hall—a portrait of Athena holding me, when she was three and I was barely one year old. Dad looked away quickly and faked a smile at me, but as he did, the same long shadows I'd seen on Mom's face stretched across his.

I collapsed against the door frame. Dad wasn't that old, either—only thirty-two to Mom's thirty-four. Plenty of people had their first child at that age. Dad had raised Athena and me as his kids, but he'd never had a baby. He hadn't even met me until I was six. I'd seen him look at our baby pictures that way before—like he wished he could have been there. I wished that, too. He should have been my father from the very beginning.

But he wasn't. And Mom wasn't the only one who wanted a baby in her arms.

"Love you, Dad," I said.

He put a hand on my shoulder. "Love you, too. Check on your mom before you head to school, okay?"

I nodded. "Okay."

And then Dad walked down the stairs and headed out the door to work.

I walked down the hall to Mom and Dad's room.

Through the gap between Mom's door and the door frame, I could see the lump of her lying in the middle of her bed, covers wrapped around her like a cocoon.

My stomach knotted. She rarely overslept, except on the bad days. If I was already pregnant, then she wouldn't be in this state now. I turned her door handle and pulled the door the rest of the way shut, letting go slowly to avoid even the slightest click.

It was time to put my plan into action. I opened the hall closet to find her ovulation predictors. If I was going to get pregnant, I needed more information about what my body was doing. It had been a week or two since my period, but I wasn't sure exactly how long. But I'd been living with Mom long enough to know how to track my fertility: she'd used ovulation predictors for years.

But as I reached for her stack of rectangular boxes, the ones she kept wedged between the extra tubes of toothpaste and tablecloths for special occasions, I found the space empty. Our red-and-green Christmas napkins slid out of the center of the tablecloth pile, the whole stack slouching into the new space.

I sighed. The nursery wasn't the only thing Mom had been cleaning.

In the garage, I found the place where Mom and I had stacked the crib, against the wall below the weed-whacker. I poked through the tops of the bags of onesies and burp cloths and thin, flannel blankets, but found nothing.

I stepped back, thinking I'd try the kitchen trash, when something crunched under my foot.

I stepped aside and looked. Where my foot had been, I found a shard of tan plastic, smaller than a dime. Amid the layers of dust and leaves and last summer's grass clippings, I found more of them—tiny, brittle chunks of plastic in irregular shapes, like someone dropped a pair of glasses, but broke only the frames.

I saw the hammer sitting on top of Dad's toolbox, and felt like I'd been socked in the gut. I hurried out the side door to our garbage cans, already knowing what I was going to find.

The morning air was thick with mist, but I could see the few feet to the garbage cans just fine. I lifted the lid on the one for trash. On top of one of the bags of garbage were the shattered remains of several ovulation predictors and pregnancy tests. They lay spread over the top of a white liner from the kitchen garbage, and smelled of rotten orange rind. Stuffed in the side of the recycling can were the cardboard boxes, torn open on one end like they'd been ripped in a hurry.

My stomach twisted tighter, and I closed the lid again. When had Mom done this? Last night? Yesterday? Before or after she dismantled the nursery?

What must she have been thinking?

I grabbed the edge of the garbage can, afraid I was going to be sick in it, but I breathed in the wet air, and my body relaxed.

I was going to fix this.

I walked quietly back up the stairs and waited outside Mom's door again. I could let Rodney drive me to school, but I pictured myself walking Rodney to the women's hygiene aisle.
So
, I'd say casually.
I was thinking I'd get pregnant.

A headache began to form at the base of my neck. No. I'd have to introduce the idea to him somehow, but not like
that
.

I knocked quietly on her door.

"Hmm?" Mom called. "Yes?"

I nudged the door open. "Can you drive me to school?"

Mom sat straight up in bed, the covers unwinding from around her shoulders.

"Not now," I said. "In half an hour. I need you to drop me off at the Walgreens to get some snacks for a class party."

Mom blinked at me, and then leaned over, pulling aside the bottom of her curtains. Fog wafted across the lawn. "I can wait for you in the parking lot," she said. "Then you won't have to walk in this weather."

If there was one thing you didn't announce to your mother, it was that you were about to try to have sex. Mom would talk me out of it. She'd
have
to. So it'd be better if I didn't tell her until after. "It's fine," I said. "I'll take my camera. I like to walk in the fog."

Mom squinted out the window, and I could see her measuring the risk in her mind. Was it dangerous for me to walk? Would some car fail to see me?

"Okay," she said.

"Thanks," I said, and I pulled her door closed again. I only hoped she didn't decide to take the hammer to the crib while I was at school. After she'd lost her first adoption, I'd faked being sick to stay home with her, but Dad told me I couldn't babysit her all the time.

He was right, but that didn't stop me from wanting to.

I texted Rodney:
I need to run to the drugstore before school. Mom's taking me. See you at lunch.

I braced for what I knew was coming. My phone beeped.

I could take you.

The phone felt slick in my palms.
It's girl stuff,
I texted back.

All Rodney said in response was
K.

I dressed quickly, wondering what he thought that meant. He'd been with me when I bought tampons before; it embarrassed me way more than it did him. Other guys might have cracked jokes, but not Rodney. He'd just stepped away from the register so I could buy my tampons in peace.

I packed up my camera in my backpack, and Mom drove me to Walgreens at about five miles an hour.

"What are you getting for class?" she asked.

"Chips, I think," I said. "I have a note somewhere."

Mom nodded.

My headache began to pulse. I could tell her. I
should
tell her. But I knew what she'd say—what she'd
have
to say. No, Penny. Don't do that. Don't even think about it.

And who could blame her? No one wants their teenage daughter to be pregnant. She was going to flip when she found out what I'd done. But there'd be no undoing it. And would my pregnancy really hurt her more than the years of longing, and the pain of giving up hope?

I looked at the circles beneath Mom's eyes as she squinted into the fog before turning into the parking lot of the Walgreens. There was no way anything I did could make her situation worse.

I opened my door before Mom had the car parked. "Thanks!" I said. "See you after school!"

I sounded far too chipper, so I closed the door before Mom could respond, and ran into the store without looking back.

There were a couple girls from school on the cosmetics aisle, smearing the sample lipsticks onto their hands. I didn't know any of them by name, and they probably didn't even recognize me.

I hoped.

I found the pregnancy tests near the tampons and the tubes of Monostat cream. As I reached for them, my stomach turned. Pregnant meant fat, it meant nausea, it meant labor.

I swallowed, and pulled a two pack of tests off the rack. Labor meant pain. Lots of pain. Supposedly more pain than I'd felt in my life.

The edges of my vision turned white. I leaned over, putting my hands on my knees, and gazed down the row of ovulation predictors.

Mom had been through pregnancy and labor twice. She survived, and more than that, she wanted to do it again. She wept for years that she couldn't. Nine months was just a school year. The same length as sixth grade, when I grew breasts before every other girl in school and Cassandra Templeton hung an endless stream of lacy, worn, second-hand bras on my locker. I lived through
that
.

Four predictors came off the rack. I held the boxes in both hands. A baby would mean an end to the crying.

I could do this.

I went through the line cashiered by the middle-aged woman, instead of the one with the twenty-something guy. If the cashier did happen to make a comment, it would be less embarrassing this way.

I stood behind a woman with a toddler and a stack of ads, holding the boxes down at my side and waiting for the cashier to price-match every item in her basket.

The male cashier waved at me as his line cleared. "I can help you," he said.

I shook my head. "I'm good."

His confused look was interrupted by the lipstick girls bearing cans of soda.

I should have told Rodney. He'd have breezed over and handed this guy the boxes without a second thought.

When the lady with the ads left, I stepped up close to the register and set my purchases down at the end of the conveyor belt. The cashier picked one up and looked at it. "Are these the ones that are a dollar off?"

I blinked at her. "I don't know."

She picked up the phone next to her register. "Let me have someone check."

I spoke too quickly. "I don't care."

Now she looked at one of the predictors. She looked at me.
Crap.
I hadn't meant to draw attention.

"It's for my mom," I said.

The cashier squinted at my pile of products. "She might care."

I squirmed. "She'll care more if I'm late to class."

As they passed by, cracking open their sodas, both girls looked at the predictor in the cashier's hand.
Just ring it up,
I thought.
Just put it in a bag.
When she finally did, I realized the bag was translucent.

Outside the store, I wrapped the bag around and around the boxes and then shoved them in the top of my backpack. I couldn't take them home where my mother might find them, and I couldn't put them in my locker where Rodney kept his book for trig. Maybe after I talked to him about it, but certainly not before.

My gym locker would work. As I walked to school, the fog was lifting, only shading the passing cars as if through a veil. But instead of feeling relieved, I just felt exposed. Even if no one knew what I was doing today, I still didn't want to be seen.