Misunderstandings (13 page)

Present Day
3:27
PM

“I hate that your touch still affects me,” Justin admitted after a few minutes had passed.

“Join the club. It’s not like I’m doing cartwheels here,” I muttered, slowly picking up the cards we had dropped.

“You don’t seem to understand what I’m going through here.”

“What you’re going through?” I shook my head at his arrogance. “You think you somehow hold the market on hate?”

“You have no reason to hate me,” he said, shaking with barely suppressed rage.

“Really? What about the fact that you left me and refused
to listen? That you never considered my feelings or how hard it was on me. I hate to break it to you, but you betrayed me long before I betrayed you. So get off your high horse. Contrary to what you believe, the world does not revolve around you.”

“I did not cheat on you with Shelly,” he said, jumping to his feet so he could pace again. “I told you that.”

“I’m not talking about cheating.”

“Then what do you mean?” he yelled.

I cringed as his voice vibrated off every corner of the small enclosed space.

“I’m talking about my heart,” I said, surging to my feet. I stood directly in front of him with rage cloaking us like a blanket. “You betrayed my heart. You left me broken and alone in front of everyone,” I added, jabbing him in the chest with my finger. “You left me alone holding all the shattered pieces,” I whispered as the dam holding my sobs at bay finally crumbled.

February 2011

“Brittni, you’re going to be late,” Melissa said, nudging my shoulder.

“What?” I said groggily, squinting in the bright daylight streaming through the window above our desks.

“I said you’re going to be late. Don’t you have biology at ten?” she asked, pulling on her jacket while she crammed her feet into the cute pair of flats she had gotten for Christmas.

“Yeah,” I answered, placing the pillow over my eyes to block out the unwanted light.

“Well, unless you get your ass in gear, you’re going to miss it.”

“What time is it?” I mumbled. My heavy eyes tried enticing me to stay in my nice comfortable bed for the rest of the day.

“It’s nine forty-five. Unless you’re skipping for the second time this week, you have to get up now,” she said, pulling the pillow off my face.

“Nine forty-five?” I repeated, trying to make sense of the time in my head, which seemed to be in permanent foggy mode lately.

“Yes, so get up,” she said, grabbing her shoulder bag.

“Yes, Mom,” I snipped, dragging my legs around so I was sitting up. The room spun slightly, making me feel queasy.

“Are you okay?” Melissa asked with her hand on the doorknob.

“Yeah, just a little light-headed. I didn’t eat much yesterday. I think I have a dumb stomach bug,” I mumbled.

“Maybe you should stay in bed. You look like hell,” Melissa replied, looking concerned.

“Thanks for the compliment. Philips would have my head. We’re covering mitosis phases versus meiosis phases this week. She’s hinted that they’ll be important facts to know for the midterm.” I struggled to pull on my favorite yoga pants at the same time that I was yanking my UW hooded sweatshirt over my head.

“Yeah, but if you’re sick,” Melissa said, taking in my lethargic movements.

“I’ll be fine. Once I finish biology, I’ll come back here and go to bed,” I said as I shoved my hair into a clip to secure it.

“Don’t you have a date with Justin tonight?”

“No, he’s studying with some guys from his humanities
class tonight. His teacher is being a complete asshat,” I said, grabbing my bag and following her out of the room.

“I’ve heard horror stories about that guy. Thank God we steered clear of him,” Melissa said before we parted ways. “Make sure you go back to bed after class,” she added sternly.

“Yes, Mom,” I teased, feeling slightly better now that I was moving around.

“Good girl, and if you’re lucky, maybe I’ll bring you some soup tonight.”

“From Mia’s Diner?” I asked hopefully.

“You’ll have to wait and see. Now go before you make both of us late,” she said, shooing me off.

Heeding her warning, I increased my pace, although my body wasn’t happy about it, but at least I reached biology with two minutes to spare. Five minutes later, I was wishing I’d just stayed in bed. To add insult to injury, I discovered that Professor Philips wouldn’t be teaching today when one of the research assistants who had previously covered her class came strolling in. The worst part was he had a heavy foreign accent that no one seemed to be able to understand. You could hear multiple grumbles throughout the room as he hooked up his laptop to the overhead screen at the front of the classroom. The best you could do was write down as much information as possible from his PowerPoint presentation and hope that Professor Philips would cover the topic again on another day. I did my best to keep up, but the minutes trickled by at an alarmingly slow rate as I imagined my warm bed back in my room.

“What a joke,” Stan, one of my friends, said as we walked out of the building together after class. “I know he’s speaking English, but I’ll be damned if I understood five words of what he said in there.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “I got ‘Hello, class,’ but everything after that sounded like gibberish.”

“Do you want to go grab some coffee? I have an inordinate amount of time left before my next class.”

“Can’t. I think I’m fighting off some kind of bug. It was all I could do to drag my ass out of bed for this joke of a class.”

“That sucks. I hope you feel better,” he said, backing away before he could catch any of my germs.

I told him thanks, although I was tempted to lick his face or something, the big baby. The walk back to my dorm seemed endless as the last of my energy surplus melted away. By the time I stumbled back to my room, I didn’t even bother to remove my clothes. Before I succumbed to sleep, I sent Justin a text telling him I was sick and that I would call him later when I woke. He replied quickly, telling me to rest and drink plenty of fluids.

Later turned into the next morning as I woke up after nearly twenty hours of sleep. I felt marginally better and relieved that the queasy stomach that had been plaguing me for the last week or so seemed to have disappeared.

“Look who’s finally awake,” Melissa said, placing a hand on my forehead. “How do you feel?”

“A little better. My stomach isn’t as bad.” I checked my phone to see several text messages and missed calls from Justin.

“I already told him you weren’t feeling well and that you
were crashing,” Melissa said when she saw my reaction to my phone.

“Thanks. I’ll call him in a few minutes. I need to get moving.”

Tuesdays and Thursdays were the two days that I worked at the daycare since I had no classes. Melissa tried to talk me into calling in sick so I wouldn’t expose the kids to my germs.

“How do you think I got those germs?” I pointed out, pulling on my last clean pair of pants, which happened to be another pair of yoga pants. I badly needed a trip to the laundry.

“I guess you’re right. Maybe that’s why you’ve been so sickly these last few weeks.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s days, not weeks,” I chastised, pulling on my boots.

“Weeks,” she emphasized. “You’ve been complaining about feeling puny since the last week of January. Valentine’s Day is on Monday. I know my math skills are shaky, but I can read a calendar, and that means you’ve felt bad for more than two weeks. Maybe you’re anemic,” she pointed out.

“Maybe,” I answered, grabbing my purse.

“You should visit the clinic,” she said as I headed for the door.

“Maybe,” I said, flashing a fake smile as I closed the door behind me.

The smile faded before the door had closed completely behind me. Two weeks? Could she be right? Two weeks of sickness and five and a half weeks since my last period. For a week and a half I had been trying in vain to ignore the fact that for the first time in my life I was late. It couldn’t be
possible. I was a Period Clock. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew something was wrong. I pushed it to the far recesses of my brain and buried it beneath mundane school-related junk, but suddenly the truth hit me like a brick wall, making me gasp for air. I detoured from my usual route to the daycare and sank down on one of the benches along the way. A lack of air made my vision blur and my stomach turn. Leaning forward, I placed my head between my knees. My world was falling apart at the seams.

After a few minutes of trying to calm my breathing, I was finally able to lift my head. The analytical part of my brain told me I needed to get up and go to work. That I needed to restore my life to some semblance of normalcy until it was ready to digest the news I had been avoiding. At the moment, I could not deal with the fact that my body no longer belonged to me alone.

Staggering to my feet, I gripped the back of the bench until the last of the light-headedness completely faded. I began the short hike to work, knowing that once I made it there I would be too busy to think about anything else. With each step I took, the band of despair that was encircling my chest loosened slightly so I was able to breathe a little bit easier.

Breathe, step, breathe, step, breathe.

Seemingly meaningless words when taken out of the context of this moment, but for now they served their purpose as they rolled through my head.

Breathe.

Step.

Breathe.

Step.

Breathe.

I plastered a smile on my face as I greeted the kind elderly receptionist who sat at the entrance of the daycare. Fellow teachers called out their own greetings as I made my way to the lounge and the locker where I stored my belongings. I returned their greetings, keeping the same brittle smile firmly in place. If they saw through my façade, they refrained from commenting.

Once I hit the classroom where I co-taught four-year-olds, my smile became a little less brittle and almost appeared normal if you didn’t know any better. The letter Q and number twenty became my best friends for the day as I worked one-on-one with each student. The monotony of the assignment allowed me to shut down the bothersome side of my brain. “Draw a circle and add a tail,” I instructed one student after another. I learned to love those words. After all sixteen of the students made their attempt at a capital Q, I moved to watching them count out twenty Goldfish crackers. Once their counting challenge was accomplished, I would hand them a cup so they could munch on their reward. The morning passed quickly and before I knew it, I was folding mats and stowing blankets and pillows in cubbies after naptime. Every task was completed with my mind occupied only on what I was doing. For a moment, a second, a minute, I convinced myself nothing was wrong.

Leaving the distractions of work behind allowed the dormant
thoughts to once again rear their ugly heads. In order to make it back to the dorm, I focused again on what I could control.

Breathe. Step. Breathe. Step.

“Holy shit, Brittni. You still look terrible,” Melissa stated as I staggered into our room.

I ignored her observation. What did it matter if I looked like hell or felt like hell? Did any of that matter when I was living in hell? Collapsing on my bed, I kicked off my boots and dragged my comforter over my head with one goal: to block out the world. I could hear Melissa asking if I was still sick. I gave her a grunt of confirmation, wanting to be left alone. She went into motherly mode again, giving me advice on what I needed to do. Ready for her to hush, I agreed to go to the campus clinic the next day even though I had no intention of doing it. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me I was pregnant. Peeing on a stick would make it official. I wasn’t ready to make it official.

During the next few days, I forced myself to pretend everything was okay so Melissa would get off my back. I canceled two dates with Justin, claiming I wanted to catch up on schoolwork. My days took on a surreal feeling as I went through the motions of being a normal person. It began to feel like I was acting in a play that only paused to take an intermission when I was finally able to succumb to sleep. Through it all, I continued to hope I would get my period, putting my fears to rest. Each night I went to bed bitterly disappointed.

Present Day
3:55
PM

Turning away from Justin, I sank down to the elevator floor, exhausted that we were back where we had started. I brushed away the tears from my eyes. It’s not like they could rewind time or change the past, and they certainly couldn’t undo the harsh words.

“You should have told me,” Justin accused.

“It was my body,” I countered.

“That’s bullshit. It was my baby too.”

I cringed at the word.
Baby.
I never allowed myself to think of it that way. It was the only way to ease the pain. Hearing him say it now was like a sword being rammed through my chest.

We were entering territory I had not forged into. Not with Melissa when she begged me to tell Justin everything. Not with Justin, who refused to hear my side when I needed support. And definitely not with my mom, who could never have handled the truth. Only one person knew all the sordid details. Tressa had met me at the airport more than two years ago and, with one look at me, detoured to the airport bar, where she ordered us several drinks in a row. Somehow we avoided being carded. Maybe the bartender, who was also a woman, could sense the grief I was experiencing. Maybe it would have been obvious to anyone. Either way, I was grateful. With the alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, my tongue loosened and my tears fell hot and fast as I poured my heart out to my best friend. She listened as I explained how Justin had ripped my guts out in front of everyone. How he’d refused to listen. At times Tressa’s face twisted with anger, but through it all she held my hand, giving me what I needed, someone to hear my side. As the last words left my mouth, I vowed to never utter them again. The pain was too unbearable. Tressa offered the support I needed with no judgment. She was loyal to the core, even offering to fly to Seattle to make Justin suffer.

Now, two years later, Justin and I were stuck together in this elevator, like two dogs forced to fight each other in some illegal backyard brawl. I couldn’t fault him for his anger any more than I could fault myself for the choices I had made. I could have pushed harder two years ago, forcing him to hear me. Even through all his resistance, I could have provided evidence that would have explained everything. At the time,
I’d been so hurt by how quickly he had turned on me that I couldn’t find the will to do any more than walk away with the small amount of dignity I had left. Maybe if things hadn’t gotten so screwed up, so ugly, they could have been different. We would never know that outcome, though.