Sunlight on My Shadow (9 page)

About the time I was very large but still in hiding, my friends and I went out to the Pitt in Glenview for a dance night out. Diane was driving and there were eight or nine of us who needed a ride. This was before seat belts, so it was common to sit on each other’s laps; sometimes we had six in the back seat. As we started to pile in, I panicked as I realized that if I sat on someone’s lap they might reach around and be able to feel my thickness—or worse yet, if they sat on my lap, it would be stuck there like a sack of potatoes between us. Dread of the back seat made me weak. I couldn’t risk being part of a double layer.

I crawled into the car, hoping I could keep my lap free, but then Jane started to crawl on top of me.

“No, Jane, get off. I’m claustrophobic.”

“Jude, there’s nowhere else to sit,” Jane said.

“Too bad” I said. “I have claustrophobia and will pass out.”

“When did this affliction appear?” Carol asked.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Barb said. “Gimme a break. Close the damn door, it’s freezing outside. Get in.”

“I don’t have anywhere to sit,” Jane said.

“Sit on the floor,” I said.

“Geez, Jude, don’t have a cow,” Jane said.

“I’m not having a cow; I just don’t want anyone on top of me. We’re packed in like sardines; I can’t take it. Carol, will you trade places with me? Please. I can’t breathe.”

Carol had no sympathy. “Forget it,” she said. “I get carsick. Besides, first come first served. I got dibs on the front seat.”

“Please, I’m begging you. Really, I can’t stand it back here.”

“Close the damn door,” Barb yelled again from the back. “Let’s get going.”

“Well, I’m not moving,” Carol said.

Feeling backed into a corner, I made a hasty decision. “Then I’ll walk,” I said.

I closed the back door of the car and stomped across the street and headed north on Waukegan Road. The cars whizzed by, throwing spray on the sidewalk. Flakes of snow had gathered on the bordering grass.

I felt like such a baby. I hated how I acted. All I knew was there was no way I was going to sit in the back seat with all the girls. I was seething with anger at Carol. She was so selfish sometimes, but now I was scared. It was late February and one of those bone-chilling, damp Chicago nights. I had no hat or gloves. What was I thinking? How would I ever walk the five miles home at 10:00 at night? I didn’t think I had a choice. Streams of anger came off me in waves. If only Carol let me sit in front.

I walked along, knowing that I had to make it home somehow. The snow was sloppy and stuck to my shoes; the moisture oozed through the soles. After a few blocks, Diane’s car pulled up next to me. My fear eased. Carol rolled down the window and said, “Okay, get in. You’re such a winner. I’ll sit in back; get in.” She opened the car door and walked around to the back seat. For us, a winner was a loser and although sometimes said in jest, this time it hurt. Carol got in back and sat on Jane’s lap. I sheepishly crawled into the passenger seat. I hated that I acted so snippy because of my predicament. My friends must have thought I was self-centered—demanding the front seat when everyone else was cramped in the back. Even though I was ashamed of how I acted, I was mostly relieved to be back inside the warm car, speeding toward home. I sat in silence, while everyone in the back chattered away. Tears tried to form, but I held them back. A tight band squeezed my throat, like a nail was stuck in there sideways.

When Diane pulled up to my house, I hopped out and said, “Bye, thanks for the ride.”

Carol said, “I hope you enjoyed the front seat.”

“Yeah, it was great,” I said and ran into the house. I suppose I could have at least thanked her for letting me sit in front, but I was way too angry to be kind. It wasn’t like she gave it up willingly. I sighed with resolve as I walked in the front door of my house. “This is ridiculous,” I thought. “I have to come clean about my condition. I just have to tell someone, but who?”

I tossed and turned most of those winter nights, waking and overcome by worry, then falling back into a fitful sleep. Five months into it and still nobody knew about my situation except Mick. The impending doom clouded my days with a sooty black. I knew I couldn’t keep the secret much longer. My belly was full and swollen. I had been feeling the baby kick for several weeks now. At first they were butterfly flutters, but now they were definite rolls and punches. My stomach muscles were stiff and iron-like from all the practice at holding in my belly. I walked with a slight bend forward so my blazer would fall around the sides, concealing my thick middle. With the rubber band around the button hole to add space to the waistline, the pleats fell with a sloppy bend in the folds.

It was quiet in our house. Mom had been taking high dose steroids for her pain, and the side effects put her in and out of the hospital. When she was home she slept a lot. She had wounds on her legs from the slightest nicks. One time a whole flap of skin came off: the wound filled up with pus and wouldn’t heal. With a compromised immune system, she caught illnesses easily. The worst episode was the staph infection that landed her in the hospital for several months, her life hanging by a thread, us visiting with masks tacked to our faces.

Hugren never could get the hang of making rice the way we liked it, so Dad did most of the cooking. His favorite meals included packaged sukiyaki with rice, T-bone steaks and rice, sukiyaki and rice. These were rotated on a weekly basis. As we sat across from each other at the glass table, Dad would look up from the newspaper and ask, “How was school today?” and I would say, “Fine.” Then we’d resume eating. Shame filled my space as I gobbled my food so I could excuse myself and go off to my room and be alone. Like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, nothing ever changed. It was a gloomy atmosphere with a word or two wedged into the silence. Hugren ate on her own and didn’t join us for dinner. The absence of Mom, who was in the hospital, and Jeff, who was away at college, left an uncomfortable emptiness. I was pretty much on my own those days; nobody paid much attention to where I was or what I was doing. I liked that part of it.

Mick and I had lost our romantic relationship. We were seeing each other occasionally, but there was such gloom wedged between us that the passion just slipped away. Our outings got fewer and farther between. After I was about four months into it, I heard through the grapevine that someone saw Mick at a Glenbrook basketball game, holding hands with some girl. My heart crumpled. How could he? I didn’t want to believe it.

One of my lowest points that year was a day in theology class. Sister Rosa Marie was lecturing us on the pitfalls of dating. “Girls, the Lord wants us to be pure and clean. You must please the Lord and maintain proper conduct at all times around the opposite sex. Holding hands, although seemingly innocent, can lead to dangerous activities. Never, ever engage in kissing and necking.”

While the words were coming out of her mouth, I could feel flutters and movement deep within my belly. If she knew how far away from the directive this young girl had gone, she would implode from the shock of it. Guilt and shame put a nasty green slime on my world. It felt like a moldy gunnysack was tied over my head: I couldn’t get enough air and I couldn’t see ahead. I longed for the innocent days when I went to Mass early in the mornings and just worried about telling Father in confession that I was thinking impure thoughts. If only I knew how good it was then. In the meantime, the baby that was hiding deep in there just kept on growing. I think it was around then that I put down the rosary before I completed my quota. What was the point? And, I never returned to confession. My sins were too monumental to divulge.

Memory works like Swiss cheese. There is the structure of the feelings and emotions and then the holes where the details should be. It amazes me that people who were present for the same event can remember entirely different details. As I gently plod along with the writing, all of a sudden I have a name, or a smell, or a scene from forty years ago distilling in my mind’s eye.

It was about a week before Christmas, 2010, late and well after dinner. I was in Palm Beach, Florida, with my longtime friends, Annie and Jane. The weather was mild and warm as we gathered around the patio furniture with our glasses of wine. I read aloud from my backlit laptop as the thin, stiff leaves of the palms rustled with the breeze. It would be the first time they heard what I had written about my teen pregnancy in 1967. I felt vulnerable, like I was putting my words to the test for accuracy. I knew that my memory had some holes, and I was hoping they could shed some light on the subject. When I had finished reading, Annie said, “I distinctly remember we were under the bleachers at Glenbrook South at a football game and you lifted up your shirt to show us.” This was contrary to what I had written. I thought we were in a hotel room or a sleepover and I was in my pajamas when I confided in them.

I didn’t remember it happening the way Annie described it, but she seemed so sure about the details that I went to bed thinking, “Could it be?” Could that have been where I told the very first people about my secret, under the bleachers?

I rolled her words over in my mind. “We were under the bleachers at a Glenbrook South football game,” she said. She painted a picture of us gathered in a huddle and me lifting my shirt to prove my predicament. As I thought about her words, a sickening feeling of fright, like something was very wrong came back to me as I remembered the dark, damp feeling of being under there with the butts and legs of people showing through the slits in the benches as we looked up. Like time-lapse photography, the image materialized in my mind, yet I didn’t think I would be willing to divulge my secret in public or lift my shirt while I was outside and chilly. I remembered us gathered under there, but couldn’t remember why. I suspected it was right after I had exposed my secret, and perhaps they all wanted another look.

Nevertheless, this is the story the way I remember it.

When March hit and the snow began to melt, we had a premature springy day of rain instead of snow. I had that nostalgic feeling about approaching spring. I felt the weight of my dark secret and remembered how carefree I was a year ago when my belly was flat and I was giddy and star struck, having just met Mick. I stood in front of the mirror and gazed at my shape with timid eyes. Without the girdle or clothes for a cover-up, my stomach relaxed into a small-sized basketball. My skin was dry and red from stretching to accommodate the growth inside. My breasts, which had been small and insignificant, now loomed large with the bottom surface resting on the skin below. Although I had longed for this fullness when I was fourteen, now it was freaky, unnatural. I was mortified at the extent of my disfiguration. I knew my reckoning day was coming soon. If I waited much longer, someone was bound to notice and call me on it. The secret was like a giant floating soap bubble, delicate and present, but tense with imminent destruction.

Annie, Jane, Carol, and I were at a sleepover. It felt like we were at a hotel. Could we have stayed at a Holiday Inn together for some reason or other? I don’t know where we were, but the surroundings were not familiar, like my house or my friends’ houses. I remember that I wasn’t worried about someone overhearing us. It was just us. I was shaking in anticipation of spilling the news. I felt trapped and forced to tell. I couldn’t hold the secret any longer. I was bursting at the seams.

They just couldn’t believe it. After all, I hadn’t even told them that Mick and I had sex. We never ventured into this topic. It was way too embarrassing and sensitive for me, and I was pretty sure none of them had done it. My friends were “good” girls. I wasn’t going to offer the fact that I was no longer a virgin, because it was something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. But now, I had to tell. I just had to tell someone.

I mustered up the courage and said the words I had been rehearsing for months. “I’m pregnant.” I didn’t give any details or lead up to it but just blurted it out, like diving into an icy pond so as not to prolong the misery by going in gradually.

A few summers before, we had read and passed around the Teen magazine issue with the cover story, “Pregnant and Still a Virgin.” The girl seemed to have had a heavy make-out session, and the boy must have dripped enough so it could travel and get inside. This was great fiction, but how did we know? These magazines were like today’s reality shows and we thought they were based on true stories. We took it as a warning to stay away from heavy petting.

Since all of us had read this magazine story, I was quizzed as to whether I actually “did” it. There were questions like, “How do you know for sure?” I told them we really did do it; I was no virgin.

When there were still questions, I told them I could feel the baby kick. I thought that would convince them. But then someone said maybe it was just gas.

“No, no,” I said, and finally lifted my shirt. “See?”

Then, I think it was Carol who said, “You’re just sticking it out.” Carol had an amazing talent and could pooch her belly out on demand so she looked like a little monkey. It was the funniest thing. So perhaps they thought I had learned Carol’s trick. I told them if they put their hand on my belly, they could feel it kick.

“That’s creepy,” someone said. Then they saw my belly roll and change shape, and they knew it was no joke.

Annie, who has always been good at offering solutions, said I should tell our local priest. This advice horrified me. Of all people, I couldn’t bear the thought of going in front of a priest and confessing what I had done. I hadn’t gone to confession in a long time, either.

Jane seemed sick with worry. “What are you going to do, Jude?”

They were all stunned, then concerned as they tried to help me come up with a plan.

By the end of the night, it was decided that my sister, Jackie, would be the best one to tell next. I felt very close to my friends and was confident that they would keep the secret, because I made each of them say, “Swear to God. Stick a needle in your eye. No peein’ in the pot. No pickin’ your snot. Swear to God.” We used these words when it was really important that the secret be kept. Each repeated it, like a rite of passage. I was a member of a sacred group and reassured that my secret was safe.

Now I felt light and free, filled with a warm sense of release from the damned-up secret. With the confession, I was free from the lead anchor that was pulling me down. As horrible as I had felt for five long months, I now felt a glimmer of hope, like this would get worked out somehow. Now I would tell Jackie. I would get some help and this secret would be dealt with however it may.