Annie's Baby Page 8

  Scared out of my wits and mentally muddled and bleeding, I fell at his knees. “I’ll…have an abortion if that’s what you want.”

  He picked me up by one arm and dragged me to the porch. “Try your sad-ass act on some of the other guys you’ve done it with.”

  As he drove off in a grinding of gears, all I could think about was how grateful I was that at least this time I had enough money to take a bus home.

  Now my problem is…will Mom discard me too? Maybe? Yes? No? And I’ve got to face another thing—Danny’s a damn liar all the way—so…could he have given me AIDS or…or…something? Oh, how I wish I’d listened in health class so I’d know more…about…everything!! Poor me! What to do? What to do?

  6:01 p.m.

  It’s almost time for Mom to come home after her last late class, and for the first time I’ve felt pangs of pain for the poor little innocent, unwanted baby that is growing within me. Nobody wants it. It might as well be lying out in the middle of a busy, dark freeway in a blinding storm. It had no choice in the matter. Danny did! I did! Not it! Poor little unloved, dejected part of my body. I wish I could love it. I wonder if I can learn to? Someone needs to! It’s in such a helpless, hopeless, loveless situation. Maybe I can learn to love it. I hope I can! Someone has got to! NO living thing in the world should have to live without love and respect, maybe respect even more than love!

  Oh, Mom, please hurry home. I need you to help guide me through this darkest period in my life. I KNOW I’ve been rude and mean and disrespectful to you the last few months, when I thought Danny was the epitome of all things good and you were—I can’t even write what I felt you sometimes were—AND YOU WEREN’T! I was the stupid asshole…but I’m not going to use that gutter-type language any more. It’s going out with the gutter-type lifestyle I’ve been living. I want to be what you want me to be. I always have! I’ve known you only wanted the best for me, both mentally and physically, and I’m proud of you and what you’ve done with your life. You’re an ideal example for me and for every other young person who comes across your path. Why couldn’t I have tried harder to follow in your footsteps?

  I hear Mom coming in the front door, and I’m literally frozen in my tracks. Will she understand? Can she? Will she still respect and love me after I tell her?

  WELL,

  HERE

  GOES NOTHING!

  March 2, Saturday

  2:30 a.m.

  I can’t believe my Mom! As soon as she put down the groceries and stuff she’d brought home from school, I took her by the hand and led her into the living room and just blurted out the whole truth. She didn’t scold or nag or scream or show me to the door or any of the other cruel and terrible things I’d thought had been possibilities. She just kept saying over and over quietly, “It’s going to be all right, baby. You and I together can handle it.” Her soft, warm hands holding mine tightly made me know that we could.

  After I’d told her all that I thought was necessary, not about Danny beating on me or anything like that, she held me as she had when I was a child and told me how “eternally precious” I was to her. Then suddenly she stood up, wiped away both her tears and mine and looked me straight in the eye and said, “Now it’s time for us to get on with our lives. Let’s go fix dinner, then go for a long walk to prove to ourselves that we are both in charge! As we walk and after we get home, we’ll talk until we’ve made some comfortable solutions for at least the next couple of days.” She squeezed me so tightly, I winced. “After that, we’ll take it one easy step at a time, right?”

  “Right,” I whispered back.

  After our long, long, long, long walk and our even longer talk, she drew a warm bath for me, then sat on the side of my bed and gently rubbed my back and shoulders and neck till I fell asleep.

  How could she be so good to me when I have been so terrible to her?

  I wonder what we’re going to do about my little tadpole? I can see it just like the pictures on the screen—teeny, tiny hands and arms and legs and big head wiggling in the amble—something fluid. I hope…I really do hope I don’t have to…but I’ll do what Mom thinks we should, or rather what we together think is best for the three of us. Oh dear, I’ve got to quit thinking of it as a her; it will make it too hard if I have to…

  March 4, Monday

  4:32 p.m.

  Mom and I talked all weekend like I wish we’d done, and we should have done, months ago. Then today she suggested that I go to school as usual. She knows it won’t be easy, but life goes on even if I am…you know. She was right and I can’t believe how normal everything around me seems while I inside feel so…so…unnormal. At least it doesn’t seem exactly normal to me, for a fourteen-year-old kid to be going around with another even littler kid developing inside her guts. It’s sort of science fiction or something, but maybe not.

  8:22 p.m.

  Mom suggested after dinner when we were talking, and we talk a lot these days, that she make an appointment for me to see a doctor. I agreed, but it’s going to be so embarrassing and make everything so absolutely final.

  March 5, Tuesday

  6:06 p.m.

  We just got home from Doctor Stewart’s. He’s Mom’s friend, and he worked us into his schedule as soon as she called. He says I appear to be almost three months pregnant, and I should make a decision immediately as to what I’m going to do about my pregnancy. THERE! I’ve used the P-word again and it didn’t kill me, but…what about the fetus? No one yet calls it a baby, except me, and maybe I shouldn’t, but I can’t help thinking of it as one. I guess we’re all different, and we have a right to think what we please. For instance, Tina, she obviously didn’t think at all about her baby fetus being a baby, but me—well, I’m me.

  I’m going to do what Mom wants, but…life is sometimes really difficult, isn’t it? But at least I’ve got good old Mom to help me through it. I am sooooooooo lucky!

  9:20 p.m.

  Mom and I have talked it over carefully and have decided to make a final decision in the next couple of days. Dr. Stewart says it isn’t wise to wait much after that. I do, but I don’t! NO. I don’t, but I do. I really…I don’t know…

  Oh sleep, dear sleep

  Come to me soon

  And rock me gently, quietly

  In the cradle of the moon.

  I hope tomorrow never comes. The decision is too final!

  March 6, Wednesday

  4:31 p.m.

  School is becoming harder every day. I don’t belong anywhere anymore. I’m not a kid and I’m not an adult. Danny stays out of my way like I have the plague. I bet he’s told everybody and their gossipy aunt about my being what I am, saying he’s not any part of it.

  I don’t want to go with Danny’s friends anymore, and my old friends don’t seem to want to go with me. But why should they? I cut them out cold when Danny told me to. How foolish, foolish, foolish I’ve been in a million different ways.

  I wonder if I’ll ever be able to put all the pieces back together again. Now I know what the Humpty Dumpty children’s poem really means!

  March 7, Thursday

  7:59 a.m.

  Mom and I got up real early and sat on our little friendly balcony and had breakfast and watched the sun come up. I dared to tell her how I felt about the little squiggly growing inside me, and she said she felt the same way, but she hadn’t wanted to force me to do something I might regret. We hugged each other and said together, quietly and happily, “We’re going to have a baby! We’re going to have a baby! We’re going to have a baby!” Then I started singing softly, “We’re going to love our baby.” And Mom joined in, “We’re going to love our baby. We’re going to love our baby.” It was a really moving moment.

  Mom knows how superduper-super sorry I am to have gotten myself into this predicament, especially at such a young age. She’s sorry, too, from the bottom of her soul, but she didn’t condemn me or berate me or anything hurtful. She just stands firmly at my side now that THIS IS THE WAY IT IS.

/>   Gotta run catch the bus,

  Bye,

  See ya tonight! You’re about my only friend left. Thank you for being my true, trusted and always there friend!

  March 14, Thursday

  9:42 p.m.

  I know I haven’t written in you for a long time, but life is very difficult for me now. I have to live out every minute with apprehension. I’m so paranoid that the kids will somehow know and judge and condemn me, and I also suspect the teachers know and are reviewing me as a bad example. In a way I wish I could drop out of school, but of course that is not an option. How could I ever get into high school and then college without a junior high school diploma? Besides, I want an education. I know that is the only way to become independent and earn a decent living.

  March 15, Friday

  4:34 p.m.

  Danny passed in the hall just as I was coming out of the library, and his eyes got absolutely blank. It was as though he was looking right at me, but totally through me like I was invisible.

  I turned around, went back into the library, and hid behind a bookshelf and cried for a couple of minutes till I got myself together.

  It was so humiliating and demeaning! How could I ever have thought he was God’s gift to the world? He’s just a selfish, self-centered, arrogant, brutal animal, or did I just bring out the ugliness and degeneracy in him? I don’t think so! In fact I remember Kip laughingly saying one time when Tina was crying that “If it didn’t hurt, I wasn’t doing it right,” and all the guys laughing with him.

  I wish I could talk to Mom about that kind of stuff, but I can’t. I do wish I could, though, because something tells me that real love isn’t about being hurtful at all.

  I just looked up LOVE IN BOTH THE DICTIONARY AND THE THESAURUS AND IT MEANS SHARING, CARING, GIVING, RESPECT, GOOD THINGS AND ON AND ON. I don’t think Danny and his gang even know what the word “LOVE” means! It certainly doesn’t mean beating up on girls or making them like semislaves.

  March 16, Saturday

  4:33 p.m.

  I’m different now! I don’t belong anywhere! It’s sort of like I’m a mutant. No one is comfortable with me and I’m not comfortable with them or myself. Mom tries to do everything she can to make me…at least a little bit secure. Sometimes she tries too hard, and it puts me even more out of the circle of humanity. That miffs me so much, I want to cut her, too, out of my existence.

  Oh, crap, I don’t even know what I’m saying or doing or thinking.

  Nothing in life makes sense anymore.

  March 21, Thursday

  6:31 p.m.

  Just got back from rollerblading to the mall. But everyplace is soooo lonely. The strangest thing is that the more crowded places are, the more lonely they seem. I think I’m going crazy.

  April 3, Wednesday

  4:40 p.m.

  I’m starting on my fourth month of being pregnant. It’s like, UNREAL! I look in the mirror, and I don’t even recognize my own body. It’s like someone else’s. Whose is it going to be next month, and the next and the next? I’m like, not a kid anymore, straight and strong and stringy. I’m…I’m too fat around the waist to button up my jeans or anything else tight. Guess from now on I’ll just wear sloppy stuff. IT’S GROSS. I’M GROSS. LIFE IS GROSS.

  What happened to the sunshine?

  10:00 p.m.

  Mom is worried about me. She’s given up her whole life to take me to movies and shopping and to the lake, and everything else she can think of to keep me from becoming so depressed that I’ll…I’ll what? If I don’t know what, how can she ever know what?

  11:21 p.m.

  I woke up from a crazy dream about having been to a kegger. I was sitting by myself in a corner, but I was so happy and content that I wish I was doing it! No, I don’t! I wouldn’t do that to the little kid growing inside me. (I decided she was a little girl a long time ago.) Anyway, since I chose to keep her, I am at least going to be good to her. I can’t even imagine letting her get drunk from the alcohol in my bloodstream…if that’s how it works.

  April 4, Thursday

  12:02 a.m.

  I can’t sleep. I just keep thinking about her. I think I’ll call her Dawn. Like the Dawn of a new day. She’ll be that for sure in my life.

  I can feel Dawn cuddled up in the crook of my arm, soft and warm and smelling like all the sweetness that Mrs. Marsdon’s baby smelled of. I remember the softness of that baby’s skin. It was softer than anything else soft in the world.

  After Dawn comes I’ll never be lonely or alone again in my whole life. She’ll love me and always be there for me! Not like my kitten that grew up to be a cat and then just kept running away until she finally got run over. No, Dawn will be with me twenty-four hours of every day and night. I’ll belong to, and with, something again! She’ll be my baby, my friend, my confidante. She’ll fill up all the blank holes I now have in my life. Oh, I’m so, so, so glad I’m having her. She’ll be my everything!

  April 10, Wednesday

  4:19 p.m.

  I just got home from school, and I hate it so much I could die. It’s dull and useless and hard. Each day gets longer, and more and more depressing. Actually I’ve become an inward hermit, in a forest of people, totally alone. I guess I’ll wind up like my father and his mother. Maybe I should go join them in their lonely, big, old, scary, dark house in their big, old, scary, lonely, dark forest. I remember they used to always keep their blinds closed, even on the brightest of sunny days. I’m getting kind of like that. All the blinds on the inside of me seem to be forever stuck closed. It’s dreary and dangerous inside me, and I HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT!!! I tried to force myself back to a few days ago when I was happy, but that now seems like a strange faraway never-never land of pretense!

  April 12, Friday

  5:29 p.m.

  Mom came home today lighted up like a birthday cake. She dropped her things in the chair and pulled me down beside her. “I think I’ve found the answer to your social problems.” She grinned.

  Feeling mean-spirited, I shot back, “Now you’re adding ‘SOCIAL RETARD’ to all my other obvious faults.”

  She looked like a small child who had been slapped, and I fell into her arms in an apologetic heap.

  It’s the first time we’ve physically connected in forever—I’ve been so paranoid and frustrated and mentally messed up.

  We cried together, and it was like a cleansing thing, a gluing-back-together experience. I was happy because I’ve missed our togetherness.

  Finally I said, “So, what’s the magical solution to your crazy-mixed-up kid’s problems!”

  “Well.” She seemed unsure. “There’s a special school for the district’s UNWED MOTHERS in the old Elm Street Elementary building.”

  She told me the big, old, stone main building had been condemned, but that the small frame building on the north side had been updated enough to make it into some usable classrooms.

  We talked about it for a long time. Maybe it would be what I needed. I hope so!

  April 13, Saturday

  12:01 a.m.

  I’ve been thinking about it and a school for just unwed mothers sounds scary and disgusting. A place for tramps and “hos” so they won’t rub off on the nice kids at the regular schools. Yeah, the nice kids like Tina and Danny and his gang of budding perverts!

  April 17, Wednesday

  4:29 p.m.

  Tomorrow at 8:15 I start the school for “Social Rejects.”

  Just between you and me, I wonder if for the last three months I’ve been mainly rejecting people, or if they’ve been rejecting me: knowingly, overtly, and sadistically, like I’ve thought they have. I really did think they were doing it because they were self-righteous and LOOKING DOWN ON ME, but today Jenny came and sat by me on the grass, where I always take my brown-paper sack lunch, and at first I didn’t speak to her, and she didn’t speak to me; then she started crying like her heart was breaking, and she said, “Oh, Annie, I’ve missed you so much. It’s like you’ve cut me out
of your life completely, and I don’t know what I’ve done.” She asked me why I wouldn’t ever return her smiles or her “Hi’s,” and I guess I didn’t even see them because I was busy looking at the floor, so people wouldn’t see the SCARLET A like a neon sign on my shirt.

  I told her I was sorry, and I just hadn’t been feeling well.

  She asked me if it was because I’d broken up with Danny, and I disintegrated into a flood of tears. I wanted to confide in her every detail of…of…every single thing, but the bell rang, and we both had to blow our noses and wipe our eyes and run back to class.

  Jenny was going one way and I the other, but as she turned the corner by the statue, she turned and yelled, “Hope I see ya at soccer soon.”

  That really startled me because I’d thought my fat belly was totally the topic of everyone at school: students, teachers, principal, and janitorial staff. How self-centered could I have been? They had other things in their lives! I wasn’t the focal point of the universe as I thought I’d been for almost four months! But even if they weren’t laughing and joking about my predicament, I was tearing myself down enough for all of us!

  10:43 p.m.

  I phoned Jenny, and we talked for hours like we used to do in the olden days B.D., before Danny. I told her I was P.G., and she cried with me and said she still wanted it to be like it used to be between us.

  Can’t you just see fat, four-months-along me playing soccer? Ha…ha…ha…boo…hoo…hoo…hoo…hoo.

  Probably I’ll never play soccer again, and I LOVED IT SOOOO MUCH!

  April 22, Monday

  5:05 p.m.

  Started the new school today. It was like moving to Uranus, seventh solar system from the sun. There are only nine girls, but they’ve been there awhile, so they’ve connected. ME! I was a foreign, frightening, new, grotesque subspecies that didn’t fit in with any of them.

  9:00 p.m.

  It was Horrible! Miserable! Totally deflating!

  I’m used to being in honor’s classes and this is like kindergarten. I thought I’d tell Mom and Jenny how funny it was—but it isn’t funny! It’s sad, sad, SAD, and BAD! Any attempt at trying to put on the positive front that I’d thought I’d put on would be nothing but a big bald-faced lie.