“Actually,” Valerie says, consonants snipped, “you’re lucky you didn’t.”
“It’s an epidemic. You see it all over the papers. The whole county is fucked.” He glances at Angel. “Screwed.”
“Yeah, thanks, I’m aware. You’re not seriously asking me to commend you for not being a heroin addict.”
Amadeo sets down his empty can, hard. “Well, it’s not nothing.”
“Mazel tov, little brother.”
Amadeo inspects his bicep, flexes, and Valerie looks away, biting her lip.
His mother is touching tiny garments, smoothing them gently in her lap. “I had no idea you saved all this, honey.” Something in her voice makes Amadeo look at her, but she lifts her head, blinks, and smiles serenely.
“Are you scared of labor?” Valerie asks Angel, shifting on the floor, her short legs not quite crossing. “I was scared out of my mind. Both times I just wanted to give up and leave them in there.” She pulls Sarah onto her lap and says to Lily over the girl’s head, “Aren’t you glad I didn’t? I’d have to open a middle school in my uterus.”
“Sick.” Lily glances up just long enough to grimace, draws her knees closer to her chest, and goes back to chewing her thumbnail. Sarah wriggles away from her mother.
Angel reaches over her stomach and lays the pinafore carefully on the far side of the pile as if it’s contaminated. “I’m not that worried. I’m in my prime childbearing years. Body-wise, I mean, not society-wise. Probably labor won’t be too hard.”
“Don’t you kid yourself,” says Yolanda darkly. “I was young, too, and it hurt like heck.”
“It’s true, Gramma. Studies have shown that it’s easier for teenagers.” Angel has brightened. “My teacher, Brianna? She told us that younger girls have less C-sections. All these old ladies waiting ’til they’re forty, they’re the ones who make problems for themselves. I see them in the grocery store, looking at me all judgy, but they’re jealous.”
Valerie shoots a worried glance at Lily. “Well—”
But Angel is already telling them about her friend Lizette’s birthing experience. “It only took her an hour. She wasn’t even sure if she’d make it to the hospital before the baby slid out. Not to be gross, but she said it was like taking a crap.”
Lily sets down her book and regards her cousin with interest. “Nast.”
Angel looks at each of them, bright-eyed. “Have you heard about olive oil? Brianna invited a guest speaker about natural birth. This lady didn’t use drugs at all, just did yoga the whole time and rubbed olive oil on her junk. She didn’t even have to get snipped.”
“Snipped?” asks Amadeo faintly. When Marissa was pregnant, they didn’t talk like this, at least not in front of Amadeo. Something’s happened to society in the last sixteen years, though. Now it’s like these women just can’t stop themselves.
“The perineum,” Valerie explains. She gives Amadeo a bland smile. Revenge.
“Disgusting, right?” says Angel, warming to her subject. “’Cause if you tear, then it don’t heal right and you’re all stretched out and you won’t give good sex ever again.”
“Okay.” Amadeo giggles, high and nervous. “Stop.” He looks at his mother and sister and is surprised to see revulsion in their faces, too. Lily, on the other hand, regards her cousin with fascination. Maybe they aren’t a united front of womanhood after all.
Valerie winds her hair around her hand again and takes a deep breath. “First,” she says, pulling out her school counselor voice and preparing her air quotes, “Angel, it’s not your job to give good sex. And second—” Her fingers go motionless in the air, and Valerie glances again at her eldest daughter.