She stood, picked up her half-eaten dinner, tossed the plate loudly on the counter. “I’m going to my room. It’s your turn to clean.”
I’d lost my appetite too and went to the sink, faced the greasy plates. I had just been administered a test. And though I couldn’t understand its purpose, I knew I had failed.
54
Evangeline woke on a Saturday in early April, victim to her baby’s anger-control problems. The baby veered toward combat, battling cramped conditions with sharp-edged kicking and punching, as if hoping to expand territory by busting out a few of her ribs. Evangeline’s previously underappreciated bladder and lungs were relegated to a fraction of their former space, forcing her to breathe double time up hills and race to the bathroom every ten minutes.
Her heart too was burdened by the alien’s demands. No longer able to fully circulate fluids, it allowed them to remain boglike in her ankles and feet. She’d press a finger into the bloat of her lower legs and the dent in her flesh would stubbornly persist, a warning that vanity—for Evangeline had always been proud of her slim ankles—was something she would have to set aside.
At nine thirty, Evangeline arrived in the kitchen to find a note from Isaac: Out walking Rufus with George. Have fun in Silverdale. Natalia was coming by at ten for a shopping trip. She wanted Evangeline’s help picking out a dress for prom. Evangeline wasn’t going, though Scottie Wilkerson had asked her, and he was nice. She didn’t even mind his stutter, but she couldn’t imagine finding a dress that would fit. Besides, she liked how disappointed Scottie had looked when she turned him down. It gave her hope.
She hadn’t slept well, and after having to pee for the third time in a half hour she called Natalia and said she was sorry, the baby was bouncing on her bladder like a trampoline and wouldn’t let her go. Natalia laughed and said she’d miss her. Evangeline returned to her room and crawled under her covers. She nearly cried at the comfort of this place, at the thought that she might lose it.
She patted the bed, coaxed up Rufus. He made the leap, but his hind legs didn’t quite catch, and he tumbled to the floor. “Rufus!” she laughed. “Come on. You can do better than that.” He fixed his eyes on her, pumping his hind legs. This time, he caught enough of the bed so she could grab him and give him a boost.
She studied him. His nose was as runny as ever, and his expression seemed slightly alarmed, probably from the fall. When she thought about it, he might have lost a little weight, but still, he was the same dog he’d always been. She pulled him into her. “I have you no matter what, don’t I, boy?”
More and more, she made a point of listing what she had. She would look around her room, at all she’d been given, and let it sink in, these signs that someone cared for her. For months, she’d dismissed it, assumed it was some new manipulation, refused to feel the love offered her. She regretted that now.
The night Peter resigned, she had wanted to force Isaac to choose between his friend and her. But even as she’d started to speak, she realized the universe had already made the choice for him, had revealed Peter for what he was. Thank goodness she’d been so vague and nonsensical that she could forgive Isaac his lack of belief. Thank goodness she could still tell herself, I have Isaac! I have Isaac! I have Isaac!
Only she knew she didn’t. Not really. During these early-April days, as nonstop rains sent grasses springing waist-high in the fields and left jackets and shoes continually damp, an impossible swamp grew between her and the man. There was a fundamental truth she had yet to speak: the baby wasn’t Daniel’s, wasn’t either of the boys’。 This past week, Dr. Taylor had changed her due date from June 9 to May 19. There’d been no talking her out of it.
Evangeline pictured herself three weeks before she met the boys. She’d snuck onto that bus to Bremerton, a naval town ninety minutes to the south. She had told herself she was going because a girl needed to get out of town once in a while. If she’d heard of a street where a girl could make a tidy bundle in an afternoon . . . well, that was just an interesting cultural aside.
A draft lifted her bedroom curtain until it curved pregnant with the empty air, and she let herself picture the man. The man was not Peter. True, Peter had stopped that August afternoon. He’d leaned over and opened the car door, and she had slid in. His hands gripped the wheel, but he didn’t pull out. He stared straight ahead, something desperate in that adamant blindness. Then he turned to her and his hands dropped.
“How old are you?”
“How old do you want me to be?” she said.
He shook his head, his mouth rigid, his eyes returned to the distance. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.” She got out, and he sped off. But she saw him stop a block down, by a girl who’d done herself up to look older. That girl must have known the answer he wanted, because she climbed in and they drove away.
The man Evangeline had to picture now pulled up not ten minutes later. He didn’t ask her age or anything else. He simply told her to get in. She remembered his thinning hair, the way his pale, nearly pink scalp showed through the long dark strands. She had focused there, not wanting to know the shape of his lips or the color of his eyes, realizing only now that his naked scalp was the most intimate of all, the way it forced her to feel his insecurities and vanities, his longing for what had been lost.
He offered her an extra forty if she’d “skip the rubber,” said he was a family guy, that he never did this type of thing, that he was “very clean.” She calculated how much food she could buy with that, then tried to remember where she was in her period. It’d been weeks, and she’d had some cramping earlier in the day, so she said okay.
When she climbed into that car, she had no home, no family, no friends. No one in the world who cared what happened to her. As far as she could tell, no one knew she existed at all. She had started to wonder if she did. Condom or no, how could it possibly matter?
When it was over, when he’d come in a burst of rigidity as if electrocuted, she retrieved her panties and her small purse that’d fallen to the floor. Beneath the seat was a Barbie wearing a sparkly pink gown. She pulled it out. He took it from her and held it, looking small and ashamed. He smoothed down the doll’s dress, almost tenderly, then set it on the backseat. He peeled two more twenties from his money clip and tossed them into her lap, his gaze, like Peter’s, fixed in the distance. It was as if he were throwing money into an empty seat.
And that was that. Her one and only john. She could not survive more. Her mother had undoubtedly managed the life longer. Maybe her mother had been stronger. Or weaker. Maybe it was all the men and the universe of ways they had restrained her, entered her, spewed on her, that had made it not only possible but necessary to leave her teenage daughter.
The baby shifted. Evangeline rubbed her belly, cooing, and the baby stilled. Had she known for a while that neither boy was the father? Sometimes she thought she had. That she had purposefully fooled herself. She needed one of the boys to be the dad. Why else would Isaac or Lorrie care about her? Sometimes she thought she’d known she was pregnant before she ever met the boys. Maybe that’s why she’d been so reckless with Daniel and eager with Jonah. Maybe she’d wanted to create other possibilities for her child.