She shrugs. “Then you will throw up for another six months and it will suck.”
“I don’t think I could do it.” I swish the water around in my mouth.
“You could and you would, because you’d have to, but you probably won’t,” Aunt Angelina says. “Being a mother is all about losing control and then surviving it.”
I spit into the trash can and take a sip of water, but my throat still feels raw.
“That makes motherhood sound really terrible.”
Aunt Angelina pulls me into a hug. “It’s worth it,” she says.
I feel sick to my stomach in a way that has nothing to do with the baby. I squeeze her tighter.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” I whisper.
“It’s still worth it, Autumn, even if they die.”
My stomach drops again, but she releases me from the hug and smiles sadly at me.
A security guard approaches and asks if we need help or an ambulance. He’s not thrilled about my use of the trash can and points out a restroom on the other side of the courtyard, as if that would have helped. Mom comes out with her shopping bags. The guard eyes my middle before getting on his walkie-talkie and asking for cleaning services.
Mom describes every outfit she has purchased in great detail so that by the time we’re in the car, I almost don’t need to go through the bags. But I do so that I can thank her for each one as we drive home. Our chatter covers the hole in our day’s adventure, the lack of excitement they’d hoped to inspire.
Everything having to do with this baby reinforces the fact that Finny’s not here.
For all of us.
Yet we want this. I want this.
He would want this.
But that doesn’t make doing this without him any easier.
So this is where I live, in a place where every shade of joy must be painted over in the black of Finny’s death, muted to the gray of willfully existing.
two
“This is awesome,” Angie says, glancing up from Guinevere to smile at me. Her face is luminous and shadowed with exhaustion.
I hadn’t planned to tell her so immediately. We’ve hardly spoken in months, but the moment I saw her round face and short figure, my heart leapt, and a feeling of safety came over me.
I suppose it has been a while since I was with a friend.
The tiny basement apartment is cluttered with the lives of three humans and their shoes. I’m perched on the edge of the secondhand plaid couch, which is covered in unfolded laundry. Angie is on the floor changing Guinevere into a “First Christmas” onesie, even though it’s the first week of November. She snaps the last button and looks up at me.
“It is awesome that you’re pregnant, right?” She sits back on her heels.
“It’s good.” I sound like I’m talking about a meal at a restaurant that wasn’t quite what I expected. “It’s scary,” I add, and I still sound like I’m talking about mayonnaise.
“It’s terrifying!” Angie sings as she tickles Guinevere’s chin. She rolls the baby onto her stomach in a square of sunshine cast through the small window. “And it doesn’t stop. Sorry.”
“What doesn’t stop?”
“Motherhood never stops being scary.”
She laughs. I don’t.
Angie stretches her arms above her blond head and groans. She yawns and blinks at me.
“Stand up and let me look at you,” she says.
I oblige, and she nods sagely.
“I can tell,” she says. “I totally see it.”
“No, I can barely feel it, Ang.” The button on my jeans is undone, but my zipper zips.
“I see it,” she says. “When are you due?”
“May Day,” I reply, and then, “May first. Not the distress call.”
Angie smiles and yawns again. “Yes, I can see Auntie Aut’s bump, can you, Guinnie?” She lies down on the floor with a groan. “Sorry, Autumn. I am just so tired.”
“It’s okay. I’m tired too.” I sit back on the couch and watch her coax a smile from her child. The Mothers were thrilled when I said I had reached out to Angie and needed a ride to her place. It’s nice seeing her. It’s weird seeing her as a mother.
There’s this confidence about Angie that startles me. I’d first noticed it at the hospital last summer, but it’s more pronounced now. When she answered the door, she was holding the baby on her hip, and after hugging me and inviting me inside, Angie said, “Sorry. I felt her head, and I need to change her into something warmer,” so she had.