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She’s right—there is something of family here. I’m relieved to find that Cecelia, Cici as she prefers to be called, isn’t really the hard and rough person she tries to be. She smiles a lot, and when she doesn’t spike her hair and add all that horrible black liner, she looks like a normal girl, a beautiful normal girl. It is only before bed that I see her au naturale, because she is adamant about washing her face before bed.
She comes back from the bathroom, and I find myself staring at her. She looks so much younger. “What?” she demands, an edge in her voice.
“Nothing. You’re so pretty,” I say because I think she might not appreciate me telling her she is so young. But I wonder how old she is, now that I see her blushing at my compliment. Much younger. Fourteen? No way. We haven’t shared all of our details yet, but I’ve been thinking she was sixteen or even seventeen, but tonight, with her cheeks scrubbed clean I know she is younger.
“Thanks.” She drops the word quietly, through lips that are barely open. “So what’s your story anyway?” she asks, putting her toiletries back in their place. Everything goes back in place; she likes to keep things neat and organized. I can already tell. The clothes she cleaned out of the bottom three drawers have all been put away in some new place, leaving nothing without a proper home.
“Oh. Probably the same as yours,” I say, not really sure how much I want to share, if anything at all.
“You mean you're knocked up, and nobody gives a shit?” She smiles, a wide, toothy smile, and I chuckle a little under my breath.
“There is that,” I agree. She settles on her bed, criss cross applesauce, her round belly cradled between her open knees.
“There is that.” She nods. “Where you from?”
My spine prickles at the question. “Illinois farm town. How about you?” I see it, the same prickling that I just had, and I laugh, “How ’bout this? Where are you going?”
“That’s a better question, isn’t it?” She laughs, and both of our prickles lie down. She pats her bed, and I go to join her, our knees just inches apart.
“How old are you?” she asks, and I’m relieved because that means I can ask her the same, so I answer, and she says, “Sixteen.”
“Really?”
“I know. I look young.” She smiles at me, looking even younger.
“You do.”
“It’s not like you look seventeen though. I thought you were fifteen when you came in. But then you had a job, so I knew you were older."
“What are you taking classes for?”
“Getting my GED,” she says, and I tell her that I had just received mine. “Why didn’t you graduate?”
I’m surprised that I don’t mind her question. I tell her that I had a really shitty year and then my mom died and it just felt like it was too late to be in high school. I’m surprised when she nods, understanding. Knowing.
“I lost my dad two years ago.” We are holding hands, and I don’t know if I reached out first or if she did.
We talk about the men, hers and mine, both who have already moved on. Hers is finishing high school. When she found out she was pregnant, her mom kicked her out. “She seriously kicked you out?” She nods, but looks like it is no big deal.
“We couldn’t get along anyway. She got married again, and he’s a real prick.” She lets my hand go. “It’s for the best, really.” She is trying to be okay, but I can tell that she isn’t, really. How can any of us be okay, really? Her mom chose him over her, and I know how that hurts.
“Tell me about everybody else.” I nod out to the hall, where one of the girls has just come past our room, looking in through the open door.
She tells me. We run through the list, starting at the room at the top of the hall. Tonya is fifteen and was due on Tuesday. “She is such a bitch right now. Her legs are all swelled up and that baby has dropped. You see her waddle?” I nod, smiling. “That baby needs to come.”
“Is she keeping it?” I ask, hushed, the question none of us should ask.
“Naw. She’s already matched. She’s got a family up in Chicago that have been paying her way for three months."
“What do you mean they are paying her way?”
“That’s how it works. This is her second one. The first one is in St. Louis, I think. You want to hook up with an agency that works with families. They’ll pay a portion of your medical and living expenses for the last trimester, and Janice passes some of that to you to help you get started. It’s pretty standard. They can’t have kids, or whatever, so they’ll do about anything.”
“Are you matched?”
“No. I haven’t chosen yet.” She looks over at the dresser.
“How do you ‘choose’?” I ask, feeling like I’m getting to glance behind the curtain at the Wizard working his levers and buttons.
“Janice does most of the legwork, by staying in touch with agencies and letting them know when we have new girls. The agencies send profile books of families that might be a good match for your kid, and then you choose.”
“Oh.” I’d thought they just took the baby and that was it, but this idea of choosing the family is nice. “How do you hook up with the agencies?”
“Janice will work with you on that. Are you positive you aren’t keeping it? She doesn’t usually start working with agencies until you’re a little further along. A lot can happen, you know."
"Like what?”
"Girls lose their babies all the time. A couple of weeks ago, Abby miscarried at twenty weeks.” I still can’t quite get used to time being calculated in weeks. Six weeks further along than me. Four weeks in a month, so five months along.
“Wow. Does that happen a lot?” I ask, my hands curling around my small bump, protective.
“Naw. Not really. The first three months are the worst, and Janice won’t even set up rooms until you’re out of the first trimester."
“That’s why she had me see the doctor?”
“That was to make sure you were pregnant. Girls show up all the time thinking they can fake it and get a free room for a while,” she explains.
“People do that?”
“Sure. It’s cold living on the streets.” We let that settle around us. I always think my life has been so hard, but I’ve never lived on the street.
The silence feels heavy, and my mind works its way back around. “So you’re six months?”
“Yeah, third trimester. Pretty rare to miscarry after that, unless there’s trauma.” She does air quotes around the word trauma, and I wonder what that could involve.
“I’m fourteen weeks.”
“That’s good. Second trimester. Risk of miscarriage goes down a lot when you get past twelve weeks. I mean, you don’t really want to miscarry because then you’re back on the street, right? This baby means good food, medical care, and a bed.” She rubs her round belly, and I know that she thinks of her baby differently than I do. Her baby is a meal ticket. My baby is a chance to do something right.
We move through our conversation, talking about “group,” which is a daily meeting in the common room where the girls get together and talk about something called “life skills.” She rolls her eyes when she says it, and I laugh along, but think that maybe I could use a little help in the life-skills department. We talk until the intercom buzzes, and a voice says, “Lights out, Ladies.”
Cici pulls back her blankets, and I go to my own bed. “See you in the morning,” I say. The lights go out, manned by a switch at the base of the stairs. I lay in my bed, on the stiff sheets provided for me, my hands resting on the small mound of my belly, my mind running with all the thoughts of the day. This is the right thing to do. I mouth the words, silent, hearing the whoosh whoosh of her heartbeat in my ears. What kind of people will be her family? I see the adoptive father in my mind’s eye. I know what he should be, but the woman who will be her mother is a completely blank image. I’m her mother. I try not to hear the thought. I try to turn it off. I try to close my eyes and sleep, but I stare at the ceiling, watching as lights from the road bounce down the drive and across the frame of the window. Tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and rolls into my ears, causing my own heart to echo, mimicking the whoosh whoosh of her on the ultrasound.