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Christmas Day came and went, and Karissa, who, like Mary, is due this month, crawled into her bed every bit as pregnant as when she woke up. Cici and I crawled into our own beds, exhausted and heavy with the weight of the children growing inside of us, heavy with the extra fluids needed to cushion and protect them. Growing a baby is exhausting work, and even though Cici’s earlier nerve pain has settled, she is still kicked and pushed and shoved all day long. That baby of hers is active almost like nobody else’s. She opted not to take the single room after Debbie left, so we are still sharing a room. Every night, when I come up, she is already asleep, with a spare pillow between her legs to take the pressure off of her hips. She sleeps with a hot water bottle on her back, and every time I see that thing, I shudder.
She has told me her story, but I’ve not told anybody mine. It’s just not something to share. I admit, only to myself, that I’m embarrassed at the way it all went. My mother did the best she could do, and I just made her feel more like a failure than she already did. I don’t let myself think about it because I can’t change anything and it just makes me sad. My mind is a like a bunch of boxes, and if I don’t take something out of the box, then I don’t have to see it. My mind is like Mr. Billups’ filing room.
I’m disappointed that I haven’t heard from Barb and Will, but like everything else, I tuck that into a box and leave it alone. I don’t pick at my scabs. Cici is breathing, slow and regular, and I tuck a pillow between my own knees, turning on my side so I can see her in the small light from the window. I watch her, waiting for sleep, the way her lashes fold over her cheeks, the way she looks so much younger without her makeup and all softened with her pregnancy. Her lip draws into her mouth, her small square teeth closing on it. For a split second I see Warren’s lips, his teeth. That motion is so like him. The image is righted as quickly as it is corrupted, and he is safely put back in his box. My eyes travel her face, and I’m startled because her eyes are open, staring back at me.
“You okay?” I ask. There is something of fear in her eyes, and fear is a rare sighting in this house.
“He stopped moving,” she says, her voice a whisper, and I see her hand moving under the blankets, her elbow pushing up a tent, shifting.
“They do that sometimes, don’t they?” I ask, trying to comfort her, but really I don’t know that they do that. I don’t know anything about babies or giving birth. She nods, but the fear doesn’t fade from her eyes.
“I don’t want to let him go.”
“I know.” We have talked about this, for both of us. Like Cici, I want to keep Little Miss. I want to raise her and make sure she knows that she is loved. I want to do it better than my mother did. We both want that, and it’s easy to think about here with plenty of food and a safe bed and none of the worries about paying the bills.
“I could go to my mom’s. She would help me.” She is reaching for straws and we both know it; we’ve had this conversation before.
“You could. Do you want him to grow up there?” I ask, devil’s advocate.
She snorts. “No.” There is a low breath released across the room. “But it would only be for a little while,” she adds with a tone of pleading, as if I am the one she has to convince.
“You gonna trust her to keep him safe while you’re at work?” She shifts and looks away, turning her face up to the ceiling. “Because she did such a good job of making sure you were safe.”
“I know.” She turns back at me, her head dropping to the side, the line of her round face glowing in the light from the window. “We could do it together,” she says, and I hear the longing in her voice. “I could go to Life Ways after he’s born, and then when you have yours, we can get an apartment together. I can take care of them while you’re at work, and you can take care of them while I’m at work.”
I let that settle. We could do that. We could make it work. We could work at the same factory. We could raise our children in a family—the four of us. “You’ve matched,” I remind her. “What about them?”
“Fuck them.” I know she doesn’t mean it. It’s just her sadness talking.
“Do you think we’d be good parents?” I ask, keeping my voice quiet.
“Damn straight.” She smiles broadly, and I smile, too, “We’d be great parents.”
“We will. Someday,” I say. “I wouldn’t be now.”
“I don’t want to let him go.” Her voice catches, and I know she is crying. She slips out of her bed and comes to me, slow, on all fours, her belly drawing her back into a U shape. I lift my blankets and scoot back letting her into my little pocket of warm. We are too big to be in this twin bed together, but just like Barb did for me the night she told me her stories of my mother, I let Cici settle her head on my arm, my cheek resting on her short, short hair.
“I know you don’t,” I whisper. “You have to love him enough to give him something better than what you had. That’s what I keep telling myself. I love her enough to let her go. I want her to have things. I want her to have a daddy.” It’s easy for me, because I still have all the months of winter stretching ahead of me and some of spring before I have to let her go.
“I’ll find him a daddy,” she says, trying to find the right angle to convince me.
“I know you would.” I rest my hand on her belly and give a low push. Her belly has moved over the last several days; we’ve all seen it, and we know what it means. It’s early, too early, and now he has stopped moving. Has he already shifted to a head down position in preparation for birth? “It’s so amazing, what our bodies have done.” She nods, and a sob breaks out of her, and I let her cry, holding her as close as I can. My friend. My best good friend, Cici.
When she is all cried out and I think she may have fallen asleep, I let my own eyes close and I dream. I dream of Dylan, who I haven’t thought of in such a long time. I dream of him with a son, rolling down a hill in some park, laughing and playing. He looks older in my dream, more like Jake, but still with those laughing blue eyes. I am there, but I’m not really me, calling out for him to be careful. “Don’t go so fast,” I say in my dream. Then I wake up into the darkness of Cici and my room. She is gone. Her bed still rumpled from where she left it, but my blanket is tucked in around me. Dylan. There is such a surge of longing that I think I may cry. There he is, completely out of his box. I mouth his name and wait until my bladder forces me out of bed for one of my many trips to the bathroom. I pass Cici on the way, coming back, waddling. Our fingers touch in passing, and when I come back to the room, she is tucked in her bed, snoring lightly.