I dreamed once that my sister was having a baby. She gave birth in a small, strange room with the whole family watching. The doctor informed us all that a second baby was coming, and no one was more surprised than my sister. Sarah delivered her second baby, but no one bothered to catch it, so it lay in the middle of the delivery room floor and cried. My sister picked up the first baby and went to leave the room. When she got to the door, she turned back to us and said, with a small shrug, “I only wanted the one,” and left.
I dreamed once that I had a baby and then ate it.
Sarah’s time in Salmon Creek, near Sharon’s house, started out hopeful. Then Sarah became secretive. The computer at Sharon’s was hardly ever used because the only internet available was dial-up. I needed to find a recipe, so I braved the slow connection. When I went to the browser’s search engine, the last few searches popped up: how to stop a miscarriage? I looked over at my sister, sitting on the couch. She was twenty-three years old, and after a year of sobriety had been slipping in and out of the program. I was pretty sure she was using again: she was painfully thin, always complaining of being tired, her pupils perpetually tiny.
“Sarah,” I said. “Can we talk outside?” She gave me a dubious look but followed me out to the front porch.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I don’t know how to ask this, but I was using the computer and saw a search about miscarriages.” I trailed off, my voice as gentle as I could make it. She looked at me and sighed, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket, and lit one using the box of matches balanced on a planter box.
“Yeah.” She paused, her eyes and mouth momentarily squeezed tight. “It happened last week, that’s why I was sick.” She took a drag from her cigarette and looked out over the cold afternoon. I watched her breath and smoke hit the chilly air and drift away from us.
“You wanted to keep it?” I asked.
“Yeah, I did.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. This was not the first time we’d had a conversation about her being pregnant, but it was the first time she had answered yes to that question.
“Was Ryan the father?”
“I think so.” She sounded reluctant. “I mean, that’s why Ryan’s parents came to visit.” I nodded—she had seen them recently.
“They must have been excited.”
“Actually, we all got in a big fight.”
“Why?”
She took another long drag and laughed bitterly. “Because they thought the baby was Jack’s and were upset about it. Ryan defended me, though. Everyone was yelling.”
“Could it have been Jack’s?” I asked.
Sarah shrugged and put her cigarette out, balancing the butt precariously in the overflowing abalone shell she used as an ashtray.
“Does it matter?”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I simply asked, “Are you okay?” She looked surprised when I asked this. Which was fair. I didn’t have the best history of being kind instead of critical when it came to some of her life choices. I’m sure she was expecting a lecture.
“I dunno.” For a second, I thought she was about to cry.
“Can I ask what made you want to keep it this time?”
“Well, I love Ryan, and it would be hard to go through an abortion again …” She trailed off, shook her head, and then grimaced. “I thought maybe it would make things different.”
“What things?”
“My life.”
My sister had six abortions. Or four. Or eight. It depends on who you ask and what you believe. I do know that on multiple occasions her young body went to the clinic so she could end a pregnancy. The nurses told her that if she continued to have evacuations, she could scar her uterus and be unable to have kids later on. “When you’re ready,” they said. I would tease her that she was so fertile, she could get knocked up just by someone looking at her.
I can’t have children. One of the chemotherapy drugs I was on damaged my ovaries. This, coupled with my endometriosis, has all but ensured kids aren’t in my future. I have never wanted to be a mother, never thought I would be a good one. After all, I could eat my baby or watch her drown or let her die at the hands of monsters.
But I watched Sarah take pregnancy test after pregnancy test, and I quietly seethed. I picked up phone calls to listen to her cry about another abortion and hid my fury. She is using up all our baby chances, I thought. There won’t be any left for me. I knew it was irrational. I did not want my own children, but I resented that Sarah had the option. I wanted her to stop getting pregnant. I wanted her to stop doing something so fucking well that I could not do at all. When I imagined my sister, belly round and glowing, I became enraged.
The only time I wanted a child was in the first few months after Sarah’s death. I was having nightly panic attacks, thinking of her body on the bathroom floor, wondering what her last thoughts were. As my partner slept beside me, I would sit in the dark, willing myself to breathe. I’d imagine holding a baby until I could feel my heart rate slow and the panic subside. At the time, I thought that these were the first signs of wanting a baby, that perhaps it had just come to me later than most. Sarah could no longer have one, I would have to do it.
I watched my pregnant friend’s belly. “It’s like an alien,” I shrieked, and Andrea laughed, lovingly running her hands over her squirming son. She described to me the different ways he moved inside her, how his feet pressed against her rib cage. I asked her a million questions. Despite her best efforts, I felt no closer to understanding what it was to have a body inside your own. I put my hand on her stomach and marveled: what a strange, remarkable thing it is to create a person.
It is tempting to make good on the promises Sarah made to the universe. I could dye my hair very blond and drive a truck. I could go to therapy and figure out her relationship to our father. I could read all the books and take up painting and meet a nice man who loves me more than I love him. I could have a baby.
Holding Noelle’s baby
I still sometimes imagine holding a baby, let the thought slow my racing heart. But as time passes, the image of that baby becomes less and less my own. I’m not imagining some future child but rather remembering the first time I held Sarah.
I was five years old when my father placed her in my arms. She wailed and put her head against my chest.