AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We’ll find out the moment after it’s ripped out of my stomach like an alien, oozing in placenta gunk and funk.” Rowen grinned at me when I let out a loud grumble.
“Good thing I’m not trying to eat here, Rowen,” I said, shoving my steak even farther away. “Because it would be projectile-ing all over the place right now.”
“You’re
really not going to find out until you have it?” Josie asked.
Rowen shrugged. “We’re really not. We like surprises.”
“Some surprises,” Jesse inserted, taking a bite of steak from Rowen’s fork when she lifted it to his mouth.
“What’s the deal with the ripping it from your stomach thing? Don’t they do that only after trying the”—Josie glanced at me and saw the scrunched-up look on my face—“after trying the more natural way?”
I let out the breath I’d been holding, thankful the v-word hadn’t just been dropped at the dinner table. I didn’t know what it was about pregnancy or the delivery process that made me so squeamish, but I couldn’t seem to overhear information about it without feeling close to trembling. Maybe it was because I could never really understand it since my body wasn’t carrying the same kind of equipment, or maybe it was because I was totally out of control of the entire process, other than the very start, and I thrived off control. Or maybe it was for some other reason I had yet to identify, but either way, I wanted to drill my fingers into my ears and drown out the gunk and funk details.
“With my heart thing,” Rowen said, stabbing at her salad with her fork, “they don’t want to put the added stress of natural labor on my heart. They’re going to schedule a Caesarean before I go into natural labor to save me the stress of it.”
Josie’s nose wrinkled. “And cutting you open and scarring your bikini area for life is how they’re planning to lessen your stress?”
Rowen smiled. “I know, right? Bastards.”
Jesse scooted closer to his wife, clamped his hands down on either side of her small stomach, and shushed the table. “The baby’s hearing is developing now. It can hear you. This is a friendly reminder to keep your curses to yourself when our baby’s within hearing range. I don’t want my daughter or son’s first word to be shit.”
“Why are you looking at me, Jess? It was your wife who just dropped that foul word.” I’d been minding my P’s and Q’s. For the most part.
“Because you, old friend, are the worst offender in that department.” Jesse’s hands stayed around Rowen’s stomach for a few more seconds before they moved away.
I guessed he thought his baby’s virgin ears were safe again, at least for the next few minutes, after broadcasting his warning. He was right though. With a baby on the way, who’d turn into a toddler, who’d become a child . . . I would have to start watching what I said around whom. I’d have to install a filter so I didn’t tarnish the little Sterling-Walker before he or she could crawl.
“Well, it sounds like they’ve thought everything out and are doing everything they can to make sure you have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery, right?” Josie picked right up where they’d left off. “It seems like you’re in good hands.”
Rowen dropped her hand onto Jesse’s shoulder and squeezed it. “I am in good hands.”
Josie took a long drink of her soda and drained it. Probably because she was parched from talking at a hundred words a minute since she’d heard the word baby. “So how many of these things do you guys want to have?”
“It depends on how this one goes,” Rowen answered.
“One,” Jesse said at the same time.
Josie rolled her eyes. “One? That’s just cruel. You need to have at least, like, four, or you could be like me and want to have a dozen.” Her eyes lit up as she continued. Knowing her, she was envisioning each of her imaginary children’s little faces and naming them on the spot. “I want to be literally crawling over children to get to the oven to make dinner every night. I want to be hoarse and exhausted and frazzled every night when I crawl into bed. I want to be bursting at the seams with dirty laundry and dishes and tile floors.” Josie was grinning as wide as I’d ever seen her—and she’d grinned a lot in her life. “Yeah, I’m definitely having a dozen.”
Rowen shook her head. “I do not envy the condition of your lady parts after that dozenth child practically flies out of your womb. And I won’t envy the boxes of tissues you’ll tear through whipping snotty noses.”
Josie just waved her off, twisting to face me and bouncing with excitement all over again. “Can we have a dozen, Garth? Can we literally have so many kids I’ll have to chauffeur them to 4-H and soccer practice in a bus? Can we please have so many children people will start dropping birth control pills into my drinks everywhere I go to keep away the threat of an army of Blacks taking over the world?” Her hands wrapped around my arm as she looked at me with something in her eyes that registered even higher on the happiness scale than joy.
To Josie, family—both blood and otherwise—was paramount in her life. I supposed the expansion of that family would be just as important to her. If Josie wanted a dozen children, she deserved a dozen. She had more than enough love and kindness and that streak of adventure to spread. She had so much of herself to give that she could have had a hundred kids and still had a surplus.
There was a problem with what she was asking though. Or at least a problem with whom she was asking. I couldn’t give her those dozen babies. At least not in the way a man and woman were intended to create a baby, and even if I could be convinced to have my little Garths medically transplanted inside her so we could “conceive” together, how could I keep up with one child while confined to a wheelchair, let alone a dozen? How could I support a family when I could barely think of ways to support myself?
I might have been able to father a child with the help of a whole hell of a lot of medical breakthroughs, but that was the easy part. The hard part, the everything-after-the-conception-and-delivery part, I was incapable of doing in a way our children deserved. I didn’t want them to go through school as I had, with free lunches and outdated clothing. I didn’t want them to be embarrassed every time we went anywhere together, with all of the points and stares that came from having a dad in a wheelchair with shrunken, useless legs. I didn’t want to feel helpless when I couldn’t climb up into a treehouse to help my kid down when they were crying and scared of doing it alone. I didn’t want to teach my child how to ride a horse from outside the corral. I didn’t want to be a nuisance or an inconvenience or a source of embarrassment.
So though I might have been able to father a child in one way, I couldn’t father one in the way that mattered most.
Lifting my hand, I cupped Josie’s cheek. I didn’t blink once as I stared at her, admiring her as though she was everything I could ever want but couldn’t have if my fate didn’t change.
“You can have whatever you want, Joze,” I said. What I didn’t say was that it might not be me who gave her everything she wanted. “If you want a dozen kids, then you can have a dozen kids.” I didn’t tell her that she might share those dozen kids with a different man though. “You’d be an amazing mom, you know that?”
Her eyes didn’t get glassy, and she didn’t sniffle at my words. Instead, her smile tipped higher as she nodded. “You’d be amazing too, you know that?”
