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Pulling out my notebook, I marked off the steps I needed to take that day. There was a litany of new ones to do tomorrow, and I was ready for them, but first, it was time to go home and get some rest. The sun would come early in the morning, and I wanted to be up at first light. Things were looking pretty good, but I knew they could be even better.
14
Danica
Saturday mornings used to be peaceful. Quiet. There was a lot of sleeping and pajamas and giant bowls of sugary cereal.
Now they involved weird meditative music starting at five-thirty in the morning, the sounds of straining while yoga positions were attempted with a new belly to contend with, and kale and fruit as the only things around to eat.
I was getting grumpy about it.
Having Jaz home had been good in general. I loved my sister and was at least happy that I knew for a fact she was being cared for and that she was safe. Since she had gotten to my apartment on Thursday night, we had some good times talking about mundane things, watching trashy TV, and avoiding talking about the glaring issue of why she was sitting on my couch like the plague. It felt like there was something she needed to ask me, and she just couldn’t get it out. There were certainly questions I had for her too, but I needed to wait. Trying to force her to talk about it would have a predictable ending. She needed a little time. I could understand that.
That was a few days ago.
When she had shown up on Thursday night, we had briefly talked about the father, who was not in the picture. Very briefly. As in she said, “He’s not in the picture and will not be,” and apparently that was supposed to suffice. I did get an indication that he knew about the situation and that her insistence that he wasn’t going to be involved was a result of the conversation she had with him about it. But when had that conversation happened? Why hadn’t she told me? It would have been so much better for her if she had me there with her to back her up.
Considering the father wasn’t in the picture and she was clearly well past the point where she could decide not to have the baby, that left the question as to what she planned on doing, exactly. Our conversations specifically about the pregnancy had been truncated and rare. Usually, it began and ended with her falling into a sobbing mess and wondering aloud what she was going to do. I knew that rubbing her back and telling her it was going to be okay wasn’t all that helpful overall, but it made her feel better.
I had gotten one piece of information out of her, and I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it. When the matter of what she was going to do came up, Jaz was clear that she planned on going back to her old life. That she couldn’t just give up who she was because life had thrown her a curve. That she was clearly not meant to be a mother.
I couldn’t really argue with her on the last point. I loved my sister to death, and I would do anything for her, but she was a bit vain and childish. The idea of her being a mother was terrifying to me; I could only imagine how she felt about it. So, the baby would not be staying with her. One way or another, Jaz was not keeping it.
What that meant was still up in the air.
What I couldn’t understand was how she let it happen in the first place. In the brief bits of conversations we had, she couldn’t even begin to get into it before falling to pieces, and I was at a loss. How did someone not know they were months and months pregnant? How did she get that far before coming to me?
With the early morning wake-up of meditation music and muttered curses, I was done waiting on her to feel comfortable enough to start the conversation herself. I got out of bed, showered, and made my way into the kitchen. Jaz had finished her morning yoga by then and was leaning against the counter, eating a bowl of what looked like assorted granola in a watery substance that vaguely resembled milk. I could only assume it was “milk” made out of a nut of some type.
I sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop and opened it up. Jaz continued eating and staring into the middle distance as I sent in the reports I needed to get out so I could enjoy my weekend, and my eye started to twitch at her nonverbal zoning out.
