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It feels right.
In this calm, quiet, secret moment, in this fantasy bubble where we mean something to each other – because I'm not going to pretend that Ted hasn't targeted me and his attention hasn't made me feel special in a way I'm not and never will be – I feel an unexpected intimacy. I slide my hand down over my belly, wondering if there's already a speck of something there, pretending it's his. PretendingI'mhis, and we'll raise this child together.
I try not to be sad that this baby, if there is one, won't have a mother. I didn't have a mother, and I'm a mess, but this child will have so much more than me.
"I don't know who my father is," I whisper in the dark. "I guess I just don't have a father."
Ted doesn't move, doesn't stir, nothing beyond the unending rise and fall off his chest. He must be in deep sleep.
"My older sister, she has a father. She doesn't know him, but he's out there somewhere. She knows his name. There's photos of him holding her when she was a baby, but then he left."
Still, Ted sleeps. I've never spoken these words before. Some of the other kids in my foster homes never stopped talking about every shitty thing that ever happened to them, but I'm not the only one who didn't think it was worth the effort.
That doesn't mean there aren't times when it all burns to come out, bile and vomit eating at my throat when I refuse to purge.
I'm safe here in this fantasy. Ted is asleep. He hears me, but he's not listening. It will all be a bad dream for him.
"My mom's a junkie. I think she was always a drunk, but then Gabbie's dad ditched, and she started smoking meth. She was turning tricks when she got pregnant with me. One of her johns, probably a junkie, too.
"And so was I. Was five pounds when I was born, and I was addicted to meth. There's one photo of me, and I'm in a glass box with a bunch of tubes, and I don't even look real. I look like some creepy doll made to look like an aborted fetus, like something those pro-lifers toss in everyone's faces at the clinic. Mom went to jail for child endangerment, I went to my abuelita's with Gabbie."
I shouldn't feel any sympathy for my mom, I don't know if I do, but for some reason, those words flowed easily. It’s what I try to say next that sticks. My throat thickens, trying to stop them, and I have to clear it to keep going.
"Mom got pregnant again in jail. One of the guards. She said he forced her. She was probably hooking again, trading sex for drugs getting smuggled in, but that didn't matter, because she was an inmate. It's automatically rape, I guess. He went to jail for it, but Kyla knows her dad’s name at least. It got Mom out too, for a while."
I sigh and rub my hand over Ted's chest. I know he's older. There’s something strange about his voice, something I can’t place, like he’s too exact with how he says things, but it makes him sound like he’s a lot older. Later forties, at least. He's in great shape, but I wonder if his sparse mat of chest hair is the light brown shade on his head or if it's starting to turn silver. I've never had a moment like this. Sex has always been a quick bang in an alley or a closet or whatever before rushing back so no one notices I'm gone. I'm careful as I run my fingers through the curls, scared I'm gonna snag and wake him, but I'm surprised how soft it is.
I scoot a little closer and take a deep breath. I'm probably a big weirdo smelling his chest like this, but he'll never know. He's washed now, the aftershave and musky sweat and ginger gone, his scent still inherently masculine.
"But she went back. She always does. She's in now for bogus charges. Like, I know what she is, she's a junkie and a whor-prostitute," I correct quickly, not because I'm worried he'll give me another lecture or I've changed my opinion of the word, but because every one of those men called me that word tonight while I was in ecstasy, and I'm not ready to work through what that means. "But they popped her for possession to sell this time, and if nothing else, mom can't keep her nose out of it long enough to sell it."
I drag myself across him, resting my head right over his breastbone so I can hear his heart and draping my arm across his waist.
"Lita Rosa got rid of us. She's got a three-bedroom house and four other kids of her own who were mostly still around, there just wasn’t space for us. And they tried to keep us together for a while, but we weren't good kids. Or, I wasn't. I was too stupid for school and–Ted?"
I lift my head up as if I could see him in the dark, but the black is pervasive. I can't tell if he just woke up, I just know he shifted under me somehow. But it was nothing. I don't even know what I felt. He breathes as deeply and evenly as before. I settle back down, giving myself another minute and speaking even more softly.
"I couldn't understand anything at school, and Kyla was in and out of the hospital. She has seizures and can't walk too good. She's real smart, in college and everything now, but with her Medicaid and her issues, she's scared to go to a better school out of state."
I snuggle in closer, pulling the blanket up over my face just in case anyone out there can hear me. Maybe the walls are thin and everyone else is just so silent that I can't hear them but they can hear me. Under the blanket, no one will hear this.
"I was seven when my sisters were taken away, and then I had nothing. I had a duffel bag. I went from home to home, and they were usually nice to me in the beginning, but then they found out how bad I was.” I try to smile to myself because it was my own fault that I was so bad, but it fades on a heavy sigh. “They all called me a brat, too. Bounced me as fast as they could, until I was run out of town, sent up to Jacksonville, too far away for me to see my sisters again.
"Until Gabbie got pregnant."
The sensation that washes over me is so much like that trance I fell into in the parlor. The tranquility of it. But that was warm. The weight was like this blanket covering me. Now, it's cold. The weight of a brick tied to my ankle, dragging me into that cold ocean water. I don't know if I can keep talking. My tongue feels like it's swollen in my mouth.
Ted shifts beneath me. I'm thinking he's about to roll out from under me, I'm probably way too hot on him. Only, he rolls into me instead. He traps one of my arms underneath him, but then his goes over me. I can hold him by the waist, and it's almost like we're hugging. Or, we are hugging, he just doesn't realize it. He's got his other arm folded under his pillow, and his chin rests atop my head, basically forcing me to nuzzle into his chest.
This is okay.
Tears sting my eyes, but if I cry now, it'll be no different than crying under that bandana. No one will know.
"She'd been at that house for like four years," I whisper as I smash my cheek into his chest and hold him tight. "I thought everything was cool. Or I didn't care. I think I just didn't care." I sniffle, hating the warble in my voice. "I didn't care that my sister was getting raped by her foster dad. And she didn't care either. That’s foster life. But then she’s sixteen and pregnant and he’s telling her she can stay, her and her baby, as long as she lies and tells everyone she’s been sleeping around, not using condoms. Baby could be anyone’s. He would have gone to jail, she probably would have been set for life, but she was so fucking . . . I don't know what, but she listened to him.
"And everyone said she was a whore just like mom, and her baby was a bastard just like me. And then she really did end up being a whore just like mom, she shovels whatever shit she can get into her veins, and she's lost both her babies now, they got thrown right back into the system. The new baby's gonna be all fucked up like me, all kinds of brain issues, and it's a little girl so she's probably going to end up a whore like her mama and her abuelita and-and-and her aunt because I'm a whore, too, I'm turning tricks just like–!"
I let out a squeak as I suddenly find myself on my back, suffocating under Ted's weight, and then the squeak is cut off by Ted's mouth crushing mine, attacking me with bruising kisses as he grabs one of my knees and notches it up on his hip, making room for himself.
