Harrison Avenue // H.S.

Not a Ball

[Ellison]

It started with a painting. A soon-to-be mother holding her stomach, painted with shades of red and purple in the shadows and a solemn look on her face. Then it turned into multiple paintings like this, over and over again, like sub-consciously I couldn't think of anything else.

It didn't click for me at first. I didn't analyze why I wanted to keep painting this. I didn't even analyze the changes that were happening in my body. It took a week of me having to run to the toilet to throw up in the morning before I realized what it meant. And somehow I'm almost positive that Harry figured it out first.

He was gone that week where I spent the first part of the morning on the floor of the bathroom and I remember wishing he was there because he'd always pulled my hair back for me and rubbed my back and made it feel like I wasn't disgusting even though I surely felt that way when I've been in that position before. When he did come back though and he saw the entire second bedroom filled with these nurturing mother paintings that I couldn't stop making, he knew.

I think he thought that it was my way of telling him this message, but it wasn't until I saw the look on his face that it finally all clicked together.

We were going to have a baby.

It felt like my heart burst in the best possible way and then there was a knot in my stomach immediately after because that moment felt real, extremely fucking real, and for a second I wasn't sure how to process it. Then Harry came running over to me, pulled me into a hug where my feet weren't touching the ground anymore and he was crying a little bit because he was so happy.

That's the only thing I could be too, happy. So incredibly happy.

It took a while to get to that place, months after we decided to officially trying for that specific outcome. I still had some sense of being on the fence about it too because Harry seemed to be leaving the city more and more often, being gone for longer periods of time, because everything for him has just gotten bigger and bigger and it doesn't seem like there is an end in sight, which is both incredible and terrifying.

He even has an official fan club. It's run by a seventeen-year old girl.

So the thought of bringing a baby into the mix of us, when everything is so chaotically good, made me a little uneasy. I wasn't sure how we would handle it. It felt like it was a rain cloud that was just waiting to move over my head, but instead a rainbow appeared and the sun came out. Any of my worries were thrown out the window the moment Harry's face changed when he knew and that's when I knew that everything would be okay. Because he already loved that tiny little baby, that wasn't more than a blob, and that made it feel like it would be okay.

Now we're months into it and my stomach is bigger than it has ever been, almost like I stick a ball underneath my clothes everyday like I used to pretend when I played house when I was five. Only it isn't a ball, it's a real baby, just growing away inside of me and that is both beautiful and horrifying.

And today this baby has decided she does not like her mama.

And this mama is sure to complain about it.

"Harry, this is your fault," I sound grouchy, because I am and of course Harry's reaction to give me the most innocent huh? face ever. "Don't look at me like that. I wouldn't be sitting here with a fat stomach and ankles that feel so swollen that I keep thinking they must be the size of my thighs at this point if it wasn't for you."

"What are you on about?" Harry continues with the face, his eyebrows pulling together as he shakes his head.

"You," I glare at him. "It's your fault."