Sweet Dreams, Sadie

SECOND TRIMESTER

       

I had managed to convince both of my parents that I didn't want to tell anyone until I had started showing, pleading with my mother that these were the last couple of months I had before everyone started looking at me differently, looking at me like the girl who got pregnant in a laundry room when she was seventeen with a guy that she pretended not to know, and that I wanted to wait until it became slightly more obvious. She looked down in the depths of her mug of tea, fingering the string that was slung over the ceramic for a moment, before wordlessly nodding, and perhaps, she was almost even relieved herself. Maybe she was just as reluctant for others to know as I was. And that was why when I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, inhaling so deeply that my lower stomach hurt, and attempting to button my denim shorts, panic starting lacing the blood in my veins like ice. Shirts and flowing blouses still masked it, but the usual tight fitting camisoles that I wore during the summer were definitely out of the question, the fabric conforming to a noticeable bump that protruded just above my belly button.

I had been leggings mostly since the middle of April, accompanied by some oversized shirt, but now that it was a month later and nearing ninety degrees, that had gotten more conspicuous than anything else. I had found a shirt that was slightly too big, flowed around my waistline, and a pair of shorts that I was struggling to fit myself into, the attempts beginning to redden my ashen skin, right over the spot that the ultrasound technician had held the wand over a couple of hours earlier. It had been more uncomfortable than I imagined—I had almost thought that it would actually feel good, like when a hair stylist cuts your hair or something—but I had thought more than once that I would about to pee in my leggings and over the examination table, and the gel had gotten everywhere, feeling as if I had used half of a toilet paper roll in the restroom ten minutes later trying to wipe it all away from my body and clothes.

But it looked almost real for the first time too, more so than it had the first couple of internal ultrasounds, with spine pearls and clenched fists and legs that had been crossed, and I thought that was funny for some reason. That it wasn't even born yet but knew how to cross its legs. They couldn't tell me what it was because of its crossed legs, but told me that at my anatomy scan, they could probably tell me. And as they showed the grainy images on the screen, I started actually wishing for something, wishing that it might be a girl, wishing that maybe she had emerald green eyes.

And now, a couple of hours later, one of my friends was having a graduation party, and I had considered not going, repeating another weathered excuse about how I hadn't been feeling well or that I was just so busy with homework or that I was grounded for being on my phone too late at night or something, but I noticed that familiar look in her eyes as I started to take in a breath to tell her one of these fabrications and then I was suddenly telling her that I would go. She and I blinked at the same time, both looking just as stunned at what I had just told her, and then she giggled, reaching forward and grasping me into a hug that caught the breath from my lungs as it came out in a short, loud laugh before I had started to angle myself away from her. I knew that eventually they would know, and even if some of them had decided that they would be the better kind of friend, the kind of friend that could ignore the bump underneath my shirt, the kind of friend that would say that it doesn't matter, eventually it would, even it weren't intentional. But, as I looked down at the shorts I had finally managed to button, pressing deeply into my stomach, I knew that the months I thought I had until everyone knew had become weeks, if not days.

So I went.

My last moment seen as Sadie, instead of the girl who had gotten pregnant before her own graduation party.

~

I drank from a plastic cup of pink lemonade with the melting cubes of ice dissolving into the liquid and stood around the rounded edge of the in-ground pool, leaning down somewhat to glide one of my bare feet through the teal colored water that was still strongly fragranced with chlorine that mingled with the scents of various sunscreens, artificial coconut clinging to the gleaming arms, legs, and shoulders of those around me. I had grabbed a towel and flung it over a corner in the fenced backyard, just underneath a large oak tree, and told everyone who asked when I was getting in the water that it was too cold for me, retorting that anything below nineties was way too frosty for me, and glanced away, smiling to the shaded area around me, as they laughed.