Grief

Lynn Boulger

Remove the apple tree and the field does not disappear. Subtract the rock, the slashed blueberry bush— the field remains. Melt the snow, empty the vernal pools under sheets of lacy ice— the field is there.

The sheep cocooned in their smell of wet wool and warm manure, lanolin, animal, their slow dignity, flecks of hay in their coats. They slowly walk into the barn, and the field remains. Night comes down low, summer stars or winter snowfall, fireflies, fallen leaves. Darkness all around. The field remains.

Mom Jeans

Kasey Renee Shaw

Tom, my boyfriend of three months, leaned against the wall of his bathroom and watched me pee on a pregnancy test. We split the cost for a box that advertised two-for-the-price-of-one for 100% certainty—$20 for certainty, couldn’t beat that price. Yellow curry was abandoned to bubble on the stove. Tom’s roommate had left a minute ago to run to the store; we dashed to the bathroom to make use of the little privacy that we had.

“These things can be wrong. Just remember that. I read it all the time online. False positives.” I avoided, to the point of delusion, the very real possibility that I was pregnant. I justified my denial in any way that I could: I took my birth control pill (only missing a day or two), Tom and I used condoms (most of the time), and I was pretty sure I had a tilted uterus, which made it harder to conceive (never formally diagnosed but my mom had one, and I assumed it was the case for me too).

“Right,” Tom countered. “But haven’t you been nauseous lately? Morning sickness is a symptom of pregnancy.” He paused, scrunching his eyebrows. “It is, right?”

I stood up from the toilet seat and buttoned my jeans, dismissing him with a wave of my hand. “My sister just got over a stomach bug. I’ve been up late studying, too, and haven’t slept, like, at all.” I gently placed the pregnancy test stick on the sink. Tom bit his thumbnail. I chewed on my bottom lip. Our eyes didn’t leave that spot

Within two minutes, a solid, pink line appeared. “Bullshit,” I said, reaching for the other test My hand was shaking Tom’s face paled. “False positives, okay?” I reminded him. “Don’t worry or you’ll start freaking me out.”

Only thirty seconds passed before the subsequent confirmation:

Shaw 57

I was pregnant. The reality flooded my brain, my denial breaking like a dam. I barely made enough at my waitressing gig to cover rent. My diet consisted of whatever alcohol I could buy with a fake I.D. and black sludgy coffee to supplement my schedule of studying, partying, and of ten getting only four hours of sleep. I didn’t know my body could get pregnant, but I knew I couldn’t afford it.

The smell of our burning dinner permeated in the house. “Leave it,” Tom told me, turning off the stove. He took me into his room. I laid down and put my hands on top of my stomach.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Oh my God. This can’t be happening.” He knelt next to me and opened his mouth to speak. I didn’t let him. Nothing he could say would be the right thing and my nerves kept my tongue wagging. “What are we going to do? What can we do?”

His mattress was on the floor, nestled next to a window. The cool glass pressed against my toes. “You have an exam tomorrow. I have to go back to my place. We can deal with this tomorrow.”

Anxiety bubbled from the base of my stomach to the top of my throat a tea kettle whis tling in another room, about to spill over. I swallowed. “I’m going to walk home so you can go study.”

Tom held both of my hands. “Do you think I’m going to leave you alone right now?” ***

My mom got pregnant with her first child, my oldest brother, when she was 21 and my dad was 20. I have no idea what the terms of their rela tionship were when she got pregnant casual dating, a hook up, a long term relationship. Neither had finished college yet. Both, after learning the news, decided to take some time off—or, more appropriately, were forced to.

My grandmother, hyper-religious and hoping to avoid Hellfire, planned a wedding for them in three months. Getting them hitched be fore my brother was born, somehow, was less of a sin. A divine loophole

I’ve seen photographs of the wedding. Friends brought homemade dishes like they were going to a potluck: chili with ground beef and black beans, grilled chicken seasoned with only salt and pepper. My mother wore a friend’s wedding dress. My dad’s groomsmen wore blue jeans. The bride wasn’t showing yet, but I can’t imagine a scenario where the

58 Shaw guests weren’t suspicious of a speedy wedding. For my family, the idea of a shotgun wedding was a much better option than the alternative: my parents raise their child out of wedlock.

They divorced nine years after they exchanged vows. I imagined Tom in a tuxedo, me in a hand-me-down white gown. Our friends would bring veggie burgers and sutlach. His groomsmen would wear dress pants Then, when our baby was born six months after our wedding, no one would say a word. ***

Morgan watched television in the living room of our apartment. No one knew I was pregnant, and I figured if anybody had to, it would be my twin sister. No doubt she would question my early-morning retching in the bathroom, my eventual absence from classes, my disappearance from outings with friends. I perched myself next to her and set my back pack on my lap. “I have to show you something,” I told her. She turned her head toward me, slow enough that I could appreciate the profile that we shared: my dad’s pointy chin and ruler-straight nose, my mom’s long eyelashes and small lips. My hand offered her the pregnancy test She stared at it, then shook her head

“I really hope you’re joking, but if not, you know you can’t have a child right now”

Her reaction stunned me, though it shouldn’t have. She had my mom’s compassion, but my dad’s direct, no-nonsense rationale. “What?” I snatched the test from her gaze and stowed it back into my bookbag. “Real great, Morgan. No ‘Are you okay?’ or ‘What’s your plan?’”

She shook her head, an adult talking to a petulant toddler. I shrank beside her. “You know you can’t have a kid. It would ruin your life Of course I’ll support whatever you choose, but be reasonable.”

I slung my bookbag over my shoulder “You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that?” Stomping into my room, I cried into my pillow. She was right, but I desperately wanted her to be wrong. I day dreamed that she would tip-toe into my room and hold me in her arms like when we were children sleeping on the same full-sized mattress I used to have panic attacks when I was that young. I was terrified the world might end. Maybe it was because of the Discovery Channel shows that talked about Heat Death or the times my Christian grandmother

Shaw 59 brought me to her church and the pastor talked about Revelations. Nev ertheless, Morgan wasn’t nervous like I was. She was never scared. She would embrace me and tell me that the world would end in light and we would feel nothing at all. But she never came. ***

At my first Planned Parenthood appointment, I sat across from a nurse with inoffensive pink lipstick and a gentle voice. She substantiated everything: I was pregnant, just about five weeks. I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue Tom waited in the next room I could hear the faint squeaksqueaksqueak of his chair as his leg bounced up and down.

“You have options,” the employee reminded me. “Have you consid ered any of them?”

Flipping idly through the pamphlets she gave me, words like safe and choice jumped out at me. The models all looked intelligent, brazen, and confident. They had young faces and dressed casually. A crisis ho tline was printed on nearly every page along with details of different psy chologists. In the corner of the room, the anatomy of a vagina was drawn on a poster with a model diaphragm next to it. One question remained stagnant in the air.

Could I be a mother? ***

Standing in front of my bedroom mirror, I lifted my shirt, probably like my own mother did when she first found out. I pushed out my ab domen, tried out what I might look like in the coming months. My belly poked over my yoga pants. I twisted from side to side and arched my back. It was hard to imagine that something was in there

“Hello,” I sang out. “Hi. Can you hear me in there? ” I gave my stom ach two or three taps with the knuckle of my index finger “You probably don’t have ears yet, huh? It’s me. Your mom.” I was trying the word out on my tongue; I didn’t feel like a mother but, in different ways, I was play ing the role. I complained of my aching back and tender feet. I avoided alcohol and fanned away Tom’s cigarette smoke We came to the quick conclusion that I couldn’t go through with the pregnancy, but, despite myself, the thought of motherhood was as lovely as it was terrifying.

60 Shaw

Tiny baby shoes Holding little hands Late nights with no sleep

Kissing chubby cheeks. Missing out on last-minute vacations with unattached friends. Unconditional love. Undisclosed resentment.

As I stared in the mirror, I told myself that I was playing a very dan gerous game. I couldn’t have myself falling in love with Him. Or Her. Or It.

Pulling down my shirt, I decided to never do that again. ***

I insisted that Tom not skip another class and asked my sister to take me to where the Planned Parenthood in my college town referred me: the Planned Parenthood East Columbus Surgical Center. I deter mined to opt out of using my insurance card; I was still on my dad’s health insurance and feared he would figure out what was going on. My parents, I decided, could never know.

“I’m really glad you’re doing this,” Morgan said to me as we stepped out of the car. I turned my head from her so she didn’t notice the tears in my eyes. My cheeks burned. I crossed my arms and held my jacket tighter to my body.

I hated Morgan for saying that.

Tom let me stay over every night and woke up early to send me to class with coffee and lunch. Where my sister refused, he indulged me in my constant interrogation: “Do you think we could do it? Raise a baby?” “It’d be hard, but it’s your choice,” he’d reply, gazing at his shoes.

“I want to know what you think,” I pressed He would stay motionless for a long time, contemplating the least aggressive and influential reaction. He was just as frightened as me. “I don’t want to tell you what to do and have you hate me forever.” It was as much of an answer as anything else. I hated Tom for how kind he was.

And the embryo inside of me, I hated It, too—a thief that stole my body’s nutrients, that made me exhausted and sick to my stomach It invaded my insides and fashioned a home using my flesh and bone. A parasite lurching and twitching in my womb, starving for my discomfort, compelling me toward motherly instinct and affection. It wreaked havoc on my my brain and my body, my father’s pragmatism and my mother’s softness, and took advantage of my love and my abhorrence

I walked into the clinic and signed in. Right when I sat down, a

Shaw 61 Woman entered. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Where I kept my head down and folded my arms around my chest, she walked in with her lips painted a merlot red, her chin held high. She clutched a toddler in her arms, and her mother, it appeared, followed closely behind. When she passed me, she gave me a soft smile with those red lips.

“I’m here for my ultrasound,” she told the secretary. “And to sched ule my surgery.”

***

My grandmother never liked my dad and she always made that clear to my sister and me. She refused to sit at our softball games with him. When my mother emailed him, their preferred method of contact, my grandmother would hover over the emails and suggest possible re plies. I took her out to dinner once, a place where the authentic Mexican food confused and revolted her. She drank heartily from her margarita, no salt. “Your father didn’t want to marry your mother, you know. He didn’t know why they couldn’t just live together and raise your broth er. I said to him: ‘You got my daughter pregnant. You’re marrying her.’” She was pleased with herself. The waitress checked on us and my grand mother let her know that she thought the queso was inedible. I wanted to slap her, to scream at her. I was sure my grandmother only thought she was doing right by my mother. But did she know she took away my dad’s choice? Did she know she took away my mom’s? Would she listen to me if I told her?

“Would you like to see?”

“Yes, I think so.”

The ultrasound technician greased my stomach with cold goo. She turned her head to the monitor, her forehead creasing until she found what she was looking for.

My baby looked like a puppy-alien hybrid. Its fingers curled un derneath its unformed chin, greyish dots-for-eyes padded the sides of its blobby head. An extraterrestrial crescent moon inhabiting my womb, and this was our first meeting My heart was a tidepool: she swelled, she sunk.

“Would you like to keep the picture?”

This was our first meeting and our last. I wanted to touch the mon

Shaw itor, to trace the curious curves and greyscale cells. A picture would be the only tangible item to remember that this happened. “Look,” I’d tell my own children, “you had a brother once.” Or perhaps I’d say “Be care ful, be so careful.” Or if Tom and I unraveled, I could show it to the next great love of my life. They would see what I went through. Evidence of my pain. Proof. A landmark.

“Yes, I think so.”

The copy of the ultrasound was in my pocket when I scheduled my final appointment. I didn’t tell Morgan as we drove home. Tom was waiting for me when I got back to my apartment. I gave him the photo and flopped onto my bed, regarding him through my eyelashes.

“Oh, wow.” He said, pinching it in between his index finger and thumb. “I can’t believe this. This is...so real, isn’t it?”

“Does it make you feel any different?”

“What do you mean?”

“About any of this? About what we decided to do?”

His face turned into a stone; he was scared to death of influenc ing my decision and my emotions but more scared of being a father. He didn’t think I knew that last part, but I did. I looked through his phone while he was sleeping I couldn’t sleep then, couldn’t ever sleep despite constant exhaustion and read a text message with a friend about how emotional I had been, how scared he was that I would back out of the procedure, how he didn’t think he could be a father. I glared at the dark outline of his sleeping form, how his chest rose and fell, and wanted to smash his phone into tiny glass pieces. I resented him for what I saw he said in his private conversations, what I imagined he could have said; I resented him for a lot, and I resented him right then. I wished he just told me that he wanted me to have the abortion. I wished he could have brought himself to say “abortion.” I wished he would tell me that he didn’t want to be with me, to be a part of a family with me and get bald while my hips grew round and sported mom jeans, to be stuck with me in his life for at least eighteen years, just like my parents were and are permanently linked The longer I sat in this quiet with him, the more time he wore that stupid blank expression on his face, the more hate began to bubble in my stomach, the more I wanted to scream at him.

Shaw 63 Coward. Coward. Coward.

He gave me back the photo The rigid glacier in the pit of my stom ach melted. The realization flooded upward, upward, upward, until I felt red-hot guilt and mourning touch the tips of my ears and submerge my brain.

Maybe, I thought, I am the coward. ***

“Are you nervous?”

I gave the Woman, the same one from my ultrasound appointment, a polite smile and shrugged. We both wore robes and had IVs attached to our arms. “A little,” I admitted. I tried to avoid looking at the needle in my arm by maintaining eye contact with her. She was pretty, with a heart-shaped face and glossy brown hair Earlier she was on the floor in the waiting room, scooting a tiny red fire truck around with her son. He couldn’t have been older than five. Her mother talked quietly on in a phone in Spanish, thumbing idly through a magazine. I tried my best not to stare at her, making out the lazy blue-black of the sky through the tinted windows, the sunrise peeking out from the cover of winter’s fog. I don’t think anybody could see inside unless they got close, pressed their face against the glass, and even then, who knew. But my eyes always re turned to her there with her son, her voice imitating an engine and her son giggling in response

“Did you get the full anesthetic?”

“Yeah. Did you?”

She nodded. “There’s no way in Hell I’d do this without being knocked the fucked out.” We laughed and the air became lighter. “How old are you? I’m sorry if that’s personal. I’m just curious.”

“Twenty.”

“That’s how old I was when I got pregnant with my first one, the lit tle guy always following me around in the waiting room. He’s great, but I couldn’t do it again. My boyfriend wanted me to. Said he wants to marry me. Do this thing right. I don’t think Davy—that’s my son, Davy I don’t think he understands what’s going on.” She tapped her long fingernails on the arm rest I thought about my mother and wondered if terminat ing her first pregnancy was on her radar, just once, or perhaps it crossed her mind when she was pregnant the last time, when her marriage with my father was failing. I could see her in the ultrasound room a couple kids, a miscarriage, and a failing marriage later—the moment they told her that they were mistaken, and one baby was actually two. Recounting the story, my mom said she cried because she was so happy Now, I ques tioned if that was true.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I’m sorry.”

She laughed as if I said the funniest thing she had heard in awhile. “What could you possibly be sorry for?” ***

The Woman was called back into the operation room. Fifteen min utes passed. There was no music playing in this room like there was in the lobby. Monitors beeped. Nurses spoke in soft voices. I tapped my toe and scrolled through my phone I tried to text Tom, but I didn’t have service. I glared at the lights until purple circles dotted my vision.

I was truly, for the first time, alone with what I was about to do. No school work, no Tom, no job, no distractions. Behind a white wall the Woman was getting an abortion, and behind that same wall, in a matter of minutes, I would be getting one too No more throwing up. No more cramps. No more sleepless nights. No more baby. I was severely sad and incredibly relieved simultaneously. I didn’t feel entitled to either emo tion. How could I be upset if I was willingly getting an abortion? How could I be relieved if losing my child made me intensely mis erable? ***

The Woman re-entered and sat down next to me. They put anoth er IV in her. She had heavy-lidded eyes and a honeyed smile. “Don’t be nervous,” she said. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

I studied her form, how relaxed she seemed to be a woman re turning from a day at the beach. Leaning toward her, I touched her arm. “Thank you.” She grasped my hand in hers, rubbing circles with her thumb on my skin. For that small blip in time, I was at peace. And then it was my turn.

“So where do you go to school?” The doctor was an older woman with a straight, gray bob and deep laugh lines. She guided my legs on Shaw 65 stirrups with a gentle, rehearsed hand.

“Ohio University” The nurse poked my veins with the sedative and it ran cool through my body. “When will this start working, by the way?” “Soon enough. Scoot your butt closer to me.” She sat in a chair. I could only see the top of her head. “What do you study at Ohio State?” “Oh, sorry, it was actually Ohio University.” My feet came into con tact with straps that held them into place. I wiggled my toes, testing my freedom. “Nursing, but I think I’m changing my major to English.” “Wonderful. I always loved to read. Gonna be a little cold here.” Her fingers examined me, foreign and strange, and my knees became magnets that compelled themselves together. “Keep them open for me, okay?”

The nurse crouched by me “It’ll start working fast Try counting down from ten.”

A mechanical whirr overshadowed the noise of the air-condition er. “Some patients look at the clouds on the ceiling and say they’re mov ing when it kicks in.”

My chin pointed upwards. “Ten, nine, eight…”

If the clouds started to swirl, I didn’t see them. ***

By the time I woke up and stumbled back to Tom, the operation didn’t exist in my memory The Woman, my companion through this shared experience, was nowhere to be found. Men filled the waiting room and snapped their heads toward the door I was escorted through. Tom sat straight up and cracked his neck when he saw it was me He ushered me into my coat

A woman in a yellow jacket stopped Tom and I just before we walked outside “Go out the back There’s an exit that way” She pushed her sunglasses up her face, her bangs fanning from behind them. “You won’t have to look at them.”

“Who?” I muttered. “Look at who?”

A group of protestors held signs with mutilated fetuses and accu sations of murder on signs. Little girls with braided pigtails picked at the grass and kicked at the dirt. The older ladies—and two gentleman showed off their posters to the building and the streets, to passing cars that honked their horns in approval and drivers who flashed them a 66 Shaw middle finger. They were noiseless, yelling nothing. There was no con versation between any of them.

I leaned on Tom’s arm, doing my best to ignore the protestors. I didn’t want to give them the pleasure of seeing me cry, proof of my grief and my relief, or the satisfaction of an angry outburst that started to rise hot in my chest. The ground beneath me was impermeable; my brain was in a fog from the drugs. I could’ve lay there, right in the snowy grass, and fallen asleep. To distract myself, I started a chant in my head: left foot, right foot, don’t look Left foot, right foot, don’t look.

“Thank you.” His voice cracked. He raised a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “Thanks so much.” I could only nod to the lady in yellow. A badge on her jacket read “volunteer.” She gave me a pat on the back and donned her sunglasses.

Tom’s car was in front of two women: both in long jean skirts with grey, knitted caps over their heads. They held their signs the smooshed heart of a fetus and a Bible verse, one I never cared to look up directly in front of the part of the fence that separated them from Tom’s car. They were straight-standing Medusas, their faces blank and their cheeks red dened from the cold. “Just get in,” Tom pleaded, opening my car door for me. “Ignore them.”

My posture swayed. I propped my elbow on the trunk of the car. The heat consumed my whole body. My chant changed: how dare they, how dare they, how dare they.

“It’s too late!” I shouted at one of them. “It’s too fucking late!” Tom grasped my upper arm. “Stop, Kasey.”

For good measure, I spit on the ground toward the fence. “You’re wasting your goddamn time. Go actually help someone!” It was no use they just stared like I wasn’t there at all. ***

“I know you were upset, but yelling wasn’t going to help anything,” Tom said.

I watched the sky and puffy white clouds trail the car as we rode down the highway back home, back to normalcy.

“If anything, that’s what they want. They want a reaction.” I closed my eyes.

“My main concern is that you’re okay, you know that.”

I didn’t like how the clouds seemed to follow me.

The weekend after I had my abortion, Tom threw a party at his house. I glided from friend group to friend group, nursing a bottle of wine that stained my teeth purple. Everyone looked at me with sad eyes.

“How are you?” they asked, and I pretended I didn’t know what they were talking about. “Ah, fine, just fine.” Tom told more people than I was okay with. It made me angry that he didn’t ask if he could divulge my secret, didn’t consider that I never wanted the sympathy, never want ed to be the Girl Who Got An Abortion.

I was bleeding from the operation The doctor and Google let me know that was to be expected, but the pad I wore chafed against me, gave me subtle reminders of my barren womb. It hurt. I tried to lie down in Tom’s bed, the lights out, the bass of his stere os creeping underneath the space of his bedroom door. I couldn’t ignore it. The room rotated. I pulled out my phone and called my mom. Her boyfriend answered.

“May I please talk to my mom?” I asked, in a voice that sounded like a little girl’s.

She answered. I told her everything. I listened to the sound of my mom crying and the starkest difference, in the weight of her words, be tween us both.

Fatherhood

Brett Thompson

My two year old daughter never lets me finish a page of her florid, outrageous picture books So I must keep my thumb affixed in the corner and lift it once the words are done, the signal between us that we both understand, yes dear, you may race ahead, you already so daring and willful, go on little stubborn one, little callus across my toe, little splinter for my palm, how I love you, more than a paper cut, than bitters at the back of the tongue, more than a vodka burn and the driving rain and all the puddles in Asia. Dear, it’s like spring, out walking on unstable ice, honeycombed and fractured, sun in my eyes, and I am slipping under myself again, the weight that comes from sinking, that feeling of sinking, it’s that feeling more than anything else.