Angst Pamela Lee

Angst

Pamela Lee

Creative Writing Celebration, Fiction, 1st Place

Shit! Shit! Shit! No blood on the toilet paper. No spotting. Not even a smear. And God knows I’ve always been regular as clockwork -- every twenty-eight days, since I was thirteen. Dear God, don’t let me be pregnant! Please, don’t let me be pregnant. Papa would kill me, and there’s no way I could ever tell Mama. She would die of shame and disappointment -- all her hopes of having spawned a college graduate now focused on me since ‘Duardo got himself shot.

Did I miss taking a pill? The dispenser says not. Aren’t these things supposed to be almost foolproof? Am I to be the “almost” statistical exception? Two missed periods now. Jeez. Maybe it’s stress. God knows a Freshman is under enough! So much homework! I stay sleep-deprived and survive mainly on peanut butter and Cheez-its. College is ten times harder than high school ever was. So please let it be stress.

Or just maybe that bout of flu stopped the flow, so to

speak.

Damn you, Lowell! Where are you! Out with some blonde bimbo with big boobs you’re hoping to score with? (How’s that for alliteration, English major?) You couldn’t/wouldn’t help anyway, if one of your wiggly spermatozoa has actually won the swimming race to my ovum: no money for an abortion, and then there’s your aristocratic reputation to uphold. A Brahmin from Boston, where the Lowells speak only to Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God? Give me a break! I won’t think about how sweet and thoughtful you were when we were “courting.” Courting. Such an old-fashioned word. I thought you really liked me as well as lusted for me. But raging teenage hormones (mine included) being what they are.... Of course I knew better. Or should have. Should never have agreed to go to your room. Girls are warned about what guys want by the time we get our permanent teeth.

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If I really am pregnant, what can I do? I don’t think spontaneous abortion is that easy. Falling from a horse? I never even rode one. And no risking septicemia with a coat hanger for me! Jesus! An abortion clinic? How do they work? I could get blown up or shot by some Right-to-Life nut who kills adults to save fetuses? What an oxymoron! (Or maybe it’s irony.) Then again perhaps death by some Right Wing extremist might be less damning than suicide.

I know there’s a day-after pill. Might there be a twomonths-after pill by now? Fat chance. My all-knowing Mac would have the answer if I Googled the question. Probably not worth the asking.

All right. If I really am pregnant, what’s my future? Diapers instead of a degree? No career in Journalism. Okay, I never aspired to be an anchor on ABC, but I’m probably bright enough — even pretty enough with my big brown eyes, high cheekbones, and raven-black hair — for a local station. No house in the ‘burbs with Lowell, or whoever. (Shouldn’t it be whomever?) I guess the three kids and a cat are still a possibility even if I wind up working at Walmart or McDonald’s.

Could I actually kill myself if it came to that? And if so, how? There’s no way I could come by enough sleeping pills to do the job. I wonder if Valium and Vodka would work? I’ve heard that a plastic bag is effective, but I’m not sure I could stand the suffocation before unconsciousness. Slashing my wrists in a bathtub? I’m haunted by that painting by Jacques-Louiss David of Marat’s death we saw in art class, but Marat’s death was a murder, not a suicide. Besides, I don’t have a tub — just a shower.

Sylvia Plath stuffed towels under the doors to spare her children when she gassed herself in her kitchen. Where on earth could one find a gas stove these days? Drowning and freezing to death are supposed to be reasonably painless. Is anything “reasonable”about dying? Virginia Woolf put a heavy stone in her coat pocket and walked into the river Ouse. (Ah, the information one can glean from the ‘net.) But there’s not enough water in the San Pedro (though they say a cupful

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would suffice), and there are no extended hard freezes in southern Arizona. I’m becoming maudlin. Stop it, Maria, with the suicide chatter. Hey, little-voice-in-my-head, “Take a rest!” All this talk of death is making me tired — and, fortunately, sleepy. So, “Good night, Mama. Good night, Papa. Good night, ‘Duardo, wherever you are. Good night, Lowell, you bastard.” Now that I think about it, I’ve not had any morning sickness. Nor any cravings, for that matter. At least not yet. A good sign?

Like Scarlett, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” And, if I’m lucky, tomorrow I’ll bleed.

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