From the other side of the circle, Dr Singh says, “It’s hard when the source of our trauma is also a place where we once had joy or a sense of identity. Does anyone have thoughts on what Marcia or someone like her should do with those feelings, hmm?”
“You should be focusing on the kids you did help,” the blond girl says loudly. “Like, when I was in juvie, I wish I’d had a lawyer who had given a shit. Maybe I’d be in a better place now if you’d been my lawyer.”
“Remember language, Brittaney,” Dr Singh says, his accent making her name three syllables.
“But like you said,” Marcia says, “maybe you would be in a better place if I’d been your lawyer. I’m not putting kids in a better place anymore.”
Brittaney shrugs and smacks her gum. “You did what you could for as long as you could, and you can’t anymore, so what else can you do?” She shrugs again, as if the matter is settled.
“What about the loss of identity that Marcia spoke about? Did that resonate with anyone else?” Dr. Singh asks.
A former soldier named Carlos begins to speak, and the next half hour is more productive. We have another forty-five minutes to go when Dr. Singh says we should take a bathroom break and stretch our legs.
The moment he says “bathroom,” I need it urgently, and I sprint out of my chair into the hallway, where the restroom is easy to find, thankfully.
When I come out of the stall, she’s waiting for me.
“You’re pregnant, right?” Brittaney says before I’ve reached the sinks.
“Yes,” I say, then I turn on the faucet.
“I knew it!” Brittaney crows. “I can always tell. Sometimes I know and the girl doesn’t even know it. I’m like that. You’re what, four months?” She spits her gum into the trash can.
“Three.” I’m a little over three, but I don’t owe her my medical information. I begin to rinse the soap from my hands.
“Girl! You having twins then? I’m kidding! You’re not that big. You’re so tiny that you’re showing early. Not that most people could even tell, but whatever. When I’m pregnant, I don’t show until I’m almost seven months gone.”
“How many times have you been pregnant?” I can’t help asking. Our eyes meet in the mirror.
“Three. But I miscarried once, and I just got the three-year-old with me now.” She looks away from my gaze and shrugs, similarly to when she’d been talking about the lawyer’s PTSD.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m as shocked by the statement as I am by the way it has been relayed, as if it is of little consequence.
“Oh, it was real early, and the baby daddy was an asshole, so…” She shrugs again.
I’m drying my hands and praying that she won’t ask me about my “baby daddy” when she says, “So you’re what, eighteen?”
“Nineteen.” I toss the brown paper towel into the trash can and turn back to her.
“I just turned twenty-one,” she says proudly. “It’s nice to see someone here besides the old fogies.”
“Yeah,” I say as I head to the door. I don’t need a friend here, and I don’t imagine we have anything in common.
Brittaney chatters at me about all the pregnancies she’s successfully predicted in the past the whole way back to the room and our folding chairs. Before sitting down, she assures me that she’ll be able to tell me the sex of my baby if I give her a few more weeks.
“Cool,” I say and am relieved that Dr. Singh is calling the room to order. I manage to not meet her eyes for the rest of the group therapy session, and afterward I quickly leave and find Mom in the waiting room, ready to escort me to the car. The same chill I’d felt in the basement greets me outside. My jacket is too tight around my middle. I’m going to have to let Mom buy me a maternity coat before much longer.
“How was it?” she asks. “Do you think it will be helpful?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
seven
“Oh, this would have been nice to have.” Angie eyes the poopsleepplay, which is standing next to the couch in my mother’s immaculately decorated living room. She sits down next to it and nods. “You’ll barely have to move. Change the diaper, put the baby back down…”
“I’ll read to it too,” I say. “And play? You’re supposed to do that even in the early weeks, right?”
I’ve been doing my research. I conquered my fear of judgmental looks from the staff that had watched me grow up checking out stacks of books each visit and made my way to the library. In addition to a book on French parenting and another on baby development, my bravery was rewarded by excitement from the librarians and flyers about story time and pre-K reading clubs.
“Yeah, you will,” Angie says. “Mostly you’ll…rest.” She says “rest” like a gentle euphemism for something more grim. “Guinnie is starting to get really fun to play with though.” She laughs in an odd way. “It’s so weird not to have her with me.”
“It was nice of Dave to offer to spend the afternoon with her so we could hang.” I sit next to her on the couch and groan a little bit. For being so small, my bump now stops me from closing my jeans, and I’m running out of dresses and baggy shirts. My mother wants me to go maternity clothes shopping with her. She hasn’t mentioned bringing Aunt Angelina with us.
“Dave owed me,” Angie says, and I raise my eyebrows. “We had a big fight because he had the fucking gall to tell me that all I ever talk about is the baby.”
“Ooh.” I know how this comment would have stung. I’ve started to realize how difficult it will be to be a mother and a writer. Just one of those feels impossible some days.
“Autumn, the way I burst into tears…” She grimaces. “We ended up better for it. We understand what each other’s going through more, you know? But he still owed me.”
I’m quiet because I don’t know. When Jamie and I fought, even if we both apologized for the things we said, nothing was ever resolved, and we certainly never ended up understanding each other better for it.
It wouldn’t have been like that with Finny when we eventually found something to fight about if he’d lived. I know we had learned our lesson about making feelings known.
“Hey, I promise this whole hangout won’t be baby related, but can I show you upstairs?”
“Yeah,” Angie says as she stands. “Did you get a crib?”
I lead the way to the stairs. “I haven’t decided what sort of, uh, sleeping method I believe in.”
“What do you mean? You put them on their backs to sleep. That’s the only thing. People argue about everything having to do with parenting.”
We reach the top of the stairs, and I open the door to my room. “Yeah, I’m learning that.”
It isn’t about having a modern baby or a hippie baby; I have to choose whether I’m a Montessori mom, an attachment parent, or one of the many other theories or combinations I could ascribe to in my pursuit of a more perfect child. It’s like suddenly being asked to choose a religion when it never occurred to me there may be a God.
“I was told we had to let her cry it out. We live in one room with the baby, so that didn’t happen. No matter what you chose or do, someone is going to tell you that you are wrong, as if it were their business.”
“Well, of course. I’m already an unfit mother because I got pregnant as a teenager in the first place, right?” I snort. “Here, this is what I wanted to show you.”
At the resale shop, Mom found a dresser to double as a changing table that matches the wood tones already in my room. She was so pleased that I said yes, even though it felt, at the time, like it was all happening too fast.
But now, having it feels like proof, proof that Finny’s baby is real.
“I have all the drawers sorted.” I open the second from the top. “Look at this one,” I say, and we paw through together, unfolding each onesie to exclaim over it and therefore undoing all the meticulous work I had done.
The feeling remains. I’ve proved something to myself or Angie.
This is real.
Really real.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe.