“You’re writing a novel?”
“No.” I laugh for the first time in days. “I wrote one. I finished it. Well, I’m still editing it.” I still cry while I edit, which slows me down, but I don’t have to stop anymore because of the crying, so that’s an improvement. And I’m reading books that aren’t about babies when I’m not editing. I may not be going to college this year or the next, but that’s no reason I can’t give myself my own literature course.
“But the story is complete?” Dr. Singh raises his bushy eyebrows in a way I’ve never seen before.
“Yeah.”
“That is very good. Very good.” He adjusts his glasses. “Do you know how many people start novels they never finish?”
“Probably a lot? Lots of people finish them too.”
“My son is thirty-two and has been working on his since college,” Dr Singh says. “I think you should be proud of yourself.”
“Finny was proud of me,” I say.
“I can’t wait to read it.”
Dr. Singh shifts in his seat. “I was hoping that at next week’s group therapy session, you’ll share with the others why you are there. I understood why you didn’t contribute last week, but I do hope it is a space that you can feel comfortable.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. “That Brittaney girl was kinda annoying.”
Dr. Singh surprises me by laughing. “Oh, ha! Brittaney is what my generation calls a spitfire. She is someone I’ve known a long time, or rather I once knew her parents in a professional—Well, her story is not mine to tell, but she is someone you could learn from, Autumn.”
I can’t help what my face does at that idea.
Dr. Singh suddenly looks old. He presses his lips together before speaking. “Autumn, she is a survivor.” His voice lands heavy on the last word.
“Of what?” I ask.
“Everything,” Dr. Singh says.
ten
“Everything looks good,” the doctor says as she scans my chart. “If you could try again to pee for us before you go…”
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s like all I do is pee, and then I can’t when I’m supposed to.”
“Happens all the time,” she says. “Just try again because it is the best way to predict preeclampsia. Do you have any questions before the organ scan?”
“The what?”
“The ultrasound.”
“Uh, no.” The room is cold, and I’m anxious to put my new maternity jeans back on.
“That’s scheduled for next week, right? No, week after next.” She pauses, makes a note, and looks up at me and smiles. “Let’s see about peeing again, okay?”
In the restroom, crouched over the toilet with a cup between my legs, I think about what Dr. Singh said about love being an action and how my actions say I’m doing the best I can to love myself and the baby I don’t quite believe in. I wonder if trying to urinate for the preeclampsia test counts as an act of love, which makes me giggle, and then I finally pee.
When the nurse takes the cup from me, I ask, “So they’ll make sure the baby has all its organs and stuff week after next?”
“Yup. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
I say, “I’m not worried. I was just surprised when the doctor called it an ‘organ scan.’ I mean, it makes sense, but I never thought of it that way.” I’m babbling and not exactly sure what I’m talking about. The poor nurse smiles tightly at me and says something about needing to get this—with a nod to the urine—into the back.
I check at reception to see if they need anything more from me, but Mom has already made my next appointment and paid the copay with the little gold card, so we’re on our way.
“Everything good?” Mom asks. “You were in there awhile.”
“I couldn’t pee.”
“But all you do is pee, Autumn.”
“That’s what I said!” I lean my head against the window. There’s a fluttering in my middle that could be Finny’s baby, or it could be yesterday’s lunch. I still can’t tell.
Organ scan.
They’ll scan for the organs and make sure they’re all there, all in the right places, all in the right sizes and shapes, because sometimes they aren’t.
Sometimes the kidneys aren’t there, or the brain isn’t the right size, or the heart isn’t the right shape.
Sometimes babies die in their sleep for no reason, and with a gasp of breath, I realize that someday this baby will die.
Hopefully, this baby will live for a hundred years, but someday it will die, just like Finny. Just like I will.
The best I can do is hope that I will die before the baby.
The absurdity of it all.
“Are you okay?” Mom asks.
“Thinking about the ultrasound,” I say. “I hope everything is okay.”
“It probably will be,” she says, but nothing more, because she knows that for eighteen years, Angelina believed that Finny would outlive her. She knows that sometimes babies die in their sleep.
And neither of us is foolish enough to believe that lightning doesn’t strike twice.
eleven
“Maybe I should start taking you to all my resale shops,” Aunt Angelina tells Mom. We’re on our way back to Vintage Mother Goose to buy a crib.
“Angelina, I will turn this car around and head straight to Pottery Barn, I swear to God,” Mom replies.
“No, no, I’ll behave.”
I’ve chosen how the baby will sleep: in a mini crib in my room for at least a year. I won’t let it cry it out, but I’ll try to wait for the baby to settle themselves like the book about French parenting I’m reading suggested.
Now there’re only a million other decisions about this baby that I’ll have to make in the next few months.
But it’s a start.
The Mothers have been trying to let me figure out this stuff on my own, letting me decide what kind of mother I want to be, not telling me how it must be done like Angie’s family. Aunt Angelina co-slept with Finny in her bed until he was two, while Mom kept me down the hall with the baby monitor on the lowest setting so that I really had to scream to wake her. Neither method is recommended these days, and neither of them has tried to convince me otherwise.
So when I said that I had decided to get a small crib for my room for the first year or so, there was no questioning my decision. Angelina called and confirmed that the mini crib we’d considered last time we were at Vintage Mother Goose was still available, but Mom insists that we look at it one last time before purchasing it.
The same elderly woman is sitting behind the counter when we arrive.
“Back again, dears?” she says without a pause in her knitting, proving my suspicions that she is a witch.
Mom, the expert shopper in all situations, leads the way to the furniture corner where the little crib sits. “It doesn’t quite match the rest of the wood in your room,” she muses. “It would almost be better if it was totally different. This will look like we tried to match it and failed. I’m certain I could find one online in a better color.”
“This is perfect,” I say. “Last I heard, none of the interior design magazines were doing spreads on teen mom’s nurseries, so I don’t think we’re missing any opportunities.” I rest my hands on the adjustable bar possessively.
“All right then, sweetie. If it were me, I’d find the coordination soothing when in the trenches.”
“In the trenches? Why do people always talk about motherhood like it’s going to war?”
Mom and Aunt Angelina look at each other and shrug.
“What are we thinking then?” the saleswoman asks, approaching us.
Mom begins to set up the purchase and delivery. I stare down at the crib and try to convince myself that someday there will be not only a mattress inside it but an infant.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Aunt Angelina asks.
“That we should let Mom order a bespoke crib mattress made of organic llama hair or something?”
“Exactly. She’s respected your wishes not to turn your dad’s office into a Victorian nursery full of chintz and should be rewarded.”
I turn from the crib to face her. “Since it’s Dad’s money, I’ll have to let her do something to his office eventually.”
Angelina stiffens. “What did you say?”