Dark Places(70)

Ben Day





JANUARY 2, 1985

5:58 P.M.





Diondra had a little belly, it freaked Ben out, and for weeks now she’d been talking about the “quickening.” The quickening had happened, the baby was moving, it was a very special, important moment and so Ben had to put his hand on her stomach all the time and feel the baby kick. He was proud of making the belly, proud of making the baby, the idea of it at least, but he didn’t like to actually touch that area or look at it. The flesh was weird, hard but globby at the same time, like ham gone bad, and touching it was just embarrassing. For weeks, she’d been grabbing his hand and pressing it there, watching his face for a reaction, and then she’d yell at him when he couldn’t feel anything. For a while, actually, he’d thought maybe the pregnancy was just one of Diondra’s jokes to make him feel dumb—he’d sit there with his hand sweating on that gross mound of skin, and think, maybe that rumble, was that it, was that the baby or was that just indigestion? He worried. He worried that if he didn’t feel anything—and he hadn’t those first weeks after the quickening—that Diondra would yell at him, It’s right there, it’s like a cannon going off in my womb, how can you not feel it? And he worried that if he finally said he did, that Diondra would blast him with her laugh, that laugh that bowed her at the midsection like she’d been shot, the knee-grabbing laugh that made her gelled hair shake like a tree after an ice storm, because of course she wasn’t really pregnant, she was just f*cking with him, didn’t he know anything?

He had, in fact, looked for signs she may be lying: those big, bloody maxipads that his mom always rolled up in the trash and that always ended up unfurled within a day. Otherwise he hadn’t been sure what to look for, and he wasn’t sure if he should ask if it was his. She talked like it was, and that was probably as sure as he’d get.

Anyway, in the past month, it was clear she was definitely pregnant, at least if you saw her naked. She still went to school, dressed in those giant baggy sweaters, and she left her jeans unbuttoned and partly unzipped, and the mound got bigger, Diondra holding it and rubbing it in her hands like it was some sort of crystal ball of their f*cked-up future, and one day, she grabbed his hand and he felt it, no doubt—that thing was kicking and all of a sudden he saw the swipe of a little foot move under the surface of Diondra’s skin, smooth and fast.

What the hell’s wrong with you? You birth cows out there at the farm don’t you? It’s just a baby was Diondra’s reaction when he snatched his hand away. She pulled it back and held it there, held his palm on that twitching thing inside her, and he thought, calving is damn different than your own real baby, and then he thought, let me go let me go let me go as if the thing were going to grab him like some late-night slasher movie and pull him inside her. That’s how he pictured it, a thing. Not a baby.

Maybe it would have helped if they talked about it more. After the quickening, she wouldn’t speak to him at all for a few days, and it turned out he was supposed to give her something for the quickening, that you gave pregnant ladies presents to celebrate the quickening, and that her parents had given her a gold bracelet when she got her first period and that this was like that. So in place of a present she made him go down on her ten times, that was the deal, which he thought she probably picked because he didn’t really like to do it, the smell made him queasy, especially now, when that whole area seemed used. She didn’t seem to like it either, that’s why it felt like punishment, her yelling at him about fingers and pressure and higher, it’s higher up, go higher and finally sighing and grabbing his head hard, by the ears and pulling him to the spot she wanted and him thinking you f*cking bitch and wiping her off his mouth when he was done. Eight more to go, you f*cking bitch, you want a glass of water sweet-heart? And she’d said No but you do, you smell like * and laughed.

Pregnant women were moody. He knew this. But otherwise, Diondra didn’t act pregnant. She still smoked and drank, which you weren’t supposed to do if you were pregnant but she said only health nuts gave up all that stuff. Another thing she didn’t do: plan. Diondra didn’t even talk much about what they’d do when it was born—when she was born. Diondra had never been to a doctor, but she was sure it was a girl because girls made you sicker and she’d been sick the first month so bad. But she really didn’t say more, reality-wise, than to talk about it as a girl, as an actual girl that would come out of her. He’d wondered at first if she was going to get an abortion. He’d said if you have the baby instead of when, and she’d completely freaked, and Diondra completely freaking was something he never wanted to see again. She was a handful enough at her most calm, this was like watching a natural disaster, the nails the crying the hitting, and her yelling that that was the worst thing anyone had ever said to her, and it’s your flesh too, what the hell is wrong with you, you * piece of shit?

But otherwise, they didn’t plan or couldn’t plan, since Diondra’s dad would literally kill her if he ever found out she was pregnant outside of marriage. If he ever found out she even did it outside of marriage, he’d kill her. Diondra’s parents had only one rule, only one single rule, and that was that she must never, ever let a boy touch her there unless he was her husband. When she turned sixteen, Diondra’s dad had given her a promise ring, a gold ring with a big red stone that looked like a wedding ring and she wore it on that finger, and it meant a promise to him and to herself that she would remain a virgin til marriage. The whole thing grossed Ben out—doesn’t that seem like you’re married to your dad? Diondra said it was a control thing, mostly. This was the one thing her dad had decided to get hung up about, it was the one thing he asked of her, and goddamit, she’d better do it. She said it made him feel better leaving her alone, unsupervised, unprotected, except for the dogs, for months at a time. It was his one parental thing: my daughter may drink or do drugs but she is a virgin and therefore I can’t be as f*cked up as I seem.