What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky(17)

Your mother, ever the opportunist, screeched, “Oh my God, you cut her! Oh, baby, Graceline, are you okay? I’m pressing charges!”

The woman apologized profusely, wadding up tissue to stanch the trickle of blood. But your mother was in full swing by then, the bleeding palm her prop, and launched into the lobby with you in her grip.

The firm exchanged a large check for dropped charges and your silence, and for months you lived like queens. You moved into a motel where you had your own bed, a rarity, and your mother gave you a daily allowance to spend at the fairgrounds a quarter mile away. You hobbled to the grounds while your mother occupied herself with shopping and the men who darted in and out of her life like a lizard’s tongue. You spent the days balancing on the Ejection Seat and testing your aim at the Chump-a-Lump. You insisted on riding the Tunnel of Love by yourself, despite the efforts of Giles, the carnie, to find you a partner (“C’mon, fellas, you aren’t going to let the little lady go by herself”) and his efforts to join you later at night when he clocked out. The children who waited in line giggled at you for riding alone. While they spent their day at the fair dodging overbearing parents and piles of manure from the livestock on display, you, too much your mother’s daughter in face and body, dodged the hands of eager men.

—

Baby, I’m so proud of you.”

Your mother lay next to you on your bed and picked at the plastic fittings on your brace, a nervous habit she’d gotten from you. The scent of Chinese food wafted from the trash in the corner, where the roaches that never bothered her would soon gather. She waved her hand, heavy with costume rings, at the room. “All this because of you.” Your palm, marred with a hoary scar, itched.

You never considered another lifestyle, tethered to your mother by familiarity and a notion of loyalty. Then you discovered your pregnancy. You were sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven when your mother handed you a five-dollar bill to purchase tampons, something she’d been doing with soldierly regularity the third week of every month since you’d turned twelve.

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked me yet.”

In the silence that followed, the words weighed heavy. You ended up purchasing a pregnancy test instead, and thirty-five minutes later, under the flickering fluorescent of a gas station bathroom, the fetal presence was confirmed.

There were a few paternal options. One was Billy, the law clerk and recipient of a blow job that had gotten out of hand. Upon catching you, your mother had flashed your birth certificate, verifying the delivery of a baby girl now fifteen and too young to be bent over that desk, bare stomach resting on the polished wood, servicing a man almost twice her age. He’d wasted no time sliding your suit to the top of the pile. The money had lasted a few weeks, until you had to pay for your car to be towed off the highway to the Lucky Leaf Truck Stop. There you were assisted by Randall the trucker, who turned out to be the guy a girl had to do to get a ride around here. He’d let you out three days and two thousand miles later, leaving you with one last blast of his horn and a wad that amounted to $850. You used this money to purchase a car from Jerry, the used-car salesman, who had to be persuaded to discount the price of the dark green Camry that had caught your mother’s eye.

You couldn’t afford to see a doctor and rarely settled in a town long enough to locate the free clinic, so you spent every spare dollar on baby books, parenting manuals, and potty-training tomes. You were convinced you could change a diaper in 12.8 seconds.

“‘Very young children require stability as they grow to ensure sound development,’” you read out loud from your latest acquisition, Formula for a Well Child. Your mother was watching the road. You were six months along and had begun hinting to her that your unstable life wouldn’t “contribute a fair environment” for the baby. “What do you think about that?”

She turned up the radio, cutting you off. A deep, thrumming bass filled the car. She ignored you often now, getting up to leave when you were on one of your “baby rants,” as she called them. But at the moment you were captives of a moving vehicle, so you decided to press the issue and twirled the volume low.

“We can’t keep doing this. We need to stop, really stop somewhere.”

“You think I’m stupid or something? I know we got to stop somewhere.”

“Okay, but it needs to be soon.” You patted your belly, now the dimensions of one of those personal-sized watermelons. Earlier, you’d speculated to your mother that it could be twins, but she’d just rolled her eyes. You grabbed the side of the door as the car swerved to the shoulder. Your mother rounded on you.

“If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

“I’m just saying it needs to be soon. If you’re going to stop, it needs to be soon, that’s all.”

“Why, you think I don’t know these things? You think I’m a bad mother or something?”

The question came from left field. Was she a bad mother? You were fifteen years old and pregnant because she wanted a price cut on a battered green Toyota. You weren’t sure how to answer, so you didn’t. She pulled back onto the road and continued, silent.

At the next town she stopped at the first grocery store you saw. You’d insisted on eating as healthy as you could manage and made frequent stops for fruit, which you ate hastily to avoid rot. Your mother pulled into the furthest open parking spot and handed you a twenty.