Future Home of the Living God(66)

“Would they have killed us, I mean, in the hospital?”

“Lots of women don’t make it out,” she says carefully.

“I see so much,” I tell her, “I feel so much. Too much has happened already, and it’s unbearable.”

She puts her hand on my back. I know she’s searching for what to say, but what she comes up with sounds pretty thin. “We’ve all had to toughen up, even your dad.”

This makes me laugh.

“Yeah, Glen the softie. Do you know exactly where he is?”

She says nothing for a few moments, then whispers, “No.”

“Are you not telling me because . . .”

I look at her and point all around the little room. Cup my hand to my ears. Are we being listened to?

She gives a “maybe” shrug, so I lie back down next to her. No use unloading the big weights around my heart yet. I want to ask her if I’ll be okay, but I should not mention Tia out loud. I’m also haunted by what that sneaky nurse, the Slider, said about these babies being extra difficult to deliver. Will I survive and will you? Was Tia’s labor really normal, and the baby’s death an anomaly? I want to tell Sera what we did to Orielee. I want to share the burden of my horror, my dreams of the killing. How I watched, that moment, before I joined in and helped Tia. Held Orielee down. Her neck was heavy, I remember that now. I couldn’t feel her bones anywhere. Her shoulders, her arms, even her elbows seemed padded by fat. And yet the colors in her eyes were so delicate, the blue irises, cornflower bright. She stared at me, then through me, to the other side I guess. And her feet would not stop pounding on the hospital linoleum.

“Are you still hungry?”

Of course I am. I’m always hungry. Ravenous, like a dog. Mom has a lovely bag of mixed nuts, unsalted, and I try to eat each one slowly, carefully, extracting the max in flavor and nutrition. I ask her if Tia’s labor was normal, and Mom assures me that it was. She thinks that the baby probably suffered from the fall back at the hospital, because when she examined the placenta she found a place where it had ruptured. The baby itself did not make things difficult, she tells me again. She is positive that I am not going to have complications.

“How come you’re positive?”

“I asked your birth mom and grandma about their deliveries—all completely normal.”

“Those things run in families?”

“For sure.”

I think she’s exaggerating, but this does make me feel better, and I’m even more encouraged when Sera takes her stethoscope and blood pressure cuff out and listens to my heart, and then finds your heart. I listen too—a little whuffing sound. She puts the cuff around my arm, pumps it up, times my pulse.

“Your blood pressure’s fine,” she says. “Baby’s active?”

“Real active,” I say, proud, but she just nods. I have this moment of longing to share my happy moment of pride in you, and I miss Phil so much I have to shut my eyes and breathe slowly, rhythmically, so that I don’t start to cry.

“Can you talk about Phil?” I mouth his name.

Sera nods, but looks uncomfortable and spooked, so I let up.

“Do you have anything else to eat?”

She rummages around in her pack again and takes out a Lunchable, one of those cheese and pressed-meat snack boxes, mostly packaging.

“Sorry.”

“What do you mean? I longed for these. You wouldn’t let me eat them!”

“Enjoy.”

I take the little package apart and eat every bite of cheesy cracker and baloney, but I’m still hungry, and parched, too. I drink most of the bottle of water, then I try the tap on the mop sink.

“Safe?”

“I think so.” I gulp down the rest of the water and fill the bottle again.

“He’s probably growing. I think I’m having a boy.”

Sera doesn’t react like a grandma’s supposed to. Her face stays neutral. An abrupt stubbornness comes over me.

“You could at least act like you’re happy,” I say.

The light is dim, her eyes are clouded. She won’t smile because she never acts. This is the part of Sera I can’t stand, her inability to prevaricate, to tell the nice lie, whitewash, even to make someone feel better.

“C’mon, just pretend like you’re happy,” I say, my voice miserable.

“Well, I can’t. I’m hoping . . . Well, it was very sad, but at least your friend’s free now.”

“Don’t say it, don’t say it!” It’s like she’s darted me, put an arrow into me, the sudden hurt is that intense. “Don’t you dare say it!” She wants me to lose the baby. And I’m suddenly furious at my mom and wish that I could get out of this mop closet just so I didn’t have to sit so close to her. I don’t want you to be affected by her lack of instinctive love. I move as far away as the couch cushion allows. I think of curling up on the hard concrete floor—but she’s the one who should get off! And the thing is, she’s not sorry. She won’t apologize for what she considers honesty. Why should she, even when it hurts somebody else, somebody desperate, somebody who needs a lie?

“I just hate it when you will not compromise,” I hiss.

“It’s my truth,” she says, sadly, moving her shoulders in a defensive shrug.