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I know it already when the baby went missing, that it was gonna happen that way. Of course I didn’t mention this to the detective, or Sawyer’s folks, because if you watch any of those police shows, like I have, where a baby goes missing then you already know you’re thenumber one suspect if your’re the Momma. Which I am, so I was. I already know’d that if yousay the wrong thing it might cause suspicion on you and then right away you got trouble comin’at you. And if some reporter gets wind of it, it goes even worse for the Momma cause they putyou on the TV where nobody really beilieves you are innocent, no matter how hard ya cry and blow your nose.Mostly I could tell the police, especially the special dective guy, just thought I was somesort of dumb young kid that got knocked up because I didn’t know how to keep my legs crossedlike a good girl would.Well, the truth is I ain’t perfect, but I ain’t so bad neither. I think I turned out alrightcoming from the low circumstances of how I were raised. My momma was a drinker and her  boyfriend was a saved meth user. Saved as in meaning he quit it, the meth. Now he is only adrinker and pot smoker. I guess my momma does some of that too, but nothing too serious, notlike shooting up or anything like that. My daddy, lives near Momma, in the same trailer park, just at the opposite end. He has a new wife, who has about fifty children, so he don’t have toomuch time to be spending with me. Plus I was a lot older than most of the new kids. Anyway I Itry to just get on as best I can. Plus I have my own worries, what with everybody acting like Imight be some sort of monster, what would hurt her own littlin’.I might’ve sit and worried myself into a way low down place 'cept for that’s not how Iam. I wanted to pull myself up like Ricky Lake and make something of myself. That’s how I gotthe job waiting on folks at The Marquam Café. They was looking for someone they could pay
 
under the table and didn’t care that I was only fifteen. They said I had a real nice way with thecustomers and also I set the glasses of water on the table by the bottom and not by grabbing themon top where people put their lips. Momma taught me this. She waited tables off and on tooI was the second to the youngest one to work at the café, the first being Sawyer, who wasthe owner’s son and did a lot of the cooking and dishwashing. He was only sixteen. I like that boy right away. I got butterflies jumping in my belly everytime we was in the same roomtogether. He was a tall skinny kind of kid with black hair that was long enough that he had tokeep it in a ponytail under his hair net. Sometimes it made me want to giggle to look at himoutside smoking a cigarette trying to be all cool, while the whole time his hair was in a hair netlike some granny.Anyway, it weren’t too long before Sawyer and I hooked up. I could tell Mr. and Mrs.Lupine weren’t none happy about it. But the truth was Sawyer wasn’t no brain scientist and Iguess they thought he could do worse than me. At least I was a hard worker and didn’t takesmoke breaks all the time like Sawyer. I liked Sawyer something. He had the softest brown eyesI ever seen on a boy.Anyway one day I got to feeling sick. I started puking and puking. Usually when I get a bug I puke it up and then I set awahile and I start getting my energy back. But this time it wasdifferent. The bug just kind of hangs on, dragging my whole body down. It gets to where I canhardly get up in the morning. My mom is asking me what’s wrong, and I think I have that bloodcancer.Then one day I drag myself to work like usual and there is this couple with this babydoll baby, all blonde curls and dimples with these pink rose petal cheeks and it hits me like a flash of lighnin' what’s been goin' on inside me. I get all sweaty in my armpits and I can feel my tongue
 
swelling like I need to vomit. I throw their plates down and run to the bathroom. That night I tellSawyer. We go and get one of those pee tests. And it’s a good thing I read the directions ‘cause Ialways thought those things worked like a thermometer. You know? I thought you stuck thatthing up your yahoo and it came out flashing a red or green light or somethin’ like that. I cun tellya’ I was pretty nervous until I read the ‘structions and all ya got ta do is pee on it. I felt prettyrelived by that, let me tell ya. Of course it comes out plus, which in case ya don’t know, meansthat I sure as salt on meat I’m knocked up.Later that week we tell his parents. And then we or they decide we should move intogether. The Lupines have a little piece of land with a real nice double wide trailer. But I don’treally want to be living with them, on account of it makes me feel too nervous. So insteadSawyer and I move into their camper which is behind the house, but hasn’t been used sinceSawyer was a kid before they bought the restaurant.Anyway the next nine months I spend in the moldy stink of the camper, tuckered out in away I han’t ever imagined I could be and still be amongst the livin’ and still waitin’ tables. Idon’t go to school and neither does Sawyer. We figure now that we gonna be parents we’ll justkeep on helpin’ at the café. When Sawyer isn’t at the restaurant or sleeping, he is off in townwith his friends hanging around outside Marquam Store, smoking cigarettes. It don’t bother metoo much, him being gone. I can’t much stand the stink of smoky cigarettes, they way it sticks toya no matter what. It sends me into a pukin’ fit everytime.When my water breaks at the restaurant one day, Mrs. Lupine rushes me to the hospitalwhich is a two hour drive in traffic. But that baby takes his own sweet time stretching throughmy body like he is trying to come out my belly button rather than my yahoo. Mrs. Lupine is allkindness talking to me while I sob in pain. I ain’t no good with pain that goes on and on. I can
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