“And Bradley would go berserk. Jumping up and down, shouting,‘Ice cream! Ice cream!’ ”
“Ha!” my mom laughs, slapping her hand down to her thigh. “He was so damn excited, it was hard to say no.”
“And he’d smear the chocolate all over his face …”
“I swear it was on purpose …”
“And I tried to smear it on my face once—”
“— until you saw that boy you had a crush on.”
I whack my mom on the arm. “Did not! It just didn’t feel good.”
“Whatever,” my mom teases.
I don’t make a big deal about it, but she’s wrong. I remember that day well. I remember the ice cream on my face because I was disappointed I couldn’t just forget it was there. I remember being sad that I couldn’t go back to the freedom of being a kid anymore.
We stop talking ’cause the memory is over and neither of us has anything left to say. My mom starts to raise a hand to her face and I know she’s crying. I get tears too, but I hold them back. Afterward, we plant a chestnut tree seed somewhere in the barren field, because Bradley liked squirrels and chestnut trees. Usually after that we just head home and order something nice for dinner, like Swiss Chalet, but this time my mom says she wants to go back and sit on the bench again. So we do, and I wonder what’s up. Until she speaks …
“Melissa, I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“About two months or so. I didn’t know. That’s why I’ve been feeling so rotten.”
“Two months?” I’m trying to do the math. She’s only been with Scott for about two months. “So whose is it?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Hopefully Scott’s.”
Hopefully? “Does he know?”
“No.”
I don’t go there. I don’t want to know what will happen. The silence grows between us, and in its emptiness I place all the things that will go wrong. He will leave her. She will have a nervous breakdown. She will lose the baby. She will start drinking again. We will lose the apartment. My life will be fucked. I feel the anger rising up inside me.
“Well. Congratulations?” I ask.
“Don’t be mad, Melissa.”
“I’m not,” I reply weakly, and scowl up to the sky. I just can’t believe it. What kind of god is supposed to be up there?
Thirty-Four
A baby?
I don’t talk to my mom for a week. I can’t help it. I’m mad. How can she be so stupid? She can’t handle a baby. She can barely take care of herself. I hate her growing belly. I hate her tired, lazy-ass body crashing on the couch early every night in front of the TV. I hate her pathetic voice when she talks to Crystal on the phone, telling her all her problems and woes, like she wants everyone to feel sorry for the choices she’s made. She’s so weak it makes me sick. I avoid going home. I spend a lot of time at Fortune’s place, or I go to Jessica’s or Ally’s. Whoever’s house I can crash at.
My mom buys fruits and vegetables and puts them in a big bowl on our kitchen table, and then comments on it every time someone comes over. “I’m on a health kick,” she explains proudly, and I know she’s dying to tell them about the pregnancy. But then she hides in her room and smokes cigarettes. She thinks I can’t smell it. She thinks the incense she burns hides it. She thinks I’m as stupid as she is.
I feel sorry for her kid. I feel sorry for that little baby.
I wake up angry, every day, so I go to Jessica’s place in the mornings before school to smoke a few joints because her mom goes to work early and she has the apartment to herself. Jess is usually who I go to if I want to talk about my mom, and Ally’s for when I want to talk about guys. I sit on Jess’s bed and roll the joints while she sits at this princess vanity table with bright lights all around the mirror, doing her hair and makeup. It takes her like an hour, and in the end she pretty much looks the same: plain Jane, except with a bit of shimmer around her eyes.
I light up the second joint, take a few drags, and then continue my thought.“I mean, how can she take care of a baby when she can’t even take care of herself? She can’t pay the rent herself—she needs a