Chapter 37
“What can I help you both with?” the Planned Parenthood representative asks
“I would like to get on birth control,” Paige says.
“Both of you—” She stops mid-sentence as her eyes find my belly.
I tighten my lips together as she looks back at me and smiles slightly.
If this had happened a couple of months ago, my face would have turned a shade of tomato-red.
Once I started showing, it took me a while to not be so embarrassed when people would look at me.
Now, I don’t care. They truly don’t know me, or my age.
If anything, I could be one of those girls who is in their twenties with a baby face.
I ignore everyone who stares at me. If I catch someone staring hard, I give them a wide grin and continue on.
She grabs a brown clipboard, clips a paper onto it, and hands it to Paige. “I’ll need you to fill this out.”
“I thought the workers here knew you?” Paige wondered.
“Why would they know me?”
“Isn’t this where you go for your ultrasounds?” We both take a seat.
“No. I came one time to confirm my pregnancy. Then they told me to go to the Community Health Center to continue my prenatal care.” The health center helps low-income families with no insurance.
They helped me get on Medicaid to cover my prenatal visits, and once the baby is here, she’ll be covered, too.
Now that I’m six months pregnant, Paige has finally decided to get on birth control. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I told her to get on it. I’m glad she’s finally listening.
Paige told her mom I’m pregnant, and, of course, Paige got lectured about it.
It was hard for her mom to trust she wouldn’t follow in my footsteps.
As a result, it feels like she doesn’t trust Paige with me.
I’m glad she’s getting on birth control.
Because if she gets pregnant, I’m sure I’ll be blamed by her mom.
This pregnancy has turned so many people away from me.
It’s sad.
An hour later, Paige is storming my way with her lips turned downward and her eyes narrowed at me. “Let’s go,” she says sternly.
Before I get up, she’s already out the door.
“What is going on?” I ask once I catch up and we both get seated in her car. “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant.”
She gives me an even harder look than she did when she first walked out of the clinic. “What? No!” she screams.
I look at her with wide-eyes. “Okay. What happened then?”
She turns to me. “Why didn’t you warn me about that stupid metal thing they shove up you?” She makes a show of trembling. “I feel violated.”
I giggle. “Why was I supposed to warn you about that?”
“It’s not funny. Now I have cramps, and I’m not even on my period.”
“It’s called a pap smear. You’ve never heard of those?”
“Yes. But I never really thought about what it entailed.”
“Those are the joys we have to go through if we want to have sex. That’s not even half as bad as what I’m going to have to push out soon.”
She looks down at my belly and rubs it. “I can’t wait until I get to meet this little one,” she says in a baby voice. “I’m glad it’s you and not me.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks.”
“Honey, I’m home!” Kai greets me as he walks through the door.
“Don’t say that. You make us sound like we’re an old, eighty-year-old couple.”
He wraps his arms around my belly like he does every time he gets home from work. “I’m practicing for when we turn eighty.” He chuckles. He leans in closer to the stove, inhaling the smell of the spaghetti sauce. “Smells good.”
“It seems like spaghetti is the only thing I can cook, so I hope you enjoy it.” I had to start cooking since we were spending so much money eating out. I never realized how much it costs, but it really adds up.
I found an old cookbook at the library and wrote down as many recipes as I could.
I tried choosing recipes with a small number of ingredients, that way we wouldn’t have to spend so much money.
Somehow, they’ve all been total fails. The recipes weren’t a fail, though.
It’s the cook. Kai has been so nice about it and eats it anyway; he always says it isn’t bad, but he’s a liar.
“You know I like your cooking.”
“Sure. It should be done by the time you get out of the shower.”
We’ve fallen into a routine over the past four months since we moved into this apartment.
He goes to school and then to work.
I work on my school packets during the day.
He comes home from work.
I serve us the dinner I cooked once he gets out of the shower.
We eat.
Watch TV.
Go to bed.
And do it all over again the next day.
Sometimes I worry we’re going to get sick of this routine, and our relationship will fall apart.
When I think about it, it’s such a boring routine, yet the familiarity and predictability of it reassures me that this will work.
Our relationship will last forever, and we’ll grow old together after raising our children.
There is comfort in knowing that this is us, and I need to stop second-guessing everything.