Delivered
Upcoming publication in Ever Eden Magazine.
I stood eye-to-eye with a gigantic stomach. It jutted out inches from my face: a massive balloon, wrapped tight in a blue dress. The woman caressed her swollen abdomen with delicate fingers, lingering on her protruding bellybutton. She and the other adults talked—maybe about how the pregnancy was going, maybe about her due date. Their voices filled the space above me, mingling with the after-Mass crowd’s floating chatter, but that bulging belly stared right at me while her hands wandered across it. I wondered if she could feel her own touch, or if the skin had stretched so far she didn’t feel anything at all. I wondered how it felt to be so full. My mom’s tug at my arm broke the spell, pulled me into the swelling crowd. I filled the car ride with an endless gush of questions, all my wonder bubbling over.
“Why was she so big, Mama?”
“But how did it get there?”
“That means I was in your tummy!”
My curiosity only somewhat calmed, I sucked in a huge breath and urged my belly to expand. It remained small in my six-year-old frame, and left me wondering what it felt like to be pregnant. I fell asleep that night stroking my flat stomach, anticipating the day I’d hold another life inside me.
I went to bed last summer with my arms wrapped around my abdomen, sore from crying. That evening, my camper told me she was abused at home. We barely knew each other, but under mauve traces of sunset she gave me stories: a water bottle hurled at her, an angry rampage through the house, her father’s fists, all the bruises. She’d never told anyone else. She spoke slowly, pausing often, and tried to remember every detail, just so the weight wouldn’t be hers to bear alone.
I did not feel strong enough, staring into her deep eyes and listening to her worry about leaving. She folded her knees to her chest like a child and fiddled with a blade of grass. She asked me questions I couldn’t answer.
“Why would he do that?”
“If I tell anyone else, will my mom be mad?”
“What’ll it be like when I go home?”
I wondered why she trusted me. I felt small. Did she realize I had questions too?
We let the silence settle. She gazed across the field, now dancing with fireflies and the sun’s final rays, and turned to me. “I feel so safe here,” she said. “So safe.” I searched for an adequate response, but lost for words, I offered my body. She leaned into me, and I gathered her in my arms.
Nighttime surrounded the chapel. I knelt inside, weeping, my heart full of another life. My fingers stroked my chest, and I curled over, feeling heavy and naïve. Why did I ever consider myself strong enough to carry someone under my skin? My mesmerized image of motherhood crumpled, and in that moment, I knew that pregnancy felt like responsibility, the instinct to protect weighing deep within. Her hurt inside me, uncomfortable. The thought of letting her go, excruciating. My childhood wonder left me, and I fell asleep holding myself.
The week moved forward, technicalities and summer activities. Under state mandate I told camp directors her situation, and she told CPS her story, and everyone else played in the sun. I ached to keep her with me. I stayed distracted, painting and rock climbing and dancing and trying to avoid the thought of this fragile child leaving my safety.
In the dewy dawn of her final day at camp, she ran to me. I hugged her, pressed her head into my neck. I waited for her to cry, but she pulled away, smiling. Her quiet confidence surprised me, and she said, “This might sound crazy but... I’m kind of excited to go home. The people from CPS told me that this was the start of a better life, and I prayed about it last night, and I believe them. I’m getting a new life!” She tugged me back into a tight embrace. I smiled and said, “Yeah, sweet girl, you are.”
I still cried, watching her bus go down the hill, and my stretched-out heart never quite shrunk back, but I knew that by leaving she began something new, something all her own. My six-year-old wonder settled back in, but this time it knew the strain and swell so beautiful and painful. New life is heavy and lovely, all at once.
Winner of the 2016 Gordone Award for Creative Nonfiction