Twelve hours. Twelve long hours. Just so we could go to church.
There are, by the way, about a million better ways to spend a Sunday, but lo and behold, as Sunday morning dawned, I found myself standing at the dock in a jacket zipped to my chin, stamping one foot and then the other while the frigid air made it appear as though I were smoking invisible cigarettes. Meanwhile, my aunt and Gwen were whispering to each other and laughing and looking happy, probably because they weren’t slinging biscuits and serving coffee before the crack of dawn. When it was time, my aunt pulled her car onto the ferry, where it crammed alongside about a dozen others.
I wish I could say that the ride was either pleasant or interesting, but it wasn’t, especially in winter. Unless you enjoyed staring at gray skies and even grayer water, there was nothing to see, and if the dock had been freezing, riding on the ferry was fifty times worse. The wind seemed to blow right through me and after less than five minutes outside, my nose started running and my ears turned bright red. There was, thank God, a large central cabin on the ferry where you could escape the weather, complete with a couple of vending machines offering snacks and places to sit, which was where Gwen and my aunt hung out. As for me, I crawled into the car and stretched out on the back seat, wishing I were anywhere else and thinking about the mess I’d gotten myself into.
The day after my mom had me pee on a stick, she brought me to see Dr. Bobbi, who was maybe ten years older than my mom, and the first nonpediatrician I’d ever seen. Dr. Bobbi’s real name was Roberta, and she was an OB-GYN. She’d delivered both my sister and me, so she and my mom went way back, and I’m pretty sure my mom was mortified by the reason for our visit. After Dr. Bobbi confirmed the pregnancy, she set me up with an ultrasound, to make sure the baby was healthy. I pulled up my shirt, one of the technicians put some goop on my tummy, and I was able to hear the heartbeat. It was both cool and utterly terrifying, but what I remember most was how surreal it felt and how much I wished that all of it was just a bad dream.
But it wasn’t a dream. Because I was Catholic, abortion wasn’t even an option, and once we learned the baby was healthy, Dr. Bobbi gave us the talk. She assured both of us that I was more than mature enough physically to carry the baby to term, but emotions were a different story. She said I was going to need a lot of support, partly because the pregnancy was unexpected, but mainly because I was still a teenager. In addition to feeling depressed, I might feel angry and disappointed as well. Dr. Bobbi warned that I was also likely to feel alienated from friends, making everything harder. Had I been able to check in with Dr. Bobbi now, I would have told her, check, check, check, and check.
With the talk ringing in her ears, my mom brought me to a support group for pregnant teenagers in Portland, Oregon. I’m sure there were the same kinds of support groups in Seattle, but I didn’t want anyone I knew to accidentally find out, and my parents didn’t want that, either. So, after almost three hours in the car, I found myself in a back room at a YMCA, where I sat in one of the fold-out chairs that had been arranged in a circle. There were nine other girls there, and some of them looked like they were attempting to smuggle watermelons by hiding them under their shirts. The lady in charge, Mrs. Walker, was a social worker, and one by one, we introduced ourselves. After that, we were all supposed to talk about our feelings and our experiences. What actually happened was that the other girls talked about their feelings and experiences, while I simply listened.
Really, it was just about the most depressing thing ever. One of the girls, who was even younger than me, talked about how bad her hemorrhoids had gotten, while another one droned on about how sore her nipples were before lifting her shirt to show us her stretch marks. Most but not all of them continued to attend their various high schools, and they talked about how embarrassed they were when they had to ask their teacher for a hall pass to go to the bathroom, sometimes two or three times during the same class period. All of them complained how their acne had gotten worse. Two of them had dropped out, and though both said they planned to go back to school, I’m not sure anyone believed them. All had lost friends, and another had been kicked out of her house and was living with her grandparents. Only one of them—a pretty Mexican girl named Sereta—still spoke with the father of the child, and aside from her, none intended to marry. Except for me, all of them planned to raise their babies with the help of their parents.
When it was over, as we were walking toward the car, I told my mom that I never wanted to do something like that again. It was supposed to be helpful and make me feel less alone, but it left me feeling exactly the opposite. What I wanted was to simply get through this so I could return to the life I had before, which was the same thing my parents wanted. That, of course, led to them making the decision to send me here, and though they assured me that it was for my own good—not theirs—I wasn’t sure I believed them.
* * *
After church, Aunt Linda and Gwen dragged me through the lunch/shop-for-supplies/garage-sales routine before heading to a graveled lot near a hardware store, which held so many Christmas trees for sale that it resembled a miniature forest. My aunt and Gwen tried to make the experience fun for me and kept asking my opinion; for my part, I did a lot of shrugging and told them to pick whatever they wanted, since no one seemed to care what I thought anyway, at least when it came to decisions about my life.
Somewhere around the sixth or seventh tree, Aunt Linda stopped asking, and they eventually made the selection without me. Once it was paid for, I watched as two guys wearing overalls tied the tree to the roof of the car, and we climbed back in.
For whatever reason, the ride back to the ferry reminded me of the ride to the airport on my last morning in Seattle. Both my mom and my dad had seen me off, which was kind of a surprise, since my dad had barely been able to look at me since he’d learned I was pregnant. They walked me to the gate and waited with me until it was time to board. Both of them were really quiet, and I wasn’t saying much, either. But as time inched forward toward the departure, I remember telling my mom that I was afraid. In truth, I was terrified to the point that my hands had begun to shake.
There were a lot of people around us and she must have noticed the trembling, because she took my hands and squeezed them. Then she led me to a less crowded gate, where we could have some privacy.
“I’m afraid, too.”
“Why are you afraid?” I asked.
“Because you’re my daughter. All I do is worry about you. And what happened is…unfortunate.”
Unfortunate. She’d been using that word a lot lately. Next, she’d remind me that leaving was for my own good.
“I don’t want to go,” I said.
“We’ve talked about this,” she said. “You know it’s for your own good.”
Bingo.
“I don’t want to leave my friends.” By that point, it was all I could do to choke out the words. “What if Aunt Linda hates me? What if I get sick and I have to go to the hospital? They don’t even have a hospital there.”
“Your friends will still be here when you get back,” she assured me. “And I know it seems like a long time, but May will come more quickly than you realize. As for Linda, she used to help pregnant girls just like you when she was at the convent. You remember when I told you that? She’ll take care of you. I promise.”