Eyes in the Mirror (17 page)

“That's why we're going to Tucson. To get out of here. To get away. That's why we're going. Let's go. Come on, the bus is here.”

“No. You go. Call me. I'll come visit. I promise. I just…I can't go. I can't run away. I have to deal with everything. I have to go back and face it. I have to go.”
I have to find Dee,
I added silently.

“Last call, Houston,” we heard over the loudspeaker. We both looked up, startled. Everyone around us had melted away in the hot summer night, and for a moment, only the two of us had existed in our argument. But the voice on the loudspeaker ended the lapse of time, putting us back with everyone else, reminding us that it was the middle of the night and we had to either stay or go—but deciding that later just wasn't an option.

“Come on. You made it this far. The bus is going to leave.”

“Go. Take it. Maybe I'll come some day. I can't run away, though. I have to go back and fix what I messed up. I just…I have to go. Go. Get on the bus. Don't miss it for me.”

Tanya looked at me silently. I could tell she knew I wasn't going to come. And I could see that she was angry at me for bailing out on her this late. When it was too late to find someone new. But she once again proved that she was a better person than me and leaned in to hug me, pulling me in hard.

“Good-bye, Samara,” she said, and I could hear her voice starting to crack.

“Good-bye,” I whispered back and pulled away to give her a kiss on the cheek. “I promise to come see you.”

She grabbed her bag and walked toward the bus. On the first step, she turned around and waved, and then she vanished onto the bus.

I waited until the bus was out of sight to go and buy a ticket home. I wasn't going to figure out how to get through the solid mirror from here. I needed to go back and figure this out from my own room. From my own home.

I walked into the house early the next morning and found the note I had left on the floor. It was smudged, and I wondered if my dad had cried over it.

“Dad?” I called, but there was no answer. Where was he? I went into the bathroom to wash up. I splashed some water on my face and looked up. There was Dee.

“Samara!”

“Dee!”

“Wait there,” she said.

They're Your Eyes

Dee

It had gotten to the point where I just didn't care about school anymore. I was dealing with a pregnancy, trying to force my mother and Jamie to get along, and trying to prep for the baby. And the girl who had gotten me to this point was gone, missing. Not talking to me.

She'd stopped coming to the mirror after the night I took the letter she'd written to her mother. I thought I could help her. I thought I'd found a friend. But after all that time searching for an alternate universe, was either of us really any better off than we had been before that party?

***

I was out looking for a crib with my mother after school one day. I don't think I'd realized how expensive having a baby would be before we started shopping.

We were looking around in the first store when a saleswoman came over with a briskly cheerful smile.

“That's a great crib. Very sturdy and safe. And isn't it just beautiful?”

It was beautiful. There were giraffes painted on the sides, and each had a different colored ribbon around its neck. The bars were unpainted wood, and there was a space on the bottom front to paint the baby's name. The crib came with a guarantee that there was no lead in the paint. It was perfect. I looked at my mother, but she pursed her lips and shook her head. “Excuse us for a moment,” she said to the saleslady, who walked away immediately.

“What? It's perfect. Look at it.”

“Yes, look at it,” my mother said. “Look at the price tag. It's too much. The crib doesn't need to be so fancy.”

That's when Jamie ran in. We were shopping in his mall, so he came over during his break.

“Sorry I'm late. What's going on? Hey, this one's nice,” he said, pointing to the crib we had just been talking about.

“You know if you work in the mall, I can give you a 10 percent discount,” the saleswoman said, indicating Jamie's uniform.

I looked back at my mom and raised my eyebrows. She just shook her head. We left the store after thanking the saleslady for her help. My mother and I wandered around in three more stores before we found a crib that was in our price range and we both liked and thought was safe. It was painted white wood. The side didn't come down, so we would have to reach over the top to get the baby out, but we thought that was better than him learning how to open the crib before he should be getting out by himself. The salesman gave Jamie a 10 percent mall-employee discount.

We knew assembling it would take us a few days, so we started that night. Jamie was coming over to help us finish it later in the evening after he got off work.

My mom and I were sitting in the middle of about five thousand parts that needed to be put together and staring at the instructions when I asked her, “What's the hardest thing about losing someone? Like a parent or a grandparent?”

I picked up a part that I didn't recognize and turned it in a few different directions to try to figure out what it was and how it was supposed to fit into another piece I was holding.

“Saying good-bye,” she said without a pause. She was looking at the directions and trying to find a certain type of screwdriver.

“What if you don't say good-bye?”

“You'll never be able to move on. The person I was closest to when I was really little was my grandfather. When he died, I was too young to go to the funeral and I never really said good-bye to him. I think it took years for me to get over his death because of that.”

I put my hand on my stomach.

“What?” she asked.

“The baby's kicking,” I said, feeling my eyes get wide. Getting scared for no reason at all. My mother put a hand on my stomach and smiled.

“That's what's supposed to happen. It's okay, sweetheart.”

I had made Jamie a copy of our keys, and he walked in and saw me holding my stomach. “What's the matter?” he asked, rushing over to me and crushing the section of crib my mom had spent an hour assembling.

“I'm fine,” I said. “The baby's kicking.”

“Oh,” he said, leaning back and looking at my mom and an hour of work down the drain. “Sorry about that.”

My mom sighed. “I'm going to get myself something to drink. Either of you want anything?” We both shook our heads.

“You know I don't think you should be doing this,” Jamie was saying as my mom walked back in.

“She's pregnant, not an invalid,” my mom said icily.

Jamie moved away from me and stood awkwardly near the couch. “Maybe I'd better go,” he said.

I looked back and forth between him and my mother, trying to decide who was more upset and went with my mom. “Yeah, I think maybe that's a good idea.”

That night in bed, I was thinking about what my mother had said and I decided that the best thing to do would be to have a second funeral for Samara's mother, a memorial service maybe, so Samara could say good-bye. Maybe I could still do something. Maybe I could still have that real friend that I thought I had found in Samara. Did it
have
to be too late?

She wouldn't just come because I told her to, I knew that. We hadn't spoken in months.
God
, I thought,
it was so much easier when we were kids and we could just share a two-part Popsicle. When ice cream was enough of an enticement to do anything. Mmmm…ice cream
. And with that I got up, finished off the pint of ice cream that was left in the freezer, and went back to bed.

***

I decided to make a blanket for the baby. I bought some yarn and taught myself how to crochet from a video online. My mom insisted that I continue going to school, but that was easier said than done. The whole school stared at me, and as soon as I started showing, I became an instant pariah. With summer came an inability to hide the pregnancy at all. Jamie, on the other hand, was getting more and more popular. And didn't seem to see any reason to bring me with him. We just got in the habit of not really talking in school. It was fine; how much could I really ask of him?

I would sit in class, carefully crocheting the baby blanket in blues and greens. My teachers never called on me. I guess they accepted that I wasn't worrying about school anymore. Kelly approached me one day after class.

“How are you, uh, how are you doing? How are you feeling?”

“I'm fine. Thanks,” I said.

“Do you want to hang out after school or something?”

I stared at Kelly. I didn't want to hang out after school. At least not with Kelly. It was just pity, I could tell. Nobody had talked to me in days. Kelly had stopped asking me to rework literary magazine pieces months earlier. It was like the world just melted away every time I walked into a room. The baby kicked, and my hand flew to my stomach.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. He's just kicking.”

Kelly stared at me. “Can I feel?”

I contemplated her. She was trying, I supposed. She was standing here talking to me, despite my status as the school leper. Girls I knew had had abortions, girls I knew had sex all the time turned and walked away when they saw me coming, whispering behind their hands.

That's the one
, I'd hear.
Well, obviously. She's huge
. At least Kelly was making some kind of effort to talk to me, to maintain our friendship.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I finally responded.

She put her hand on my stomach. “Wow. So it's a boy?”

I nodded and smiled. “Yup, my little boy.”

Kelly paused but she looked like she wanted to say something.

“What?” I asked.

“I've just…I've never known someone who was pregnant before. I'm the youngest of my siblings and cousins and stuff so I've never, like, felt a baby kick before or anything. I don't know, I guess that sounds so stupid and immature to you…now that you're having your own baby.”

“It doesn't sound stupid,” I told her. “It's just the way it is.”

Kelly smiled at me. “Well, see you around,” and she hurried off down the hall.

“See you around,” I said quietly to her back.

***

School became a struggle. Well, just getting my shoes on in the morning became a struggle. I felt like I was snapping at Jamie and my mom constantly, even though I knew both of them were trying as hard as they could to help. Both of them were working full time, and I was sitting in front of the mirror all day, crocheting, watching my stomach grow, waiting for Samara, and eating ice cream.

I felt the pain in my back my mother told me to expect two weeks early, but once we'd passed eight months, my doctor had said not to worry. I called my mom and asked her to come home. She rushed home and brought me to the hospital. I asked her to call Jamie. She called him twice, but I guess he was at work or something and didn't get the message until I was well into labor pains.

My mom held my hand and kept telling me that the pain I was feeling was normal, that I shouldn't worry. I didn't find that particularly comforting. I really didn't care that other people often felt the same way. I hurt. Hurting is not something to just ignore. And as I was yelling that at her, Jamie ran in.

“Did I miss it? Did you have…” He clutched his side and took a few deep breaths and then ran forward. “Hey.” He leaned down and kissed me. “You're amazing, Dee. I'm here. I'm sorry I'm late. I'm sorry it took me so long.” He looked over at my mom who looked somewhat affronted by the fact that he had pushed her out of the way to get to me.

A doctor came in shortly after that. He looked at me, nodded, and said, “You're doing great. Now, after this one, I'm going to ask you to start to push. It's going to be a big strong breath and then push as hard as you can.”

Anything, anything I could do to get this baby out of me was fine. My mother gave me her hand.

“As hard as you need,” she said. “Okay, maybe not that hard.” I tried to loosen my grip, but I felt the hand in mine switch. Jamie looked at my mom as he slipped his hand into mine, saying, “I can take it.”

After one push I really would have been content to stop. It still hurt but not as much as pushing did. But the doctor kept saying, “Just one more big one,” and I kept doing just one more big one and thinking about how lucky he was to be a man and to not have to give birth. I could have shot him, but just at that moment I heard crying and screaming. The doctor picked the baby up and showed him to me. I tried to appreciate how adorable he was, but all I could think was that he looked completely ugly. And slimy.

“Daddy, do you want to cut the cord?”

Jamie's eyes got wide, and he shook his head quickly back and forth. He looked over at my mom. Her eyes brimmed with tears and she nodded at the doctor. They took the baby away to clean him up, and I couldn't believe they were allowed to just take my baby away. Though when they brought him back pink and bald and cute and not slimy, I was glad they had cleaned him up. The nurse handed me the baby.

“He's beautiful,” my mom said to me, wiping her eyes. “Just beautiful.”

“Handsome,” I corrected her. We were going to have to remember this was a boy in our family, not another girl.

He really was a handsome little boy. His head was so big and his body was so small that it seemed like he could have very well had no body at all. But his head was so cute that I preferred him this way. His body could grow big later. I kissed his forehead and Jamie ran his hand over the baby's head.

“Have you decided on a name?” the nurse asked, looking at me over the chart she was filling in.

“Samuel?” I asked, looking up at Jamie, who nodded at me as he stroked his son's little baby fingers and held his son's little baby hands. “His name is Samuel.”

“That's a magnificent name, Lorna,” my mother said. She had been there with me the whole time.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, he is magnificent.”

***

The ride home from the hospital was excruciating. Every bump and every turn brought more fear that the baby could get hurt. But we made it home fine.

Jamie met us at home with his parents. They were all waiting for us in the living room when we got back to the apartment.

I sat down next to Jamie and asked him, “Do you want to hold him?” He shook his head, but I pushed him, “Come on. He's your son. You should hold him.”

“She's right,” his father said. “I remember the first time I held you. This isn't an experience you want to miss.”

“Just support the head,” my mom said.

Jamie reached out and took Sammy from me. He looked so natural with a baby in his arms. Sammy was definitely Jamie's little boy.

I don't remember sleeping in the following three weeks. Sammy needed something all the time. But that was okay because I always wanted to give him something. I wanted to be with him all the time. I wanted to give him everything. I was so in love with him. I was so glad he was mine. My baby. My little boy.

Jamie came over as often as he could to stay up with Sammy so that I could sleep for an hour or two. Jamie's parents even came up a few times to hold and see their grandson. Having the baby seemed to have brought my mom and Jamie together, though it was pulling me apart from Jamie. We only saw each other for a few minutes at a time when he would come over to watch Sammy while I slept. We hardly got any time together.

***

Sitting in front of the mirror all day waiting for Samara was out of the question. It felt like ages until Jamie and my mom had had overlapping days off. They decided to use their day off to give me a day off. I hadn't had more than a few hours to myself at a time, so I couldn't wait. They told me they would take Sammy out for a walk, go out for lunch together, then walk him around the park for an afternoon nap—he always slept best outside—and then come home.

The first thing I did was fall into bed because I was so tired. I hadn't realized it was possible to function on that little sleep. I woke up a few hours later and knew what the only other thing I wanted to do was. I took a long bath and then got dressed and sat in front of the mirror. I just had a feeling that Samara would show up that day. And I was right: it was only ten minutes until she did.