Libba thought of Nathan. He has dreams. He deserves to know. The test hadn’t even come back yet, but she knew it was positive. She was twenty-one and had just finished her first “womanly” exam. She went not because of any “upcoming nuptials,” the only reason her Southern Baptist father acknowledged for going to that kind of doctor. She went because she knew. The test would be positive.
Positive meant so much. Libba thought of her first phone conversation with Nathan. They’d been flirting for weeks before he even asked if he could call her, and when he did, he didn’t even ask her out until he was sure of her stance on children. He had definite opinions about them. His sister had a little boy, and Nathan saw him often. He knew all about dirty diapers, late nights, first words, and baby fat. His opinions were set. He knew his stance on kids, and Libba knew too. She knew she had to pass the test to even date him. They’d never have gone out at all if she answered that question incorrectly. His question, “So, do you like kids?” was important enough to be asked even before a date, and her answer haunted her now. If she’d only known then that she’d be here and the test would be positive.
A squeeze on her right forearm drew her stare away from the open book on her lap. Her eyes had been fixated on the words “wrap around porch” for twenty minutes. She’d either become Nicholas Sparks’ most adoring fan or his worst. The breaker of her stare, her mom, nodded toward a mother with two young children leaving the back rooms to exit through the waiting room. Mom probably noticed the Indian war paint on the youngest girl’s cheek, most likely decorated with red marker by her older sister, but Libba noticed other things—the small leftover baby pooch, two sets of blue eyes and two round brown eyes, and the small diamond chip on the woman’s wedding band. She envied it all.
Her only other experience at what her mom called, “the butt doctor,” an anatomically incorrect description, had been as a little girl, no older than the face-painter now begging for McDonalds. Every October her mom would age a year, and Libba and her sisters would sit with their coloring books behind a long white and blue-checkered curtain. After they brought home Libba’s second sister, the visits to the doctor became more frequent. Mom would leave Libba in charge of Candace and Ashley, and Libba’s dad would drive Mom to the doctor.
Sometimes it was the hospital. Then, things didn’t make sense. Mom’s olive skin would turn yellow before sinking to a shade lighter than Libba’s fair skin. Dad would help her rise from the bed—she’d always feel very tired for weeks before having to go to the doctor—then they’d leave.
Once, Libba and her sisters went to Papa’s while the church deacons came over and prayed for Mom. The girls had to clean the house by themselves because Mom had been sick in bed again. Dad smiled when he picked the girls up from Papa’s, but three days later, Mom’s skin turned light, and she went back to the doctor.
The times when it wasn’t the hospital, Mom came here. She left four unborn children here, and even more failed attempts to conceive. This was her doctor. Libba turned toward the blue textured wallpaper. She thought she remembered it being more aqua when she had viewed it through little girl eyes. Now she looked through eyes bordered with pale pink eye shadow and mascara. She didn’t remember the exam taking as long with her mom as it seemed to take with her, but today of all days, she wished the waiting room were aqua and that she was still the child behind the checkered curtain.
Walking into the blue waiting room, a tall black woman in a light pink lab coat called for “Elisabeth Law.” Back toward the exam room, Libba and her mom walked. The navy hallway seemed too narrow to allow the many pregnant and not-pregnant women to access the awaiting exam rooms. Libba shuffled most of the way, looking like a grandmother with her mom’s firm grip on her elbow pulling her along the hallway. Nathan will find someone else. She thought. Better that he finds out now, before things get too serious. “Too serious” meant before he showed Libba’s dad the ½ carat princess cut diamond he’d bought last week. “Too serious” meant before Nathan made a promise he didn’t want to keep. It meant giving him an opportunity to leave, to take advantage of the thirty-day return policy on the ring that cost too much anyway.
Her blank stare dropped to focus on her naked ring finger. It wasn’t the ring that she’d miss. She never felt its texture barely hang around her size five finger, but she’d miss the calloused palm that once rested against her manicured hand.
Libba could hope that surgery would fix the problem. Maybe she still had time to take one of the pills she’d read about. Maybe she could again feel the calloused palm against that white-gold band. With a burst of energy reminiscent of her real age, Libba hopped onto the exam table and sat cross-legged, but her back slumped. Surgery didn’t help Mom, and no pill ever saved those babies from spontaneous abortion, when babies were conceived at all. When the doctor finally spoke, she only confirmed what Libba already knew.
Infertility passed from adoptive mother to her virgin daughter. The test was positive. Libba could not conceive.
Filed under: Short Stories | Tagged: Children, Fiction, Relationships | 1 Comment »
Pen to Paper. Feet to Floor 