“It seems impossible for me to be pregnant now. All of the years of drunken sex with strangers, forgotten birth-control pills, weekend trips blurred from substance abuse, my year of so-called nymphomania. My name is Rebecca and I’m a sex addict. But I wasn’t a sex addict. I was just lonely.”

Chapter 1. Holy Shit, I’m Pregnant

I must be drunk or on drugs or dreaming. My breasts are not sore and the nausea I’ve been feeling is just a weeklong hangover. I had a lot to drink last week at the Three of Clubs. Five rounds or so. There is no way I can be pregnant.

I light up a cigarette and lean out the window of my bedroom. My hands are shaking. My tattoos itch. They always itch when I’m nervous, rising up from my skin like swollen bug bites. “I’m not pregnant,” I say aloud. My roommate knocks on my bedroom door. “Are you talking to me?”

I don’t answer. I quickly hide the pregnancy test and its double yellowed lines under a towel and mumble something about going for a drive as I trip out the door.

I roll down the windows of my silver Volkswagen and merge onto Santa Monica Boulevard. The summer wind is thick with smog and mariachi music. It’s Friday night. My friends and I will be meeting at the bar in an hour. I can’t be pregnant. I’m meeting Mitzi and Terra for vodka tonics and darts at ten o’clock.

I pull into Rite-Aid and forget to lock my car. Sometimes I forget to press the button on my keychain. Sometimes I press the button and it doesn’t lock. Damn Volkswagens. I pull my hooded sweatshirt over my head and wrap my hair around my neck. I don’t want anyone to notice that I was just here, not even an hour ago. Twice in one night. Buying pregnancy tests from the Asian man with the thick accent and knowing eyes.

I pace near the explicit materials aisle, condoms ribbed for her pleasure beside the Astroglide beside the Clearblue Easy Pregnancy Tests beside the calling cards. I can’t figure out what calling cards are doing next to the condoms. When the condoms break, when the lube dries, when I’m feeling sad, I simply make a long-distance call to Japan and then I don’t feel so bad.

I make up songs in my head when I’m afraid, and right now I’m scared out of my mind. I want to break out of the moment, climb up the walls and hide behind the fluorescent lights in the ceiling so I can watch women in my position and see what they do. See if they notice the calling cards that methodically line the isle of embarrassment and horror. We never used a condom. It was stupid.

I can feel the eyes of wandering patrons, people pretending not to stare. I know they are pretending not to stare because I do the same thing. We all have eyes in the backs of our heads. We all lead double lives as spies. Why couldn’t we have used a condom? Why do I do such stupid things?

I casually reach for the e.p.t. test, knocking over several tubes of K-Y Jelly. I restock the boxes on the shelf and make my way to the register.

“You were just here, yes?” the pharmacist asks.

“Yeah but I bought a generic test. It was cheaper. I have to be sure.”
He nods. “Is okay?”

I nod back. “I’m fine. It must have been broken. I just want to buy a few extras to make sure. I don’t know which brand is the most trusted.”

I can’t be pregnant. I’m only twenty-three.

It seems impossible for me to be pregnant now. All of the years of drunken sex with strangers, forgotten birth-control pills, weekend trips blurred from substance abuse, my year of so-called nymphomania. My name is Rebecca and I’m a sex addict. But I wasn’t a sex addict. I was just lonely.

I’m only twenty-three.

I sneak into the house, past my roommate Frank, who is outside smoking cigarettes on the patio. Candles lit around him, he is laughing, flirting with his boyfriend on the phone. I walk slowly up the tiled stairs, invisible. Everything moves in slow motion, my dog’s wagging tail, the cat behind the vase on the landing. Light and shadows change shape like the eyes of a jack-o’-lantern. When I wake up, this will all be forgotten. I am sleepwalking is all. Only a dream. My hands are shaking. I have to pee. But maybe if I hold it in forever I’ll never know the truth. I’ll hold my breath and everything will be the same. Cigarettes in bed and late-night dinners at Toi Thai on Sunset and a sleepover with my boyfriend who will never know because I will never know. Hold it all in. It’s worth the pain. I don’t want to have to pee on four more pregnancy tests to know the truth. I sit down on the worn toilet seat, spread my legs, and aim for the tab on the plastic stick. And then I do it again and again until there are six peed-on tests in a neat little row and the results appear clear as day, like twelve painted lines.
(II) (II) (II) (II) (II) (II)

I make sure that the row is straight and that there is an equal amount of space between each test. I clean the sink, wipe the toothpaste splatter off the mirror with wet toilet paper, and apply lipstick and perfume. I adjust the tests to control the chaos. I trace my finger across the urine-soaked vanity table and write my name in piss and eye-shadow dust.

For two hours I hide under the sink, folded up like origami, watching the clock move its rusted hands around the face of time. Everything is moving as if under water., slowly dancing with the current that I can recognize only as fear. I am so afraid, I could die right here in this spot on the floor, up to my ankles in dog hair and dirty clothes, beside the toilet I forgot to flush. If only I could fall on my face over and over until I became unrecognizable, face too swollen to know that I’m the one carrying the burden.

I flush the toilet.

All I can think of when I look up at the watermarks on the ceiling is that I’m not alone. I have never felt so alone in my life, and yet I suddenly feel so abnormally full of life. I immediately recognize that there is something inside of me, surviving. Something so tiny. Something so huge. Hold me closer, tiny dancer. I wish I had a different song in my head.

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” I ask.

Except I’m the only one who can answer that. It’s up to me to figure out if I am willing to change my life. Little girl all grown up. People to see and things to do and distant lands to travel. Books to write and magazines to query and ideas to explore on my own. If only I could disappear first. How can I be pregnant with anything but ideas? I can’t help but feel anger. I’m mad at myself for being so careless. I’m mad at my body for being alive, unpredictable, female.

And the anger turns into rage. The pregnancy tests go flying across the room, against the walls and the mirrors and out the window. And the neighbors next door are fighting again and the cars are honking as they run the stop sign in front and I’m spinning in circles. And the dogs outside are still barking, harmoniously calling out against the Santa Ana winds.

If only I could blow away.

I light another cigarette. I put it out. One after another I light them on fire, trying with all my might to inhale but I can’t do it. And I knock the ashtray over trying to put out one more cigarette, lit and wasted. I never waste cigarettes and I dig through my make-up drawer to find a pen and I pull a receipt out of the trash bin and I write as many question marks as I can fit on the tiny yellow paper: ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Frank is knocking on the door.

“Bec? You okay in there?”

But instead of lying to him I say nothing because I know he will know to come find me, which he does. He opens the door and sees the mess I’ve made, that I am shaking under the sink with e.p.t. tests in every corner of the room. The dogs from next door stop barking. The city holds its breath. The whole wide world pauses. Frank picks up one of the pregnancy tests.

“Fuck.”

“Fuck,” I echo. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“You’re pregnant,” he says, the same fear in his own eyes.

I shake my head, climb out from under the sink and cry in his arms.

“What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. First I need to tell Hal.”

I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. Hal and I have only been dating for four months and I am afraid. Scared out of my wits. But I love him and when I close my eyes I think of him beside me in bed, smoking cigarettes and beating me at truth or dare in the “tree house” which is what he calls my bedroom because all you can see when you look out the windows are the rubber trees spilling onto the street, overgrown and pressed against the glass.

I dare myself to tell the truth. I tell myself to wait until I stop shaking so I can get in my car and drive over to his house and sit down with him so we can talk about this like adults. I will not be hysterical. I will be collected. Like couples are in the movies or on television. Girl gets pregnant. Boy holds girlfriend’s hand as she breaks the news. Boy shakes his head and hugs girl. Roll credits.

An hour of waiting and I’m still shaking. I realize now that the shaking isn’t going to stop. Maybe one day but not tonight. I hold onto Frank’s hand and together we walk down the stairs. I don’t have any shoes on but I can’t think where they are right now or how to go about putting them on. I walk barefoot through the kitchen and out the door.

Frank kisses my cheeks. “Good luck.”

I get into my car and reverse into traffic, driving slowly, with snot in my nose, hyperventilating. I turn left on Fairfax and then onto Melrose. I get every green light on my way to Hal’s house.

The lights are on in the living room and I watch the many shadows of his roommates, bending and flexing against the window curtains as the colors change from pink to green from the rainbow glow of the TV. I am frozen to my seat. I cannot go inside. Not right now. Not with his roommates home and the makeup smeared across my face.

I call him from the safety of my car.

“Hello?”

I tell Hal between asthmatic wails to come outside, that I am outside. Please come outside. The drape opens. Our eyes meet through the window and then the drape closes and the front door of the house swings open and he comes to me, white-faced. I try to speak but I can’t so instead I go on with charades and hysterics and I wish I had a piece of paper so I could write “I’m pregnant” like in that scene in Wild at Heart. I wish the director could just call “CUT” so I could stop trying to make sense. I wish I didn’t choke every time I opened my mouth. I point to my belly.

“You’re pregnant?”

I nod.

And then he holds me and I twitch and choke on his shoulder and I shake my head and he pulls away for a moment just to say, “We’re in this together.” And I smile because suddenly I’m not alone, we’re in this together now, and I tell him that I love him and after an hour of twitching in his arms I finally calm down.

“We will figure this out. Whatever happens, okay? It’s going to be alright.”

And I believe him. I nod and pull my hair out of my face and believe with all my might. For the next ten days, I barely sleep, and when I do, I dream of darkness. I dream of hollow days and sunken eyes and black sunsets. I dream of broken hearts and the fist that holds my chest together, opening and closing and blowing itself up. I dream of bodies without faces and stick figures twisted like yarn. I dream of giving birth to myself. For the next few days everything is different. I can’t stop tripping over my feet or the dog’s tail or the invisible holes in the hardwood floor. My world is booby-trapped. Landmines exploding at every turn and I feel for my limbs to make sure they’re still there.

I think only of our choice. We both want to talk about what to do, but neither of us can articulate our needs, our wants, our questions, so instead we fight and cry and argue and throw household items at the wall. Plastic cups and ashtrays and coasters that roll across the room like little tires. “If we keep the baby, everything will change,” he says.

“If we don’t keep the baby, I will not be able to be with you anymore,” I respond.

“I will leave the choice up to you, then,” Hal says. “It’s your call.”

I don’t want to be alone. I make an appointment with my doctor. I go out to the bar and do not drink. I say no when my coworkers offer me cigarettes. I rub my belly. I curse my belly. I cry. Everywhere I look, people are pregnant. Pushing strollers and holding the hands of tiny people, breastfeeding on park benches, eating for two. Everywhere I go women are swelling with life. Just like me.

Every day I can feel myself becoming more and more attached to the unknown, casually rooting myself to the invisible and unthinkable and unimaginable. I think about all the things I haven’t done yet. The novel I haven’t finished. The job I haven’t secured. And then the little voice inside me says, “But you still can finish that book. You still can secure that job.”

But the timing is so terrible. When is the timing ever right?

I hadn’t planned for this. Nothing in life is ever planned.

I’m too young to be a mother. There is nothing wrong with being young. But we have no money! Plenty of people make it work with far less.

But no one I know has any children. What if I don’t know how to be a mother? You will figure it out. You are not afraid.

I don’t want to be a housewife. Great! Then don’t be.

I don’t want to have regrets. You will never regret a decision you make with your heart.

I don’t want to give up everything in my life and just be a Mom. Why do you think you have to?

I don’t want to live life by the book. You never have before.

I want to keep this baby. I know you do.

Thank you for listening. Well, duh. . . . I’m your inner voice. It’s my

No one knows what to say. I tell my friends. I tell my family. I tell my diary. I know what people are thinking that if I have the baby I will be giving everything up, leaving my life for the sake of another. I see the looks when I break the news. I know it won’t take long before no one calls me. No one wants to party with a pregnant girl. No one wants to tell the young mother his secrets or relationship problems or story ideas. No one wants to lie and talk shit and collaborate on an art installation with a baby crying in the background. And yet for once I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.

I feel proud. Empowered by my pregnancy and by a suddenly changed life. So I step onto the edge of the world, and with both hands, I throw the slabs of truth like stones and watch the ripples curl and push out into the unknown.

It’s your call.

I know I am ready. For me, being ready has always meant not being ready at all. Because when is anyone ever ready for what they do not know? This is the time. This is my body. My instincts. My life. And I have never been able to follow the rules. I have instead forged my signature to humor the lemmings and gone my own way of waiting out front. In the past I may have lived life fast. Breaking the speed limit and racing down the freeway with music blasting, ashtray overflowing, all by myself. But I’m ready for a change. I am no longer alone. “I want to have this baby.”

Hal nods, takes me in his arms and kisses me, and as we combine in one another’s tears, I swallow all doubt and choke back the fear, all of the questions, and everything suddenly becomes very clear. I am not on drugs or dreaming. I am pregnant, and soon I will be a mother. Holy fucking shit. Life flexes its muscles and I recline against the complexity of the future, kaleidoscopic, ever-changing, brilliant with color and an infinity of diamonds. I check my rear-view mirror one last time and merge into the carpool lane, across the double yellow lines.

+++
BUY Rockabye.
READ an interview with Rebecca Woolf.
CHECK OUT Rebecca Woolf’s Girl’s Gone Child and Straight from the Bottle blogs.
ENTER Rick’s Picks and SMITH mag’s What’s Your Pregnancy Story? contest.

Tags: Girl's Gone Child, Pregnancy, Rebecca Woolf, Rockabye