Therese Fowler - Reunion

Harmony Blue panted, avoiding the midwife’s eyes and words and looking, instead, at the pink ceramic lamp on the dresser. A painted-on ballerina smiled serenely from the lamp’s rounded base. The light shining through the dusty lampshade warmed the room the same way it had warmed the bedroom where the lamp used to be. Where her sister had been too, until adulthood—such as it was—had come for each of them .

She concentrated on the faded Journey band poster on the wall above the lamp, positioned just as it had been in that other bedroom. “Don’t Stop Believin’” they urged in one of their songs, but she’d failed them, and now look at her. Pregnant not by a man she loved, not by the man she loved, but by a guy she barely knew, a guy she could not have cared less about. Pregnant and then paralyzed by the mistake, tortured, unable to decide what she wanted to do. Keep it? End it? Indecisive weeks had turned to months, leaving her with a different pair of choices—and even then she’d had trouble choosing, until Meredith helped her see which way to go .

Meredith had supported her wish to give birth at home, where she would not be judged. Meredith was a facilitator— that was the term she’d used, a facilitator for the people on the other end. There was some money involved, not that it mattered. There was always money in these situations, according to Bat, who’d found Meredith through the friend of a friend. The new parents’ offer to the girl, through some law firm, through Meredith, had been ten thousand dollars. For expenses, Meredith said. It would be a closed adoption. Anonymous. No strings. No names .

Bat squeezed her hand harder. “Why is there so much blood? ”

Meredith, sitting on a stool at the end of the bed, leaned back and sighed. With her forearm, she brushed dark bangs back from her narrow face. “It’s normal. Okay now, with the next contraction, take a breath, focus, and push .”

Focus. Icy rain blew against the window just above the midwife’s head, pattering, streaking. Focus. How was she supposed to focus when her belly was going to split wide open at any second? This accidental baby … the pain was her punishment, pain like a hot iron shoved into her lower back, proving that there was no escaping stupidity. So she’d gotten her heart broken by the man she’d believed was perfect for her, so what? Other girls didn’t deal with heartbreak by running away, by joining a group of directionless misfits like the ones she was living with. Getting high. Getting pregnant .

Getting over it was what she should have done .

She was over it now, though. In her time here, she had not spoken of her past, not to Bat, not to Will—who’d gotten her pregnant, she didn’t care how much he’d denied it before he split—not to any of the people she’d met. If she revealed her heartbreak, they would see her for the fool she was. They’d reject her too, she was sure. She had not spoken of her past, and she would not .

“ Deep breath,” Meredith said. “You’re almost there .”

“ No,” she moaned, holding her belly. “No, I can’t.” If time would only stop for a minute, let her catch her breath, let her spend a little longer with the baby there beneath her hands. It was true that she hadn’t been sure, at first, if she’d continue the pregnancy. It was true that this baby owed its existence more to inaction than intent. Even so, they were good friends now. She’d tried to protect him—or was it her?—she’d really tried. A few more days as one entity. Maybe that would be enough .

“ Push now.” The midwife’s face was lighted, eager. “Come on, here’s the head .”

She began to cry, knowing there was no stopping it, pain like a locomotive pulling, pulling the baby on to its real life, its better life. She wanted that for this child, this unintended effect of too much fun, too little thought—same as its mother had been, and its aunt. She wanted this child to have intentional parents, who would make its life everything that hers hadn’t been .

“ Happy accidents” was what her mother had liked to call her and her sister, even after they had little to be happy about. When the girls reached puberty, the refrain became, “Just don’t imagine I’d be able to raise yours. We can barely afford ourselves and, though God knows I try, I am not as capable as my mother.” That would be their grandmother, Kate, who’d helped raise them. Until she died, and then they’d had to for the most part raise themselves .

“ Oh my god, oh my god.” Bat leaned over to watch the baby emerging, still squeezing her friend’s hand. “Oh my god! You did it! Jesus! Check him out! It’s a boy! ”

A son. Good. Everyone wanted a son. He’d be especially loved by his parents. He was from questionable stock, but the adopting parents didn’t care. It was enough for them that he be white and healthy—he was healthy, just look at him, listen to that cry!—and free of complications. Meredith had assured her that this way was best, no strings for any of them. As soon as the adoption paperwork was filed and finalized, the original birth certificate would be sealed away, accessible only by court order. She would own her future again, free and clear, as if he had never happened. No strings, no trail .

Meredith would be back later, and tomorrow, and again, if needed, in the weeks to come. Post-partum was the word she’d used. Any trouble and Harmony Blue was to call the number she’d called when her labor began, and Meredith would come. “If it isn’t an emergency, don’t go to the ER,” the midwife had said .

Bat had nodded as though she, too, was wise, and said, “Not unless you want to have to answer a lot of questions .”

She didn’t. Not any. Ever .

“ Not unless she wants to wait all day,” Meredith said .

Now Meredith held the baby up, one hand beneath his buttocks, one beneath his head. “Do you want to hold him? ”

“ I do!” Bat said .

Harmony Blue struggled to sit upright. The pain was a shadow now, the way her belly was a shadow of what it had been just moments before. Her belly. Round but no longer bulging. A cantaloupe instead of a watermelon, and why was she thinking of fruit? Would the tiny thing, sputtering there in the midwife’s hands, that red-faced creature with blood drying on his newborn skin, would he love fruit the way she did? Would his parents one day tempt him with fresh pineapple and find he took to it like a duck to bugs? Her grandma, Kate, had always said that, like a duck to bugs .

Would he have her brown eyes, her slender fingers? Would he love to play Scrabble the way she once had? Before, in that other life that now seemed as far away as Sirius. Sirius was the brightest star, the most hopeful point of light in the sky. She had wished on it so often. Had begun, for a time, to believe she’d been heard .