Jilted by the Mafia

My parent’s house has a porch with three steps. As a kid, I flew up hardly even noticing them. But my childhood ended abruptly, and my pregnant belly makes it hard to climb even the first one. I do it, and my oversized tee rides up the planet that used to be my cute, flat stomach. Why do I even bother to tug it back? Clothes can’t hide the baby growing inside me for nine months.

Ascending the second step robs me of my breath, and goosebumps prickle my arms in the sweltering L.A. afternoon. I hug myself, since nobody else will. Just one more step.

This was where it happened to me, where he had happened to me. And to think that Mom lectured me about the dangers of the East Coast college I was bound for! It wasn’t as embarrassing as climbing these steps now, but it came close enough.

“Heidi,” she told me, sitting at the exact spot by the kitchen table where I was allowed to color the eggs every Easter. “Heidi, you’ll be far from us, but we’re just a phone call away. You take care of yourself, of course, but....”

The way she glanced at me, I understood she meant the special care an inexperienced girl should exercise around the boys. She told me nearly the same thing before I started high school: You will be a year younger than the rest of the kids.

“There’ll be so many temptations in college, and the older boys who just want one thing from a girl like you.”

How I wished I hadn’t skipped the damn grade! Then the older boys wouldn’t be the bane of my existence.

“But, we are here. And we know what it means to be young. We won’t judge, so talk to us.”

Standing on the second step, I bite my lips. Gosh, I hope she wasn’t lying back then! I avoided going home since I could no longer blame the freshman fifteen for my expanding waistline. You should find time to exercise, Heidi.

Great advice, but useless in my position.

To make my cheeks burn even hotter, Mom shoulder-checked if Dad was preoccupied with his evening news in the living room. He was. So she rummaged through her purse and stuffed a pack of condoms into my suddenly sweating hand. “Please, be careful.”

“Mom!”

“Shh, you never know.” And she winked at me as if we were conspiring together.

Another great and useless piece of advice. I didn’t lose my virginity in a dorm room after a stupid party. It wasn’t the quarterback type she was freaking out about. I was seduced, crumpled for a moment of pleasure, and discarded on her home turf, where she didn’t scatter bowls of condoms. Just caramels.

I swallowed the first wave of nausea. Not that it was bad yet, but my son was already growing, asking me to take care of him. “Guess you’re right,” I said nothing and ran off to college.

There, I wouldn’t have to curl up under the Disney cover and cry until my frilly pillow was wet with tears under the soulful gaze of my stuffies and remember… His jeans had landed by the white dresser when he took them off. The wet spot he left on my sheets and the smidgen of blood, the last reminder of my given-away innocence. I could see it in my mind’s eye even after I washed the bedding so many times Mom had tactfully lowered her voice to ask if I was anxious about leaving home.

“No. I’m looking forward to going.” This wasn’t a lie. I was sick of hiding my secret, and once I was safely across the continent, I could find a doctor more easily. Then Mom would never need to know I had already slept with a guy. Or that I’d picked someone so bad as my first, it didn’t even occur to her to warn me against his kind. And Dad would never have to think about my love life at all.

It was a solid plan, except my son plugged into every part of me from the very beginning. Whenever I lifted my head after being violently sick, I remembered he was flesh and blood. He piqued my curiosity too: What kind of person can I give birth to? Would he have the same stark blue eyes as his father? My unruly curls and brown eyes? Most of all, he promised love his father denied me. To a girl who grew up isolated by sickness and anxiety, he was a balm to the soul.

With all that going on, I delayed for another day, then for another week and another month.

Meanwhile, my belly shaped a sanctuary around Felix. The college girls gave me a wide berth, and the boys jeered. I felt like a leper. Shunned again, sick again, just like in high school, but with one difference: this time I wasn’t alone. Despite all the tears and sickness, I loved this feeling. I couldn’t imagine facing solitude ever again. I cradled my growing belly as I studied, because I wanted to do my nursing degree too. Trapped between these two competing desires, I returned home.

The only choice, even a natural one… And my heart squeezes in apprehension before I take that last step. “Be brave, Felix.”

A tiny foot kicks me on the inside — one of the many exasperated ’Mom, come on,’ to come. Or so I hope.

I find Felix’s heel with my hand. “Hush, baby. We’ll get help, okay? Your grandparents are going to love you. Mom said they will not judge.”

Despite the pep talk, my hand trembles when I ring the doorbell. A cheerful ding-dong, so different from the toll in my head — and my mom’s footsteps rush to the door. Our shepherd Paulie bounces along, barking, then his body thuds against the door, claws scratching wood.

“Come on, boy, you know who that is! Behave!” Mom exclaims while she’s fighting to get to the lock.

Paulie only barks louder, and I press my forehead against the doorframe with a sigh. Paulie never listens to anyone except Dad, when Dad is home.

The lock finally grinds.

“Heidi!” Mom swings the door open. Her bleached hair curls on her forehead as always thanks to the nightly application of a soft curler. The laugh lines don’t cut too deep into her tanned skin thanks to the latest surgery. But instead of blasting me with the familiar fizzy energy, she freezes. Her glance travels to my belly and stays there, like it is all there is to me. “H-heidi…”

Paulie barks again.

“What’s the hold up? In or out! The damn dog is going nuts.” Dad’s LazyBoy chair creaks, straining to release him. Free at last, he marches toward us.

“Hello, Prince—” The rest of the ‘princess’ comes out as a hiss. Unwillingly, he greets his grandson, not me. Prince Felix — I like that. I’d like it even more if we didn’t stand there like a monument to an awestruck family.

Paulie wags his tail until it taps the wall and gazes at Dad with adoration in his brown eyes. Dad puts his hand on the dog’s head without looking. This, this right here, is the kind of subconscious warmth I need from him right now. His gaze moves from my belly to my face, and my hope sinks. No sparkle, no crinkling at the corners of his eyes, just a flat gaze.

In or out, he’s said. “Will you let me in?” My voice breaks. “Or do you want me to leave?”

Dad pats Paulie’s head. “Where’s the father?”

My head becomes too heavy to hold under his gaze, and I hang it.

“Neil!” Mom draws me into the living room past Paulie and past Dad’s livid face. “Neil, don’t.”

But of course he does. “I think it’s a fair question, given she’s eighteen and brought home this.”

He troops into the living room after us to jam his finger into my belly. Into my growing son, his grandson. My love-child, if one madcap night can be called love… I hope so because I really need something to hold on to right now, and even a crumble of love would do.

“I can’t tell you that.” I swallow, wiping my tears and shame away on the tissues Mom presses into my hand. They smell of Mom’s favorite scent, lavender. Then I lie. “I don’t know, Daddy, I swear… I swear!”

“Were you raped?”

“Neil!” Mom exclaims again, a pale hand flying to her mouth. It’s like she knows only her husband’s name, and nothing else.

There is an alternative universe where Daddy loves me again. Maybe not as he’s loved me before, since his little Princess is corrupt, but a shred of love is still love. I quiver, surveying the path that can lead me there. If I lie that my precious baby was put into my belly against my will, I might —

Dad’s sharp voice snaps me back to reality. “Did you report it?”

The alternative universe dissolves into smoke. If I lie, he’ll drag me to the police, turn the world inside out to find my fake assailant. At a minimum, he’ll insist I give my ‘rape’ baby away.

I’ve been down this road before, when the college counselor stapled a phone number for an adoption agency to the cover of a teen pregnancy pamphlet. The picture on it had a glowing young mom next to flowering trees under a cloudless blue sky. If this gal had been tormented by fears and doubts, she’d overcome them all. Just look at her beaming smile and the hand on her belly! By contrast, the card was a white rectangle with a default font.

I tossed that pamphlet in the trashcan because the merry girl made me sob every time I glanced at her. It felt wrong to make these kind of choices at eighteen, but I ripped the card too. The white shreds of card-paper hit the smile and the blossoms like hail, and my lips pinched between the still red, wet cheeks. Nobody can have my son.

I draw a shuddering breath remembering the feeling to ease the tightness in my chest. Nothing has changed: my son is mine.

What if I tell dad the truth and the name?

He’ll go to my lover’s family demanding they do the right thing for his Princess. Daddy will remove the burden from my slouched shoulders and prove me a fool for agonizing for months. My chest aches even worse imagining this beautiful, simple resolution.

“Well? Say something.” Paulie sits by his side and tilts his head. The dog’s eyes watch me with such an expression that if it were a human, it would be a squint.

I wish I could enjoy a rosy dream for another second, but no.

No.

If my dad barges in on that specific family with his demands, all four of us — Dad, Mom, me and the baby — are doomed.

“I... I don’t remember, but it wasn't like that. It wasn't anything wrong. I just ah... I don't know who I did it with.”

“I see.”

He doesn't.

“I was…” I squeeze my eyes shut, so I too don't have to see anything. “I wasn’t sober.”

These two short sentences seal the deal. He collapses into his groaning LazyBoy and flips through the TV channels with his back to me. “I’m disappointed.”

“It’s your fault too!” Guilt, fear, hope, frustration, resentment — everything that has cooped up in me and steeped with the pregnancy hormones wants out of my pounding heart. “You never let me do anything, go anywhere, even after I was completely healthy! You got used to me being sick, was comfortable with it, because it let you bubble-wrap me and nor worry about anything! The minute I got out of here... No, the second... I had to… you know, experiment.”

This isn't even another lie, except one small detail. I didn't wait to get away. I did it right here, on the couch next to his favorite chair.

“So, you experimented. Great job." Dad grits his teeth. "Fantastic results. Congratulations.”

He stares at the TV so intently, I absurdly wish I were on some talk show so he’d at least look at me again. Paulie tilts his head the other way, then puts it on my dad’s knee: good dog, bad daughter.

“You love your stupid dog more than me!”

Dad pets Paulie and clenches his jaw. He probably loves anyone more than me right now, and won’t speak to me for a long time. Hopefully never, because then he’ll never find out, and so he’ll live to loathe me. Mom will live to pity me. I’ll live to raise Felix. We’ll all live as long as I tell no one who fathered my little Prince Felix.

So, this is it, I thought, tiptoeing out of the living room with my mom. All is well, or as well as it could be, but an obstruction in my throat blocks my sigh of relief.