Page 69 of The Summer of ’98

He threw his arm around Amber, absolute glee on his face as he kissed her temple. “I arrived last night, to be honest. We hit it off over the phone, talked ever since, and then I thought, what the hell, we’re going to the same college, might as well spend the rest of summer together before we go. Right, Prez?”

“Prez?” I questioned.

“Oh, I called her princess once,” Eric said, and Amber started laughing as we stepped out into the hot afternoon sun. I’d almost forgotten how damn unbearable the weather is here. “But she said she doesn’t want to be a princess; she wants to be the president. So I said, I get it babe, and Prez was born.”

“That’s cute,” I said. As beautiful as their blossoming relationship was, beautiful enough to distract me from the grief that I was feeling from my own, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy. Now might have been a good time to insist that they use birth control. Knowing Amber, though, she was all over it.

The closer that we got to home, to the inevitable truth that I would have to tell Momma, the more I slipped from reality, isolating my mind in order to keep from falling apart in the backseat of the car. Perhaps she would surprise me. Eleanor managed to remain calm when her son’s entire future was on the line. Perhaps Momma would tell me that I didn’t have to terminate the pregnancy. Perhaps she’d tell me that we should come up with some other plan because being a teen mom wasn’t the end of the world. She’d done it. She survived. Perhaps she’d tell me that I would too.

“You told me nothing had happened with him,” Momma snapped, pacing the living room while she chewed on her thumbnail. “You promised me that it wasn’t physical. Lord, Ellie! You met the boy once! When did you even find the time to sleep together?”

“I don’t think that you need to know that.”

“I do,” she said with a hostile tone. “My daughter is pregnant by a boy that she’d met once.”

“Momma,” I sobbed because I hadn’t stopped bawling from the moment she came home from work and found me in the middle of the living room. “You’re making it sound like it was a one-night stand.”

“But it was!” she threw her hands up. “It would have been. If he hadn’t kept in contact.”

“Well, he did.” I sniffed into a tissue and swiped at my cheeks with the back of my hand. “He loves me, Momma. So, leave it alone. What’s done is done and I’m going to deal with it.”

“And who is going to pay for this termination?” She stopped pacing and folded her arms. “I sure as hell can’t afford it. You need to phone the doctor. You need to go through counseling. You need to have an ultrasound and tests done before you even get to the cost.”

I hadn’t even thought about that, and as strange as it was, I felt this surge of relief move through me. It confused me because I knew that I wasn’t ready to be a mother, but the more time that passed, the harder it was to imagine going through with the termination.

“You have savings, I assume?”

I looked at my mother and couldn’t recognize who was looking back at me. Disappointment was nothing new, but this was something else. This was hostile disgust and loathing. She was furious.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, standing up so that I could go to my bedroom, but before I could leave, she gripped my elbow to stop me.

“I don’t think you should see him again,” Momma said. “He’s trouble.”

“You don’t know a thing about him,” I bit back and pulled my arm out of her grasp. “He’s a good man and I won’t be told otherwise.”

When I went to leave the second time, she let me go. I knew that Momma would be upset about the pregnancy, but I expected a little more support, a gentler approach perhaps. I hadn’t expected her to be so cold and awful, as if I’d done it on purpose. As I stormed up the short corridor and into my bedroom, which was a mess from the haphazard unpacking, I felt tears welling up again. The door slammed when I swung it shut and I collapsed into a heap on the single bed.

Although I was home with my momma and in the place that I’d spent my entire life, I felt so alone, out of place. I already missed Leroy and while I was so distraught, I wanted him with me. Without even thinking about it, my hands moved up and cradled my stomach. I thought about the fact that a part of him was with me, and in some turn of event, it helped me not to feel so alone.

“Hey, baby,” Leroy came in through the back door and set his gear down. “Smells good in here.”

“I’m making your favorite,” I smiled and let him kiss me on the cheek before he leaned over and inhaled the aroma of fresh cooking. “The kids will be excited to see you.”

“Ooh, where are they?”

“Playing upstairs.” I arched backward so I could shout in the direction of the staircase. “Abby, Drayton! Daddy is home!”

The sound of little footsteps came barreling down the staircase and my two blond darlings appeared with giant smiles and excitement. They bound into Leroy’s arms and squealed with delight.

“How are you both? Did you watch Dad on television this weekend?”

They both nodded with enthusiasm. “You play the best, Daddy,” Abby grinned when he gave her a big kiss on the cheek.

“I wanna be like you one day, Daddy,” Drayton nodded, and I felt my heart flutter. It pounded so hard at the sight of my gorgeous family. My son and daughter were everything to me. The reason I woke in the morning. The reason I tried to be the best that I could be. Leroy looked up at me and his brows pulled together.

“Ellie?”

I couldn’t answer him. No matter how hard I tried. Nothing would come out.

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