You, Me, and the Glob

“CAREFUL!” Mrs. Lee shouts as she catches me, seconds before my tailbone crashes to her kitchen floor. “You lose your footing, Sam,” she laughs as she steadies me. 

I force a smile and a laugh I know sounds false. “Always clumsy!”

Ellen pinches my arm, hard, and gives me a look that says ‘shut the fuck up—quick.’ She grabs the empty plates from my hands and throws them in the sink. “We’re gonna go for fro-yo, thanks for dinner, Ma,” she says, as she kisses Mrs. Lee on the cheek and drags me out the door. I smile, wave goodbye to her parents as I follow her. 

As soon as we’re in the safety of her car, I throw my head back against the passenger seat. “Jesus fucking CHRIST! Was that a joke, whispering that to me while I’m next to your MOM? Are you being funny in a way that isn’t funny?”

“I’m not being funny. It’s not funny.”

“Okay,” I nod, trying hard not to react. “When?”

“I don’t know, a month or something. Six weeks, I don’t know.”

“Does Josh know?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she turns her face away from me and looks out her window. “I called him a few days ago. He said it was my decision and all that. What, am I going to have a baby and keep it in the bathtub? Where would I even PUT a baby once it was born?”

“Where would you put a baby before it was born?” I ask, poking her tiny stomach. She smiles, finally. “Okay, so. What do we do? Do you need me to give you a ride somewhere?”

Ellen shakes her head. “No, I’m going to do it when I get back home. I mean, back to New York. Josh wants to be there.” I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “I made an appointment. Josh and I have to go to his cousin’s wedding that Saturday, then I’m getting aborted on Monday.”

“Come on, aborted. You’re the abortER, don’t be so negative.”

Ellen’s shoulders relax and she laughs. “I hope we still make good jokes like that in hell. I’m a ruined woman, getting rid of a baby,” she says and dramatically drapes her forearm over her brow. 

“You’ve been ruined for years,” I laugh. “And it’s not a baby. I don’t know what it is. It’s just a glob now, isn’t it?” We both turn to look at each other. She’s smiling, but her eyes aren’t. Neither are mine. 

“Well. I guess we may as well get the fro-yo, huh?” I offer. “It’s on me.” She smiles and nods. By the time we reach the stoplight at the end of the block, she’s brought up a book she just finished and we’ve both silently vowed not to talk about what’s inside of her again. 

_____

“I felt it,” she moans.

“What? You felt what?” She must be walking down the street, because I can barely hear her over the sound of traffic. After a minute she enters the quiet vacuum of her apartment building.

“I felt it come out of me,” she pants as she trudges the six floors up to her apartment. “The baby.”

“What? It’s not a baby, Bubs. It’s nothing yet. You’re just upset.”

“Not a baby. I just felt it. The pregnancy. Whatever the hell it is, the little sac of bodily shit, I don’t know. It’s a glob. The size of a stone you would skip. It’s dark and oxblood color like that lipstick you always wear and clumpy and it looks veiny and it just came out of me an—did you just puke?”

“No, no,” I say, hacking. “But I did almost choke to death. Death by potato. Jesus, you should’ve warned me not to take a bite when you were going to paint that picture. Are you okay?”

She laughs. “Ew. I’m sorry. I’m fucked up.”

“I know,” I say. I try to say it warmly, but my blood runs cold. I don’t know. Everything else, I know. The embarrassing things that happen the first time she has sex with a new guy. The humiliation when she realizes she forgot to wear underwear with her see through, short dress. The nervousness before a job interview she’s ill prepared for. The self loathing she feels when she walks into an exam she's neglected to study for. Whenever she calls, I can yell I KNOW! and we can roar with laughter because I understand exactly what she means and even though everything is so ridiculous and embarrassing at least someone else is having the same plight, however stupid and melodramatic and self obsessed we may get. But I’ve never felt this. I’ve never worn a diaper around all day because I’m bleeding out the beginnings of something that could hijack my entire life. I’ve never felt something slip out of me and gone to the bathroom to see what she just described. She doesn’t have me on this one. I feel like a failure, and for a second I wish this had happened to me before, so I could tell her I know what she means and have it be the truth. I push the thought away. Not everything is about you.

I sigh. “I’m sorry this heinous shit is spewing out of you.” 

I can hear her grin through the phone. “I love you.”

“I love you too, “ I say. She sounds far away, like she’s talking to me from across the room on top of from across the country, and I know I’m on speakerphone when I hear Josh enter her room. I try not to be annoyed at the sound of his voice and the thought of him comforting her the way a boyfriend would, not the way a best friend should. “Go on, call me tomorrow.”

“I will,” she says, sounding a little sad. “I hope you fall asleep thinking about a giant glob oozing out of my vagina.”

“Fuck off. Sleep tight,” I say, and hang up, trying not to think about what’s no longer inside of her.

_____

The fitted sheet is curled over my legs, trapping me in its elastic grip. I try to kick it off, but the fight is futile. I roll over, wrapping myself in it further and resting my head on El’s flat stomach. She rests her plate of spaghetti on my wet hair and I laugh as I reach back to grab her fork, knocking her cabernet out of her hand and all over her sheets. 

“Oh, Christ, it’s just a bloodbath over here!” she wails.

“And you get your laundry done!” I laugh. “How will you explain this? It’s Cranapple juice!” I yell, doing my best Christian Bale.

“I can only get these sheets in Santa Fe!” El continues.

I sit up and wipe my eyes. “God, what a mess.”

“You’ve had worse,” El winks exaggeratedly. 

“Shut up. Not lately,” I roll my eyes.

“What about Michael?” she asks.

“No. I’m gonna stop that,” I insist. She rolls her eyes at me and turns her attention towards my plate of unspilled pasta, helping herself. “But you won’t.” 

She’s right—I won’t. She knows how I operate with these things. The way I’ll drag it out, long after I know I don’t want the same things that he does, and that I can’t and won’t give him what he needs from me, and that I’m going to bail any minute now if I get the slightest inkling that I may want to. She reminds me of this routine, and I roll my eyes at her.

“You really don’t like him? You’re still claiming no?”

“It’s not a claim, it’s my answer. I don’t do that.”

“What, feelings?” she probes.

I laugh. “Pretty much. I don’t have time. Or energy. Or the wont."

She rolls her eyes at me. “That’s okay, I predict you’ll terminate within a few weeks, according to the Sam schedule,” she grins. “But don’t skip your pill. Seriously.” 

“Don’t worry,” I nod. “I solemnly swear we won’t have another pregnancy.”

“I don’t think the universe would do that to us twice,” she says as she flops onto her back, tossing one leg over mine.

I smile when she says us, as if it’s something we did together. Like we weren’t separated by 800 miles and some deep, unspoken canyon of womanhood.

“That was all you, Bubs,” I say. “I didn’t have to go through shit.”

“You’re so wrong,” she says as she drops her head on my shoulder. “Do you think I told Josh about the glob that oozed out of my vagina? No way. He still has to think it’s a nice place down there.”

I laugh and make a disgusted noise. She burrows into me a bit and before long, I know she’s sleeping. I think about shifting into a more comfortable position, but El has tangled her limbs so intricately with mine that I don’t know if I can move without disturbing her. I look up at her ceiling and try to ignore the tightness in my chest and the stinging behind my eyes and the fact that she feels so far away from me, as if we’re no longer occupying the same space with the same rules. I wait until she’s breathing steadily enough to assure me she’s out before I lug her dead weight off of me and crawl out of bed. I grab cigarettes from my purse and the unfinished bottle of wine off her floor and creep into the living room. I crawl out the window as quietly as I can and perch myself on the fire escape. I try not to look at her through the window, asleep in her queen bed. We’ve spent years sharing couches and futons and sleeping bags. Sleeping in places that shouldn’t have fit even one of us. Now she’s on her own, a tiny girl in a big bed, and she doesn’t look so small. She doesn’t look vulnerable or slight or like half of a whole and the sight of her looking so complete makes me feel completely alone.

_____

“I shouldn’t have taken you to this corner, finding a cab is always a nightmare,” Ellen sighs.

“Maybe it’s a sign,” I say. “I shouldn’t go back, I should just live in your bed like I’m supposed to.”

“Don’t joke.” She gives me a facetiously stern look. “I’ve been preaching that plan for years, don’t be a tease.”

I laugh. “Would if I could.”

El’s eyes linger on mine for a moment, and I recognize in her face an expression I know all too well, even if I don’t see it often.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I say, trying to lighten the mood with the tone of a mother slapping a child’s hand out of the cookie jar. “You cannot cry in the street right now, that is such a chick flick move.”

The corner of her mouth twitches up, as if she’s about to smile. It’s a welcome distraction from her ever-so-slightly trembling chin. I know she’s counting on me to say these things. I have to joke. If I don’t fulfill my duties as the emotion-diffuser, those barely-lashed eyes are going to fill with tears and I’ll have to throw myself in front of a cab to avoid our becoming those girls crying in the street.

“Hey, there’s one!” I shout and throw my arm in the air, summoning the lone cab to our corner, grateful for any excuse to focus on something other than the fact that I’m getting on a plane and she’s staying here. He pulls over and I say hello, throwing my backpack into the backseat and tell him I’ll be ready in just a second.

“Thanks for your hospitality,” I say and extend my hand for a shake.

She laughs and slaps it away, pulling me into a hug. Her grip is shockingly tight for such a waif, and we stand there for what is probably fifteen seconds past what is kosher in public. I sway back and forth a bit, jokingly emphasizing the melodrama of our hug and she laughs and pulls back.

“I hate when you leave,” she says.

I feel a sharp pang in my chest and try to smile through it. “I fucking hate leaving,” I say. “You’ll be back in the Midwest soon. We can manage to distract ourselves for 3 months.”

“As long as you don’t use your usual methods.” She winks and I lightly shove her arm with a “fuck off.”

“I’m just kidding,” she grins. “Just make sure you get some sleep. And drink something that doesn’t raise your BAC once in a while, will ya? And wear a condom. And let Michael be your boyfriend if he wants. And keep an eye on how bony your hips get. And...”

“All right, Mom,” I cut her off, laughing. “Thanks for the tips, I’m not taking any of them,” I wink at her. 

“That’s my girl.”

I open the cab door and we turn to each other, both of us tilting our heads down and jutting out our bottom lips with cartoonish sadness.

“Three months will fly by. No pregnancies before then, okay?”

“How long are we allowed to make abortion jokes at my expense? Is there a shelf-life?”

“Five months,” I answer with mock seriousness. “We’ll enjoy the next two, then we’re done.”

She laughs and then is silent. We stand there for a second, and I grin at her, silently begging her to buck up. “We’re really keeping this poor guy waiting,” I say.

“What else is new?” Ellen laughs and opens the door for me. I lightly pinch her side and she throws her arms around my neck. I squeeze her back and give her a quick kiss on the side of her head. 

“I love you a lot,” I say in her ear.

“I love you a lot,” she repeats as she pulls away. “I hate everyone that isn’t you.”

I smile. “Be good. Talk soon.”

Ellen relinquishes her grip and I slide into the backseat and close the door. The driver stalls for a moment, waiting for an opportunity to pull away from the curb and I try not to turn around. When cave and glance back, she’s standing there, shoulders slumped, wiping her nose. She meets my eye and snaps into performance, jutting out her bottom lip, furrowing her brow and stomping one leg, like an angry child. I grin and give her the finger as we pull away. 

“Small backpack,” the driver offers from the front seat. “All you have?”

“Yup,” I answer in that startlingly chipper voice reserved for strangers. “Just in for the weekend.”

“Ah, very quick,” he nods.

_____

“Come on through here, Sugar pie,’ calls the enthusiastic TSA worker. He’s the admirable kind of peppy, the sort of upbeat that one can only muster when they’re desperately treading water, trying not to let their shitty-hours, minimum wage job swallow them whole into an existential dread. “I.D. please, Honey.”

I smile back at him and pull out my wallet, a flutter of receipts and wrappers flying out with my license. I quickly gather as many as I can while he scans my boarding pass and hurry through, ignoring what’s left of my backpack trash. As I take off my Birkenstocks, cursing myself for not wearing socks to the airport—again—a man taps me on the shoulder.

“You uh, you dropped stuff,” he says awkwardly, reaching out a pile of receipts, topped with my University I.D. and a proudly perched Trojan.

“Oh, God, I don’t even know what that—thank you,” I stutter, grabbing the pile from him. I can’t figure out how I would’ve accidentally snatched a condom from El’s floor, but there it is. I move to sift through the pile and turn the condom over. There's a mini post-it stuck to the other side.

I know you don’t use these. START. We don’t need another. You and me.

And the Glob. 

xx-El

 I read it and feel that tightness grip my throat. You will not cry in an airport. That is too cliché, I tell myself. And especially not over a condom. I dash to my gate just as boarding is ending. Tip-toeing down the aisle, trying to get a look at my seat, I sigh with relief when I see an empty row. Settling into the window seat, I revel in my space. I slump back in my seat and contemplate three months, trying not to think about all of the things one can do in that time. That’s long enough for my hair to grow at least two inches. Long enough for a goldfish to die twice. Long enough to have a new favorite drink and a new love interest and a new phrase, repeated like a tic. Long enough for a whole trimester of pregnancy.

I feel expanded and deflated, like an empty thing with no shape. The only thing that sounds right to me is the two hour nap in front of me, and the row to myself. I lean my head against the window and close my eyes. I try to fill the space.