A baby.
I always dream to bear a child of my own.
Ever since I was a toddler, I often pictured myself as someone who’s older enough, nursing and cuddling a beautiful, bouncing baby girl I would name Cassandra.
I would dress her with a pink lacey gown with soft ruffles and put pink satin ribbons on her curly mane. I would tuck her in bed, tell her stories of princes and princesses and elves and fairies until she falls soundly asleep. Every morning, we would take walks together and I would show her the world around her.
Such a wonderful dream!
Yet, I really do not know how motherhood could have been lovelier–until then.
It was pleasant to remember that used to be within my womb is a tiny speck of miracle who, supposedly, could have been blooming and growing these days.
But perhaps, it’s sad that my baby have to come at a wrong time.
Wearily, I dropped my head, both forgetting the hideous white mask this small room is wearing and regretting the things I have just done.
As I shut my eyes, I heard again my own voice tearing the silence of the past.
“Lorenzzz.”
Lorenz, my boyfriend, was atop my naked body. While his rigorous pumps went faster and harder, he clung more tightly unto my body while running his tongue on my naked skin.
“Tart… Keith…”
And I felt him exploded into invisible pieces inside me.
“Lorenzzz… wait up…” Another spurt from him and he was lying on his back beside me.
“Hey, Keith are you okay? What are you staring about?” he asked me after a while, I can barely hear him behind the monotonous hum of the A/C.
The buzzing seemed to get louder against the stillness. The cold numbly bite on my flesh yet, it nudges me to finally speak.
“I’m afraid, Lorenz, maybe, I’m actually more scared than what I can say. We should have not gone this far,” I whispered a few minutes after, the chilling cold around the room, the thing that just happened between us and the fears building up within me all sent my voice to quiver.
“Ssh…”
“What if Dad learned about this? What if I end up just like Leslie?” Leslie was a classmate who had dropped out from school last semester after she got pregnant. “I don’t want that to happen to me.”
“Keith, stop fuzzing. Stay calm, okay. ‘No need to be scared,” Lorenz indifferently uttered.
He was alternately toying again with my peaks.
“But, Lorenz…” I felt electrified as I respond to his touch.
“I said, don’t worry. Just take those pills I’ve given to you, okay? They can help us,” he said, convincing me.
He, then promptly lowered his head unto my chest.
PERHAPS, HE IS RIGHT.
MAYBE, I CAN TRUST HIM, HE’S BEEN AROUND, I thought foolishly then.
At nineteen, so much was expected from me.
In fact, my dad’s anticipating that I would also be a good lawyer someday. That’s why he was that kind of strict.
It was really easy to please him until one day, during the school’s foundation anniversary, I met Lorenz, a good-looking junior from another Law school.
Eventually, he invited me for a date. It was followed by another date and another one. And after sometime, I ended sleeping with him.
And of course, Dad knew nothing.
Even my recent last visit to the OB clinic has been a secret. Though, I never thought that the obstetrician would later confirm what I still doubt earlier.
“Your tests came back positive, Miss Vialez,” the OB eagerly announced, not knowing her words were like bombs to my ears. I never thought that she would confirm what I still doubt earlier.
Foolishly, I tried to believe that getting pregnant was something that happened to other girls, not me.
Not me, I am sure of that.
Not me, not yet.
However, when I started missing a couple of periods, I began to panic.
Chaos of fears and confusions reeled in my mind. I even didn’t know how to react exactly—to be delighted or to be anxious. Of course, it my dream to be a mother, but not now.
But what shall I do?
“Why don’t we try the doctor suggested by my friend?” Lorenz softly implied on the phone. I’ve just called him and told him about the baby. “Owen said that doctor knows how to help people like us and he only asks a little payment.”
“Who’s doctor? What do you mean… are you saying…? Are you saying that you want to abort our baby? How dare you think about it?” I drawled at him.
I no longer mind his cold reaction about my condition but the idea that he just implied enraged me.
“Tart, we have no other choice…”
“But not abortion. Not that one. It’s no different than murder, Lorenz. I could not allow anyone to kill my own child.”
“Keith, you’re not thinking, are you? You’re going to have a baby, yet, we are too young to be his parents. Tell me, what do you know about taking care of a kid?”
Then, why didn’t we think of these things before, I wanted so much to shout at him, but I might not have the will to do so.
“You told me that’s it going to be okay. You said the pills will help us.”
“If only you have been careful.”
“I’ve skipped only once.”
“Damn, Keith, look what happened? What do you think we will do next? Sit on our damn ass? Relax while waiting for that baby to come out and make our lives more miserable?” he sharply said.
“Please, Lorenz, stop blaming me.”
“Okay, okay, just think about what I’ve said. Not our best option, but it will do us good.” Lorenz reminded before the dial tone went on.
I thought hard, cried and tried to make some sense out of his words; and there really isn’t.
Abortion.
How could he ever think of abortion when we are talking of our own child?
Maybe it was just sad that my little Cassandra had to come too soon. I wonder, DOES SHE EVER FELT UNWELCOMED AND UNLOVED?
OH, IF ONLY I HAVE BEEN BRAVE FOR HER.
But, I have been alone and very confused during those times.
That a week after that phone call, I found myself lying helplessly on that narrow coach untidily covered with a yellowish cloth.
Somewhere outside that room, I heard Lorenz talking with someone. Then, a man in white robe entered and gave me two pricks of injection and went out, leaving me alone again.
After almost an hour, I just felt a stinging pain down my lower abdomen as if a hundred big pins were piercing it.
Afterwards, it gradually lessened, but later returned.
The intensity of the pain was much greater then – it seemed a steel belt was being tightened and twisted around my waist.
“Aaarghh… Lorenz… it hurts.” I cried out, wishing at least he could hear me.
Moments passed, I was already panting and soaked.
I was beginning to be totally scared, when a man in white came in and gave me another shot of injection.
Maybe, fear of what shall happen next, I just closed my eyes against the gleaming lights.
The pain was still there when the man started to work on my lower body with a cold instrument. As he moved it in and out between my legs, shiver crept my spine painfully.
I COULD NO LONGER REMEMBER HOW LONG IT LASTED UNTIL I FELL ASLEEP AND DREAMT THAT MY BABY HAD WAILED HARD, FOUGHT HARD TO LIVE, BUT I, MYSELF, HER OWN MOM, REFUSED TO EMBRACE HER.
MY POOR ANGEL, I KNOW SHE’S GONE.
Then, a few days after we had gone from that concealed clinic, I was suddenly experiencing cramps, but suspected nothing about it, I just ignored it.
Then, immediately the following day, there was just a terrible, severe pain; and later, continuous bleeding.
The blood just won’t stop.
I was scared as hell with the sight of the scarlet blood and the recurring horrors of the abortion in my mind that perhaps, I had finally passed out.
When I opened my eyes, I was already inside this white, neat room. I heard two fuzzy, distant voices from somewhere.
I tried to move but I was so exhausted and drained.
The voices outside continued murmuring—might be of my dad and the attending doctor. From the torrent of their words, I could only sense a few.
“Failed to remove other products of conception…
infections…
serious complications…
hemorrhage…
hysterectomy…
sterility…”
THE HORRORS OF ABORTION, INDEED.
My head seems spinning; nevertheless, I try to sit on my bed, looked outside the dull night.
The moon, dumb and bright has just risen over some distant mountains, while I remained where I was slumped, musing.
I try to believe that one of the million shimmering sparks of lights up there is my own little star. My own little baby whom I snuffed out the chance to see the rays of the sun.
She would never even blow her pink little candles or wear her pink ribbons.
“Cassandra, my sweet darling, you do not deserve me for disowning you, but I wish that you’ll still smile upon me from way up there. Whenever sorrow and regret haunts me, may you always be there to happily shine light to the darkness of my nights.”
PERHAPS, MY MOURNING FOR MY BABY WHOM I NEVER KNEW SHALL LAST A LIFETIME.
Tears start forming on my eyes—tears for losing Cassandra and all the lost babbling babies I would have had.
My dream of bearing and rearing my own children shall always be a mere and lifeless dream.
A dream.
A baby.
It’s all gone.
(End)
Copyright © terradegramm 1994
All rights reserved.
This short story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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