The Lit Report (7 page)

Any other year, Ruth would have been heckling Joseph and Mary, belting out lewd lyrics to the carols and running up and down the basketball court, pretending to be a Laker girl. This year she skipped the carol concert and confined her cheerleading activities to the occasional rude chant. She was kicked out after yelling,

You might be good at teaching

You might be good in class

But when it comes to basketball

We're gonna kick your ass
.

Which turned out not to be true. All the cheering in the world couldn't help the Westland Warriors; the teachers beat them 92–74. High fives and Praise the Lords all round on the teacher's bench, with a few butt slaps for Coach Baylor. The Warriors muttered a lot about unfair coaching advantages. They didn't seem to remember what Our Lord said about turning the other cheek. At least not the kind
He was talking about. Apparently there was an unfortunate incident after the game at the live nativity scene— numerous young male cheeks were turned, and Mary almost had a coronary. The Three Wise Men took off after the offenders but were severely hampered by their long robes and the gifts they bore. The Warriors pulled up their shorts and scampered into Passmore Park, where they were later picked up for public drunkenness. Among those arrested was none other than Rick Greenway. One of Pastor Pete's parishioners, who works at the police station, told us that when he asked Mary if she could pick the offenders out of a lineup, she said she'd never seen their faces, but she'd be able to recognize one of them by the distinctive pimples on his butt. She said they reminded her of the Big Dipper. I guess when you're out in the cold holding a plastic Jesus while people drive by and throw things at you, you have a lot of time to look at the stars.

I told my mom that I had done some serious praying, and I felt that Our Savior wanted me to spend the next few months purifying my body and abstaining from all unhealthy habits. And when I was finished purifying and abstaining, He wanted me to go on a spiritual retreat. What God-fearing mother wouldn't want to hear that from her seventeen-year-old daughter? My mom nodded and continued working on a cross-stitched sampler pillow, which said, appropriately,
Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden
.

I told my dad and Miki that I wanted to lose some weight, but they were so far gone into baby-land that they just nodded and smiled and asked me to go to the store for gelato. Apparently something called stracciatella gelato settled Miki's stomach. Unfortunately both its price and its calorie count made it off-limits for Ruth and me. Ruth didn't tell her parents anything—she never does. She has refused to eat with them since they sent Jonah away, so we put a cooler in her closet (she had sold her hope chest on eBay) and kept it stocked with healthy snacks. We cheated every now and again, and Ruth ate at my house a lot, under my mom's approving eye. We walked everywhere—to school, downtown, to the movies, to the store.

By Christmas Ruth's nausea was gone, and we had both lost five pounds. Such is the power of the no-junk-food diet. We decided to relax the food rules a bit for Christmas, although we swore we'd go easy on the mashed potatoes and gravy. I usually have three Christmas dinners: one restaurant dinner on Christmas Eve with my dad and Miki and Ruth, followed by gift-opening; one traditional turkey dinner with my mother and Nana on Christmas Day (after more gift-opening and church); and dinner on Boxing Day at Ruth's. Since Peggy claims to be too busy doing the Lord's work to cook, we eat food donated by Pastor Pete's loyal church ladies. Things like Mrs. Lowen's Pizza Casserole, Mrs. Marpenny's Bratwurst Soup and Mrs. Bingham's Mexican Lasagna.
I looked forward all year to Miss Chalfont's Texas-Missouri Beer Bread, although this year I ate only two pieces instead of my usual five. There are never any salads (unless you count tomato aspic, which isn't even food), and all vegetables are cooked beyond recognition. For dessert there was a gummy Sara Lee cheesecake. Ruth deigned to eat with her family, not because it was Christmas, but because Jonah was home for a week.

Seated at the table in Peggy's pristine dining room, the tacky nativity tree centerpiece lit up and playing “Silent Night,” the table groaning under the weight of the casserole dishes, we held hands as Pastor Pete prayed for the heathens, the sinners, the homosexuals, the Jews, the members of Metallica and Slayer, anyone associated with hip-hop, and the makers of
Sex and the City
. It was a long prayer. Jonah was sitting next to me, holding my left hand in his right. As Pastor Pete detailed the Lord's plans to smite the evildoers at
HBO
, Jonah squeezed my hand. I turned my head slightly and opened my eyes long enough to see him wink at me before he bowed his head again. His hair had been buzzed off, military-style, but I remembered a particular dark damp curl that had caught on one of my rings. A few strands of his hair had come off in my hand. I have them still, in an envelope in my underwear drawer. I wondered what it would feel like to stroke his neck now. Fuzzy? Prickly? Cool? Pastor Pete's prayer finally came to
an end, and I snatched my hand away from Jonah's before he could feel the sweat rising on my palm.

AFTER CHRISTMAS I
began my research in earnest. Ruth and I walked to the library almost every day; she read magazines while I filled a notebook with information about fetal development, nutrition and the importance of maintaining a positive attitude. I thought I could cope with the physical stuff—I hoped I could anyway—but the attitude? That was another story. Even though I tried to interest Ruth in what I was learning, she wanted nothing to do with it. It was as if I was the one who was pregnant and she was the one along for the ride. Total role reversal. Her biggest concern seemed to be that she wasn't going to be able to show off her “bump,” as she called it. There would be no clingy tank tops or skimpy dresses for Ruth. Just increasingly baggy T-shirts, exercise pants and sweatshirts. I would dress the same way, for solidarity purposes, but after the baby came I hoped to be shopping for something clingy and/or revealing myself. After all, I was going to be somebody's big sister—a role model, in fact. I had to look good.

It was love at first sight.

—Joseph Heller,
Catch-22

I'm not sure I believe in love at first sight. I mean, I first saw Jonah when I was five and he was seven, and Ruth was trying to bury him alive in the sandbox in their backyard. She was sitting on him, and he was howling, and his little snot-and-sand-encrusted face kept appearing out of the sand. I pulled Ruth off him and helped him up, and he ran into the house, screaming for his mother. Ruth was disgusted with me and kept on being disgusted with me over the years every time I defended Jonah against her. Maybe I have loved him from the beginning. Maybe it's not even love.
Catch-22
isn't about romantic love anyway. It's about war and what people will do to try to survive in combat. It's about defying authority in creative ways and about not getting killed in the process. It's about how wacky idealists like Ruth and
born-again pragmatists like me are simultaneously brilliant and stupid. We were doing this insane thing—concealing Ruth's bump—and hoping not to get killed, metaphorically speaking. And we were caught in a classic Catch-22: We would be equally crazy whether we told anybody what was going on or not. We were engaged in a war in which our main weapon was our ability to lie convincingly. Usually I don't mind lying—I think of it as a legitimate creative exercise for a budding writer. But I hated lying to Jonah. Jonah is like the Texan in the army hospital in
Catch 22
: “good-natured, generous and likable.” Unlike the Texan, who no one could stand after three days, Jonah just gets better with time.

We'd only had a couple of hours alone together over Christmas. My mom went out one evening, but she was gone long enough for me to determine that Jonah's buzz cut was as soft as the acrylic-pile snowsuit I had when I was six. Boot camp also had some unforeseen benefits—all that enforced exercise had given Jonah an impressive six-pack and the stamina of a triathlete. He was still Jonah, though— smart, funny, thoughtful (he brought condoms but put them away when I said I wasn't ready yet).

“I got accepted to chef school in Vancouver, Julia,” he told me as we snuggled under my duvet and listened to
Kind of Blue
. I don't really like Miles Davis, but I can tolerate him under certain circumstances. “I got a full
scholarship. No one else knows. I start in September. I'll be there two years and then, who knows—LA, maybe, or New York or London.”

I had a sudden vision of Jonah in the funky two-bedroom apartment that Ruth and I dreamed of—his hair grown out, exhausted and exhilarated from a night in a hellishly hot kitchen. In my vision I had opened a bottle of red wine and was sitting on his lap while Ruth regaled us with tales about her latest movie promotion. Copies of my new novel were on the bookshelf...

It didn't surprise me at all that Jonah had his own grand plan or that he had already put it in motion. It did surprise me that I felt so forlorn. It wasn't like I was his girlfriend or anything.

“That's awesome,” I said, smoothing out the duvet while I struggled to control the quaver in my voice. “When will you tell your parents?”

He shrugged and rolled over onto his back, lacing his hands behind his head; his armpit hair was damp and curly and smelled faintly of stale deodorant. I ran my fingertips over his nose, lingering on the bump. Jonah's nose had been broken a few times: once by Ruth (with a Tonka truck), once when he tried (unsuccessfully) to do a skateboard trick called a Bomb Drop and once when he plowed into a tree in his parents' car. His nose is beautiful. As are his lips, which are both full (bottom) and chiseled (top). He smiles a lot,
even though his teeth are crooked. There is also a small scar on his chin from when he fell into a rosebush when he was a toddler. I have memorized Jonah's face like a poem.

I desperately wanted to tell him about the baby, but Ruth would have killed me, and what good would it have done anyway? Maybe I'd be able to tell him in May when he came back from boot camp. Maybe not.

“So what's up with you and Ruthie?” he said. “You guys okay?”

You have no idea, I thought as I sat up and pulled on my T-shirt. He put his hand on my back, and I wondered if he could feel my heart accelerate.

“No big plans,” I lied. “Just, you know, get through high school, leave home, that kinda thing.”

“Cool,” he said, running his hand up and down my spine as Miles went off on one of his interminable jangly riffs. “Ruthie seems a bit down, that's all. Sort of quiet— for her anyway. I just wanted to make sure she's okay. She looks great, though. Healthier. So do you.” He sat up in bed, and I kept my back turned to him as he wrapped his arms around my waist and nestled his chin into my neck. “You look...” He paused and I wondered if he'd been about to say “thinner” and then thought better of it. Telling a girl she looks thinner is pretty much the same thing as saying, “You used to be a fat cow.” Instead he said, “I notice you guys don't eat so much crap anymore.”

I wanted to blurt it all out right then. I wanted to, but I didn't. I kept my face turned away from his and I kept lying. “Ruth's fine. There was this guy—he dumped her and it kinda hit her hard. She really liked him. But she's okay now.”

“Who was he? Anyone I know?”

“He was nobody. Just some cretin on the basketball team.” Shut up, Julia, shut up, I told myself.

“I could kick his ass if you like,” he said. “Give him a good ol' Bible-thumpin' beat-down.”

I laughed. “If anyone kicks his ass it'll be Ruth. But thanks for the offer.”

“Keep me posted,” Jonah said as he pulled on his jeans. “I worry about you guys.”

“You don't need to—really,” I said. “We're totally fine.”

AS I HAD
predicted, nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to our new healthy habits. After all, it was January— season of short-lived New Year's resolutions. Maybe when we're in therapy years from now, Ruth and I will say we wish our families had figured it out. At the moment, though, my parents' trust, Ruth's parents' general cluelessness and the self-absorption of our peers were distinct blessings.

“When am I gonna feel it kick?” Ruth asked as we walked home from school in late January.

“Movement is usually detectable from about sixteen weeks on,” I said, parroting one of the books I had been reading.

“When's that, Einstein?”

“Another month or so—maybe a bit sooner.” We'd been over this stuff so many times: her due date (sometime in late July—I'd tried about five different methods of calculation and got a different date each time), her mood swings (scary), the size of her breasts (impressive, unlike mine, which were shrinking), but she didn't seem to retain anything but water. And not even much of that yet. It was one of the things I checked every week, along with her blood pressure, her weight and her emotional state. I also measured her stomach, which she hated, even though it wasn't any bigger yet. I had managed to find a fetoscope and a blood-pressure cuff on eBay. I had to ask my mother if I could use her credit card to order Ruth a birthday present online, but even when she said yes, a Doppler was still out of the question. A $500 charge on her
VISA
would set off all her maternal alarm bells. I stole a tape measure from the sewing room at school, and I bought a really gorgeous lined journal and a special pen with purple ink to record all the information.

“Remember? I told you we'd be able to hear the heartbeat at around twenty weeks? You'll probably feel the baby kicking before that,” I said. “It's so cool. I heard Miki's baby's heartbeat on the Doppler when she was only eleven weeks
along, but fetoscopes aren't that sensitive. Wait till you hear it—it sounds like a tiny galloping horse.”