Page 80 of Jar of Hearts
’Cause all that’s waiting is regret
Don’t you know I’m not your ghost anymore
You lost the love I love the most
I learned to live half alive
And now you want me one more time.”
~ Christina Perri, “Jar of Hearts”
29
The positive pregnancy test only confirmed what Geo already suspected.
Her cycles had always been predictable, every twenty-nine or thirty days. When she missed two in a row, she bought a pregnancy test at Rite Aid, cutting her last class so she wouldn’t run into anybody she knew. The directions were pretty clear, and she peed on the stick as soon as she got home, bathroom door locked tight in case she had mixed up her dad’s schedule and he came home earlier than she expected. The results were fast, less than thirty seconds. The instructions said it would be either a plus or minus sign, and that any hint of blue in the plus sign meant she was pregnant.
The stick was so fucking blue it was almost purple. She wrapped it in paper towels and stuck it at the bottom of the wastebin, then sat on the toilet seat lid and cried.
She was pregnant with Calvin’s baby. And it wasn’t a love child. How could it be, when it was rape?
She made an appointment at Planned Parenthood for the following week, and then spent the days in between genuinely questioning whether it would be better to run out onto the street and let herself get hit by a bus. When she arrived at Planned Parenthood on a Wednesday morning (having faked sick to her dad, so he’d write her a note to get out of school for the day), her appointment had been delayedfor about twenty minutes while they dealt with an emergency. It was long enough for Geo to completely freak out.
She called her father from a pay phone in the parking lot, sobbing, and he came to pick her up. She told him about the pregnancy, how she didn’t want the baby, but neither could she bring herself to abort it. She refused to tell him who the father was other than that he was someone who didn’t go to St. Martin’s (true) and that she never wanted to see him again (also true). Walter Shaw listened, growing more upset with every word. He told her to go to bed. She did.
When she woke up the next morning, her dad was waiting for her at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in front of him, a cup of herbal tea for her.
“Whatever you want to do, we’ll do,” he said, and she burst into tears again.
Walter’s normally stoic face was filled with anguish. “It’s because I work all the time and you don’t have a mother, right? You wanted something of your own to love?”
“God, Dad, no.” Despite her emotional state, Geo managed to roll her eyes. “It just… it just happened. Trust me, this wasn’t anything I wanted, even on a subconscious level.”
“If you were sexually active, I could have made you an appointment at the—”
“Dad,please.” Geo knew her face was red. She felt the heat creep up her neck and stop at her eyes. “I wasn’t… sexually active. It only happened one time.”
She closed her eyes, remembering the weight of Calvin on top of her, her inability to move or draw anything deeper than a shallow breath. No, she hadn’t wanted it. Yes, it was rape. No, she couldn’t tell anybody. If she told someone, and they arrested him, who knew what Calvin would say? About Angela? About her?
Sometimes karma came for you later. Sometimes karma came for you right away.
“So what do you want to do?” Walt asked her gently.
“I think adoption makes the most sense. Not that I can imagine giving birth, oh god.…” She shuddered. She couldn’t let herself thinkabout that now. “But I can’t imagine getting rid of it. And I can’t imagine being a mom.”
Her father nodded. It was hard to tell how he felt about what she had said. It would certainly make both their lives easier if she had an abortion. An abortion meant she could finish out her junior year with nobody the wiser. Her body wouldn’t have to change; no weight gain, no stretch marks. There would be no painful delivery, no watching someone take the baby, no having to live with wondering what kind of person he or she would grow up to be.
She was nine weeks along. It wasn’t even a real person, right?
But it was. To her, it was.
“But I can’t… I can’t go to school pregnant, Dad,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
Walt’s face was set, but grim. “I’ll speak to your guidance counselor. We’ll figure it out.” He cupped her chin with a warm hand. “Are you sure about this? If you don’t want to have it at all, that’s okay. It’s your decision. And there’s still time.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I… I can’t deal with any more death. Of any kind.”
Walt assumed she was talking about her mother. Which she was, but only to a degree.
