I slammed the door behind me as I reentered my house. The fucking doctors finally let me out of that goddamn hospital.
I went to the room where the nurse told me where I tried to hang myself, but the rope and everything was cleaned up. Actually, my house was spotless. I was told that I had trashed it.
But I remembered that the housekeeper started her first day while I was hospitalized against my will.
A will.
Bill’s will. That I still had to go over.
When I was more stable in the hospital, his lawyer visited me and tried to go over it, but I just glanced at it. It looked stupid and boring.
While I was there, I texted my group chat with my friends from St. Louis, titled ‘Bitch Pack’. I Venmo-ed them all money to pay for a plane ticket so they could come visit me for a while. They are flying in tomorrow.
We’re gonna have a lot to go over.
Including the fact that I’m fucking pregnant.
I still can’t wrap my head around it. It was me and Bill’s dream to be parents and raise our beautiful children together, but now it sounds like a death sentence to me.
In the hospital, I thought of getting an abortion, but I believe it’s evil. I couldn’t do that. This baby will be the one thing I will share with my late husband.
And, it turns out I’ve been pregnant for 2 months. Not a week. Honestly, it felt better thinking I’d been pregnant for a week.
The worst thing is that Bill didn’t even know we were going to have a kid.
But goddamn, I miss him so much. His tanned, summer skin, his sweet smile. He was always good to me, and he always felt right. Even when we would fight, I was still head over heels for him.
And Betty was so sweet for actually showing up. She came to my wedding when she didn’t want to. And she’s still angry and bitter about me leaving her, but she still came over when I asked her when Bill died.
And now she’s going to be an aunt.
She’s going to be the best.
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I called Betty in the middle of the night on Saturday. It was 2:00 on Sunday morning, but she picked up and drove over to my house.
I got out my collection of anthology books that our grandpa gave me before I left for St. Louis. I love poetry, and I decided I wanted to share them with her.
She picked out my favorite one, The Anthology Department, and started flipping through the poems. She smiled.
“Which one is it?” I asked.
“It’s called Tortured Poets,” she said.
I smiled. “That one is my favorite in that book,” I said.
She started to read it. “And so I enter into evidence,” she said. I joined in, having memorized it my junior year. “My tarnished coat of arms. My muses, acquired like bruises. My talisman and charms. The tick, tick, tick of love bombs. My veins of pitch black ink. All’s fair in love and poetry. Sincerely, the chairman of the tortured poets department,” we recited, in perfect unison.
She flipped through the rest of the book, passing some of my other favorites, like The Prophecy, So Long London, The Albatross, Cassandra, and The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.
Every so often, my sister would stop and read one. Her favorite was I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.
“'Cause I'm a real tough kid. I can handle my shit. They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it till you make it" and I did. Lights, camera, bitch, smile. Even when you wanna die. He said he'd love me all his life. But that life was too short. Breaking down, I hit the floor. All the piеces of me shatterеd as the crowd was chanting "more". I was grinning like I'm winning. I was hitting my marks. 'Cause I can do it with a broken heart,” she read aloud.
She read another one, titled My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys. “Just say when, I'd play again. He was my best friend. Down at the sandlot. I felt more when I played pretend. Than with all the Kens. ‘Cause he took me out of my box. Stole my tortured heart. Left all these broken parts. Told me I’m better off. But I’m not. I’m not. I’m not,” she said.
I nodded, a small tear dripping from my eye. I looked around my beautiful house, the walls that once would’ve held years full of memories with my husband and our child, who has yet to be born.
“Can I borrow this book? I like this one a lot, I’d like to read it all sometime. I’ll give it back, don’t worry,” she said.
“Read The Manuscript first,” I told her.
She started flipping through the pages, until stopping when she found it. “Now and then she re-reads the manuscript. Of the entire torrid affair. They compared their licenses. He said, "I'm not a donor but I'd give you my heart if you needed it". She rolled her eyes and said, "You're a professional". He said, "No, just a Good Samaritan". He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was. Soon they'd be pushing strollers. But soon it was over,” she read.
She looked up as more tears dropped from my eyes. “Bek, what’s wrong?” she asked.
Bek. She used to call me that when she was a toddler.
“Read it again, just to yourself,” I replied.
She looked down and reread the poem a few times, studying the page.
“Is this supposed to be about you?” she asked. “You and Bill got married, something about kids, soon it was over, referring to his passing,” she added.
I nodded.
“Wait, are you pregnant?” she asked.
I nodded again, confirming her guess. Another tear dripped down. “He didn’t even know,” I told her.
She put her hands on top of mine, which were both trembling.
“It’s gonna be okay. I’ll be with you the whole time. I’ll help you and everything. I’ll be there in the birthing room to help you. I’ll babysit for you, help in any way. You’ve got this. It’s gonna turn out perfectly fine,” she told me, sweetly.
My eyes welled up with tears. Betty, my little sister, the one I raised, the one who raised herself, the one I ditched, was going to help me. To help raise my child. Her niece or nephew.
“Thank you so much,” I whispered.
“Of course,” she whispered back.
Then she gave me a hug. Which is one of the most genuine gestures I’ve ever gotten.
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