Free The Bitch Posse by Martha O'Connor Page B

thing Amy can feel is that fucking hospital bracelet, the handcuff, so she’s trapped.
    They’re mumbling something about stitching her up so the scar won’t show. What the hell does Amy care about a goddamn scar? “How much longer will this take? When can I see her?”
    The doctor answers the first question but not the second. “Ha ha ha, the cutting’s so quick but the stitching takes forever.”
    That does not amuse her in the least, and now,
now
is when Scotty bursts into the room and stands over her. “Amy, Amy, how did it happen?” It’s like he’s accusing her of something, of having lost the baby.
    No, God, don’t think that, you didn’t lose the baby, not yet.
    How dare you think “yet”?
    She meets his eyes, and what’s in them, she’s suspected for so long. In his widened pupils, the ones that suck her into the pit, the answer echoes back why he didn’t come home for dinner, or for his fucking cake that’s gathering dust now on the kitchen counter. He was with someone, and she’s pretty sure she knows who. Suzy Petersen, that little brunette who’s the receptionist at the Toyota dealership. Amy refuses even to ask him where he was or why he’s so late. She won’t admit she wished he’d been here. Let him feel goddamn guilty, let him feel like hell. All she can spit out is “Catey drove me to the hospital. I bled all over her car. You should call and offer to have it detailed.”
    Scotty just looks at her, his brown eyes filling up with something.
Don’t you goddamn dare apologize, I don’t want to talk to you.
He whispers, “How is she? How’s our baby?”
    Someone must have told him it was a girl. She doesn’t answer and lets the tears keep streaming into her hair. Scotty reaches out, strokes it. It feels comforting somehow, even though half of her hates his guts. She can’t get up and bolt anyway, so she lets him rub her tangled hair. She drifts into sleep that’s bumpy and wild-ridish, filled with pictures of
CallieHemmlerScottysnowbloodbloodblood,
and she can’t have slept for more than a minute because when her eyes pop open, the curtain’s still up. They’re still making sure her scar doesn’t show, and she feels very alone, here in this cold room with doctors and nurses and Scotty, and the world is cracking in two. The clock on the wall says it’s early morning, and she hasn’t slept at all. She closes her eyes again and groans at the neck ache that’s suddenly seized up from her shoulder to her eyeballs. The spinal must be wearing off. She curves her thoughts around the neck ache and spins toward sleep again.
    Scotty’s hands move away from her hair, and she wishes she was dead, wishes she never had to wake up. In her dream babies are crying, fat cherubs with rosy cheeks and rattles and chubby tummies. A knife has sliced into her belly, but they’ll sew it up so there’s no scar at all.
    Not even the tiniest little mark.

10
Rennie

    March 1988
Holland High School
    I’m sitting in the second semicircle of desks in drama class, legs crossed, staring at Mr. Schafer, Rob, whoever the hell he is. Behind me are the makeup mirrors and the double doors that lead to the stage. I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying because I keep thinking of what happened there, in the great dark presence behind where I sit, a drowning bubble into another world, a pit.
    It always hurts the first time,
I remind myself.
    You have to hurt if you want to feel anything at all.
    I didn’t say a word to Amy and Cherry. This is the first time I’ve kept something like this from them. Maybe I’m afraid they’ll talk me out of it, because if I let myself think too much about it, the whole situation is vaguely terrifying. But I don’t need their warnings. I know what I’m doing and it’s fun and daring and all about the new me, and I’m going to keep doing it.
    I’m staring at his face and he’s conspicuously
not
looking at me. Instead he’s directing his comments to Pammie McFadden,