Free Look at You Now by Liz Pryor Page B

phone and felt my dad looking at me.
    â€œThis is unbelievable , Liz.” It was unbelievable. Everything inside me stopped, and I felt myself go dark. Like a horrible, black reset button on my life had been hit. Disappointing my parents like this was a torture I could barely take. It was almost more frightening than the pregnancy itself. I saw the sadness, and love, and defeat on my dad’s face. But it was too hard to look in the eyes of the man who had believed I could be something great in this world.
    â€¢ • • •
    Ms. Graham offered me a cup of water and some nuts toward the end of our Tuesday afternoon session. I figured I should eat them, since I wasn’t going to be eating dinner. I was never going to be eating dinner there ever again.
    â€œThank you,” I said.
    â€œHow did you end up deciding to come to the facility, Liz?” Ms. Graham asked.
    â€œMy mom found it. She told me it was a Catholic home for unwed mothers, which isn’t exactly what this is, right?”
    â€œRight, not exactly.”
    â€œShe told my dad the same thing, so maybe he doesn’t know this is a locked facility. I don’t know.”
    â€œLiz, you’re not locked in here. You are free to come and go as you please.”
    â€œYeah, but the people who live here aren’t, right?”
    â€œCorrect. They cannot come and go. But I can assure you, as I have assured your mother, that you’ll be taken care of here, and you will adapt.” Those words didn’t mean anything to me. I wondered why adults always imagined they knew things about young people, when in truth they were clueless. Ms. Graham carried on. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk about your health and the baby. I question if you know how important it is to make sure that you do what you need to do to keep yourself and your baby healthy.”
    â€œI know that fainting is not a good thing, and I don’t want it to happen again.”
    â€œGood, that’s what I mean.”
    â€œI can see that I have to pay more attention to eating, but I have a hard time feeling hungry when everything feels so sad. And no offense, the food—at dinnertime, anyway—well it’s terrible, even for someone who is starving.”
    â€œOkay, perhaps we can figure out something beyond the cafeteria for you for dinner food. I know that it’s not very good at all; the girls are used to it, I guess. Maybe you could get a hotplate for your room; you can warm up soup and things?”
    â€œYeah, okay.” Anything to keep me out of the mainstream would be a good thing. I knew I would never feel comfortable here.
    â€œAnd how are you feeling about the baby?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean have you felt it kick? Do you think about it, do you wonder if it’s a boy or a girl?” This baffled me. Did she not get that the baby in my stomach was the reason that my life was ruined? Did she not get that I’d never regretted anything more in my life than having sex and making this baby? That the baby was the reason I was separated from everyone I loved? That I was now tarnished, and bad? That my parents were going to have to suffer and lie because of me . . . and this baby?
    â€œI don’t . . . see it as a baby.”
    â€œWhat do you see it as?”
    â€œI don’t know . . . a thing . . . I guess?”
    â€œBut it’s not a thing. It’s a small life there in your stomach, and you are in charge of it until it comes out.”
    I thought about it for a moment. “I guess I’m not very good at that.”
    â€œIs there any way you could begin to see that the baby didn’t do this to you, Liz?” Of course Ms. Graham was saying that I did it , the baby was an innocent and I was a perpetrator. She went on: “The baby is just a little life that didn’t mean to cause you pain and doesn’t know any of this. All