Free Bliss by Danyel Smith Page A

There it is
.
    Then, Ron.
    Eva’s body, rocked.
    Her mind, fucked.
    For the thousandth time she’d demonstrated her ability to rise to the occasion, to perform through inner crisis. And for that she got what she truly craved. It was just like the people had shouted to Sunny at the showcase:
Go ’head or Work it out! or You better do your thing!
    Same thing as
Stroke me sweetie, Bring it on home, I love the way you feel, You better fuck me like you know how. Like you need me. Show me. Your talent
.

CHAPTER 6
    A lcohol woke Eva up. She didn’t have to look to know Ron was long gone. She glanced at her travel clock.
    Six-twenty?
    It took Eva some minutes to realize she might vomit. When she felt it behind her nostrils, Eva ran to the bathroom. Almost everything from the day and night before came up.
    Eva leaned against the sinks. Waited. When Eva vomited, there was always a weak round one, then a powerful, all-cleansing round two. She straightened up and wiped her mouth with a hand towel, then held it to her throat, bunched at the center like a giant handkerchief. Warmth rushed her body. Her underarms and cleavage were clammy. Eva waited.
    Never had morning sickness. When I was pregnant before. Has to be the Scotch. Drank a lot last night
.
    Six-twenty
.
    I was drinking two hours ago
.
    When was I throwing up all the time? Not for a while. Maybe when I was twenty-two, new to the game and drinking White Russians
.
    Even if I am pregnant, how pregnant could I be? No one has morning sickness when they’re two weeks pregnant. If I’m pregnant
.
    Eva took shaky, deep breaths. She twisted a faucet, watched food-less vomit trail down the sink, and thought about when she was pregnant by a boy named Michael who everybody called Mix because he was a DJ. Mix was twenty, and when Eva called to tell him she waspregnant, he was honest about his fear and confusion, and he told Eva not to worry. She heard Alexander O’Neal in his background.
I can’t go a day without my sunshine
. Eva loved that song, loved the name of the label he was signed to: Tabu. Eva was eighteen.
    “I’m right here for you,” Mix said.
    She called him the next day and got his machine and then got his machine and got his machine for about nine weeks. That’s how Eva counted time when she was pregnant. It’s how everyone counts time when they’re pregnant. Eva was counting, and it was nine weeks, and Mix went to college not fifty miles from where she went to college, so she could have gotten out there, but even in the midst of the nausea, she had an inch of pride. Eva knew Mix was getting those messages. And so Eva told her stepmother she was ten weeks pregnant, and told her boss at her on-campus employment, and they both advised abortion.
    “You have so much ahead of you,” they both said, in different ways, and, truth be told, Eva did.
    Eva made the appointment, and the night before the appointment, Mix called.
    “I spoke to Lynn,” he said. “Day before yesterday.” Lynn was Eva’s boss. Mix was friends with her, too. Eva didn’t have the energy to be angry with Lynn for telling Mix whatever she’d told him. “She told me you decided.”
    “I had to decide. It’s tomorrow morning.”
    “Can I pick you up and drive you there?”
    “Yeah. Don’t be late.”
    Mix arrived at six o’clock in the morning in his Fiat sedan with the tore-up clutch and drove her over to a place where they made Mix sit in a room with magazines on tables and commuter news television, and they took Eva to a small room to watch a video about the procedure. They did an ultrasound, and then told Eva without batting an eye that there were twins in there. And so Eva said to herself,
Here’s your big moment. Here is your time to make your own decision with no advice from anyone
.
    I’m not ready
, said the flush that burned, then dampened her.
    Eva’s body was screeching, trying to convince her mind.
Don’t want a baby. Don’t want an abortion. This is real. It’s bad.