Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (17 page)

“Safer?” Mike said incredulously. “When are they ever going to be safer? This world is not safe.”

“Mike, I love how smart you are and I agree with you, but these are important questions I'm asking. How would we live?”

Mike shifted around on the couch and looked away. He was silent for a while. Then he turned to me. “I don't know. But I don't care. I want this Margaritte, and our parents will just have to deal with it. We could get on some kind of… assistance if they won't.”

My stomach turned. This was my nightmare. I saw those women at the grocery store. Fat, tired, their children reaching up at them, yelling. The women buying the cheap, shitty food the government allotted them. Either commodity or food stamp. I had spent my whole life knowing that I didn't want that. No matter what.

“You don't understand, Mike. It's bad. You don't get it.”

“I don't care. Please, Margaritte.”

I wanted a cigarette, badly. But I knew it would make things worse. I sat for a while, thinking, looking for strings of my own to pull.

“Mike? Why do you want this so badly? Most boys your age would be tearing their wallets out of their pockets and shoving money at their girlfriend's faces in the hope that they would get an abortion. But you, you really want this. I don't understand.”

He was silent and I could feel the pain radiating out of him. It felt like waves of heat coming from every part of his body. Tears were beginning in the corner of his eyes and so I took his hand.

“I don't have anything here,” he said.

My eyebrows knitted together in confusion, hurt. “You have me. You have your parents.”

“It's not the same.”

“Not the same?”

“There is no one here that is really my family. You don't understand that. You have a huge family.”

“OK, but Jake is who I'm closest to. And he's adopted. I feel closer to him than any of my family.”

Mike nodded.

“You know Mike, Jake looked his biological family up once. They were fucking awful. His dad was a deadbeat, never there, drunk when he was. His mom is full-blooded. An enrolled Cheyenne. Jake thought that alone was reason enough to contact her. She wasn't just a drunk, she was a junkie. He would come over and there were needles all over the floor, her kids all running around wild. He'd try to feed them, help her. It didn't work. One time he came over and she was holding the kids hostage with a knife. They were all huddled in the corner, stinking of pee. Jake had to call the cops and social services took the kids. I'm not saying it'd be the same for you. But it doesn't always turn out so great. Sometimes your biological family, well, sometimes they suck.”

Mike stood up and went to the kitchen, his glass in his hand. He came back with a drink for himself and sat back down again. He sipped.

“It's funny, I used to think that all of my bad qualities came from my dad. I used to picture him as Indian. I used to picture my mom as more Spanish. I know how that sounds now.”

“I thought you didn't think about what you were.”

“Well. I didn't. I don't. But, well, I did. Just not the way you would. It's hard to explain.”

I nodded. “Well… I used to want blue eyes.”

“Really?” Mike asked, looking at me with amusement. “I can't even picture it.”

“I know.”

Mike drank again, looked out into the living room, at all of his parents' beautiful, expensive, meaningless furniture.

“My mom wasn't our age you know.”

“Our age?”

“When she abandoned me.”

“How old was she?”

“Nineteen. That's not young. That's old enough to keep a baby. Sometimes I hate her. I fucking hate her.”

“You don't know the story, Mike, what it was like for her, or what she was going through.”

“I guess.”

I put my arm around him. “Well, maybe it's selfish of me, but I'm glad you were adopted. Because otherwise I would have never known you.”

Mike turned to me, took my hand. “That's not selfish. That's how my parents feel.”

My stomach began to hurt and he pulled me toward him, the animal thing between us yearning until we began to kiss, and he began to cry and lead me to his bedroom.

He made love to me gently, as if I were days away from having our child instead of months and months, whispering
Please Margaritte
and
I love you so much
over and over. I kept telling him I loved him too, and I did, and it terrified me how much I did because Mike was a boy who had gotten so much and was used to getting it, but he was someone who had been ignored too. For all of his affection and tenderness towards me, I knew there was anger and immaturity there and it frightened me to think about what would happen if I said no to him. But it frightened me much more to think about what would happen to us, to me, if I said yes. When we were finished, he passed out into a deep sleep, his arms and legs wrapped around me as if he were my child. I watched him sleeping, his mouth in a long, peaceful line, his silky black eyelashes that slanted down over his eyes when he was awake making him look shy and devilish at the same time, almost like a doll's. I touched them gently and he sighed. I could not sleep. This was too much, too much.

I woke up to Mike's arms and legs still around me. I had finally slept a little, after staring at Mike, the walls and finally the light coming in through the window, and yet I still could not stay asleep. I disentangled myself and got up and made breakfast, wandering where his parents were now. I had never met them.

“Hey,” Mike said, walking into the living room and stretching. “You made coffee? God, yes.” He walked over to the machine and poured himself a cup and sat down. “Did you get something to eat?”

“Yeah. I made eggs and toast. I left some for you,” I said, getting up and walking over to the plate I had made for him. “It's still pretty warm.” I picked it up and walked it over to him, setting it down. He looked up at me.

“What?”

He was quiet, and then he put his hand on my arm and pulled me gently down towards him. He kissed me. I lifted back up and shook my head.

“You're an incredibly silly boy,” I said, sitting down in front of my cup of coffee. He frowned.

“What?”

“That's not good for the baby.”

“I… Mike, we talked about this.”

Mike put his fork down, sat back, a pained expression on his face. “But I thought after last night… ”

“Mike. I love you. But how in hell would we raise a baby?”

“Margaritte… we'll figure it out. Please.”

“I can't live like the women in this town. My whole life I've promised myself I wouldn't be like my mother, or any other of the sad fucking women in this town, walking around with no lives of their own, trapped, fat, sad. Supporting their dead beat  men.”

Mike took a sharp breath. He looked angry. “I would never, ever be like that. Ever. And I can't believe you would even say that.”

“No, no… Mike, I know you wouldn't but I don't want to be like that. I want to… I don't know what I want! I don't want to be a teenage mother just like every other girl in this town. And I
don't
want my mother's life.”

“I am not your father.”

“I know you're not! I'm not saying you're like my father. It's not about you.”

“It is about me. This is my baby too. Please,” he said, his lip trembling. “Let's just… I know you have to get back and my parents will be back in the next few days, but just tell me you'll think about this before you go and do something you know you'll regret.”

“Why would I regret it, Mike? I don't understand.”

“You do. I know you do. I can feel that you want this baby. Why else would you have told me?”

The force of his words released a tidal pain inside of me, ripping forward, wave after wave. “Don't do this to me. I love you so much.”

We were quiet then, both of us eating our eggs and toast and sipping our coffee with little appetite. When we finished, I showered and got ready to leave. At the door he told me he would call me. We hugged.

“Don't do anything without talking to me first,” he said, and I nodded. “Promise me.”

“Yes,” I said, and he looked at me like I was holding something of his, something he could not trust me with and I suppose that I was. But it was mine too. That's what he didn't seem to understand, that it was growing inside me. And the thing that I could not tell him, the thing that rose up in my throat, the thing that he could see as clearly as if it were written across my forehead was that he was right. I wanted it. I wanted it and him, and all of us together. But I knew where that kind of thinking led. To a doublewide trailer and miles and miles of cheap macaroni and cheese, ten for a dollar.

I drove down the mountain and snuck back through my window, hoping Mom would think that I'd slept in.

“Hey,” Jake said, and I jumped. He was laying on the futon.

“What's up?” I was surprised to see him there.

“Arguing with the parents again. Where were you?”

I sat down on my bed, the springs creaking. “Mike's.”

Jake nodded. “You really are in love, aren't you.”

I took a deep breath. “Jake, I gotta tell you something. I'm not just in love, I'm pregnant.”

Jake blinked a few times, like he couldn't comprehend what I was saying.

“You're
…
how
…
what?” He sat up on the futon, his mouth slack.

“Yeah.”

“How did you get pregnant?”

“Well, when a boy and a girl get together and love each other very much—”

“Don't be funny. This isn't funny. At all. Have you told Mike?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say.”

“Fuck, I want a cigarette,” I muttered, running my hands along the bedspread. I knew that I wasn't going to keep it, but smoking just seemed wrong.

“Margaritte, what did he say?”

“He said he wanted me to keep it.”

“What?” Jake said incredulously. “He's crazy! I know he loves you but, well—is he talking about marriage? Is this what this is about?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Then what's going on? Why would he want you to have a baby at sixteen?

I thought about long drags of cigarettes and then reached into my bag and got one. I lit it, feeling perverse.

“I said the same thing. Not about marriage, about being sixteen, both of us. Frankly, his reaction shocked the fuck out of me. I thought he was going to freak out, make sure I was down with getting rid of it and that it would be the end of us as a couple.” I smashed the half-finished cigarette down into the ashtray, as it was making me nauseated. “What he said was that, well, he wants it because he doesn't have any family here.”

“Doesn't have any… of course he does. His mom and dad and oh, you mean because he was adopted,” Jake said, a small breath coming from his nose. He nodded slightly and lit a cigarette. “Yeah. Well. Did you tell him about my fantastic biological family?”

“I did. But he's so emotional over this, I can't tell you. And there's something else.”

“Oh, God. What.”

“Remember that party he came to? The one where the cops got you?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, remember your friend saying something about Mike's friends all being cokeheads?”

“He's
not
.”

“Yeah. He is. He sure is. I caught him yesterday. And I couldn't believe I hadn't figured it out before. He's just all sweaty and high-strung and
fuck yeah!
after he hangs with his little track buddies. And sometimes he was like that when I came up to visit. I guess I didn't want to see it. But he was careless yesterday, after I told him about the baby, and I saw powder on his nose. Worst part is, he thinks it's no big deal.”

“Margaritte, we can take the money out of our savings account for an abortion.”

“Right. It'd barely cut into our savings, really. And I know it's the right thing to do. I am
not
living the Idaho Springs Lifestyle. Not this bitch. Hell no. But I know that it means Mike and I will break up. And I love him. And I'm so—” my voice broke and I began crying. Jake got off the futon and sat next to me. He held me as I cried.

“I'm sorry, Margaritte. I'm so sorry. I'll go with you.”

I cried for a while and when I was finished, wiped my face with my sleeve and took a long, hard breath.

“We didn't use protection.”

“Margaritte, Jesus.”