Laid 2 Rest Two Halves of a Whole (12 page)

How we were all enjoying the freedom of having had finished school, when I found out that I was pregnant just a couple of months afterwards. “At first, Able was so supportive. He even went to all of my doctor appointments with me. I was three months along when he pulled a 360 and changed his mind about the baby.” I told her.

“That little fucker! What did he do?” she said pissed.

“He told me in a damn parking lot that he wasn’t ready to be a dad and asked me to have an abortion.”

“No girl… tell me he didn’t? How could he?”

“
I know right!
I was so heartbroken that I shutdown and did exactly as he asked. I didn’t want to trap him and I
definitely
didn’t want to be a single mother at eighteen either. We didn’t speak after that day, he completely abandoned me. I felt as if I didn’t have any other choice but to terminate the pregnancy. I knew my mom wouldn’t have helped me with the baby like any normal grandmother would have and my dad would have been so disappointed in me for throwing away my future.

My hands were tied. I can see myself heading into the clinic and having it done so clearly. He didn’t even go with me… he wasn’t there when it was finished… he didn’t even bother to call to see if I was alright afterwards, let alone help me pay for it.”

“That’s horrible, Jazz,” she said, placing an arm around me as my eyes began to moisten and redden.

“You want to know what the worst part was… the clinic gave me an ultrasound to check how far along I was before they performed the procedure. I was 13 weeks; I saw the baby on the monitor and even heard her little heartbeat before they sedated me. I was completely traumatized when I felt the baby move inside of me for the very first time. It was as if she knew what I was about to do.

They put me to sleep and when I woke up, I found myself in a row of beds setup along a blank wall. Maya, they were all filled with young girls
our
age. They made me get up to get dressed despite my protests of pain and blood splattered all over the white marble floor beneath me. There was… so… much… blood. They refused to let me leave because I was bleeding out so much. After getting dressed and drinking some orange juice, I was forced to literally endure them observing me for another hour. Girl, I was humiliated with a capital H.

When I finally did make it outside, the fresh air hit me so hard that I threw up in the bushes. Joel was waiting there for me so he could drive me home, but he had to practically pick me up and carry me to the car because I just wanted to curl up there next to my vomit and disappear from the world.”

“I swear, I’ll kill him with me bare hands the next time I see him,” she sneered.

“I tried to commit suicide later on that evening, but I was stopped right before I could hurt myself. For some unknown reason, Tyce called me at that exact moment just to check on me. I had talked to him the night before and told him what I was planning to do and he was simply calling me back to see if I was okay. He had no idea that I was about to kill myself… how could he? He saved my life and didn’t even know it.

That was the darkest day of my life by far and I have never really gotten over it. It still pains me to this day. Every year when everyone else comes together to celebrate Thanksgiving, I relive the anniversary of that horrific day. There’s no way I could ever block that memory out, because that day was perfectly named… Black Friday!

Nobody understands that I hate the person that I now see in the mirror everyday. It’s the face of a monster. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret what I did. I killed my own baby. Oh God Maya… I killed my own daughter for that PRICK!” I admitted reluctantly, burying my face in my hands as I finally released the secrets and horrors of that day.

“Where was I during all of this?” she asked me apologetically.

“I don’t remember… I was in such a dark place that I think my brain started blocking out bits and pieces in order to protect itself. I spiraled out of control, pushing everyone away, including you. Our friendship changed at that point… the closeness that we share right now becomes lost. We’re still friends and all, but it’s different… much different from how it used to be.

You see, Maya, I no longer trusted anyone around me. I became suspicious of everything. Paranoid that everyone was trying to hurt me… destroy me. I still have major problems with authority to this very day because of Able. I cannot stand it when people try to tell me what to do. I instantly get transported back to that time and I’ll be damned if anyone else makes or forces another decision upon me… EVER!

My drinking was at an all time high. I even slept with Tyce, Luke, and Able all in the same month trying to get pregnant again… believe it or not. I didn’t care who the father might end up being. The furthest things from my mind were the consequences and repercussions of my stupidity. The only thing driving me at that moment was a need to right a wrong. I needed to feel a little baby growing inside of me again, no matter what it took. That alone was the driving force behind my actions... Girl, I was obsessed. I used and hurt people that I cared for deeply in order to get what I wanted and
I’ve punished myself for it ever since
.

I know what you must think of me. But believe me… I’ve never been proud of it and not a day goes by that I’m not wishing I could repair some of the damage that I caused.”

It was obvious that Maya was saddened to hear that our friendship would falter in the near future. She was disappointed in herself for something that hadn’t even happened yet.

I had flat-out lied when I told her that I couldn’t remember where she was during that time of my life. The truth was… she herself was pregnant with her first child as well. Our daughters would have been born one month apart. I could not tell her that though. That seeing her blotted belly only made me more determined to carry out my insane plan to become pregnant again. No good would have come from me telling her that.

“It sounds like you were broken to me, Jazz. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you like you needed me to be… like I should have been. How did you get thru all that by yourself?” she questioned.

Shaking my head and snorting at my mother’s ridiculous idea, I blurted out, “My mom dragged me to the Philippines with her three months after the fact because her dad was dying. I guess she thought a month away from home would do me some good. Make me forget. It didn’t work though. When I got back, Able was there waiting for me. He proposed to me only a few hours after I stepped off the plane and we ended up getting married and immediately started trying to replace the baby that I/we had aborted.”

“Shit girl, you really were fucked up back then. How could you even consider taking him back after what he did to you?”

“I had convinced myself that if we tried again… then we could make up for our past mistakes somehow. That it would cancel itself out. Only, I couldn’t get pregnant again. We tried for a while with no success. The doctors said that the trauma from the abortion messed me up so badly that I wouldn’t be able to ever have kids of my own. So, after going thru all of that, we ended up getting divorced…
go figure!
”

“You still can’t have kids…
can you?
” she said with tears running down her round face as the moral of my story began to sink in.

“No… no, I can’t. He stole that from me. He robbed me of my natural womanly right to bear children for all time,” I whispered. “But I currently have a nephew and four god-kids to make up for it.” I added quickly, trying to lighten the mood.

“Well, what’s the plan then? We can’t let this happen to you.”

“That’s the problem right there. Something will change by not spending the night with him tonight, but what is stopping me from sleeping with him again once I return to my real body. I’m not going to remember having this conversation with you and I won’t know anything about the horrible future I’ll have with him,” I said defeated.

“You won’t remember, but
I will
. I’m not about to let that shit happen to you twice. You saved me from Garrett, now it’s my turn to save you from Able. You don’t have to worry about a thing… let me handle it.”

“Thanks, but you don’t get it! Do you really believe it’s that simple? This will change my whole future, don’t you see. What will I find back home in my time? What if things only get worse? What if I erase something that I’m not supposed to?”

It looked like she was tempted to slap me.
Man, she looked down right evil.
“Look, you’re here for a reason, remember? Today of all days blah, blah, blah! It’s today that you’re supposed to change for the better, not for the worst. Someone is watching over you girl, bettering you… healing you even. You need to accept that you have an angel sitting on your shoulder. Nothing could be worse than what you were already forced to live thru. I’ll watch for the warning signs just in case and believe me when I say… I won’t let you fall… not this time around.”

She was right.
Ah hell, she was always right.

In the morning, I finally accepted Able’s phone call and explained that things were over between us and that we had no future together. I gave no reason, I only asked that he respect my wishes and stay far away from me. I wasn’t mean or cruel, just dead serious. There you have it… all done. It is out of my hands now.

Angel please help me.

But nothing happened. Not a darn thing, I was still stuck back in June of 1992. Why didn’t it work? Why was I still trapped back in time?

While asking myself useless questions, I got so bored that I hung out with some old friends while waiting to be transported back to my present body; I even went to the mall of all things.

Believe me, the difference in fashion now and back then was frightening. In the 90’s the brighter your clothes were, the better. The sea of people at the mall literally looked like a living, breathing bag of sour jellybeans
.

Yuck!

Way too bright for my now much more sophisticated taste (I am 35. Keep up, people). I wondered if I had a responsibility to tell someone that this very mall would came crashing down in a huge earthquake in January of 1994. I quickly decided against it. Not only would no one believe my ass, but I also got the distinct feeling that I wasn’t supposed to interfere with future events just for the hell of it. I was to focus, primarily on myself and myself alone. That if I walked around playing God, I would rip the fabric of the universe wide open, the earth would start spinning off its axis, smack into the sun, and turn us all into crispy critters.

Yes
, I’m aware that’s a little over the top, but that’s how it felt, okay. Besides, I still haven’t received that time traveling instruction manual yet, so I don’t have a handy little list of dos and don’ts.

When I woke up the following morning (Monday) still in my younger body, I began to hyperventilate. This was the longest episode I’ve had to date. What the hell was I still doing here? Please don’t let me be trapped in my teenage years forever.

True that my being here had kept Able back at arm’s length since he had called me at least twenty times, looking for an explanation of why I had broken up with him. Who knows what my younger self would have done in my place? Is it possible that I haven’t changed everything that I’m supposed to change yet? Maybe this little SOB is so persistent that I take him back. That I only delayed future events, instead of preventing them from happening altogether.

Over my dead body!

I see I need to strengthen this little breakup before it was too late and what better way to do that, then to show up for school today. High school… where Able was sure to be.

Once there, I was completely caught off guard by how busy and popular I was. How in the world did I function back then with all of these people up in my face? To make matters worse, I was the yearbook artist, plus one of the two leadership artists, and right now I was smack dab in the middle of several different important projects.

Today, yearbooks were being distributed in homeroom so I spent the morning in a frenzy of yearbook exchanges where everyone could scribble down some bright and cheery best wishes for the future.