Thank You for Noticing

Rebecca Jensen

1.

I am seven and my bedroom window overlooks the yellowing grass of our backyard. I am sitting on the sill between the double-glazed pane and the veil of a net curtain that smells lemon-fresh like furniture polish. I am watching my mother smoke a cigarette. She sits perched on the edge of a plastic lawn chair that used to be green but is now turning white at the joints. My mother is in a washed-out pair of cut-off jeans, her hair scraped high onto her head.

My mother looks relaxed, but I also know that she is newly pregnant and at school Ms. Harris tells us that pregnant women can’t smoke cigarettes. Ms. Harris is trying to get pregnant, too. She has a new husband and his name is David. She wears a wedding ring but no makeup and I like to sit by her desk and tell her about the baby growing in the nest of Mom’s stomach and she smiles a glassy blue-eyed smile.

My mother stubs out the last of her cigarette and leans down to pick up her coffee cup from the ground. I scramble off the windowsill, but something tells me she is too busy inside her head to notice me at all. My feet slip and slide on the ledge, ankles hidden in white socks whose toes are thin and threatening to tear.

In the kitchen, my mom lets me sit up at the new high-top on a bar stool with a little cushion as long as I promise not to fidget. She tugs under my arms and hoists me up to the seat, places a napkin on the table in front of me. I can smell the cigarette smoke lingering on her breath. She swallows a sigh as she sees me watching her, sniffing her breath in the curious way that seven-year-olds can get away with, and takes a seat across from me.

I watch her pink fingernails push into the skin of a thick navel orange and peel back slowly, trembling under the pressure. Her lips are crinkled and puckered as she concentrates and I can’t think of the words to tell her I know what’s going on. My mouth opens and closes, quick and fishlike, gulping the air and salivating for the citrus flesh as she breaks it.

I know that pregnant women are not supposed to cry in the way that my mother does. Her hair is straw, bleached from sun, and it falls into her face in wisps. She doesn’t push it back; her eyes well and her cheeks flush and she sucks on the rinds of the oranges to cover up the stink of tobacco. I know there is no longer a baby in her stomach. She holds out a piece of orange and I peel the straggly pith, segment by segment, without meeting her eye.

2.

I am twenty-two. Before the sun rises, I leave for work, and after work I sit in my car and stare at the steering wheel before turning the key in the ignition and releasing the handbrake and driving to our apartment.

He locks his dog in our bedroom and I open the door each night to find her chewing on an old sandal or the spaghetti strap of my favorite dress. I don’t get angry at her. I scratch her head and remove the item from her gentle grip. I will learn to hang up all of my clothes, and to store my shoes up on the highest shelf of the walk-in wardrobe. The dog nudges me with her curious nose and I think how easy it would be to place my clothes not on the shelf but into a suitcase and into my car and into the distance without looking back.

3.

The box is bright pink and loud. I hold it gingerly, feeling eyes on me as I make my way to the pharmacy checkout. The cashier drops the box into a plastic carrier bag, the kind that tells me Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You in decreasing levels of bold font. Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You as if the disembodied voice is tired, so tired, of repeating the message to each young woman in search of meaning, answers. I don’t open the bag again until I reach Meg’s house. She hears my car before I cut the engine and steps outside on to the porch.

“It’s simple,” she says, “just open up the box.”

It is simple. I pee on the feathered tip of the stick in her mother’s bathroom. We have the house to ourselves and Meg presses a hand on the other side of the door and breathes through the crack to ask if I’m okay. The window on the test is clear for a while until one pink solid line blushes into contrast. I read the instructions again and stare at the empty space, waiting for the second pink line to show.

When the second line doesn’t appear, the tension pours from my body and I sit on the bathroom floor and push my fingers through the strands of Meg’s mom’s rug. I straighten them into neat lines and when Meg asks again if I’m okay she doesn’t wait for me to answer before pushing open the door and sitting with me by the tub.

“Can I look?” She reaches for the test that I have abandoned on the floor. She picks up the wrapping and disposes of it all.

“Good.”

“Good,” I agree.

The following morning, we decide to drive to the beach. I braid my hair and reach up to tie the halter of my bathing suit. I feel the familiar tug in my abdomen, my pelvis, and a wave of warmth. I sprint to the bathroom and splash my face with cold water. Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You. In the mirror, my blue eyes are scarlet ringed with gray.