Dr. Williams finishes digging to China, slides back and slips off his rubber gloves while he stands.
The nurse takes my arm and helps me sit up. I try to situate the paper shirt and skirt thing to cover myself back up but it seems like the f**king thing shrunk. I give up and just keep my legs as tightly together as I can. It doesn’t seem appropriate to flash the goods to the doctor now that the exam was over. It would be like walking up to your dentist in the grocery store and showing him your teeth. There is a time and a place for everything.
“So? Is everything okay? What’s next?” I ask, hoping since he hasn’t said much during the exam, aside from television gossip, that all is good and I'm worrying for nothing.
“Well, we’ll order up some blood work, and I’ll see you back here in four weeks,” he said with a smile as he wrote something else on my chart. “Congratulations, you’re pregnant!”
~
Did you know The Dollar Store sells pregnancy tests? It’s true. And even though all these stupid dollar stores should change their names to “The Dollar Store – Everything Isn’t Really a Dollar, We Just Like to Fuck With You”, pregnancy tests are in fact one of the few things there that actually only cost one dollar. Which begs me to ask the question why the hell did I get a dirty look from the cashier when I asked for all thirty-seven tests? Like that’s never happened before? They are pregnancy tests for ONE DOLLAR, people. Gavin gets one dollar for doing chores around the house every once in a while. Even HE can afford to buy a pregnancy test. Why a four-and-a-half-year-old would need to buy a pregnancy test is beyond me, but these are the facts.
Arguing with the cashier and telling her I hope she slams her ginormous tits into the drawer of the cash register probably isn’t my finest moment, but it keeps my mind off of the fact that I might be pregnant.
Yes, I said might. I have just finished peeing on the twenty-third test and Dr. Williams had told me I was pregnant when he fondled my uterus, but he could have been wrong. Doctors get things wrong all the time. They remove a kidney when they mean to remove a gallbladder, and they forget to take clamps and shit out of someone before they sew them up. He could definitely be wrong about my uterus. How many uteri does he stroke on a daily basis? Maybe he's just off his game. Maybe he hadn't even been touching my uterus but had his hand around my spleen. But that would probably mean he was up to his elbows in my vagina. It had been uncomfortable, but not elbows-deep uncomfortable.
I stand at the sink in the bathroom and stare at the pregnancy test in my hand, waiting for the five minutes to be up so I can gouge out my eyes when I see another positive result. When the timer on my cell phone beeps with the new tone (“SWEET MOTHER FUCKING JESUS IT’S TIME!”) I downloaded just for this purpose, I glance down and try not to cry.
An hour later, Carter and Gavin come home from the store and find me curled up in the fetal position on the floor of the bathroom, surrounded by used pregnancy tests, instructions, and ripped open boxes.
“Mommy, where did you get all these magic wands?!” Gavin asks excitedly as he runs into the bathroom.
He picks up one of the tests and pretends like he's Harry Potter, aiming the test at random objects around the small bathroom yelling, “I curse you with my magic wand, punk toilet paper!”
I don’t even lift my head from the cold tiles; they feel too good on my tear-stained cheeks to move. I watch him with my eyes and wonder briefly if I'm a bad mother for letting him play with something that I peed on. That just starts another crying jag when I realize I will be a bad mother to two kids now. I have a vision of the future where both of my children are sitting in a tub of pee while I'm comatose on the floor.
Carter walks to the doorway and takes one look at me and the litter on the floor and jumps into action.
“Hey, Gavin, how about you put down that wand and go get the bubbles we just bought. I’ll even let you blow them in your room.”
“Sweet! This wand smells funny anyway, and it’s making my hand wet,” Gavin states as he drops it on the floor and runs from the room.
“You should probably tell him to wash his hands,” I mumble from the floor.
“Eh, he’s going to be playing with bubbles, which are like soap, so it will all even out,” Carter replies as he steps into the room and sits down on the floor next to me.
I sit up, pushing tests and boxes out of my way so I can cross my legs and sit Indian style across from him with our knees touching.
“So, how was your day?” Carter asks gently as he reaches over and brushes my hair out of my eyes.
I sniffle and look around at the mess.
“Oh you know, the usual. I worked, ran some errands, some guy put his hands up my chimichanga, complimented my uterus, and I got into a fight with a clerk at The Dollar Store.”
“Was it because practically nothing in that store is a dollar?” he asks.
“Oh my God, right? What the f**k is up with that? I don’t go into a store called The Dollar Store to buy a five dollar toy. Someone needs to school these people on proper advertising,” I complain.
A few seconds of silence lapse, and I knew Carter was waiting for me to mention the huge “I'm pregnant” elephant in the room. Fuck that elephant! He can just sit there in the corner eating peanuts and shitting on the tile while giving me looks of disgust.
You’re the one shitting on the floor, elephant, don’t give me that look.
Carter spreads his legs out on either side of me, reaches over and grabs onto both of my ankles, unwinds my legs, and pulls me across the floor to him. He re-hooks my ankles together behind his back and puts his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to look him in the eyes.