The Light in the Wound (10 page)

He shuddered violently and caressed my face when it was all over. I clung to him as he emptied himself inside of me.

“Issy, I can’t take you being here like this when I’m not around. Can you help me out with this? Maybe take a little break from this until I’m more comfortable with it?” he muttered.

“Jess, I promise I won’t tie my shirt up anymore. I’ll wear normal loose-fitting clothes over my britches if that’s what’s bothering you,” I answered, still trying to make sense of what he meant.

“No, it’s more than that. I don’t think I can take knowing that everyone is watching you compete.”

I never showed up for the regionals. I backed out of the competition altogether. I wanted to prove to Jesse that these were merely small spaces in me that he could easily fill. I cried for two weeks after we sold Pepe to a little girl who had big dreams of training for the Olympics. I couldn’t compare Jesse to a pet, an animal. No one ever wanted me like Jesse did. I would give up anything and everything to be with him.

Our senior year of high school came and went, with Jesse and I trying to spend as much time together as we could. I had no other activities now, so I would spend my time waiting for him to let me know what the plans were for the upcoming weekends. My mother and I were as close as we had ever been. Our roles had shifted and I was the one hellbent on taking care of her. She was fragile and sensitive and hurt and angry all the time. Her boyfriend worked long hours and never seemed to be able to give her the attention that she needed. It remained a known fact that she was heavily medicated on her prescription pills, but when she was lucid, she seemed like a normal person.

Jesse spent many hours over at our home and became part of our family. Everything with Jesse was a plan, a goal, and I was happy to assume that I would be a part of the end prize, no matter what it was. He was awarded the baseball scholarship he tried out for and was going to attend a local university in the city. I applied to a few colleges and decided to become an Economics major. There was nothing that I wanted more than to go to the same school as him.

Evie was seriously dating someone much older than her named Seth. He was a professional dancer and not exactly someone my family wanted to see her end up with. Alicia was in a relationship with a guy who was in the same class as Jesse. We sometimes triple dated, but even that was quite a rarity. The guys were just such different characters that my sisters and I never really wanted to force the issue of getting them all together. Alicia was also very secretive and went over to Carter’s house quite often. No one wanted to stay at our house more than necessary, because of the volatile situation we were all tiptoeing around between my mother and her boyfriend.

Alicia continued to be an honor student and was set to graduate Magna Cum Laude at our high school. She also applied at the same school that Jesse was accepted to for a different specialty in the same Engineering field. Whereas my grades were average, I didn’t really try that hard and spent more time writing poems and letters to Jesse than taking my studies seriously.

One month before graduation, Jesse and I were sitting in the living room watching a rerun of Beverly Hills 90210. Jesse had practically moved in during the week that my mother had taken off on a shopping junket to Hong Kong with her friends. Alicia showed up unexpectedly, her eyes bleary and swollen as she walked silently toward us, looking at me with a pained stare that never left my gaze.

“Isa, when is Mom arriving? Do we have a way of reaching her in Hong Kong?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse and she was obviously very nervous.

“Nope. She arrives tonight, though. What’s up, Ali?”

Alicia reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out a pink slip of paper, her hands shaking as she passed it to me.

Weird. It was a little strip folded up in sixteenths. I slowly unfurled it. It contained one single word written in blue ink:

POSITIVE

My protective instinct kicked in full blast. Jesse and I were immediately on our feet surrounding her, holding her.

“Ali, don’t cry. It’s okay. We’ll help you figure out what to do,” I said with so much confidence that it made me sob.

Jesse was rubbing her back, glancing at me from time to time.

“Isa, please help me talk to Mom. I want to keep the baby. Carter said he’d support whatever my decision is.”

“Of course, Ali, we’ll do everything we can to help take care of this baby.”

Jesse nodded at me, his expressive eyes filled with worry.

I excused myself for a moment and calmly walked upstairs to my bedroom. As soon as I closed the door, I sat at the edge of my bed and cried. I didn’t cry for Alicia, but for myself. More than anything, I wished that it were me. I was filled with jealousy at the thought of Alicia having something of Carter forever. I wished that I were having Jesse’s baby instead.

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

—L. Frank Baum

That evening, my mother walked in from the airport as Ali and I sat in the living room to wait for her. Alicia paced back and forth as we heard the car enter the driveway. She walked in looking rested and refreshed.

“Mom, we have to tell you something,” I started out, with Alicia squeezing my hand so tightly I thought it was going to fall off due to lack of circulation. “Alicia is pregnant.”

“Who? You, Isabel? You’re pregnant?”

“No, Mom. Alicia is.”

“Isabel,
you
?”

“NO, MOM! NOT Isabel!!! I am. I am pregnant!” Alicia stepped in front of me and held on to my mother’s shoulders, shaking them slightly. This time she had no tears and was determined to show my mother that she had it all figured out. I wasn’t even listening to their conversation. I was incensed by the fact that my mother’s mind was programmed to think I would be the one to make that mistake.

Trying to prove everyone wrong is getting to be an impossible task for me. I’ve been stereotyped, even by the person whose past has doomed me to my future.
It hurt me so much to realize that she, too, had very low expectations of me.

Claudia Holtzer could not stop saying that she was too young to be a grandmother. In all seriousness, however, my mother turned into the most supportive ally that Alicia could have ever imagined. Two weeks after my mother got the news, two men showed up at Carter’s doorstep at 3:00 A.M. They then went to pick up Alicia and both were whisked to a judge’s home where they were married. My mother set up their living quarters in our home. Carter was going to continue to go to school while Alicia was going to have the baby and enroll in university one year later.

This event had such the opposite effect on Jesse. Two words to describe him were: Freaked. Out.

“Issy, we have to be super careful now. What happened to Alicia can’t happen to us. I have so many plans for our future. I can’t be sidetracked by this, okay? You’re well protected, right?”

Betty and I were both seeing an older cousin of hers, who despite his reluctance to supply us with our prescriptions, thought it his responsibility as a doctor to keep us safe rather than sorry.

“Don’t worry about it, Jesse. If you want, we can even abstain for all I care.”

I was hurt and insulted. We actually did abstain for a few weeks. Jesse found many inventive and creative ways to make sure that we were both fulfilled without actually having sexual intercourse. It took a brilliantly orchestrated plan on my part to get him to lose himself one night and for us to get back to normal. By this time, I knew how Jesse’s mind and heart worked and the stars magically aligned for me one night at a party we attended. It involved being relentlessly pursued by a boy from another school who wouldn’t leave my side. All I had to do was ignore Jesse’s fuming looks as the night wore on. As soon as Jesse saw what was happening, he quickly took me home, re-staked his claim and made me promise that I was his, and only his, forever.

When I think back to the past, I don’t have an answer as to why I felt so brazen about our physical relationship.