Pregnant Pause by Han Nolan Read Free Book Online Page B

trouble, so before daylight I got myself up again and trudged back to the cabin. I felt too hot and my butt was sore from where it had been sitting with the rim of the toilet seat wrapped around it. I could feel a deep ridge in my skin there that hurt to touch. I guess I won't be doing that again, but something has to change. Maybe I can find a pot to pee in and put it under my bed. I felt like I was the one who had been out all night drinking.
    Lam wasn't home when I returned to the cabin, but about a half hour later he staggers in and when he sees me sitting on the couch fanning myself with our marriage certificate, he puts his finger to his mouth. "Shhh," he says. "Don't want to make up the missus—I mean, wake up the wissus." He laughs. "You know what I mean."
    "Yeah, I sure do." I drop the certificate on the floor and sit with my arms crossed over my belly and my feet up on the trunk. Suddenly I see myself years from now, maybe I'm fifty years old, and Lam is still coming in at all hours, drunk and talking stupid, and I'm sitting just like this. The thought is so depressing I burst into tears, and Lam stumbles over and, half falling on the trunk and half on me, tries to comfort me. "Hey, baby, it's okay. Whassa matter? It's okay. Hey."
    I lean away from him. He smells of B.O. and beer. "Lam, just go away. I'm too tired and too depressed for this," I cry.
    "So go to bed. It's still earl—early." He pets my head and burps and laughs, and then he cries, too, and reaches out to me for some sympathy. I lean farther away from him, but not far enough, because then he throws up—not outside in front of the campers, not in front of his parents, but on me. His warm, stinkin' barf lands all over my arms, shirt, shorts, legs, and even my bathrobe, which I had taken off and Lam is half sitting on. I cry even harder and I think of my parents in Kenya, and I miss them, and I want them to come home and take care of me, and I wonder how and when life had gotten so complicated.
    Lam is laughing and crying at the same time. He crawls off of me while I just sit there with my arms up in the air trying not to get any more vomit on me than necessary. I would have jumped up, only I'm
pregnant!
So I sit there while Lam in all his fog tries to figure out what to do.
    I ever so slowly get myself to my feet. "Go get some wet paper towels from the bathroom or maybe the kitchen, Lam. Or wait, if the kitchen is open, get a wet cloth or a mop—yeah, a mop. Ask for a mop."
    Lam nods and staggers to the door. I look at my watch. Just after five. "Wait. The kitchen won't be open. You've gotta go to your parents' cabin. Yeah, go there. They've got a bathroom and a kitchen—unlike us. Go there."
    Lam blinks at me. "No way. No way. Come on. They—they'll kill me if they smee me like this—I mean smee lee like—I feel sick." He leans over like he's going to puke again.
    "Lam! Do it! Just do it!" I yell this loud enough to wake up the whole camp, but I don't care.
    Lam stumbles out the door, and I stare after him. I don't know what to do. I have nothing to clean the mess up with, but hiking all the way up to the bathroom without a robe on feels too risky, what with the MIL and FIL about to be wakened. All I can think to do is to go to the little square windows that run the length of two sides of the cabin and open them all up to air out the place. They're made of wood and I realize that they open from the outside, because window screens block me from getting at them on the inside. I think about getting into some other clothes but I have so few that fit me and I don't want to get any vomit on them. I figure going outside naked is out of the question, and although it's tempting to put on something of Lam's, I decide that's kind of mean, so I decide to risk it and go as I am to open the windows.
    On the outside the windows are pretty high up so I have to find a rock or something to stand on to reach them. I find a log that's set up