The Moths and Other Stories by Helena María Viramontes Read Free Book Online Page A

STUPID, stupid! Virgins have babies, too. Enough Alice. Keep warm, Alice. No sex, Alice. Punishing me. For loving, God? Fucking, Alice. Fucking Alice. Stop it, Alice. Alice. Grow up, not out.
    Alice.
    God isn’t pregnant.
    Alice.
    â€œAlice. Alice Johnson.”
    â€œMe.” I nod my head and smile. I think I’m going to win.
    â€œThen you must be Cynthia Simmons.” The girl with the mayonnaise hair barely nods her head. “It sure is cold in here…” I smile in agreement. I don’t feel like small talk. “My name is Kathy.” She resembles a small elf. A petite and skinny girl wearing an orange dress and white tights that gather at her bony knees. “…Follow me, please…” We follow her like zombies into another larger room. On one side, test tubes, desk lights, bottles; on the other, desks and telephones. The room was probably a kitchen before. Cabinets, like Terry’s kitchen.
    â€œHow do I realize these things? Y’know the feeling. I was a whole invisible. I felt so light, I automatically took everything lightly. The responsibility of having a child didn’t fit into my scheme of loving. To me, to me, Terry…” She paused to take another sip of jasmine tea. The light of the kitchen made a round, bright ring on the table where Alice put her cup down. “…love was satisfaction, happiness, and all that other bullshit, not babies.” Terry gestured mocking amazement with a dull smirk which impelled Alice to defend herself. “Babies, yea, sure, but not in the real sense. Not me.”
    Terry sat across from her and munched on graham crackers throughout the evening. Alice searched for some evidence of sympathetic understanding from her, but all Terry seemed to do was munch slowly on a cracker, once in a while dipping it into her tea.
    â€œRelax, Alice. My God, you would think it was the end of the world.” She said it with such an air of nonchalance thatAlice became angry, and yet comforted by her words. (Tell me what to do.) “How does Mike feel about it?”
    â€œI haven’t really told him…I mean, nothing definite. This is all so unreal.” She tried to hide the tears from Terry. A moment later Terry stood up from the table. Alice’s eyes followed her to the living room. She picked up her phone book and, with the slowness of thick molasses, returned to her chair. She opened the book. “Here, take this number down…”
    â€œWhat’s this? Dial-A-Prayer?” Neither of them laughed. Alice copied the number down, hesitating to ask her what place it belonged to, but nonetheless trusting Terry’s experience and age. She thought of Terry as an experienced woman at twenty-one. She was a big-boned female with high cheekbones that did not give her face away to any genre of feeling. Yet, Terry was sensuously beautiful. She was her own best friend and took responsibility for her actions. Her coolness in the hottest situations always troubled Alice. She knew Terry concealed all her emotions behind a facade, an almost perfect unbreakable mask, and she hoped to see the day her flowing warmth would turn into blazes unchecked.
    Terry was Alice’s best friend.
    â€œIt’s to the Woman’s Abortion Referral Center, in case…” and that was all it had come to.
    â€œWhy are you so sure I want an abortion?”
    â€œYou don’t?”
    â€œI just haven’t made up my mind yet.” Terry picked up a cracker and munched on it. Alice knew what was coming.
    â€œWe both know you can’t have a child. You’re young and dreamy. That won’t help you or your child any. Look, you’ll stew and brood and feel pitiful and pray until your knees chap, but in the end, you’ll decide on the abortion. So why not cut out all this silliness.”
    â€œI wish it were all that easy. But you wouldn’t know how it feels. I wish it were…” Alice couldn’t