Driving me crazy

                                 
                                    Driving me Crazy

Her finger tips grazed the top of the bag.
"Damn, come on!", she hissed.

Megan’s size-eighteen ass had become wedged under the steering column of her tiny two doored Honda Civic preventing her from reaching any further into the backseat. She bent her elbow and managed to close two fingers over-top of the thin plastic material.

"Come to mama…", she whispered to herself.

The bag lifted off of the seat for a moment before it fell to the floor of the car with a thud.

"Shit."

Megan’s eyes flew to her rear view mirror.  "Oh please...don't…I’ll do anything".

His eyes remained closed.

She let out a breath. How could something this small wield so much power.

He had finally fallen asleep after thirty-four laps around town; he had screamed loud enough to bring tears to her eyes for thirty-three of them. Gerald had been like this since birth. He stuck his head out of her body, sucked in a big breath of crying and hadn't finished exhaling for the six weeks since his birth. He cried when she rocked him, he cried when she walked him, he cried when she put him in the baby swing, he cried when she vacuumed and he even managed to cry while he sucked. The only time he didn't cry was when he slept. The only way to put him to sleep with any kind of speed, was to drive. She looked at him again. He was a beautiful BABY, she smiled to herself.  She felt a glimmer of hope, and for the first time since his birth,  she wondered if maybe it would be okay.

Forced to wear her husband’s sweat pants and t-shirt, she had gained ninety-seven pounds while pregnant and her scale hadn’t moved since his birth. She was supposed to be on her way to the ‘Baby and Mom’ fitness CLASS at the YWCA. She went last week and saw them, the Mothers with their perfect,  smiling babies and there she was with Gerald, red faced and screaming from the moment they arrived and not stopping until the drive home. They hated her. She didn't think they were real mothers; they looked too good. Dan had encouraged her to go back, and after he reminded her that the extra ninety-seven pounds that she was carrying was the exact weight of the super model they had seen on a television program the night before, she had promised.

Her fingers searched blindly for the bag of chocolate bars; she didn't dare pull over. The last time she had stopped too soon after he fell asleep, he had woken and cried until he projectile-vomited all over her car. After that, he was so wound up he didn’t sleep all that night.  She had seriously considered throwing herself out of the window.

While shopping earlier that day she had talked herself into purchasing the giant-size bag of mini chocolate bars. It was a good deal, she had told herself, and she would be prepared for Halloween. The only problem was, Halloween wasn't for another month and she knew she’d have them eaten by tomorrow.  She ran her hand over her stomach. She didn’t fit any of her old clothes and she refused to wear her maternity things. She would rather die. Last week she had noticed her arms resting on her belly - something her over-weight Mother and Grandmother had both done.  It had frightened her.

Maybe she should go to the class. Summer would be here before she knew it and when it was 87 Fahrenheit and full-on humidity, she’d wither in the heat.

She’d go, she thought, work hard and sweat off some inches. Gerald had been asleep for long enough; once he was this deep, he was almost bomb proof. She started to feel excited about the possibility of returning to some kind of normalcy. She pulled into the YWCA parking lot and turned off her engine and Gerald didn’t make a sound. She got out of the car, swung the diaper bag over her shoulder and smiling, opened the back door.

Somewhere off in the distance, she heard it and her blood turned cold. With sirens wailing and lights flashing wildly, a FIRE ENGINE was coming and there was nothing she could do about it. For a moment, she had considered throwing herself in front of it to try and block the sound.

She watched and waited for Gerald’s mouth to open and for the tidal wave of sound and mucus to burst forth from the depths of his being but it didn’t. He didn’t move; he didn’t even twitch. She took it as a sign. Gerald was a good baby and it would be okay. She would lose the weight and Dan wouldn’t leave her  - a fear she had harbored since he had seen her naked after a shower, and had walked out of the bathroom without a word. She felt a confidence she hadn’t felt since he was born, hell, maybe since she had become pregnant. She leaned down to unbuckle the car seat and noticed the bag of chocolate bars on the floor of the backseat. She thought it ironic that the number of bars in the value pack, ninety-seven, matched both the pounds she needed to lose and the weight of the supermodel they had seen on television. She lifted the bag onto her lap and sat on the seat beside Gerald.
She wouldn’t be like her Grandmother, or like her Mother, she declared to herself, and before she had thought it through, she ripped open the bag with a violent tug.

Gerald’s eyes flew open, and it was during the second of silence before the storm hit, as his little face reddened and his tiny lungs filled with air, that she realized her life, as she had known it, was over and was never coming back. She shoved the first of the 97 bars into her mouth and began to chew.

The End

Word count 997