Drowning

Like a first period, or first time shaving your legs, a first pregnancy scare is another one of those frightening and awkward experiences that girls have. My best friend, Sally, had had three pregnancy scares in her life and told me not to worry.
“It happens,” she shrugged. “Take a test. You’ll be fine.”
I felt completely embarrassed when I handed the CVS cashier the Clearblue pregnancy test. She was an older woman, probably with high moral standards, who likely thought I was just another college slut who had drunk, unprotected sex. I didn’t look at her as she rang me up, just handed her my credit card and got out of the store and into the cold, early April afternoon as soon as I could.
I took the test right away and it came back positive. Even then, I didn’t worry too much. My roommate, Darlene, told me, “That happened to me once. Try buying a different brand.”
The same day and same cashier wrung up my two for the price of one e.p.t. test. Looking at me, she said, “Will this be all?”
“Yeah,” I replied, then blurted out, “My friend thinks she’s pregnant. It’s for her.”
The lady just shrugged, handing me the plastic bag that held my fate. Blushing, I quickly left, making a mental note to never go back to that CVS again.
I took both tests as soon as I got back to my room. I couldn’t look and asked Darlene what they said. I could tell just from the pitying look on her face that I was screwed.
Rubbing my back as I buried my face into my hands, she said,” Look at the bright side. Pete’s a great guy. He’ll help you through this.”

When Pete told me, “Maggie, I love you. I promise I will help you and support you with whatever you decide to do,” I thought he meant it. Still, when I expressed my interests in getting an abortion he told me, “I don’t know. I really don’t feel comfortable with that.”
“I don’t either!” I was mad at him. I wanted him to just decide what to do, to take the weight of this problem off my shoulders. “I don’t like the idea of abortion either, and I don’t feel so hot about adoption, but I also don’t want to ruin my life by having a baby!”
I began to cry and he hugged me, burying my face into the shoulder of his sweatshirt. “I don’t know what to do,” I mumbled. “This is too hard.” Pete held me, stroking my hair and letting me wipe my tears on his shirt.
“It will be okay, I promise.” He tilted my face upwards to look him in the eye. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Pete was a great guy and he probably would be a great father. At that moment, it was the first, and basically only, time I didn’t feel completely lonely in this whole pregnancy thing. He held me close to him again and wiped away the tears that fell down my face. I couldn’t have an abortion. He loved me, and I knew he would stand by me and I couldn’t do that to him.


It was June 27th and my 20th birthday. Sally, Pete and I had gone to Cape Cod to stay with our friend, Mike. His parents had a cottage there and said we could all stay there while they were in Colorado for the last two weeks of June.
I have a love-hate relationship with the beach. Nothing suits me better than falling asleep in the sun on the warm, soft sand or walking along the edge of the water at low tide and seeing the tiny hermit crabs and fish swimming and crawling around in the small pools of water. Even as an adult I loved to build sand castles and walk on the jagged rocks of the jetty, avoiding the barnacles while looking at the oysters and snails. I love almost everything about the beach.
Almost. The water terrifies me.
I don’t remember how it started or why I developed an intense fear for deep, murky water. However, I could remember being 12 years old and at a family gathering in Vermont and having my first panic attack. I had jumped off the cement dock into a lake crowded by my cousins, expecting to bounce off a sandy bottom back to the surface. But the water was deeper than I thought and I didn’t feel my feet touch the bottom; they only rubbed against a jagged rock. After hurriedly paddling my way to the top I found it crowded with kicking feet, splashing arms and oversized inner tubes, blocking my way to air. I felt my chest constricting and my heart beating madly as I searched for an alternate route to the surface. I opened my eyes saw only an eternity of black water. Shaking and gasping for breath, my mouth full of the dirty taste of the lake, I pushed through the crowd of people and I got out of the water immediately a few feet from where. I haven’t been in a lake since. Even then I didn’t fully understand my fear. I thought it was just one bad experience.
I never went out past my hips in the ocean, if I even went that far. I usually just avoided the water. I would spend most of the time lying on a towel reading, sleeping or just hanging out. At that moment I was standing on the damp sand, letting the freezing water wash over my toes while I watched Pete dive into a wave.
“Come on, Mag!” he called. “The water’s great!”
“No thanks,” I yelled back. I had heard rumors that great white sharks were found off the coast of Massachusetts and that was enough for me to want to stay out. Not only that, but I felt fat and didn’t feel like strutting around in a skin tight bathing suit. Every day I would stand in front of a mirror and scrutinize myself and my growing belly. I had reached the point where if you looked closely you might wonder if I was pregnant or just a little fat. I felt huge, surrendering my body to t-shirts and elastic waisted pants and shorts, and I wasn’t even four months along yet.
I was writing my name in the sand with my toe as Pete got out of the ocean. I stood there while the tiny waves crept up and washed my signature away, when Pete joined me after drying off. We were going to go for a walk.
After walking for a minute or two, Pete suddenly handed me a small, black box. “Happy birthday,” he said. I looked at him. He was biting his lip. “Open it.”
Lifting the lid, I saw a ring, gold with a small, round diamond, nestled in the white satin folds of the box. When I looked back at Pete, he was bent on one knee, taking my hand into his. I wasn’t sure if I should roll my eyes, smile or cry, and instead just stared at him.
“Maggie, I love you,” he began. “I’ve been thinking about us, and how we’ve been together over a year, and now we’re having a baby, and I realized I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
I couldn’t believe what was happening. I just stared and his eyes shifted uncomfortably on me.
“Marry you?” I asked.
He nodded. “I love you, Maggie, I really do.”
A wave of nausea passed through my body. He stared at me with pleading eyes. I thought of the money he spent on the ring, the way he borrowed a friend’s car to take me a free clinic, how he hung up the ultrasound picture on a bulletin board in his room and the way he stared into my eyes and I knew he really loved me.
“I love you, too,” I replied, knowing that for me I was saying that phrase out of habit and because I didn’t know what else to say. I felt like I owed him something back, something real. And so, I said, “I’ll marry you.”


There was a celebration that night, partly for my birthday, partly for the engagement and partly because everyone likes a party. Mike bought a keg and invited some of his friends who also flock to the coast in the summer. He offered me a beer, and I had to remind him that I couldn’t drink since I was pregnant.
“I’m so happy for you guys!” Sally said for the twelfth time that night, as she took a sip from her fifth plastic cup of beer. “Do I get to be a bridesmaid?”
“Of course,” I replied, smiling.
“Can I help plan it and everything too?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I don’t know how much there will be to plan, I want to keep it as small as possible.”
“Oh, come on, a huge wedding would be so much fun!” Pete said from behind me. He had been drinking too, though he wasn’t nearly as tipsy as Sally.
“Yeah, but it will also be expensive,” I reminded him. “I honestly think it might be best if we just elope, or else just have a small ceremony with a few people.”
“Where’s the fun in that though?” Pete asked.
“Who cares? We have a baby coming and need to save money.”
“Aww, but I want a huge wedding!” he insisted, taking a gulp of his beer. I watched Sally head back over to the keg to get another drink. “Come on, don’t you want a big, fancy wedding, too?”
“Well, yeah,” I replied. “I’ve been planning my wedding since I was five years old. But we really just can’t afford anything extravagant.”
“We’ll manage,” Pete said. “I want you to have the wedding you’ve always wanted.”
“Pete, it’s just not realistic,” I replied, starting to get annoyed. “I’ve been thinking, and we really need to save money. I don’t even think I’ll have health insurance anymore since I’m dropping out of college. As soon as I get back to Worcester I’m going to start applying for a second job somewhere.”
“Whatever, our parents will help us out. It’ll be okay.”
“It’s going to be really hard,” I said. “Its going to be hard enough to afford this baby, not to mention a wedding, and you really didn’t need to spend money on a diamond ring—“
“It probably wasn’t too expensive,” Sally said, rejoining us. “Look on the bright side – it’s a really small diamond!”
I laughed, but Pete seemed worried. “Maggie, I don’t want you to be so stressed out over this. I want you to be excited instead!”
“I am excited.”
“You don’t seem it, you seem worried instead. Let me handle it. Don’t worry about money!”
“Just let me worry, please,” I told him. “One of us needs to.”
“Mag, I have it under control, let me do the worrying. Just enjoy the party!”
“Stop doing stuff for me!” I suddenly cried. Sally stopped her drunk giggling and stared at me. “Just let me worry, okay?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but I wasn’t able to stick around and listen, and I didn’t care. I suddenly felt like I had to throw up. Without giving an explanation I walked over to the bathroom.
“Someone’s puking in there,” Mike told me, as he stood outside the door. “Just use the bathroom upstairs.”
I walked away and went outside instead of upstairs, where I proceeded to wretch into a rhododendron bush. I threw up until my stomach was empty, until it contracted with dry heaves. I caught my breath, looking into the dark recesses of the plant and resting my hands on my knees. Feeling gross, I washed my face with the hose outside, the one that is kept there so we can wash the sand off our feet before we go into the house. The cold water pooled into my hands and I splashed my sweaty face, feeling better almost instantly. I drank some of the water too, not wanting to go back inside to get a cup.
I walked down the end of the driveway to the street. At the end of the road was a set of old stairs that lead over the sand dunes and down to the beach. I went down the stairs, feeling the chilled wood under my bare feet. I didn’t feel like going back to the party to get shoes. The sand of the beach was cold and felt almost like it was wet. The beach was empty except for a few seagulls that picked food out of a metal trash can. Piles of seaweed were washed up on shore, and I remembered being a kid and how my sister and I always had seaweed fights, putting it on top of each other’s heads sticking it down the backs of each other’s bathing suits.
I remembered the voicemail I got earlier that day, my parents singing “Happy Birthday” to me and warning me not to party too hard. They were going to be so disappointed in me once they knew the real reason I wasn’t partying.
I had been trying not to think of my parents and how mad they were going to be. All I wanted to do right then was crawl up into my mother’s lap like I was a little girl again. I imagined her pushing me away when she found out I was pregnant. I’d have a baby of my own and I wondered if she would still think of me as her baby. The thought brought tears to my eyes. I hoped they would at least be glad Pete and I were going to get married.
Ugh. Married. I sank down in the sand, lying back and resting my hand on my belly. Placing my hands on my stomach had become an automatic reaction for me, maybe, as if in some subconscious way I was protecting this fetus-thing that was growing inside me. It felt weird to care about it. So much was going on. The ring, the baby, the party, the wedding, the parents – it all felt like too much. These were decisions and problems I thought I would be facing in years when I would be middle aged and able to deal with them. But not now, not as a knocked up college drop out, engaged to a guy I had agreed to marry because I felt bad. I felt sick again, and I closed my eyes, waiting for it to pass. It wasn’t just morning sickness, it was all day sickness. The doctor said this meant the baby was healthy. All I knew was I felt like shit.

The sound of the waves that was so soothing before was now ominous and scary. They banged onto the ground, angry white foam eating the sand, dragging the seaweed back out to the depths of its deep, dark water. The thought of that alone was enough to make me shiver.
The waves continued to crash, tearing and redefining the shore line every time. The sky was dark, and I suddenly felt nervous. I closed my eyes again and tried to take a few deep breaths, but when I looked around again the darkness only seemed closer and my lungs struggled to breathe in the ocean air.
I was barely twenty years old. I had hardly any work experience, less than a thousand dollars in my bank account and a boyfriend who thought the solution to all our problems was to get married. I felt submerged, flooded with the stress of what to do. Darkness pressed on and my heart began to beat faster. I tried to take another deep breath, but could only hear the sound of the waves and feel the chill of the air. I sat up quickly, clasping my hands together, trying to think of something besides my stress. I took a raspy breath, and my hands fumbled together, fingers grazing the cold diamond ring. I felt like I was drowning and I wasn’t even in the water.
I pulled off the ring, kneeling over in the sand. I heard the screech of a seagull nearby and I looked over, suddenly feeling the panic that had taken over my whole body decrease. It dried up, leaving me with a tired ache and relief filling my lungs. I got up off the sand, looking at the ring in the palm of my hand. I headed over to the stairs, knowing that I couldn’t live like this. I just didn’t know how I was going to tell Pete that he was weighing me down, drowning me in a pool of a life I wasn’t ready for.