Speak of the Devil

“Excuse me?”
“Carly, with the symptoms you’ve described to me, you could definitely be pregnant.”
“I can’t be. I just can’t.”
“Alright, well if you can’t believe it from me, then urinate on a pregnancy test. Those things are one hundred percent accurate.”
“How did this even happen to me…” I babbled to myself.
“Well, when a man and a woman have a strong attraction to each other, they,”
“I know how it happens! I just don’t know how I let him do that. I mean, why him? I could’ve met someone else.”
“Fate is fate. Things like that happen to a lot of women.” I coughed out a sigh of anguish.
“Yeah…I guess. I’ll figure out a way to deal with this.”
“Good, good, hope you make some progress. Call me if anything’s up.”
“Got it Kier. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, bye.” I hung the phone up. What to do. I didn’t believe that peeing on a plastic stick would tell me if I’m pregnant or not. But I had no other choice. I bolted into my room and chose some clothes out to wear. I yanked out a pair of stonewashed jeans and a plain jet black t-shirt. I didn’t bother to prod my contacts into my eyes because I knew I’d end up going out, coming back, peeing on the stick and going back to sleep or just laying around.

By the time I had disembarked at the store, a light rain began to fall. I barreled into a local general store, scrambling through aisle after aisle raking through the shelves to find a pregnancy test. I had no luck of finding the stick in the first several aisles, but once I entered the fourth aisle, I caught the sight of a home pregnancy test on the highest shelf. I was never a high jumper. I leaped once with my hand elongated out ahead me, but I soon dropped back down to the floor.
“Damn it.” I leaped again, but there was no chance of me catching it. Thoughts and ideas bubbled in my head as I tried to capture the test. “I have to use my resources.” I burbled as I caught a double-take at the shelf that held very few items below it. “I could…climb that. I guess.” I assumed as I began clambering up the empty shelves up to the tiny box that held the answer to my problem. “Let’s hope I don’t break my neck while I do this.” I ascended higher and higher until I finally reached a high point. I glommed my sweating palm around it. As soon as I held it safely in my hand, I heard a creaking sound below me. “Oh shit.” The shelves collapsed from my pressure and sent me crashing down. I landed flat on my back with an obstreperous sound. “It’s all good over here.” I shouted out to the clerk who came shooting over to the aisle with miscellaneous items scattered about. I helped myself up and calmed myself. I abandoned the mess for the employees to clean up as I casually waltzed over to the counter where the clerk returned to. I placed the pregnancy test on the counter and swiped out my wallet. I peeled several bills out and pushed them towards the clerk.
“That’ll be $13.95, miss.” The clerk scolded as he bagged the box in a flimsy plastic bag.
“Thank you, sir.” I hissed as I filched the bag off the counter. I zipped out the door and back home in the now pouring rain.

After twenty minutes of driving at a moderate speed in the dangerous weather, I sprung into my front door, lobbed my keys into the window sill, and escaped to the bathroom and banged the door shut. I hunkered on the toilet, ripped open the bag and tore open the packaging of the box. I bunked the box to the side as a set of directions sundered down to the ground next to the box. I held the stick with a clueless expression on my face as I gathered the packet and read through the instructions over and over again.
“I just gotta pee on this and it’ll tell me if I’m pregnant or not within a minute? Damn, technology these days is crazy.” I pattered as I carelessly let the pamphlet drop to the rug. I unzipped my pants, let my panties slip down and spread my legs. “Wait…I don’t need to pee.” I realized as I tugged my panties back up, left the stick remaining on the floor and dragged my feet into the kitchen. I never kept a glass in the bathroom due to some incidents I had when I was a child.

The chill of the air conditioner made shivers crack up my spine and froze my nerves as I skidded into the kitchen. I revolved the refrigerator door open and bent over for an unsealed bottle of water that I had probably drank a few days ago. At the back of the fridge, I alluded a bottle with motley speckles piling on top of each other at the base. “It’ll have to do.” I declared as I reached back and drew out the bottle by its cap. I observed the particles that were floating around at the bottom and gulped at the sight of the brown spots that flickered and swam about as I shook the bottle. Second thoughts aroused my mind. Whatever, I had to find out. I twisted the bottle cap up and flipped it off. I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as possible and slurped up the dirty water. As soon as I let the mouth of the bottle leave my lips, I automatically had to pee. I deserted the bottle on my tiled floor and allowed the refrigerator door slam itself shut.

I fled into the bathroom for the second time and locked the door. I let my panties skate down my lengthy legs and crossed my legs as I panicked at the missing test. I was so foolish; the test stick was laying dead in front of me.

I hooked onto the stick, expanded my legs out, stuck the test under me and urinated. I let myself go. Until I lost my senses and peed on my hand.
“Oh my freaking gosh! I am so retarded!” I yipped as I slightly pulled my hand out and aimed the test under me again. Once I completed my first task, I brought the test out of the darkness and unfolded the instructions with my feet. I squinted my eyes to read the next step. “Ok, I gotta put this thing on a tissue apparently…” I gently wiggled it for it to dry. I tugged out a tissue from a box behind me and laid the saturated test on the cushioned sheet. I rested the test on the top cover of the toilet and promptly stood up to tidy myself up.

I zipped up my pants and cleansed my hands thoroughly with blazing hot water. I toweled my hands and shook them out to get air running over my skin. I inspected the results for the test just as the directions said I could. “It look like a division sign.” I blurted out as I bent down to check the signs that the directions had listed. “What does the reddish sign mean?” I scrolled through the whole list and there was nothing. I glimmered my eyes closer to the paper to translate that a pink plus sign means I was positive. I crumbled the notes in my hand as my hand constricted the positive test in my palm. I quivered with anger and steam flared out of my ears. Just as I was having my break down, the phone rings like it did on occasion. I disabled the paper and plastic unit as I answered the ring.
I unhooked the phone from the charger.

“Hello?” I grouched unhappily.
“Hello, Carly? It’s Monte.” Speak of the devil.
“You.”
“Um, what?”
“You did this to me!”
“Did what?”
“You…you…you…”
“I what?”
“You got me pregnant! You did this all to me, all the pain I had to go through and all the questions I had to ask myself, I thought I had some sort of rare case of Abetalipoproteinemia or something! Non posso crederla, lei il figlio di una femmina, lei mi ha preso incinta!” I always shouted in Italian when I was extremely angry. With my grandfather being full-blooded Italian and able to speak it fully and having to listen to a number of Italian patients speak; I ended up teaching myself the language. I hung onto the language ever since I translated a patient straight out of Italy. “Nope…Nope…” Monte consumed all my screaming and yelling and foreign language.

“I have no clue what you just said, but the last part with all the foreign stuff sounded hot.”
“That’s not the point! I’m holding your child inside me!”
“Ok, what’s the big deal, we can just have it together.”
“What’s the big deal?! I’ll tell you what the big deal is Monte! The big deal is that I’m not your wife and I can’t be this child’s mother!”
“Why not?”
“Because, Monte, I’m way crazy and wild to have a child running around in my house where everything can break.” Monte broke out laughing. “This isn’t funny Monte!”
“You’re not crazy or wild…You’re just saying that.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, I’m just saying you’re making excuses.”
“You little…”
“Oops…I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You’re the one that made the excuse to have sex with me in the first place! Just because we were drunk didn’t mean you had to screw me!”
“Well, we did, so what are we going to do about it now if we can’t raise a child?”
“We can either…put it up for adoption, or…I can get an abortion.”
“We can’t kill it! It has its rights as a human being to live!”
“Alright, would you stop calling her an ‘it’? That just makes me worse.”
“So now it’s a girl.”

“It’ll be a girl unless we find out it’s a boy!”
“Ok, ok. But I don’t think we should put it-her up for adoption either.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m the father I should have a say in what I think we should do with her.”
“Who’s the one squeezing her out?”
“You make it sound like you’re laying an egg or something.”
“I’m not! I’m the one that has to deliver her though!”
“Anyway, I believe I should have a say in what we should do with her.”
“Fine, fine, we’ll keep her. But you have to promise me that you’ll raise her yourself.”
“That’s no fair at all.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re the one who ‘squeezed her out’ so you should be taking care of her.”
“Don’t mock me! And now it’s unfair for me to have to raise the child myself!”
“Ok then…” he paused and let out an exasperating sigh. “We’ll just have to raise her together.”
“Fine. We’ll raise her together. But I don’t like it.”
“It’s either we raise her with each other or we don’t raise her at all.”
“Ok, ok, we’ll raise her together.”
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Ok Mama, Daddy’s comin’ home in a little bit. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Don’t call me Mama!”
“Bye baby.” Ugh. Baby. I hate that word. But I hated being called ‘Mama’ more.