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by Rene Ohana
I drop a tired copy of Seventeen on the waiting room table in front of me, watch dust bunnies race across the linoleum floor toward the lopsided plastic Christmas tree in the corner, and wonder how much longer until I become a big sister. You’d think the waiting room in labor and delivery would be bubbling with pink and family. I guess not.
Next to me, Susan, who’s in grandma hyperdrive, click-clicks at her knitting with her pale fingers, thick at the knuckles. Until recently, she’s been pretty cool, especially for a step-grandmother. Rafted the Colorado on her last birthday. Raises seeing-eye dogs. Owns a Tae Kwon Do studio. Even gave me lessons until three years ago, when all the other girls in the class switched to modern dance and I decided I wasn’t cool with being the only girl in a class of twelve-year-old boys. Yuck.
But to look at her now, all yarn and baby brain, I wouldn’t be surprised if she started wearing those horrible holiday sweaters that are 50 percent off even in December. Three fuzzy cats singing Meowy Christmas.
I imagine what Susan’s fridge will look like a month from now, covered in baby pictures. The baby with a giant rubber duck. The baby sitting in a blue plastic boat. The baby in his special outfit for each freaking day of the week. Maybe I should mention that I have school pictures. Hell, that I’ve had school pictures every year since Angie and Mom got together seven years ago. Or that I am not the second best grandkid. And I am certainly not the not-the-real-grandkid.
But right now talking to Susan seems harder than getting asked out by the junior in my math class. I can see it now. I say something like, Hey, Susan, want to see the pictures from winter formal?
And she’s all, Oh, how nice, darling. But do you have a printout from the ultrasound? Hello?! Ultrasound pics aren’t even in color!
Then the freckles on the loose skin of her bare arms dance as her elbows wave up and down with her knitting needles for a while, and maybe it annoys me enough so that I get brave and say something like, Why didn’t you ever knit anything for me?
And she opens her eyes big. Gee, honey, I didn’t know that you, the girl who loves clothes more than anything, would want a handmade, one-of-a-kind sweater.
Or I could get real gutsy and go Law and Order on her. Angie loves me like I’m her daughter, so why do you have to treat me and my new baby brother so different?
But I’m no television lawyer. Damn, I can’t even convince my mom to let me wear spaghetti straps to school.
Before I figure out how to start, Mom comes around the corner into the waiting room, and Susan’s clicking stops as she looks up. Mom’s body slumps, and she eyes the empty chair beside me hungrily but doesn’t sit. The smell of vomit hovers around her like too much Axe on a teenage boy after PE class. She could use a hairbrush or a change of socks or a hug. I uncross my legs to stand up, but she holds up her hand, stopping me.
“No baby yet, guys. Angie’s dilated to four, but they say it’s going to be a while.”
Mom is interrupted by the sound of Susan’s knitting landing on her lap like a lump.
“Hey, Tasha, honey, can I borrow your sweatshirt?” Mom’s Dodgers T-shirt, the one she sleeps in, the one she left the house in late last night, has a large wet stain the shape of Australia over the left shoulder. She must have tried to wipe off the vomit. Gross.
I pull my arms out of my Roxy hoodie, worried that Mom might comment on my shirt—a tight pink spaghetti-strap number that she expressly told me I could not wear out of the house. But she just accepts my sweatshirt and flops it over her warm brown arm.
“Are you two holding up all right in here?” I follow Mom’s eyes to the floor, where I'd tossed the mangled origami crane I made out of a “Subscribe Now for 10% Off the Cover Price” card. “You know you could go home if you want. I don’t think anything will happen soon, and we could give you a call if things change.” I don’t want to go, but part of me thinks of punishing Susan for not carrying my picture in her wallet. I shake my head.
“All right, then. Have fun in here.” Mom gives me her half wave and vanishes around the corner to change out of her Dodger vomit and do whatever it is people do to help babies get born.
Susan turns to me, and her pendulum earrings swing, a striking blue against her pale neck and cinnamon sugar hair. “I’m glad you wanted to stick around.” I listen as she babbles about breast pumps and diaper pails and Chlomid and sperm banks. “What do we know about the father—I mean, donor? I hope he’s college educated. Not that it matters.” Things that she really doesn’t have any right to talk about. Grandma or not.
“You know, Susan, Mom and Angie really don’t like it when people talk about the sperm donor. It’s kind of personal.” Too personal for you.
The clicking stops. She looks at me like she just found out she didn’t make the cheer squad or something. “Oh. I didn’t realize.” And I feel like a shit. Hell, it’s her grandkid. Of course she can talk about it.
I look at my flip flop bobbing on the end of my foot as it bounces nervously. “It’s just that... Well, if people make a big deal about the sperm donor, then it’s kinda like he matters more than Mom. And me.” I look up and am surprised to notice wrinkles in her Navajo print skirt. Not big ones. But wrinkles.
Susan reaches over. Puts her hand on my knee. “I’m sorry. You know that’s not what I mean. I’m just excited.”
“I know.” But I’m not sure I do. If Susan really understood that Mom was just as much this baby’s mother as Angie, then she’d know I was just as much her grandkid. Then she’d already have my school picture on her fridge. I sit, tight in my anger, and finally she slides away from me.
Susan picks up her knitting. Slowly the clicking begins. Not with its recent annoyingly chipper rhythm. But slow. Like some song GrannyMay, Mom’s mother, would call “easy listening.” Sad. Choppy. Nothing easy about it. Knitting like crying.
Finally, I give in. Look over at her. “Susan?”
“Yes?” Her eyes are down. On her knitting.
“I’m…”
She looks up, “What, Tasha?”
“Listen. I’m sorry.”
Susan’s knitting is beginning to look like something the dog chewed. She puts it down.
“I just,” I say. “I was just mad. I didn’t really mean it. Sorry.”
“Mad?”
“Well, I…” Dang it. Why can’t she just be grandmother enough to know that she’s blown it? That she ought to be giving me a pep talk about how it’s okay if your date doesn’t kiss you good night after the winter formal. About what a great sister I’m going to be. Or even about doing my homework. Hell, that she ought to be talking to me about me. Not just talking about the damn baby.
“Are you worrying about having to share your mom with the baby?”
“Not really.”
“Sharing Angie?”
I shake my head.
“What’s bothering you, honey?”
“You didn’t even ask to see my pictures from winter formal.”
"Winter formal pictures?” She looks at me, eyes open. Searching.
“And you never knitted me a sweater.”
Susan holds the tiny blue and green half-sweater on her lap. Crumpled. I fold with embarrassment. I sound so stupid. So much like a little kid.
“Tasha, you’re right. I should have learned to knit a long time ago. I should have asked about your pictures. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m being stupid.” And I am.
“Honey, you’re not stupid. And even though I might belong to the home ec generation, I clearly failed the yarn crafts unit.” Susan grins and holds the mangled sweater up to me. “Don’t you think this will fit you?” I laugh. Susan laughs. We laugh at her crappy knitting and at my stupid picture thing. It feels good to laugh together. Laugh round and full and together.
She leans out of her chair and wraps her arms around me. “Tasha, honey, I love you. Absolutely, totally love you.” She squeezes, and the big square bone buttons of her blouse press into my shoulder. “I can’t tell you how much fun it would have been if I’d been your grandmother from the moment you were born, but I’m just so glad that I’m your grandma now.”
“Me too, Susan.” I pause. “Me too, Grandma.”
She lets me go. Smiles big and then leans in to rub noses, like we used to when I was eight. Her nose is warm and soft and smells of Oil of Olay. But, boy, am I glad the waiting room is empty.
Empty.
Empty.
Shit. Where are GrannyMay and Papi?
I pat my pockets for my cell. Of course, I left it charging by my bed.
“Grandma Susan, do you have your cell phone with you?”
“Sure, honey. Who are you going to call? That lucky winter formal date?”
“No. GrannyMay and Papi. They should be here too. My brother’s whole family should be here from the moment he’s born.”
Grandma Susan smiles and hands me her phone. “Good idea.”
I flip it open and dial.
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