Carry Me Like Water Read Free Page A

showing. At first she had hated the fact that complete strangers would walk up to her and editorialize about morning sickness, about cravings, about miscarriages, about the night they knew they conceived, about the names they might label their forthcoming progeny, the pluses and minuses of knowing a child’s sex before birth, remedies for swollen feet, and the best positions to sleep in after the sixth month. But now she enjoyed the small kindnesses, the unthreatening intimacies, the quiet words that made her feel cared for, made her feel like an indispensable part of the world that suddenly appeared to be inexplicably kind. As she waited in line at the checkout, she turned over a bottle of wine in her hand. She imagined how it would taste. It had been almost seven months since she touched any alcohol or drank any caffeine. Her baby was going to be perfect. But the feeling that she’d like to sit alone and enjoy a glass of wine entered her and took control of her body. The urge to drink wine was solid asa stone hitting her in the stomach. She pictured herself in her backyard, at ease, sipping on a glass of wine in the late afternoon, the sun reflecting in her eyes, reflecting off the glass. She felt the wine on her tongue, and swallowed the cool, rich, red, silky liquid. The taste of the wine was so real it held her motionless—then let her go like a strong hand loosening its grasp. She found herself standing in an aisle of the grocery store.
    The sack girl asked her if she needed help lifting the groceries into her car. “No,” she said—then changed her mind. “Yes, that would be very helpful.” Another sacker, walking in the opposite direction, spoke to the young girl who was pushing Helen’s basket. “¡IQue muchachita tan linda!” he said. “Te quiero.” He said it half seriously, half in jest. Helen pretended not to hear, and, for an instant—perhaps for only a second—her face filled with an overpowering shame, a shame she could not hide even from herself, a shame that was as much a part of her as the color of her eyes, or the thickness of her hair, or the soft lilt in her voice, a shame that was part of a memory larger than the baby in her body, louder than her laughter, a shame that could never deliberately be remembered or recalled but could never be forgotten, a shame she kept successfully hidden most of her waking moments, a shame that kept returning to her like a boomerang or a bad penny or a bad dream. In that instant, that shame rose to her face and she felt the entire world could see it, could see the ugliness of her life, could see she did not deserve a husband or a baby or the house she lived in. She wanted to cover herself and be protected; she wanted to weep because she felt she would never be an adult, never be a grown-up woman because she would always be a little girl whom someone had hurt. And then the look was gone. Nobody in the store noticed. The look that deformed her face was too fleeting, was over almost as soon as it had arrived. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. She took several deep breaths—controlled her body—she kept it from shaking. “It’s just the pregnancy,” she told herself, “it’s just the baby.”
    The young girl noticed her look of discomfort. “He didn’t mean anything by it,” she said, “he was just messing around. He’s a littleforward, but he’s nice. You speak Spanish?” Helen forced a smile and shook her head. “Oh, then you must be Italian.”
    “Yes,” she said, “I’m Italian.”

    After lunch, Helen stepped out of her house on Emerson Street, and wandered slowly through her English garden. She bent down with a little difficulty and smelled her lavender bush, then the mint growing next to it. She snapped off a leaf from the mint and bit into it. She liked the way the taste exploded in her mouth. The late spring afternoon was too perfect to drive a car. She decided to walk. The northern California breeze was typically light, and