Scar Girl Read Free

you know the only surefire cure for nausea? No? I’ll tell you. Puking. You can drink all the ginger ale and eat all the saltine crackers you want. You wanna feel better? Woof your cookies.
    Anyway, I couldn’t tell any of the guys in the band I was pregnant, so I talked to my younger sister Theresa. Or, really, she talked to me.
    We were sitting on the beds in our room—Theresa and I shared a room with one of our other sisters, Agnes, but Agnes wasn’t there—and I had my head leaned up against the wall, my hair matted against a movie poster of Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains . It was really hot out, and I felt like I was going to be sick. Theresa took one look at me and knew.
    â€œYou’re knocked up, aren’t you?”
    I’m guessing my jaw dropped. “Shit. You can tell?”
    â€œYou should go to Planned Parenthood.”
    â€œPlanned Parenthood?”
    â€œYes. Get rid of it, Chey.”
    For some reason, I wasn’t expecting her to say that, and it made me upset. Which made me feel more sick. I closed my eyes.
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œWhy get rid of it?” She sounded like she thought I was crazy for asking.
    â€œYeah. You tried to keep yours.”
    â€œAnd look what happened,” she said. “God punished me.”
    Theresa had gotten pregnant two summers earlier, when she was fifteen, and lost her baby, at home, in bed. It was pretty messed up. She was, like, seven months, and the baby just started to come out. She tried to hide it, but with all that blood there was no hiding anything.
    It had happened in the middle of the night, and somehow all of my sisters except for Agnes managed to sleep through it, even after the ambulance came. My parents, on the other hand, freaked out. My mother stood there in her bathrobe, clutching her rosaries and praying for the soul of the unborn baby. All I could think was Shouldn’t you be praying for Theresa ? My father kept mumbling something about killing “the boy who did this to my little girl.”
    The two of them went with Theresa to the hospital, but before they left my mother cornered me and Agnes: “Not one word of this to your sisters, do you understand?” She had fire and brimstone in her eyes.
    â€œWhat are we supposed to tell them?”
    â€œTell them Theresa has the flu.” Then she spun on her heel and climbed in the ambulance, still silently mouthing her prayers as she did. To this day I don’t think any of my other sisters know.
    I guess the conversation about me being pregnant was bringing back some pretty bad memories for Theresa, because she was squeezing the life out of Mr. Giggle Bunny. That’s one of her stuffed animals.
    My father’s only emotional connection to his daughters has been to buy us stuffed animals. Lots and lots of stuffed animals. I have twelve and I’m a lightweight. There are one hundred twenty-six between all seven of us, and every one of them has been named. It’s kind of a thing in our family.
    â€œBut won’t God punish me more if I get rid of it?” I asked.
    Most of the time I tried to be cool and scoff at all the Catholic stuff, but twelve years of religious education and a lifetime of being surrounded by religious paintings, statues, and lectures—well, you can take the girl out of the Church, but you can’t take the Church out of the girl, you know? I started to cry.
    Theresa rolled her eyes. “Just get it taken care of, Chey.” It wasn’t exactly mean, but it wasn’t really helpful, either. She put her headphones back on, letting me know that the conversation was over. I guess, on some level, it felt good to get it off my chest, but really, talking to my sister was pretty much useless.
    HARBINGER JONES
    Once Johnny and I had reconnected, it was like an incredible weight had been lifted. Whatever Johnny’s foibles and whatever my foibles, real friendships, I guess, run deep, and