Belly Up by Eva Darrows

Author:Eva Darrows
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2019-02-13T20:43:35+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

“He probably thinks you’re easy,” Mormor said.

“Mom! Will you just...talk less. Okay? Talk less.”

Both my mother and grandmother glowered at one another over a pile of potatoes. I, meanwhile, shoveled food into my maw. Sure, what Mormor said was screwed up, but when you expected very little of people, they rarely disappointed you.

It was how I survived living with Mormor most days.

“What? She is pregnant! There is only one way for that to happen.” Mormor snorted and poured gravy over everything on her plate. “I love Sara, but we cannot avoid the truth that she had intercourse to get here. Now, this boy is probably thinking he can have plenty of it with her without consequence.”

Is that what I did in that truck? Have “intercourse”? ’Cause it felt a lot like fu—

“Or maybe he’s a decent kid and that didn’t occur to him at all.” Mom grabbed a roll from the basket for herself before lobbing one my way. It bounced off my head and onto my plate, splashing gravy across my shirt and making me look like a Jackson Pollock painting. My care cup was empty. I bit into the roll and eyed my grandmother while I chewed, slow and deliberate, not unlike a cow with its cud.

“She can still get the AIDS,” Mormor announced, swinging her watery blue gaze my way. “You will need to practice safe sex regardless.”

“Great dinner conversation. Really engaging. So glad I brought up that I have a date,” I said. “I love it when we talk about The AIDS over meat loaf.”

Mormor snuffled. “You have a baby to think about now is all I am saying.”

Mom looked like she wanted to crawl under the table and die. Instead, she grabbed my hand and squeezed my fingers. “This is her way of worrying about you, I promise. On the bright side, aren’t you glad your mom is a functional adult most of the time? The weirdest thing I ever did was have an abbreviated Juggalo phase and name you Serendipity.”

“Are those the murder clowns?” Mormor demanded. “I hated them. That was terrible. You looked like a demon slut.”

Anything I could say—about Leaf, murder clowns or The AIDS—would turn into an argument I didn’t want to have. I kept to my food and minded my business. My mother hadn’t told me I couldn’t go out with Leaf, so I was keeping my plans. If in some weirdo parallel universe he really was just going out with me because pregnancy equated to easy in his mind, he was going to be really, really disappointed.

Jack was the exception, not the rule. It took Aaron a year to go spelunking in my undies.

The conversation shifted from me to Mormor’s bridge quartet, Mormor complaining about her friend Florence’s insistence on cutting the crusts off her finger sandwiches. I took that as a cue that I was clear to take off and, finishing my dinner, I loaded the dishwasher before excusing myself to study. I pulled out my

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