The Pregnancy Project by Gaby Rodriguez

Author:Gaby Rodriguez
Format: epub
Published: 2016-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

UPS AND DOWNS

Let me put it to you this way: Christmas 2010 sucked.

Normally, Christmas is a wonderful holiday in our family. All my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews are together. When I was a kid, we’d get together at my grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve and go to the ten o’clock Mass, and then stay up to open presents at midnight. But as the family grew and grew and each of my siblings wanted to spend Christmas morning with their families, our tradition changed. A few days before, we’d get together at Javier’s house, and on Christmas Eve, Sonya would throw a party for anyone who wanted to attend. We may not have a lot of money, but we have each other, and good food, conversation, and laughter. But not that year.

It was just a week or so after my brothers and sisters found out my news. Of all my siblings, Javier was the one whose reaction I feared most—I knew he was going to be mad—so I chickened out and made Sonya do it. She told him before work one day. He yelled, “What the fuck?” Then he was silent for a long time.

After that, Sonya said, he seemed really sad and defeated. “She had a chance and she just tossed it away. She threw her life in the garbage,” he said. “I thought she had learned from our mistakes. She was supposed to be the one who was different and would make our mother proud. She’s so stupid.”

I learned that, after their talk, Javier moped around feeling guilty that he hadn’t done more to stop my relationship with Jorge—not that he hadn’t actually tried, of course. He was plenty insulting to both of us, and always full of lectures and unsolicited advice about our relationship. But now he felt like he should have stepped in as an authority figure and basically forbidden me to date, or kept Jorge away from me.

Javier didn’t call me. He was waiting for me to call him so he could chew me out, but I didn’t give him the opportunity. I ran into Tony at a Walmart, but I didn’t feel right announcing my big news—even if it was fake—in the middle of a Walmart checkout line. He later told me that he’d already heard by that point, but similarly didn’t want to talk about it there. The news traveled fast until they all knew. And they told my older nieces and nephews, who were not very good at concealing their curiosity. They kept staring at my belly.

My brothers were not kind. They made nasty comments about me to Sonya and to my mom, and one threatened, “If Jorge bails, I’m going to beat his ass.”

At our Christmas celebration at Javier’s house, there was a completely different mood hanging in the air from usual. It felt like a funeral to me. People were flat-out ignoring Jorge and me—we’d hear them talking and laughing, and then as soon as we came into a room, they’d go silent and sit there with straight faces.

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