The Girl Who Couldn't Say No: Memoir of a Teenage Mom by Tracy Engelbrecht

Author:Tracy Engelbrecht
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781463516406
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2011-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

1994: In which she figures out which way is up, eventually

Bringing Steven home from the hospital was surreal. I walked outside into the lemony April sunlight and the whole world seemed completely different. It was a different planet, as if I’d woken from a coma after thirty years to find that men had walked on the moon. Or something. The world in my head had changed so dramatically, so permanently, I was sure I’d see the change outside, too. After what I’d just done, how could anything in the world still be the same?

We were all on cloud nine and, in our excitement over-ambitious, which led to a grave error in judgment. Why not go straight from the hospital to visit Gran and my great aunts and uncles? What a lovely idea, we thought. Everyone wanted to see Steven, and I wanted to show him off. Big mistake. Huge.

There is a reason why the books say you should limit visitors in the first few days, and it’s not only because you’ll be a red-eyed zombie with baby puke for hair gel. Of course you will be. Or because you need the time to bond in private, although you need that, too. No – it’s actually so that you don’t scare friends and relatives by revealing what an absolutely bungling disaster of a useless, reject mother you truly are. The books should quit beating about the bush and say this directly. It could save many an over-confident new mother the embarrassment of being dragged off to the Child Welfare offices by concerned mothers-in-law who have witnessed the first solo, nurse-free attempts at breastfeeding. Nobody likes to look stupid. But believe me, you are guaranteed to look monumentally stupid. So best you do it in the privacy of your own home, without any witnesses besides those directly involved and as inept as you are. Or ones you can send to sleep with the fishes without arousing too much suspicion.

I didn’t know this then, obviously, so off we went to visit the relatives. What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, so did the second George Bush, and we all know how that turned out.

I’ve never been on a more terrifying drive than that day, not even the time an angry policeman ex-boyfriend drove me home ten minutes after me dumping him. As always, my mother drove perfectly, but now we seemed to be surrounded by danger on every side – crazy, reckless road hogs, stray cows, drunk pedestrians, crater-sized potholes. Perils ngeles. PeI’d never noticed before. They seemed to have come out especially for the occasion, hell-bent on our annihilation. I held my bundle of breakable porcelain in my arms and sat with my eyes screwed shut all the way there, bracing myself for the moment of impact. I was surprised when it didn’t happen and we arrived in one piece.

While the family oohed and aahed, Steven was a little angel and didn’t fuss at all, even when passed from one cooing old lady to the next – another big Miriam Stoppard no-no.

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