Read Online Milk by Emily Hammond - Free Book Online Page B

Mapes.”
    I’m too thrilled to correct him.
    â€œMaybe next time we’ll get a heartbeat,” he adds.
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œThe baby’s heartbeat.”
    â€œYou can hear it?”
    â€œYou bet.” He offers a hairy hand—for me to shake, I realize a moment too late. He claps me on the back instead, vigorously. “Congratulations,” he says.
    I’m half-expecting cigars to be produced, passed all around. Big fat stogies. Then I remember all the men I’ve slept with. “Before you go, Dr. Grimes, I was wondering.”
    â€œYes?”
    I swallow. “Do you do HIV tests here?”
    â€œSure, Missy.” He’s so casual, you’d think I’d asked for a tongue depressor as a souvenir.
    â€œJust in case,” I joke to the nurse as she draws my blood.
    She doesn’t smile, as if my requesting this test makes a positive result more likely.
    â€œI mean, I would hate … I just couldn’t … It’s not that I think I … but what if?” God, I sound like my father, stammering away about some point of etiquette. “I just couldn’t live with myself,” I say. “Doing that to a baby.”
    â€œWe get more requests than you think,” she says, tight-lipped. “And we’re starting to insist on it ourselves. Standard procedure. Hold this, please.” A cotton ball.
    I bend my arm at the elbow to keep the cotton in place, trying to imagine cradling a baby in my arms. Have I ever even held one before? I keep picturing a doll, or a swaddle of blankets with nothing inside, only air.
    I wish Jackson were here. Not Jackson; Gregg. Somebody. Who? My mother?
    I’m shuttled into a different room where another one of Dr. Grime’s nurses carries in an armload of booklets and charts. “Now,” she says. She’s delicate, pale, girlish—speaks with a touch of a lisp. “This is the diet Dr. Grimes wants you to follow.”
    She passes it to me across the table.
    â€œAa-nn-d,” (she draws this out with a little flourish), “your prescription for maternal vitamins as well as iron pills. And this is a chart you might like. It shows the fetus at different stages, see? Here’s eight weeks, where you are now.”
    I feel rather queasy. “Kind of resembles escargot, don’t you think?”
    She gives me a strange look.
    â€œThings do seem to improve from there,” I add, studying the chart.
    Now that pregnancy is a certainty, I feel sicker than ever, my womb and bloodstream and breasts pulsing with hormones. Pain between my legs and in my uterus, as if already it’s expanding; pin-like shooting pains up and down my limbs, leaving me too warm, then chilled—is this normal?
    To celebrate, I go out for a late breakfast, nearly gagging at the sight of anyone else’s yellow-bellied soft-boiled eggs sopped up by white toast, parsley on the side. I’d wanted a diner with homemade blueberry muffins, bowls of Special K in whole milk, sausage, but Denny’s is all I could find, smelling of eggs and paper napkins.
    I order a mixture of side dishes, going over the menu aloud with the waitress. “Potatoes? No. No. But I will have an English muffin, no butter. Wait. Butter on the side. And an egg, but hard-boiled—do you have any that are cold? No orange juice. Do you have strawberries? Plain, not mixed in with other fruits. Never mind, then, I’ll have melon, but cantaloupe, not honeydew. And ice water, please. No, no tea. No coffee.”
    I used to adore coffee, as recently as last week.
    After breakfast I feel so much better, luscious in fact, juicy and full. My breasts are about to burst from my bra, and I want to tear off my clothes and lie on a bed naked; make love. Gregg comes to mind, not the father of this child, dimming my lust for a moment. Ah, my body says, who cares. Copulate with everyone. Offer your breasts to everyone and, really, I’d like