SLUTS DON’T HAVE BABIES
It’s Christmas on the Wente side, which means it is January, Grandma Kathy is making chicken and rice, and everyone I’ve known is invited. My mother, her new husband (my stepdad), her old husband (my biological dad). Cheating exes (my biological dad, two of my uncles). New girlfriends. Ghosts. Estranged sons. This list includes my aunt’s ex-mother-in-law, Joanne.
“You have three kids,” Joanne says to me, squinting her eyes, as if staring at me harder will make babies march out of my body. This Christmas, I do not have a baby. I do not have a partner. This is a hot topic of conversation amongst adults.
“Huh, I didn’t know. Where are they?” I look around me, searching for phantom children I created.
“You are pregnant…?” Joanne asks questions like statements. She feels even more troubled, unsure of her own brain, skeptical of me. She also always gets my sister, Jordan, and me confused. Jordan is due in seven weeks and wears as shirt that says Tis the Season to be Pregnant. The baby inside her is the size of a pineapple. We know this for a fact, she has an app that tells her so.
“If I were pregnant, it would be an immaculate conception.” Everyone laughs, you know, a Virgin Mary joke on Christmas. My mother laughs out of relief. My aunt, Tina, quietly says to me, “Come on, how long has it been?”
Little do they know, after a couple rounds of cards, I’ll be heading home to hook up with a Scorpio I don’t even like. I texted him in the middle of this dinner, I don’t like looking him in the eye, but I like grabbing onto his chest hair like it’s a bouldering wall. The holidays make me lonely. We can’t all be strong.
My mom chimes in, “No, Jordan is pregnant. Lindsey went to Thailand!” This is how close family members remember me, as a near-woman with nothing in her womb, but a lot of thrilling stories about bed bugs. Lindsey knows how to exchange dollars for Baht but has never breast fed. Lindsey knows how to put a finger in a Swiss man’s ass but could never handle a teething child.
For once I want to be the one who leaves early.
Before I go, I hear everyone around the table talking about my relationship history.
“There’s been a couple,” my mom says. “But nothing really serious.”
Joanne gets it now. Finally. There is nothing inside me.
