I felt like a pregnant woman. I held my stomach (which felt enormous) with both hands, and took small, waddling steps toward the kitchen. With every step, I let out a little grunt, groan, or whimper.

---

 

4. Concrete That Expands
 

Mom picked up a magazine, crossed her legs, and started reading. I couldn't believe it! I was in deep digestive agony, and she thought I was being dramatic.

Ida was still pottering around the kitchen, singing to herself. Groaning, I raised myself to my feet, hoping that maybe if I moved a little, things might get better inside of me.

I felt like a pregnant woman. I held my stomach (which seemed enormous) with both hands, and took small, waddling steps toward the kitchen. With every step, I let out a little grunt, groan, or whimper.

"Oh, stop it," my mother told me in a low, unsympathetic voice.

I stopped moving and looked down at her. "If I wasn't in so much pain," I told her, "I'd have something to say to you. But I am, so I don't."

My mother wasn't really listening, so she didn't get it. She turned a blank face toward me and asked, "What did you say?"

"Forget it," I groaned, and went back to my waddling.
 

When I finally arrived at the kitchen, Ida was just closing the refrigerator.

"Watcha doin'?" I asked. "Do you need any help?" I hoped with all my heart that she didn't, because at that moment, standing and talking to her was all I could manage.

"Well," she replied, "I was just about to wrap up that cheesecake so you could take it home with you. You polished off your piece like it was nothing, and I don't dare keep it in the house, or I'll blow up like a balloon."

While I, on the other hand, will blow up like an oil refinery, I thought, but of course I didn't say it. I just smiled and felt a bead of sweat run down the full length of my spine.

"I'll just wrap it up and put it in a bag for you two," she continued. "You go on back with your mother and I'll join you in a moment."

I worked my way back to the couch. Mom was still reading.

"Mom... MOM!" I whispered. "Can you help me? I can't bend. Will you help lower me down to the couch?"

She scoffed, but rose to her feet and held one of my arms so that I could ease down, like a plank, to rest diagonally with my feet on the floor and my head on the arm of the couch.

"Thanks," I sighed. "Ach... that cheesecake... it's like concrete that expands."

Mom gave me a warning look.

"I won't say anything!" I protested.

"You don't have to," she replied, drily. Then she went back to her chair.

I began to do Lamaze-style breathing. It seemed to help. Mom shot me a look, so I quit.

Ida walked in, smiling, and set a little carrying bag by the front door. She tilted her head to the same angle as mine, and asked, "Are you comfy there? You don't look comfortable."

"Oh," I groaned, "That dinner of yours made me SO sleepy. I can hardly stay up."

"I'm glad," she said.

Mom clicked her tongue in disapproval. "Ida, I'm sorry to eat and run, but this one has been complaining about being tired all the time you were in the kitchen. I better take her home and put her to bed."

"That's alright," said Ida. "I'm glad you two could make it."

After some hugs, and compliments on the dinner, Mom and I were alone again, and walking home. Mom carried the cheesecake. I carried my poor bloated belly.

We walked in silence, until we passed a trash can. I heard Ida's cheesecake fall heavily inside as Mom let go of the bag, and I wished I could drop my inner cheesecake as easily as that.

I sighed heavily. "Oh, Mom," I groaned, "that cheesecake is really killing me! Maybe we should go to the emergency room!"

She scoffed. "There was nothing wrong with that cheesecake! I feel perfectly fine."

"You only had two bites! AND you were in the bathroom for a half an hour!"

She was silent for a time, then admitted, "That cheesecake... it did have a taste like — what's that stuff you use for patching walls? Spackle."

I couldn't laugh, I was in such desperate pain.

"Mom, what was that tang in the... the pea sauce? There was this kind of sharp taste..."

"I don't know... I was thinking about that. Honestly, I think she used some sort of oil, some sort of very old oil, in there. When oil gets old, it gets rancid. And the... liver..." Mom belched slightly and excused herself. "I'm not saying it had gone bad, but today might have been the very last day that it could have been served."

At the thought of the liver, I whimpered slightly. I put my hand to my stomach, which by now seemed as large as a weather balloon. From deep inside, near the tops of my legs, came a roiling and gurgling sound that didn't promise anything good. Massive, hot, acidic bubbles churned up from below, broke through the tectonic plate of cheesecake, and erupted in an abrupt, rock-shivering belch.

"Oh, really, Marcie!" Mom protested. "Next time, if you can't hold it in, at least have the decency to turn your head!"

It smelled terrible. If I wasn't afraid of letting go of my stomach, I would have waved it away from my face.

A wave of desperation and nausea washed over me. My salivary glands kicked into overdrive. Involuntarily, I clutched my stomach tighter with both hands and shouted, "Mom, I have to get home, quick!"

And I took off, running.

"Marcie!" Mom called from behind me. "Marcie, wait!"

But I didn't wait. I couldn't wait. Something bad — something VERY bad — was about to happen, and I wanted it to happen at home, not on some stranger's lawn.

I kept running, like a mad juggernaut. The whole time, bubbles of gas noisily made their way through my internal plumbing. I whimpered like Maria Carey's falsetto, but I kept my face pointed home, and kept my legs moving.

It was difficult, because each jarring footstep shook the dangerous mixture inside me, making an explosion increasingly imminent. At the same time, I knew that standing still was no solution: the explosion could come anyway, anytime. I felt like a volcano packed with nitroglycerine — and a tactical nuke buried far down below the magma and the nitro. And a couple sticks of dynamite, too, tossed in like cinnamon sticks. Shaken, stirred, and set afire.

I heard my mother's voice from a half block behind me: "Not that way, Marcie! We can't go in the front door! All the reporters are that way!"

"I don't care!" I shouted. "It's the shortest way! I have to go!"

When I was two houses from home, I stopped to catch my breath. For the moment, there was silence in my inner world, and I looked ahead of me. The reporters were camped all around, waiting, chatting with each other, smoking cigarettes, standing on our lawn and in our driveway. It was insane.

Some calculating part of me realized that all of them thought I was inside the house, so I had the element of surprise in spades.

Mom caught up with me. She, too, was out of breath.

"I can't go round the block, Mom," I told her. "I can't. I have to get inside as quick as I can."

"Alright," she said.

"Look," I told her, "They all think we're inside. We can walk up along the curb, and if anyone recognizes us, we can make a run for it. They won't expect it, so they won't react in time."

Mom nodded. "Slow, then fast. We can make it." She got her keys in hand, and put the front-door key between thumb and forefinger. "Ready?"

I nodded. She took my arm, and the two of us walked up the street as naturally as we could. It was working: you could see the reporters actively ignoring us. It must be something they learn, to avoid being bothered when they're out on the job.

It was like being invisible. To them, we were just another pair of curiosity seekers: they filtered us out of their awareness. No one recognized us, no one bothered to look.

In fact, none of the reporters or cameramen even looked at each other. Weird. It was as though each news station was pretending to be the only ones there.

We stopped in front of our steps, the ones that go up the lawn to the front door. It looked far, especially with the toxic load I was carrying.

Mom gave me a grim look, clutched the front-door key firmly, and said, "Let's go."

When our feet touched the first step, there were slight tremors in the camp. A few people stirred, as if they were waking up.

Still, in their estimation we were probably just neighbors. The neighbors had been nice, dropping off food, even flowers, or just stopping by to wish us well, to welcome us to the neighborhood. Then there was the bonus (for our neighbor) of a possible few moments on television... sometimes a mini-interview. (Oh, yes, they just moved in, but they're the *nicest* people! And it's shocking what happened to that girl!)

We were halfway to the door, but no one stirred. We still hadn't registered in their minds. I felt as if everyone was asleep, in a fog, or frozen in suspended animation. But then, something happened to wake them up.

A low rumble rocked my inner world. It was part of my body's early warning system. Just as I passed a cameraman who slouched in a lawn chair, a powerfully evil and noxious gas slid silently out of me. From the burn and smell of it, I imagined it to be a sulphurous yellow, and the man cried out in offended surprise.

What he actually said was, "Hazmat!" (It took me a while to figure it out.)

When she heard him cry out, Mom thought we'd been recognized, and in a bound she was at the door. I'd swear she cleared six yards in that jump! In a single stroke, she had the key in the lock and the door open. I hurried after her, and when I got close enough, she grabbed my arm and propelled me inside. I looked back toward the lawn, and saw shocked faces, like people disturbed in their sleep, and some of them fumbled uselessly with their cameras, but none of them got there in time.

Mom slammed the door and noisily locked it.

"Wow, Mom!" I said, well and fully impressed. "That was amazing! I didn't know you could move that fast! Really!"

I would have gone on, but she turned to me, trembling and breathing hard. She was scared.

"Mom...," I began, "I'm sorry... I'm sorry this is so hard for you..."

She cut me short. "I thought you were desperate for the bathroom," she said.

Right on cue, the cheesecake-rock twisted inside me. Even Mom was alarmed when she saw the face I made.

I tore off my coat and boots and stumbled to the bathroom, dropping clothes along the way.

After forty minutes of agony, I finally felt some degree of inner peace, and Mom helped me get upstairs.

Halfway up, I stopped and told her, "Mom, I think I understand the pain of childbirth."

She bit her tongue.

---

Later, after she'd tucked me in, given me some cool water to drink, and fluffed my pillow, she sat on the edge of my bed.

"Oh, Marcie," she sighed. "What a life we live!" But she smiled as she said it. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes," I said. "I think I got it all out of my system." I lay still a moment, mentally searching my body, seeking out the spots where the cheesecake could still be hiding, but there didn't seem to be any trace of it left.

I looked at Mom. She seemed a bit more relaxed.

"Hey, Mom," I asked her, "How come the cheesecake didn't get to you?"

"It did," she replied. "But remember, I only had two bites. You ate a very large piece. You practically swallowed it whole. AND you ate every bite of Ida's dinner. I only picked. Maybe the wine helped, too. The alcohol might have killed or neutralized whatever made you sick."

I chuckled. "AND you spent some time in the bathroom."

She sighed. "Marcie, do we have to talk about that? You're not nine years old, you know. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about something else–"

"Oh, that reminds me! Remember how you said you told Ida, because I stayed overnight? Does that mean you told Susan's parents, too? 'Cause she stayed over here?"

"Ah," Mom said, as she adjusted to the abrupt change in topic. "No, we didn't tell Susan's parents. For one thing, we never talked to them directly — in fact, I don't know whether they even speak English. Besides that, given your emotional state at the time, we just wanted her to be here with you.

"I hope it won't become a problem. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do."

I murmured in agreement. We'd have to see. I'd tell Susan tomorrow, and then we'd take it from there.

"ANYWAY," Mom continued, "As I was saying–"

"Did I interrupt?" I asked.

"Yes," Mom replied, "and you've just done it again. As I was saying... Ms. Gifford was right about your getting away. I talked to your father about it earlier, and he agrees. He said he'd call your Aunt Jane tonight, so we'll see in the morning if you can stay with her... unless there's somewhere else you'd rather be? Someone else you'd rather stay with?"

"Maisie?" I ventured.

"Could you stay with her?" Mom asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I could ask. I don't know what it would be like."

"You'd be safe there," Mom offered.

"Yeah, that's for sure." Maisie's father lived in Llewellyn, a gated community. The press had never seen Maisie, because they couldn't get in. If I was there, no one could see me, either. "I wonder if Susan could come with me," I mused.

"There's a thought," Mom said with a smile. "We can find out all of that tomorrow, and see how soon we can slip you out of here. I'm hoping you can go tomorrow... get you out of here as soon as possible."

"Tomorrow?" I repeated.

"Try to see if you can come up with any other relatives or friends that would be good possibilities. There's my sister..."

I stiffened.

"She's not so bad," Mom said reproachfully.

"Didn't she do all kinds of mean things to you when you were growing up? She was always whacking your butt and bossing you around, wasn't she?"

"Well, yes, but that's what older sisters do. You're lucky you're an only child." As she spoke, Mom gave me a strange look.

"What does that look mean?" I asked her.

"What look?" she asked.

"Do I have a brother or sister off somewhere that I don't know about?"

"No, honey. No evil twin, either. There's just you; you're the only one."

"Good," I said, and burrowed down into the covers. I only meant to blink, but it turned into a long one: my eyes were closed for several seconds. I almost drifted off.

"You look exhausted," Mom said.

"Yes," I mumbled. "That cheesecake really took its toll on me."

"Alright," Mom said, turning off the light. "We'll figure out where you're going tomorrow. Have a good rest. Sweet dreams!"

© 2008 by Kaleigh Way

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