Chapter Eighteen
Molly: Queasy
I had to go into the bathroom while Brooke was in the shower, because I thought I was maybe going to throw up.
I’d been lying on that motel bed with the baby, just sort of nursing this really ugly feeling that was sitting sort of in my stomach, but sort of lower, like I’d eaten a big piece of evil and it had gone all the way down into my intestines but now it wanted to come back up again. Or kill me, I wasn’t sure which.
“I’m sorry,” I said when I got to the bathroom door. “I’m not trying to look or get all up in your privacy or anything and I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to, but I think maybe I’m about to be sick.”
Then I fell down onto my knees in front of the toilet and just waited, feeling my face get hot. But then, after all that, nothing seemed to happen. It was like the evil I’d swallowed decided to stay inside and kill me.
She turned off the water and looked around from behind the shower curtain, so I could see just her head. She was holding the curtain to cover the rest of her, and it was a nice solid curtain that you couldn’t see through, so there was nothing weird or indecent about the situation.
“Something you ate?” she asked me.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. It just sort of came over me. I’ll get back out with the baby in a minute.”
I couldn’t believe I’d left Etta alone, even for a second, even just in the next room, after everything I went through trying to get Brooke to go take a shower and let me look after her. I mean, it was like pulling teeth trying to get her to just go into the bathroom and shut herself in and trust me for a split second.
She tossed her head in the direction of the open bathroom door, so I looked there. The baby was standing in the doorway, holding the edge of the door to steady herself, and giving me this look like she was worried about me.
“I’m okay, Etta,” I said. “I just got to feeling a little sick.”
“Sick?” she asked.
And her face was so sad with hurting for me, and her voice was so sweet and soft, I just fell in love with her all over again. I remember thinking how lucky I was that I ever got to see her again after that terrible night. I really hadn’t seen any of this coming. I mean, who would?
I just froze there on my knees for a while with everybody staring at me. Well, both of them, which is only two—I’m not sure if that qualifies as an everybody or not. I was really aware of how I felt, not even in terms of my belly, but more that I was clean, and my hair was brushed, and I was wearing the brand-new jeans and sweatshirt Brooke had bought me the night before, and I felt like a real person. But I don’t mean that like I thought I hadn’t been a real person before. I’m not quite sure how to explain what I mean. I guess I mean I felt like I could go anywhere and meet anybody and they wouldn’t look at me funny, and they would treat me like a real person just like everybody else.
And while I was noticing all that I also started noticing that I probably wasn’t going to throw up. I wasn’t exactly feeling great down there, but it seemed like the moment had passed.
“Sorry,” I said, and got up off my knees. “False alarm, I guess.”
The baby looked super relieved and Brooke turned the water on and went back to taking her shower, and I left the bathroom and closed the door to give her some privacy.
Like I would have all along if I’d figured I had any choice about the thing.
When you’re going from LA to Utah, where I used to live, it’s mostly California and Nevada all the way through. But then there’s this one little tiny piece of Arizona. It’s just a little corner, and when you get to Mesquite you know you’re about to hit it, and then you better not blink, because it’s going to be over fast. I mean, not literally, because really it might be thirty or forty miles, but I’m just saying it’s not much when you think about how you’re driving through a whole state. And then you’re about to cross the state line into Utah, right at that southwest corner, and the very first city that comes up is St. George, and that’s where I grew up, and that’s where my parents still lived.
And that’s where we were going.
So we passed through Mesquite and I started to feel sick to my stomach again, because I knew we were really close to there, and that’s when I think it dawned on me that it wasn’t about something I ate.
“Could you pull over?” I asked. “I think I might need to throw up again.”
Except it wasn’t a very good way to describe the thing, because I hadn’t thrown up before, but I guess I was trying to say I felt like I needed to again.
We were on the I-15, which is a pretty big highway, and people go really fast on it. The speed limit is 70, but then people go even faster than that. There was a pretty good, pretty wide shoulder, but I guess it was only for emergencies, so I was waiting to see if she would think this was emergency enough.
“Sick?” Etta asked from the back seat.
I was riding up front with Brooke because I was all nervous and frazzled and I didn’t want the baby to pick it up from me.
“A little,” I said to her.
And while Etta and I were talking about that, Brooke pulled
