“What we told you about the rain and wanting to get out of the house was all true. It was August, which meant of course we were thinking about having to go back to school. Ashley was going into the eighth grade. She was already talking about how it was her last year in middle school before she was going to get to join us in high school. She was so excited. She never felt like the other kids her age,” Allison says.
“Why is that?” I ask.
Allison shrugs slightly. “She just had a different mindset, I guess. We went to the park and we were going to camp. My boyfriend and Tegan got there. It was just like we said. We went to the abandoned campground. We hiked around some. But then my boyfriend and I got in an argument. I wasn’t feeling well and he wanted some… alone time with me.”
“You wouldn’t give him sex and he got mad at you,” I say.
I need her to stop being vague, to stop with the delicate way she’s presenting things and be straight up with me. There have been enough secrets and enough misconceptions at this point.
“Yes,” she admits. “He got mad and left. I was upset and it was starting to rain a little, so we decided to go hang out at the elementary school for a while to see if it would stop. We were planning on coming back, because we didn’t really have anywhere else to go for the night. All the different parents thought we were with another family. Tegan brought us, but he dropped us off. He went to find my boyfriend, so he could talk to him.
“Vivian had managed to sneak some liquor from her father’s collection and brought it with us. We didn’t really drink all that often. It wasn’t as if it was all we did. But that night I was upset and stressed and feeling sick. I just didn’t want to think about anything. So, I drank a little. Then Vivian drank some and convinced Ashley to as well. Then everything happened.”
“You gave birth,” I say.
She nods. “When you hear about women having babies, you always hear how long it takes. That it’s this long, drawn-out process and takes hours. For me, it was like everything inside me ripped apart. The pain was horrible. It started like a cramp, then it got so bad I couldn’t even stand up. Vivian and Ashley were scared. Ashley wanted me to go to the hospital, but I said no. I knew what was happening and I didn’t want anyone else to find out. I wasn’t thinking straight. She ended up taking my phone and calling my boyfriend. I guess she thought he would come and force me to go to the hospital.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No,” she says. “By the time he got there, the baby had already come. I couldn’t believe it had actually happened.”
“Did you know you were pregnant?”
“I didn’t know for sure. I hadn’t gone to a doctor or taken a test or anything. I had missed some periods and was having a few minor symptoms, but I pushed it out of my mind. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about or even consider a possibility. My boyfriend and I had only started having sex a few months before, so I knew the baby couldn’t possibly be ready to be born.”
“You lost your virginity to him,” I say.
“Yes. And like they say, it only takes one time. I was only four months along. Almost five. Not far enough for the baby to survive.”
“So, it was a stillbirth,” I say. “The baby wasn’t alive when it was born.”
“No,” she mutters, shaking her head and staring back down into the hole as if she was seeing it all unfold in front of her again.
“Did you have a boy or a girl?” I ask.
I want to humanize the moment for her, to bring her into the full reality of it. She’s been hiding this for five years; in that time, I can only imagine she’s found so many ways to convince herself it didn’t really happen. To justify what she did that night. But it’s been eating at her. Chipping away at everything inside her.
She lets out a sob but also smiles. “A boy. He was so beautiful. He looked like a tiny little doll. So perfect. I tried so hard to save him. All I wanted to do was wake him up. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I wanted him to breathe. I wanted to hear him cry. I would have done anything.”
Allison collapses in tears, leaning over so they fall into the grave she dug for her son five years ago. Her hands grip at the ground as though she’s trying to find something to anchor her, to hold her in place.
“What happened?” I ask softly.
“I didn’t want to admit he was gone, but Vivian and my boyfriend looked at him. They told me he wasn’t breathing, that his heart wasn’t beating. He was blue. Nothing was going to save him. I didn’t want anyone to take him from me, so I wrapped him in my shirt and I buried him. We made him a gravestone and said a prayer over him. It was all I could do for him.”
Her voice has fallen low and she looks lost in her thoughts.
“Did you name him?” I ask.
That makes her look up at me with a wistful, agonized smile on her dripping lips. “Charlie.”
“I like that.”
“He would be five years old next week. He’d be starting kindergarten in September,” she says. “He should have been born in December. A Christmas baby. I’ve gotten him a Christmas present every year. I keep them in my closet in a box I made for him.
