Chapter 26 — Everything but the Girl

“What’s wrong with Pam?” everyone asked that week at the station since I barely spoke. It also didn’t help that two weeks later I was sick every morning and hardly could keep anything down during the day.

“Pam if you need to go home, I understand,” Egil told me when I showed up the Monday after Thanksgiving and passed out in the studio.

“Look, I’ll be fine,” I insisted, but he called up Jeff and told him to get me.

The next morning I decided to visit my doctor and he put me through a series of tests, then he told me to sit down and wait for a while. For what felt like forever, I sat there and stared at the walls, the Ansel Adams wilderness prints taking me back to those family vacations up in Yosemite. Then the door burst open, and the doctor walked back inside.

“Well Miss Vasquez, there seems to be nothing wrong with you.”

“Nothing wrong? Then why do I wake up sick every day?”

“Let’s see here,” he said as he looked through the stack of notes on his clipboard. “Temp is good, urine looks fine, eyes, ears, nose, and throat all look okay. Oh, by the way,” he said then he let out a hint of a smile. “Congratulations!”

“Congratulations?” I said, “For what?”

“You are with child,” he answered. “Miss Vasquez, you’re pregnant!”

I wanted to tell my family, but I decided to save the announcement for Christmas. Then when my siblings and I went to my dad’s, I handed him a card with snow covered gables on the front and a hundred-dollar bill tucked neatly inside.

“Merry Christmas daddy!” I said as he walked over and hugged me. “And wait, there’s still one more thing.”

“What is that little girl?” he asked me.

I stood before him, then slowly turned toward my family gathered round by the tree and let out a breath. “I’m pregnant!” I said.

My dad just about shit a brick. Same thing for the rest of my family.

“What kind of a sick joke are you trying to play?” My father asked me, his expression now stern and his voice growing angry.

“It’s not a joke dad, I’m having a baby!”

“I don’t want to hear it!” My father railed waving his hands through the air trying to make it all go away. “In fact, right now I’m going upstairs.”

As soon as my dad disappeared from the room, the whole house fell into a deafening silence until my sister Veronica finally spoke up.

“What do you mean you’re fucking pregnant?” She said grabbing my arm. “You’ll never even live through the pregnancy, let alone try and raise a baby yourself!”

“Well I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, I’m having this baby!”

I pulled out my phone and called up a cab while all of my siblings just stood there yelling at me.

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” I told them as I walked out the door.

When I got home, the telephone rang, and my stepmother Betty wanted to talk.

“Oh Pam, they’re just worried,” she said. “If you want to have this baby, then that’s your decision. But everyone is just worried about you.”

“Well, I do want to have this baby.”

“Then that’s your choice and not theirs. So don’t let them make that decision for you.”

“So you’re not angry with me?” I asked her.

“Of course not,” she said. “And I’ll be there to help you if that’s what you want.”

“I love you, Mom!”

“I love you too, Pam. And Merry Christmas to you!”

Sometime after New Year’s, I was up in L.A. doing a gig when I stopped over at Frankie’s.

“Tony, you’re not going to believe this!” I said after he hugged me and sat down at my table.

“Believe what?” he asked, pulling the cork from a bottle of wine.

“I’m pregnant!” I told him.

In the space of an instant, I watched all the color drain out from his face.

“Is it mine?” He asked in a voice that barely arose from out of his chest. “Are you planning on keeping it?”

“Of course I plan on keeping it. What kind of stupid question is that?”

“Well, you do remember,” he said, “you do remember that I told you I don’t want any kids. You do remember that, right?”

“Of course I remember. I just wanted to tell you. Please understand I’m not asking for anything.”

“I see,” was all that he said. Then he got up and walked away until somebody else came over to wait on me. It was the last time I saw him. He never bothered to call after that and when I went back to the restaurant on certain occasions, he would never be there. So I just stopped going back.

Later that month, the telephone rang in the morning, and my father’s voice was on the other end. It was the first time the two of us had spoken to each other since Christmas.

“I’ll be over there in less than an hour,” he told me. “I’m coming to take you to have an abortion.”

When he got to my place, it sounded like he was trying to break down the door. Then he finally put in his key and walked right inside.

“Come on are you ready?” he asked me.

“I’m not going anywhere!” I told him.

“We’ll see about that!” he insisted, “or don’t you remember that I’m your conservator?”

“You’re only the conservator of my estate!” I corrected him. “But not of my person! You cannot legally make me do anything!”

“Then I’ll take you to court if I have to!”

“Go right ahead,” I dared him as he turned and walked out the door.

For the next few weeks he came over and tried to get me to sign some papers, but since I knew that he was probably up to something, I’d politely refuse. Then he would break down and tell me he loved me and that he couldn’t stand to see me risking my life. By then I figured he had already talked to his lawyer and was informed that he did not have a case. Once he even tried using God to convince me.

“If it’s some sort of religious belief, I’m sure that God would forgive you,” He assured me like some sort of priest absolving my sins.

“Look, Daddy,” I told him, “you know that I love you. But I am not aborting this baby!”

Later that evening, I called up KOST 103, a station my father would always have on in the kitchen when him and Betty would sit down to eat and made a request.

“Papa Don’t Preach,” I said to the voice on the phone.

“And who would you like to dedicate this to young lady?” The gentleman asked me.

“To my father Ronald, from his youngest Pam.”

“And is there anything you would like me to tell him?”

“Yes,” I said, “tell him I love him.”

I’m not sure if he heard the request, but sometime later he seemed to back off. When my sister Veronica came in from the desert, she would bring me a plate of her chilaquiles and a bowl of menudo just to make sure I was eating all right.

“You know these babies will try to take everything out of you,” she would warn me.

At night, before I would lay down in bed, I would hear her thumping inside of my tummy, like she was giving herself tap dance lessons. I would reach down and cradle my belly and rock her to sleep. I promised God that when she was born that I would always try to do what was best for her.

“She will always be my whole world,” I told Him. “I swear, I would lay down my life for this child!”

The winter rains dried up early that year, and by March, I was now able to walk wherever I needed. One day when I was walking home from Pepe’s, I crossed Brea Blvd. and waited for the light on Acacia. When it finally turned green, I slid my cane down off of the curb and started to cross. The next thing I knew, I felt the crush of thick metal chrome driving into my side, throwing me down to the pavement below. I saw some guy getting out of his car, then turning around and trying to take off.

“My baby! My baby!” I screamed as a crowd started to form all around me.

When the paramedics arrived on the scene, they heard me screaming and one of them asked if my baby got hit.

“You idiot!” another one said. “Can’t you see she’s pregnant? We better get this one to the hospital.”

I saw the police talking to the person who hit me. As he’d tried to get back into his car, two young adults, a guy and a girl, had run over and restrained him then called the police.

“I didn’t see her!” he kept on saying shaking his head. “I thought that I still had the light. My God is she going to be okay?”

“You better damn well hope so!” one of the cops told the man as he sat down at the curb and started to cry.

They rushed me over to Placentia Linda where they were already waiting for me as the police kept talking to some of the witnesses. A few of them followed me to the hospital and waited outside of my room. After drawing some blood and taking some x-rays, one of the doctors walked up to my bed.

“Miss Vasquez you are one lucky lady,” he told me. “It doesn’t look like you broke anything.”

“My baby!” I shouted. “How is my baby?”

“Your baby’s just fine,” he assured me. “Now you get some rest.”

After a while, they started letting in visitors. A man who worked at one of the restaurants I went to, the guy and the girl who stopped the driver, and some guy that I don’t remember seeing before.

“My father’s a doctor,” he told me. “And I’m doing pre-med studies over at Fullerton. I was just coming home from one of my classes when I saw what happened. You certainly are a living miracle.”

“You don’t know the half of it!” I told him then I listened as he introduced himself.

“My name’s Steve,” he said, “and you must be Pam.”

“Wait, how did you know that?” I asked him.

“Is says so right here on your chart,” he said pointing at the clipboard that hung by my bed.

A few minutes later, the curtain tore open, and my sister Veronica was standing at the foot of my bed huffing like she had just run a marathon.

“I better be going,” Steve told me. “See you again?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Who was that guy?” Veronica asked as she walked over and put her hand on my forehead.

“Oh, that’s Steve,” I answered. “He was one of the people who witnessed the accident. How the hell did you get here so fast?”

“Dad called me from work, and I drove like a maniac. Must have been doing a hundred the whole way.”

“You need to be more careful, sis.”

“I need to be more careful? What about you?”

Then we both laughed for a while before she left to go to my dad’s to wait for him to get home from work. Her, my father, and Betty came back to see me that evening. Then the next morning before I was released, Steve came over to visit as well.

“Brought you some soup—chicken noodle,” he said, moving my tray over my chest. “I heard somewhere that it makes everything better?”

“What is it about guys and soup? I asked him, shaking my head.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Oh nothing,” I smiled. “It’s just every guy that I’ve ever dated has always tried bringing me soup.”

“So, we’re dating now?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“But would you like to? I mean, one day when you’re better?”

I didn’t answer him right away. But that still didn’t stop him from coming to visit me. On the day that I was released, Veronica came to take me back home, then just like that, Steve and I started dating. I’m not sure that he was ever my type, but he cheered me up and made me laugh. No to mention, him and his family were Christian.

Later that spring, the weather changed from cool to hot as if somebody flipped the switch on some giant outdoor thermostat. After that, both of my legs started to swell like a pair of purple Kevlar balloons.

“You look fine,” Steve assured me as he came over to take me to dinner.

“Either you have a crush on Barney, or you’re blinder than I am!” I laughed.

The following weekend, he took me over to meet his family. Both his mother and father liked me a lot, but after our meal, his sister Christina pulled me aside to give me a warning. But unlike most of my past boyfriend’s sisters, it wasn’t about me hurting him, but rather him hurting me.

“Pam, you seem like a really nice lady,” she said, “but Stevie, don’t get me wrong cause I really do love him, but Stevie can be a bit of an asshole.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because with dad being a doctor and all there’s a lot of pressure for him to succeed. Anyway, he always finds a way to sabotage everything that’s good in his life.”

“Well, thanks for the warning,” I told her.

When the day started getting closer, I could barely get out of bed. By that time I must have weighed over three-hundred pounds and to make matters worse, I was no longer able to work. Egil assured me there would always be a place for me down at the station, but Jeff seemed to be growing more and more distant and I soon came to realize that me not working was costing him money.

One day, Veronica called me to discuss what we needed to do when I got ready to deliver. She would take some time off from work and come over to stay with me the week before I had to go in. By this time, Steve and I had already thought of a name. For a girl it would be Aimee Elizabeth—he insisted it be spelled with an “i” and two “ee’s”—and Austin Christopher if it was a boy. Before we hung up, she asked me one final question, one that we had often discussed but as that day was approaching, I tried not to think about. I thought that if things worked out between Steve and I, that maybe he could help raise the baby, but he was still working and going to school. So I kept it inside and tried not to think about it until that moment she brought it back up.

“So,” Veronica asked me, “do you still intend on having Don and I raise the baby?”

I couldn’t answer her right away, knowing that it would probably be the most difficult choice I would make in my life. For one, I knew that with my visual impairment I would never be able to raise a child on my own. Second, my father wasn’t going to provide any help since he never wanted me having this child in the first place. And lastly, since I didn’t really have a man I could count on, my baby would not have a father.

I know that Ruth would be willing to help, but she was already well into her fifties and recently got a new foster child, a four-year-old boy, she was raising. Let’s see, I could always call Tony, since the baby may even be his—ah fuck Tony, he never wanted to have kids in the first place so what kind of father would he ever make? I guess Veronica would probably be my best option, maybe even my only option. I know she lives out in the desert, but at least my child would have brothers and sisters, not to mention a mother and father.

Yet inside I felt as though I was dying, like something was about to be disconnected. After more than eight months I was going to be losing a part of me, a little life that depended on my every breath, my every meal, and my body’s ability to protect it from that asshole driver who hit me. At night when I felt the baby starting to kick, I would cradle my belly and sing it a lullaby until the kicking stopped and both of us started dreaming together. If it were a boy, he would be a musician just like my brother, or maybe an actor. I wouldn’t want him playing football or anything like that, since not only did I never like football, but I’d also always worry that he would get hurt. If it were a girl, she would always be my little princess, and with all of the kicking at night, most likely a dancer.

What do I do? Please God tell me what should I do? I could hear myself starting to cry as my sister, now growing impatient, asked me again. Then wiping away the flood of tears that were starting to pour down my cheeks, I finally answered her quietly, “yes.”

On the morning of July 28, I was rushed over to Placentia Linda for an emergency C-section. I remember the pain and all of the blood—blood everywhere like in one of those horror movies I used to stay up and watch with my friends—and the needle, it felt like it must have been ten feet long as they slid every inch of it into my spine.

“Keep breathing! Keep breathing!” Veronica said as she pulled back the soaking wet strands of my hair from off of my forehead. “We’re here for you, baby!”

There was an intense pressure across my abdomen then a tearing sensation inside of my uterus. I don’t remember if I stopped breathing, but I heard the doctor scream at the nurse for an oxygen mask and everyone almost chanting in unison, “breathe! breathe! Come on, Pam, just breathe!”

Feeling dizzy and close to passing out, I asked Veronica if the doctor had finished cutting me open.

“Cutting you open?” she screamed with excitement. “They’re stitching you up! Pam, you just had a baby!”

Then I heard a loud crack of a hand upon skin and a loud cry rang out through the room—a baby, my baby! The newest member of the human race.

“It’s a girl!” the doctor exclaimed. “A beautiful little baby girl!”

“Not to mention, she’s also a Vasquez!” Veronica said as the baby let out another long cry.

The doctor held her up so I could make out her face, her deep dark eyes, and full head of hair. I started to cry and Steve, who had just arrived in the room, walked over and gave me a hug. One of the nurses came to pick up the baby and take her to stay in the nursery. The next day when Steve came to visit, I asked if he had the chance to go see her.

“So, what do you think?” I asked him.

“She’s ugly!” he said.

I reached out and slapped him.

“Ow!” he exclaimed. “What did you do that for? All babies are ugly when they’re born, all that blood all over their bodies. They look just like…”

“Just like what?” I asked him.

“Like little baboons,” he said.

I reached over and smacked him again.

He asked me what I’d decided to name her.

“Arielle Breanna,” I said. “My sister’s idea.”

“What happened to the name we decided on?” he wondered. “You know Aimee Elizabeth, or did you forget?”

“Well since my sister is going to raise her,” I started to say, but he never let me finish my sentence.

“Well to me she will always be Aimee Elizabeth! That’s what I’ll call her if,” then he paused for a moment while shaking his head. “That is, if I ever see her again!”

Then he turned and walked out of my room.

The next day I woke up late and asked if I could go to the nursery and see my baby.

“I’m sorry Miss Vasquez,” one of the nurses told me. “But your sister came and got her this morning.”

“What do you mean she got her this morning?”

“Her and her husband.” The nurse informed me. “You do remember when you signed all the papers that both her and her husband would be raising the baby?”

“Just go away! Will you please go away?” I shouted, then I laid back down and started to cry, the tears spilling down all over my pillow.

I was released from the hospital a few days later and when I got home, my sister and her family were gone along with my baby. For the next few weeks, Steve would come over when he got off from work and we both sat down and ate dinner together. Then around the time of my birthday, Jeff came over to my apartment and handed me an envelope with a ribbon on top.

“It’s from all of the guys at the station,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“Why don’t you open it and see for yourself?” he insisted.

I tore open the envelope and opened the card and two tickets fell out onto my lap.

“What’s this?”

“See for yourself. I made sure to have them blow up the print.”

“Dear Pam, Congratulations to the youngest member of our Groove Radio family and to the future ‘Princess of Mixing.’ Can’t wait to have you back at the station, in the meantime, enjoy the show! Sincerely, The team at Groove Radio.”

Then he picked up the tickets from out of my lap and read them to me: Everything but the Girl live at the Hollywood Palladium November 13, 1997.

“Oh my God!” I screamed.

“And check out the seats!” he said, holding a ticket in front of my face. “Section two, row three!”

“Holy shit!” I kept saying over and over and over again.

The next day, I called up Steve and asked him if he wanted to go, but he blew me off like he didn’t even know me, much less the man I was dating for nearly six months.

“Everything but the what?” he asked me. “Come on, Pam, you know I don’t like all of that techno shit.”

“But it’s not even techno,” I argued, but that still didn’t matter.

“Maybe some other time” he said. “I’ve gotta get going.”

Just like that, he hung up the phone. So I ended up going with one of my neighbors, some girl named Natasha who had just given birth a month before me. The night was cool, and the music swept over us in corpulent waves as the crowd began to sway back and forth in time with the beat. But as the lyrics to Missing boomed out all around, its images of deserts and rain, and my baby rocking to sleep next to my sister unaware that I was her mommy, I never felt more alone in my life.