I Speak for the Trees

Of all the times and places to completely break down, the Blockbuster Video on 6th avenue on a Friday night is not my first choice.

What am I even doing here, drowning in a throng of young people and desperately searching for something with enough inane laughter to get me through another night, bring me another few hours closer to the newest dawn?

Oh. Never mind. That's what I'm doing here. That's why I'm standing in line behind a teenage couple who can't seem to keep their hands off each other and fighting back a wave of nausea that isn't just the result of the record-setting hormone levels coursing through me. I close my eyes against their blasphemous giddiness.

Why do they call it morning sickness, anyway?

I think I'm holding myself together with duct tape and twine and chewing gum.

I dare to look up, at the bank of monitors hanging precipitously over the heads of the clerks at the counter. A cartoon. I hadn't noticed before. There is a characteristic Dr. Seuss aura about it. Cartoons, and children, and all those happy things... but children need fathers. Mothers need fathers.

I am about to look away, when I recognize it. It's The Lorax.

I remember this, and before I can escape, the words are there in my ears, in my head. I am the Lorax, he insists, this small creature crying out against the overpowering might razing his forests to the ground. I speak for the trees.

Just like you, crying out against the transgressions of the powerful, demanding audience with the overseer. You spoke for the trees.

Oh, God, what is it with the bad metaphors, and when did I start thinking of you in the past tense?

I am definitely going to be sick.

The tape I was holding slips numbly from my suddenly-weak grasp to clatter on the thin carpet as I lurch away and stumble toward the public bathroom. The couple in front of me is staring. I don't care.

Thank God it's empty. I lock the door behind me and stagger toward the nearest porcelain fixture.

It's the sink. Someone's going to have a mess to clean up. I suppose that should embarrass me, but it doesn't. I can barely muster the strength to rinse my mouth with water before I sink down and curl up, my face and swollen midriff pressed hard against the cold, blank linoleum, my body reflexively curled into the same position as the child, your child, growing inside me.

I'm thinking of betrayal.

Did you think of me when they took you? Did you know you weren't coming back?

Did you know I felt him kick for the first time last night?

Don't you know I need you?

Betrayal.

My body is betraying you at every turn, even as it struggles to bring forth that life that you alone could give me. It is betraying you because I just don't have the strength to find you. High blood pressure and gestational diabetes and unrelenting morning sickness and most unforgiving of all, my nose has begun to bleed again in slow, bright red droplets, and I am terrified and I need you.

I can only watch the sky from my mother's bay window as the others, everyone but me, pour the totality of their souls into the search for you. I can only splay my fingers out against the pane and scan the sky for you and count the stars.

Goddamn you. You have so much to come home to.

I reach out, my fingers flat against the cold floor, mimicking their actions against my mother's glass. It is cold, so cold, and I drift off counting stars.