Mother Knows Best [closed]

Note: This takes place three days after 80's Night at Black Creek Tavern

Aline wasn't sure what had gone down at Black Creek, but she vaguely remembered a cute guy...and with her, just because she hadn't woken up beside him didn't mean they hadn't gotten frisky. She decided to be safe; she always decided to be safe. She waited three days, which was the shortest amount of time she possibly could. Waking up in the semi-dark of her curtain-bound bedroom, she decided that now was as good as ever. Slogging through the mounds of junk that had accumulated on her floor, she made her way to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. What a fucking vision. She had been exhausted last night and had gone to bed without taking off her makeup, and it had been a mistake. With her mascara smeared halfway down her face, her lip stain faded to a dried blood color, and her hair in a blonde tornado, she wasn't looking her best. Feeling a slight a twinge, she remembered that she was going to be thirty in two years. Age and weight were the two biggest fears of every dancer; she didn't have as much to fear because she wasn't dancing professionally, but the desire to stay young still clutched her every time she looked into the mirror. Aline splashed water onto her face and wiped it off hard enough to make her cheeks red, but it hardly helped. She dragged a brush through her hair and looked at her slightly improved appearance...she'd fix it better later.

Reaching into the medicine cabinet, thankful to not have to look at herself anymore, Aline pulled out a packaged pregnancy test, deftly tearing open the paper and sliding the thing into her hand. She hated herself a little, but she had to do it, just to make sure. Just to reassure herself. She'd take another in two weeks, but she knew she would feel better if she took one now, too. Every time she did this, which was at least every two weeks, she reminded herself why she had to. How babies were gross little aliens that took advantage of your body and wrecked it. If age and weight were the two biggest fears for dancers, pregnancy was the third biggest. It went deeper for Aline; most just avoided it. She actively feared it, and tried to prevent it. She wanted her body to always just be hers, to not have any squishy little people growing inside of her.

Waiting for the results, she thought of her mother. Isabelle Rushing had some hormonal problems, and conceiving had been difficult for her. Aline was a miracle following two miscarriages, and there had been countless others following her. Swallowing, tapping one bare foot on the tile floor, Aline thought of the day when she was ten years old that had decided her once and for all never to have children. She'd been looking for her mother, wanting to ask her about lunch; Isabelle wasn't in the kitchen, the dining room, the bedroom, the den...Aline poked her sunflower colored head into the bathroom, having hear noises coming from within. It sounded like crying...'Mom?' she called, and her voice was small and soft and tenuous. Isabelle was sitting on the bathroom floor, crying. She was semi-nude, and the floor was bloody, and...

The results came back with the little pink line that meant negative. Aline breathed a sigh of relief and tossed it in the garbage. She could get on with her day, with her life, but never without that sneaking fear that it had been wrong, that she had missed something, that it was too early to tell. Did Green Ridge have an abortionist, or would she have to go back to the main land if she ever needed one? And she had no doubt that a fourth abortion would occur before her fortieth birthday; all the protection in the world was unreliable. Stepping over the pile of clothes that needed washing in the doorway, Aline walked to the kitchen, intent on having her breakfast, which was unvaryingly half a grapefruit. She got halfway there, thinking resolutely of the grapefruit, before she sank to the floor and leaned her head back against an end table. She reached upward, her face pinched, trying to stave off tears, and seized the telephone, dialing with shaking fingers.

"Hello?" asked a cheerful female voice.

"Hi, mom? It's Aline." The tears came, bubbling and hot and endless, and she barely heard her mother saying,

"Aline? Is everything okay, sweetie?"

"No, it's not. Mom, I haven't...told you the whole truth. I think I'm in trouble."