Rowena Raven: Chapter Eight

man, I'm really bad about pictures, aren't I?

The door slammed downstairs, and it woke me up. Immediately, my eyes sought the windows to figure out what general time of day it was. My alarm clock usually woke me up at seven, but it hadn’t gone off yet. The fading darkness told me it was extremely early in the morning, not more than four-thirty or five o clock. My hand came up to rub my eyes and I rolled over, trying to go back to bed.
But then I thought, wait, why had the door slammed? And then I thought, delayed reactions like this are going to get me in trouble with business like this. And then I thought of Rowena’s baby. Velvet Skies, the name made me think of the particular brand of gray the sky happened to be right now.
There was no time wasted between my bedroom and the “guest’s” room. I even banged hip on the edge of my desk. Just as I thought, the only one missing was Rowena. I hurried not to jump to conclusions though, surely she wouldn’t have run away again? We were making so much progress. I checked the upstairs bathroom, and then, quietly, daisy’s office and bedroom.
I was even quicker to check every room downstairs, but that didn’t speed up finding her at all. If I’d found her sitting somewhere all normal, sipping tea, running up to her all flustered and breathless, I’m not really sure what I would have told her, or even if I’d be able to tell her anything at all.
I saw the mug of abandoned tea on the coffee table in the foyer and picked it up, still warm, still full. I set it back down and went to grab my keys before going outside, just in case she wasn’t even in the yard. It had been twelve minutes between when the door woke me up and that moment, she could be so far away by now.
The thought only motivated me to move faster, checking the yard barefoot, not bothering to put a shirt on or check if my hair looked ridiculous. I couldn’t explain my own recklessness, refused to admit that it was love, and that I was just worried she was gone.
Instead, I assured myself that my already teetering business would surely go under if Rowena were to go missing, or commit suicide. All my work thus far, gone, and what a shame because I was still so young. And even then, my poor sister who would be dragged down with me. Maybe we could go back to daddie’s house and ask him to hire us. “We’re so sorry we tried to prove ourselves, dad. We’ll bend over and be your bitches now, just like you asked.”
I gripped the wheel tighter and only faintly realized I had gotten into my car. I was driving sporadically, slowly sometimes so that I could look off to the side of the road and search for Rowena, and then fast because I knew I wasn’t going to find her.

You understand her, I reminded myself. You know where she went, I yelled into my own skull. But you just have to get there in time. You know she wants you, the littler voice says, that she can’t bear the thought of losing Velvet, but even greater is her will to get him back.
I knew it though, I just knew I would find her on the bridge. She wasn’t going to find drugs, she wouldn’t think of slitting her wrists, and what quicker death than breaking your neck hitting the cold water from however many feet above?

She was standing there, just about halfway over the bridge. She’d been standing there for a couple of minutes already, I’m not sure why I could tell. It just felt right.
I stopped my car a couple of yards behind her, because I didn’t want to startle her. If I startled her, who knew what she would do?

I walked towards her as slowly as I could bear to, because I cared. About my business. If she died, so did my business, I reminded myself.
“Rowena.” I called out to her, she was already leaning so far over the edge. I was about five feet away from her, if she jumped now, I wouldn’t get to her in time. She looked at me and stepped back from the edge a bit.
“Do you think you’re going to stop me?” She didn’t sound distraught, or upset.
“I don’t think I’ll have to.”

She frowned.
“Listen, I understand what you’re going through.”
“You couldn’t possibly..” She scoffed, waving me off.
“No, really, I mean. As best as a man could, I get it, Rowena, don’t do this to yourself, or anyone around you. Please.”

“You really think I’d be standing here if I gave a shit what happened to anyone else?” She sort of faltered at the end, and I thought of Velvet again. I remembered his innocent face in the hospital when I carried him out to CPS, and how he cried.
“Rowena, if you do this, he’ll always blame himself.”
“That’s ridiculous, it’s not his fault he was born.”
“That’s not how children think of it, Rowena.” She turned around, taking a step back towards the edge of the bridge again. I wished I could see her face.
“Rowena, Daisy had a baby too.”
“What’s that got to do with me? You were rich, you were fine, she didn’t have to give hers up, I bet.” I could tell she knew she was wrong.
“That’s why dad called her useless, Rowena.” I dared a step closer. “She couldn’t do anything but the opposite of his wishes.” I imitated my father’s voice. “He didn’t want us dating, but she had a boyfriend all through high school. She got pregnant halfway through her junior year and he almost forced her to get an abortion.”
I watched the slump of her shoulders when she exhaled.
“‘All you can do is be a stupid woman.’ He told her. ‘Just like your mother.’ Because, Rowena, our parents didn’t want her. She was the useless leg, the rebel. She tried so hard to help, to clean, to get good grades, everything.” I stepped closer again, she flicked a glance at me but allowed it.
“And, Rowena, That’s how Velvet is going to feel.” I heard her sigh, and I continued. “He’s going to always try his hardest to please whoever he lives with, and it’s never going to be enough, because he’ll know his mom killed herself after he was born. It will always be his fault. If he hadn’t been born, she would still be alive and well. I’ve got straight A’s, he’ll think, but my mom still wouldn’t love me. I graduated valedictorian, he’ll think, but my mom still wouldn’t love me. I’m a neurosurgeon, he’ll think, but that’s still not good enough for mom.”
She turned around and her eyes said daggers, the rest said she’d given up and would come back with me.
“Come home, Rowena. We all need you.” I suddenly remembered what I’d been telling myself about the business. “And that way, Velvet can live a better life.”
There was a moment when she held her breath and looked up at me from under her scorn, and ultimately, her sadness, and then she breathed out and said. “Come home, Rowena, come inside, Rowena. You could drag me to the ends of the earth, you know, Vanilla. All you’d have to do is say please, and you always do.”

I was stunned. I couldn’t tell if she meant because it was me, or because I was so good at convincing her to do things. For some reason it didn’t worry me much. Beyond that, it was just unbelievable. Would winning her over really be that easy?

                                                                       ~o~

It was days before she even spoke again, weeks before she opened up to a fraction of what she used to open up about. She played the piano a lot, tried to be alone more often.
There was one evening when I was sitting in the hallway, and she was sitting on one of the chairs in the foyer, when Pomegranate sauntered up to her.

He sat down on the couch and waggled his eyebrows at her. He said something, but it was too low for me to hear. She rolled her eyes and said something back.

 He did this thing he always does when he’s annoyed but trying to get something he wants, he sort of clenches his jaw and smiles at you extra-nice. He did that and said something that looked vaguely like ‘but don’t you want me?’
I smiled and went back to the book I’d been reading when she audibly said “Fuck off, Pomegranate,” got up, and walked away.

“God, what is it about me?” She said when she sat down in the chair across from me the next morning for our meeting.

 “Just what is it that makes all the wrong men go ‘oh, I can get with that?” She huffed and looked displeased.
“I don’t know, Rowena. Maybe it’s the way you’ve presented yourself.” She entertained the thought, I could see, because her eyebrows went up for a second and she nodded.

She seemed to struggle with saying something, because she thought about it first, opened her mouth, and then thought about it again. She decided not to say it, and I wondered what it had been.
“How am I supposed to present myself?”
I laughed, “However you think you should. Personally I’d try to be the kind of person who attracts the kind of people I want to attract.”

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Rowena Raven: Chapter Seven

From the moment she was brought into my home, I knew she was something different. The first few days she was distant and quiet, but after that, she was just... spicy.

She had a mental hardiness to her, a sort of armor that was useful but was also her downfall. She was hard headed and close minded, but also smart in a reasonable way. You could tell she wasn’t all that book smart, but there was something else about her, like she got what was going on in the world around her, like she really knew how to figure someone out. I’d never seen that quality in anyone but myself before, it was intriguing, but I liked to think that was why I couldn’t completely figure her out.
It was all there, her daddy problems, why she was okay with men abusing her because she thought the relationship was normal. There was how her mother didn’t love her, so she didn’t know what it was like. It explained everything, her distance, the way she didn’t let anyone in, but it didn’t explain the basic core of her personality. It didn’t explain how she was so strong, so resilient, when she should have been so weak.
I’d had patients before like her, same situation and everything, but I’d never had anyone who resisted treatment for so long.
I knew from the first time I talked to her that I would go the rest of my life completely infatuated and curious about her. When something changes your life like that, you don’t really think about how unrealistic or strange, how sudden it is. It just happens, and you’re okay with it.
But I just couldn’t figure her out, and somewhere under my caring curiosity I knew it hurt my pride that I could tell she didn’t share an ounce of my feelings, she was too busy looking at Pomme, or missing Smog, or however many other guys she’d ever thought she loved.
I had to admit that I did find her antics quite amusing, despite her utter apathy for the lives around her.
It tore at my heartstrings when she finally began changing, seeing the world from a new light.

When she walked so calmly into my office and told me of her insecurites for her child. It was like meeting a kid with cancer, you know you can help, and you’re doing your best, only it’s not very effective. I wanted to give her everything, but it really went against my values, and the most I wanted to do for her was give her a job. So I sung her praises to a friend of mine, which is when it really helps that your father had friends in high places, and you spent your life meeting them.

                                                                         ~o~

Daisy and I were sitting on her couch the night that Rowena freaked out on her. It was hard to get a personal moment with so many people in the house, but it was possible. Daisy and I always had short conversations in the evenings just before going to bed.
“She kinda freaks me out, Lemon. There’s just something about her, it’s like she just sees right through me.” She was making wide gestures with her hands, her eyes wide.

“I could see that, considering what she told you, It’s like she knew.”

“I know, it just brought me back to that moment. It was scary, how she just figured it out like that. Am I really that transparent, Lemon?” You could tell it had really gotten to her.
“I don’t think so, Daisy. She just- I don’t know. She’s just smart, I think.”
“I wouldn’t know, considering she’s never let me talk to her.” Daisy harrumphed.

it was true, that it was so freaky what she’d figured out, how our father had told Daisy she was useless. It was scary, but also a little predictable. Daisy and Rowena were more alike than they thought, they’d both had children they couldn’t keep, and could not have good relationships with men for shit.

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Rowena Raven: Chapter Six. "The Birth of Self-Hatred."

Okay. The yellow one. I could do this. I could walk to Vanilla’s car and go have this baby. I was ready for this. So ready. It wouldn’t even be that hard, I mean, this is what I was made to do. It was hard to breathe and walk down the stairs at the same time though. I could hear Vanilla rushing around telling everyone what was happening and when he expected to be back by. I had to stop and breathe though, I realized I could not handle walking down and out to the car.
“Vanilaaaaaghh!” I yelled out, towards the end feeling a sharp pain. The person in question promptly appeared at the foot of the stairs, looking a little frantic. “Help me get down there.” I stated, and he nodded his head, seeming kinda distracted as he held my hand and put his other one on the small of my back, reminding me to breathe.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I noted that it seemed like he needed it more than I did. Mentally, I was pretty blank, it was just that physically I was on overload. I was especially bad at handling physical pain considering I’d spent the larger part of my youth considerably numb. I just thought of getting to the car, and once I got to the car it was to the hospital.
It took 16 hours, but it was very busy. I refused to use any drugs which was probably me being just a little too paranoid, but I thought it was worth it. Vanilla didn’t leave the building, and kept trying to come in before the actual pushing started, but he was irritating me being all nervous. I don’t think he was worried about me getting hurt or anything, but he was thinking about what was happening to my baby after it was born, so he assumed I was doing that too. I most assuredly was not thinking towards the future. I was just thinking about getting it over with.
But when I saw that baby’s face, it was suddenly all worth it. Everything I had been working towards just suddenly made so much sense. My mental health was not just for my benefit. It just wasn’t about me anymore.

                                                          ~o~

He looked a lot like Smog, his hair and the shape of his face. There was no telling where he got the shade of his skin from, but he had the exact same deep red eyes as me, and my mother before that. He was generally quiet, just looking around and sometimes making little noises.
After he was born my mind made the jump back into reality. I was warned by Vanilla that I probably had an hour and a half with him at the most. It was about two in the morning and I just wanted to sleep, but I wasn’t about to just throw away my time with him napping.

I walked up and down the hallway with him, just quietly appreciating him, Velvet Skies Raven.
Back in the room I stood in front of the window with him. I knew he couldn’t understand but telling him what was going on just felt right.

“Hello, little boy.” I said softly, bittersweetly smiling at him. “I wish I could stay with you longer, Velvet.” I paused for a moment and looked out the window, I was starting to get choked up. “But we just have to wait a little while. Just a few weeks.” I tried smiling at him again, kissing his forehead.

“Just enough time for mommy to get back on track,” I continued. “I want you to know I’ll always love you.” I told him, still holding back my tears. Even if he didn’t know, I didn’t want him to see me crying. I didn’t want to know where he ended up, whether he ended up in some random foster home or back at Smog’s did matter to me, it was just that neither of them would be satisfactory to me.
“Never forget it, Velvet Skies. You’ll be in trouble if you don’t know that I love you.” For a second it was a bit embarrassing, I wondered if anyone could hear me and I hoped not. The conversation felt very personal and secret.

It actually only took about fourty five minutes for CPS to show up to take Velvet away. They didn’t come into the room, but Vanilla did. I didn’t turn around when he walked up behind me and put my hand on my shoulder.
“They’re here.” He was quiet, like he knew he needed to be, like if he wasn’t something bad would happen.

I looked away from Velvet because at that moment I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. I didn’t sob or cry out or anything, just silent tears.
“I can’t go out there.” I choked out. Vanilla squeezed my shoulder and reached towards Velvet.
“Let me take him then.” There were no words wasted, he didn’t say ‘I’m so sorry, it’s just the way it has to be.’ or anything. He looked just as disappointed as I felt.
When I handed Velvet off to him my arms felt like empty, cold noodles. I folded my arms and tried not to watch, but when Vanilla walked out of the room with him I did hear Velvet crying briefly. It just broke my heart.

I sat back down on the cold hospital bed, and one of the CPS people came in to get my info and ask me a bunch of questions. Vanilla sat with me through it, but I was somewhere else entirely.

                                                            ~o~

  Jarred awake by nothing in particular later that night, reality hit me again, hard. I’d floated through the house, not really coming down and thinking about how real everything was. It was a comfortable feeling, but it was always worse when the realization hit me, and it always did.

I felt like I was going to be sick. It was all my fault, Velvet leaving, me not getting out of rehab. Completely my fault.
I could have prevented this. I didn’t have to be this far into despair right now. Velvet could have a better life. This was just all my fault. It made me dizzy, I was going to be sick. I had just enough time to run for the bathroom.

 I threw up, but I was so dizzy I wasn’t sure what happened. I must have passed out because I woke up on the floor with a bitter taste in my mouth.
I went downstairs to get myself a cup of tea and calm myself down a bit, thinking to myself on the way there that I was just being stupid, because why should I have to calm down? My baby was taken from me, I wasn’t at fault here, because he should not have been taken away.
I sat in one of the foyer chairs, trying to breathe and stop being so dizzy. I had this pounding headache. But I was sitting there, just staring at the door.

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Rowena Raven: Chapter Five. "What's Growing Inside of me is Not a Child."

      okay, so sorry for a lack of pictures. in case you didn't know, I recently had to uninstall and reinstall all of my games, and I was stupid enough to not back  up my screenshots, where all of the pictures for this chapter were. sorry, guys. The chapter after this will probably not have pictures in the beginning of it, either.


       The next few weeks flew by. I’d never had so much time to think before, but it was like this big switch had been turned on inside of me. Nilla said he’d never seen someone improve so fast. He said it was because I’d never been given such an easy opportunity to let everything go, coupled with the pregnancy hormones. When he told me that I wondered where I’d be now if I hadn’t gotten pregnant.
However, I was still stuck on whether or not their version of better was really something I agreed with, and Vanilla boy said that was perfectly normal. He’d be more concerned and skeptical if I’d just immediately succumbed. Any faster improvement, he said, and I’d have to be faking. It was encouraging but scary to wrap my mind around. Sometimes in the middle of the day, I’d wonder what I was doing. Why wasn’t I getting out of here? I just wanted to leave. My hands would shake and I’d briefly become very angry with myself. This isn’t what I had always thought life was supposed to be. I was supposed to live, and die. I didn’t expect to be happy or see another point of view, and I couldn’t help but realize how close minded I was. But I didn’t see anything wrong with it.
Sessions with Vanilla were radically different from sessions with Daisy, as if I hadn’t said it enough. Daisy’s sessions had been therapy, “how does that make you feel? If you could go back would you do it differently?” But with Vanilla it was like having a friend- but also because he was a friend, I doubted the definition of "friend" that I’d had my whole life.
But anyway, where Daisy’s was therapy, Vanilla’s were casual conversation. Sometimes it was deep, but mostly we told each other stories. Sometimes unbelievable stories, because it was hard to stomach the image of teenage rebels Daisy and Vanilla boy.
Just like me, they went to parties and got drunk. They threw parties while daddy was away, and because they were rich kids they had the resources to do anything they could think of doing. Nilla told me that once, in his Freshman year of college he’d thrown a party so huge even the cops joined in.
He also told me that miss Hippy Daisy in her sophomore year of high school, had taken BioMed class. In that class, they dissected dead cats. Daisy was against this, so instead of quietly dissecting a cat, Vanilla boy helped her buy fifty living cats and let them loose in the science wing of their school over night. He told me they’d almost gotten expelled, if it hadn’t been for daddy’s money. I asked if she’d ended up having to dissect a cat anyway, he chuckled and said “Yeah..” with a far-away look on his face. He looked back at his high school and college memories with a sense of nostalgia and happiness. I looked back on mine with indifference and discontentment. I’d been that way even before I’d come to Renewing Springs Inn.
Eventually the stories we told each other got more and more personal. I was always wary, expecting snide remarks or sarcasm. Vanilla boy gave me none. It was mature, refreshing. I told him how I’d lost my virginity on the second day of my freshman year of high school to a boy named Macadamia in the girl’s locker room. We’d skipped creative writing together. I remembered that he had a car, which was particularly cool to a freshman girl. I also remembered that we didn’t really talk after that one occurrence.  I don’t even think he knew how young I was, or that I was a virgin.
Vanilla asked me if I was ashamed of myself, and I told him the truth, that no, I wasn’t. I told him I was proud to have these stories to tell, to show people that despite my actions I’d come out alive on the other end. I’d started becoming surprised at my own thoughts, sometimes.
Nilla told me that he lost his virginity in his junior year of high school to a senior girl named Pesto. He’d taken her to a drive in movie in his father’s car, and he’d been the nervous one. I laughed and told him that it sounded like a story from the 60‘s, and that his father had probably lost his the same way. Then we laughed together.
“Is this normal?” I asked him after we were done laughing.
“what do you mean?”
“I mean this feels like friendship, not therapy.” He started opening his mouth, but I interrupted him. “I know, I know, being friendly and all that. It just seems strange and unprofessional that you should be my friend and not my therapist.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“Not really- it’s just that I didn’t even share this much information with Marina. I mean, I told her things that had happened, but not how I felt about it. With you it’s like I give everything away.”
He smiled at me and I could practically hear him saying “you have so much to learn.”
“That’s probably why we’re making so much progress.” He interjected.
I shrugged. “I guess.” it just didn’t seem right. There had to be more to it than that. This couldn’t possibly be a normal friendship. I couldn’t quite get the concept that Vanilla understood me and the way my mind worked so clearly.
                                                                      ~o~
“So how far along are you again?”
“Eight months. I’m about ready to pop.”
Pomme and I were outside, sitting on the lawn and watching the evening clouds float by. It was peaceful, and that was enough for me. As for Pomme, you could hear the anticipation and impatience dripping for the tenor and accent of his voice.
“And after that, you’ll be with me, right?” He spoke low, trying to be sexy. He rolled over on his side and put his hand on my huge belly. I put my hand on his and turned my head to face him.
“I don’t know Pomme, I mean, I’m going to be a mother.”
“But it’s just a baby, Rowena. Aren’t you going to adopt it out, anyways?” He sounded confused, but not genuinely so. Like maybe if he played innocent, I’d actually do it.
“Uh, no. This is my child, Pomme. I’m keeping him.”
“Doesn’t the father want it?” He seemed vaguely disgusted.
“It? Pomme, it’s not the father’s choice. I’ve taken responsibility for this and I’m not going to opt out and make Smog care for a child he doesn’t want!”
“But, Rowena darling, you don’t want that, right? Just have fun while you can-”
“Pomme. I am eight months pregnant.” I said sternly, pushing his unwanted kiss away from my jaw. “If I’d wanted to continue having fun, I would have gotten an abortion.”
At this point, Pomegranate had sat up. I sat up too. He looked worried and angry under his suave exterior.
“But you said-”
“Pomme, I don’t care what I said. You disgust me.” I’d never thought about it before, but, mulling over my words, I realized that I couldn’t have said anything more true to him.
There was no argument. Huffily, he got up and stomped back into the house. I slumped back down onto the grass, sighing. I sat there until the sky began to turn from pink to dark blue,  and then moved to the swing. My mind was blank and my conscience clean, but I couldn’t help but feel wrong.
I sat on the swing for I don’t know how long. Daisy had given the warning to come inside twice, but she had given up. She’d probably gone and told Vanilla boy to come and get me, but he didn’t. I sat there until the stars and the moon lit the sky, and then I sat some more.
I wishfully gazed at the city lights to my right, letting my bare toes drag in the dirt under the swing. I listened as the door opened and Nilla walked over to me, but I didn’t look at him or acknowledge that he was there.
He stood in front of me with his arms crossed for awhile, but his gaze wasn’t menacing or impatient. He looked at me sadly, like he’d expected more out of me. We stared at each other for a moment.
“What are you doing out here, Rowena?”
I looked away, back towards the glowing city. “My bed is too small.”
“Please just come inside. You’re making us nervous.”
I looked back at him again, looking right at his face. Briefly he looked uncomfortable, and wavered, uncrossing his arms. “Please, Rowena. You can’t sit here on this swing all night.”
“It’d be more comfortable than sleeping on that godawful bed.” I don’t really know what I was trying to get him to do for me. I just wanted to cause problems and be childish.
“Then sleep in my bed! I don’t care, just come inside please. I’m begging you.” I shot him a look, and to that he answered, “Yes, with me in it. We can sleep in a bed together as friends, Rowena.”
“Whatever,” I said, getting up off the swing and walking back towards the house. Vanilla boy followed me.
“Is that a yes?”
“You think I’m gonna choose the bunk bed if I have a choice?”
He chuckled and followed me inside.

                                                                       ~o~

I woke up to the other half of the bed empty. I hadn’t slept that well in months and I was reluctant to get up. Instead I rolled over and spread out on the bed, taking up the whole thing and staring at the ceiling. It was a very sunny day for Briocheport, and it reflected my mood. I felt at peace and like I had more energy than I’d had in a long time. After laying on my back for a few more minutes I got up and stretched, finding my muscles mostly free of aches.
When I got downstairs everyone was already done with breakfast. Vanilla boy was at the table reading a thick book. I grabbed myself a bowl of cereal and sat across from him. He glanced up for a second and went back to reading.
“How late is it?”
“Hmm? oh, I don’t know. After 10:30 I think. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Oh.” I didn’t really know what to think about it, but he was very nonchalant, so I decided I wasn’t going to worry or anything. We’d missed the time frame to have a session though, so maybe my mood was just a little bit dampened. I wasn’t going to let it ruin my day, though.
I spent a couple of hours sitting in the main room on the bigger piano. They had two, a grand piano and one that was upright and smaller, in the TV room. But Gogi and Melon were watching something, so I didn’t want to disturb them. I was, however, glad to be left alone while playing. I’d half expected Daisy to come and watch me, but she didn’t. I don’t think I saw Pomme once that day.

                                                                       ~o~

“So, do you have anything in mind you’d like to do for a job?”
“Something with music. I can play the piano at least decently, I think. I’d be happy just doing maintenence or something.” I would really need the money. The baby was due in three weeks.
“I have a friend down at the theater in the city. They do plays, concerts and symphonies, things like that. I might be able to get you a performing job. Hope you’re not afraid of an audience.”
“Definitely not.” I said, beaming.
“Don’t expect this to be set in stone though, I can’t promise you anything. I could suggest you and he might have you sweeping hallways and cleaning up after shows, or he might not hire you at all.”
“I’ll make sure to keep that in mind. You’ll at least help me get some sort of a job though, right?”
“Of course, Rowena. I’m here for you every step of the way.” Personally, I was glad he was being honest about the possibility of my not getting hired.
“But I do need to tell you that we’ve talked to child protective services about your baby.” He didn’t sound too happy and I steeled myself over for what was coming.
“They told us that they absolutely cannot let a child live here, and you’re not ready to leave yet. I don’t think you’ll be able to get out of here fast enough to keep him. I’m really sorry..”
I couldn’t help it, but I felt a mix of fear, anger and sadness. I could feel myself starting to cry, but I suppressed it, sighing and taking my breaths slowly.
“You’re sure? Will I have to fight to get him back afterwards?”
“Possibly, but they also said that as a woman recently out of rehab, the chances of you getting him back at all are slim.”
My hand moved to my bulging stomach. I rested my elbow on the arm of the chair, and then slumped my head into my hand, beginning to quietly sob. Vanilla walked over behind my chair and rubbed my shoulder, offering me tissues. I didn’t want to look at him, and he understood me, just standing there and comforting me while I cried for what felt like hours.
The next day I entered his office a bit more humbled than I had been the day before. He sat in the chair in front of me, clapping his hands together and smiling.
“I talked to my friend down at the theater, he said he’d definitely accept you no matter what, but the job he accepts you in will depend on how good you are with various instruments.”
He paused, waiting for my answer. I just smiled at him
“I hope you’re good with something other than a piano!”
He looked at me again, and I still didn’t answer, still smiling.
“Alright, what’s up, you look happy but you’re not saying anything.”
“I’m pretty sure my water just broke.” I was still smiling. It was still a little early, but it didn’t worry me too much.
“Oh.” His eyes widened and he glanced at the door for a moment before getting up and walking  across the room. “I’ll go uh, warm my car up, do you- do you need help getting down there?”
“No, I think I can manage. Just give me a minute.”
“Wow, hoo- Okay. Alright. We’re prepared for this.” He seemed shell-shocked. “Mine’s the yellow one, in case you didn’t know.”


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Rowena Raven: Chapter Four

My first couple of sessions with Ditzy were all the same. She sat on the couch, I sat on the chair, and I stared at her until she shut up. She’d start with something like “So what was your mom like?” and when she realized she wasn’t going to get anything out of me she went on to lighter things like “Do you have a lot of friends?”
She was the kind of person who tried to ignore the problem. She didn’t ask me anything like “How many times a week do you usually get high?” She didn’t ask about my relationship with Smog, and she didn’t ask what my living conditions were like. She didn’t even ask what I thought about myself. Daisy and I had therapy sessions every morning after breakfast, and she was the kind of cheerful that made me think the milk in my cereal had curdled in my stomach and was coming back up.
Morning sickness didn’t help.
But then there was that one glorious day. The day she gave in and realized she wasn’t getting anywhere with me. My foolish hopes were that she’d move on and say that she was going to send me somewhere else, or send me home, or tell me she thought that I was just fine the way I was and she wasn’t going to try and “Help” me anymore.
It was a Sunday morning, so breakfast wasn’t the usual cereal. We had eggs and toast and fruit and stuff, and for once I wasn’t completely uninterested. My mood was looking up, if not for morning sickness. It’d been about two weeks since I’d gotten there. Sixteen meetings with Ditzy gone by and it took her this long to give in. She was wearing her most cheerfully false smile, and she asked me how I was feeling.

“Alright,” I said, staring at her diploma on the wall. “And you?” I tried my best to seem sincerely sarcastic. My voice was horribly grumbly and raspy because my lungs were still cleaning themselves after smoking since I was fourteen.

“I’m doing fantastic, thanks for asking honey!” I flinched at her voice, thinking about how my meetings should really not be in the morning. I thought of her drowning in the bathtub, or maybe falling off a cliff or something. I couldn’t help thinking of her body all twisted up on the rocks, and smiled.

“Gosh, Rowena! What’s got you in such a good mood?” And then I laughed at her, right in her face.

“You are such a stupid bitch. You need to get real.” I said at her, sitting back in my stupid striped chair. “I can’t stand you.” I thought of stopping there, but as I said more it just came to me. I needed to tell her why she was so stupid, I couldn’t help myself. “You are so freaking cheerful that it makes you look stupid beyond your wildest dreams. You look so fake all the time. Your exterior is so nice, and so perfect to you that you’re like a one dimensional character in a bad movie. You’re the gullible elementary school teacher. You’re the ditzy teenage girl. I can’t even think of anything to compare you to because you’re so fake. Someone in your life must’ve hated you growing up.” My voice got louder and louder with momentum. “Your dad or someone, yeah. He told you to sit down and shut up and act like a lady, right? So you’re nice and you’re helpful and you’re not useless, daddy!” And at the end it was a shriek.

Dazey ran from the room, leaving the door open in her wake. I watched her crack open Vanilla boy’s door and ask him if he had a minute.

They stepped in the hall and whispered to each other as I watched on, leaning my back against Daisy’s door. Vanilla glanced up at me when she was done

whispering and nodded to her, touching her arm. He walked back into his room and Daisy walked back towards me, trying to look at the floor. When she did make eye contact She quickly looked away like I’d burned her.

“What was that all about?”
She sighed a little and made wavering eye contact again. “Tomorrow you’ll start having sessions with Vanilla instead of me, at the same time every day.” She brushed past me with slumped shoulders and a generally deflated body language. I din’t feel bad in the least.

                                                                      ~o~

That night Pomme and I stayed out in the garden area a little later than usual. We sat and casually chatted, and I told him about how annoyed I was with Daisy. He laughed at all the little nicknames I’d come up with to describe her.

I liked Pomegranate, generally. He wasn’t someone to go to for the most engaging conversation, and he told me that he’d dropped out of high school. He was younger than me, and I found his adventures being a nymphomaniac pretty funny. I think that was the point though. He told me that when he was fifteen and sixteen he started selling himself because he was so obsessed with sex. He’d managed to keep it mostly secret from his mom, but she could always tell something was up.

The way he talked about his mom was endearing, but also like he thought of her as being stupid, or ignorant of the world around here. “It’s just like Daisy,” He said “she chooses to ignore everything that’s wrong with the world instead of embracing it.”
I nodded. We were in perfect harmony, I thought. We understood each other. I never considered for even one moment that he was only trying to get in my pants. That was only natural for me, I never thought of relationships as being more than that considering I’d been with Smog for so long.
We got up to go inside, because Daisy had given us a five-minute warning. He felt my belly and told me, “I can’t wait until you give birth, then we can totally do stuff.” I laughed at his antics and he winked at me, and then we went inside to go to bed.

                                                                       ~o~

The next day I got up and stretched and tried my best to rub my own back, sleeping on the tiny bunkbed was definitely not doing wonders for me. I’d asked about getting a different bed weeks ago, but Daisy just said that “They hadn’t planned” to take care of a pregnant woman when they redid the house to be a rehab facility. Meanwhile, she sleeps on her own huge bed every night. But whatever, that’s not what I’m trying to say.
What I’m getting to is that that was my first day of sessions with Vanilla, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I certainly didn’t want to acknowledge that I felt a little nervous, and passed it off as anticipation influenced by pregnancy hormones. I didn’t even have a reason to be nervous. If anything, I thought of him as being more of a potential “friend” than how I thought of Daisy, but that was a bad thing to me, because if he was my friend, and he got through to me, then I’d get “better.”
Their definition of better, not mine.
When I went upstairs to his office and walked inside, he was sitting at his desk waiting for me. I mentally winced at how awkward it made me feel. But, the first thing I noticed was how much brighter his room was than Ditzy’s. It was much more yellow and bright, and hers had been more neutral and had darker purples.

He had been waiting for me, sitting at his desk. He got up and shook my hand and said “Welcome, Welcome, have a seat.” He actually seemed kind of excited and it was funny to me. He rubbed his hands together and tried to start a conversation.
“So, Rowena, where are you from?”
“This is my hometown.” I told him flatly.
“Never moved away or anything?”
I shook my head and then fell silent,  staring off blankly so that he’d get the hint and stop talking to me.

It was all quiet for a moment, Vanilla boy just stared at me. And then he got up and moved the two chairs in front of his desk to face each other, even though I was still sitting in one of them. I didn’t really know what to do when he sat in the one across from me. We were so close we were almost knocking knees.

“Look, Rowena. I know Daisy tolerated your shit, but I genuinely care about what’s going on with you.” He was looking right at me, very serious. I was suddenly very uncomfortable. I still sat and stared at a place on the wall just above his right shoulder.

“So we can do this the easy way, and you can help me, and I can help you. Or we can transfer you somewhere much more rigorous, where the people are not half as nice as Daisy and I. I can promise you that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Alright, alright. Ask away, Vanilla boy.”

He sat back in his seat and smiled. “Thank you.” He paused for a moment, considering his words. “So you’re, uh... friends with Pomegranate.”
“Yeah, we’re friends. I know what you’re thinking, too. The way you said friends and all. We totally want to bump uglies.”
He laughed, which was not what I was expecting. “Do you really think you’re in the position to be doing that, I mean-” Vanilla gestured to my swelling stomach.
“We’re not gonna do it while I’m still pregnant, jeez!”
“No, no. That’s not what I meant at all. I just mean you know you’re going to have a baby, right?”
“No, I’m going to give birth to a litter of puppies.”
“Right, so, you won’t be able to keep it unless you get better and get out of here first. And then if Pomegranate has sex, he’ll go back to square one. He’ll never get out of here. And you’ll have a baby and everything. It just sounds like you both want to destroy yourselves.”

Absentmindedly, my hand came up to my stomach. “Yeah, but. You guys think you’re making us better, but we’re fine just where we are.”
“Do you really think that, Rowena?”
“Yes! I was happy, and I don’t think I was destroying myself. Nobody I knew criticized my lifestyle and then I came here.”
“But, Rowena. You were high off your ass. You couldn’t even form coherent sentences. You were drunk while pregnant. You could’ve killed your baby, it could be born completely deformed for all you know, and that’s because of your lifestyle.”
“So? That’s my choice, not yours. I could pretend to get better and get out of here and go back to drinking and getting high for all you know.”
“I don’t think you could do that.”
“Do what? Go back to drinking and everything?”
“You don’t know how to act normal enough for us to accept it, Rowena.” When I stared off at the wall again he continued.

“From what I can gather, your life has been like this for as long as you can remember. You’ve never had anything normal, but because of that you think what you’re going through and the way you act is normal and OK.”
“What’s wrong with that? It is normal and OK!”
“Not when you’re hurting someone else’s life, Rowena. Here you are talking about ruining Pomegranate’s chances, and your baby’s chances, and you’re completely alright with that. Why?”
“I don’t know.”I mumbled. I had never considered anyone else’s feelings before, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. I just automatically thought that if anyone had any problems with anything, they’d deal with it instead of just going with what I was giving them. It was a completely new perspective, and if it had been shown to me at any other time, I wouldn’t have been ready for it.

                                                                   ~o~

With that new perspective, I spent the next couple of days worrying about my baby and what I was doing at all hours of the day. What was he going to like? How would he feel about his mama?
I immediately thought back to my mother, and my scorn towards her. I always respected her as a woman, she had her own agenda and she didn’t want a child, and she made that clear.
But now here I was, in the same situation she had been, only she had had a steady job and a house and an at least somewhat good life. Now I was bringing a child into the world under even worse circumstances.

                                                  ~o~

This was the topic the next time I had a meeting with Vanilla.
I walked into his office and sat down in the same chair as last time, and he was sitting in one of the chairs too instead of at his desk. I guess he decided it was easier.
“I don’t know how I feel about my baby now.” I looked at the floor because I was embarrassed to admit that he’d gotten to me. I half expected some sort of clever remark, but there was none of that.

“Oh, Rowena. There’s so much you can do for it. You can give it up for adoption or you could hand it over to a family member.”
“I think it’s a boy. But I want to keep him. I can’t stand the thought of him going somewhere else that isn’t home with me. But now I don’t know how much of a home my grubby apartment is. It smells like smoke and marijuana.” A smell that was once nostalgic and calming, I thought to myself.
“I don’t know Rowena, now that you’re getting better, maybe I can help you find a job somewhere, yeah? Then you wouldn’t have to stay in your apartment for so long.”

I nearly cried at his kind words and his utter sincerity.


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