Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

50 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Heather E. Goodman
“Don’t you wonder?”
“No.”
He waited for me to say something else. I rolled over onto my side,
turning my back to him.
“Lou?”
I didn’t answer. My belly was waking up; soon I would have to
puke. I was sick of throwing up.
“Lulu?”
“What?”
“I was thinking I would make a crib. Make it since we can’t afford
one?”
More talk of preparation for the baby, only six days since I told
him. Seven weeks since the condom broke.
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know why he was doing this. Talking
about keeping the baby.
He reached again for my belly, and this time I picked up his wrist
and set it back on his side of the bed. “I don’t want you to touch my
stomach.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because I don’t like it.”
“But I want to know what it’s like.”
“It’s not like anything. It’s nothing.”
He pulled my shoulder, twisting me to look at him. “It’s not
nothing.”
“Well it’s not anything I wanted. And I thought it wasn’t anything
you wanted. We didn’t want one.”
He looked at me, trying to figure me out. “But now it’s different.”
As if that was an explanation. I rolled back to face the wall. “Just
don’t touch me there.”
I dawdle, run my fingers on the wood walls, and rub the
hammer imprint left over one of the nails. The cabin is sparse, Dad
having moved here when Mom died, selling the trailer we grew up in,
and keeping this shack we escaped to in summer and on weekends.
The first weeks after Mom’s death, he insulated the walls and put
up knotty pine boards. He fixed the leak under the sink and dug a
new hole for the outhouse. When Will and I visited the first time, he
looked drunk but didn’t smell it, and the cabin was torn apart. When