Abby Henry

I knew The Bad Thing would happen but that didn’t make it any less hard.

So, I boiled potatoes on the stovetop and bought coffee at the store. I drove with my kneecaps, kept my hands in my hair. Claire and I watched Kajillionaire on the couch.

I said things like “I didn’t know Miranda July made movies” and “This is so me.”

Joey left me at the end of June, right after I met his parents. Right after we talked about dating for real this time. That was the start of The Bad Thing. A few days later, I found out I was pregnant; that was the middle. And then the baby died. That was the end.

She was a girl, in my mind. And she was named Apple, like Gwenyth Paltrow’s daughter. Because I always thought that was the prettiest name in the world.

Apple made my hair fall out faster than normal and she made my stomach feel tight, my bladder small. I had a headache most of the time — a headache she gave me — but my skin was pretty good. I drank lots of water. Apple wasn’t real for very long, so when she died there wasn’t much of her to lose. Just clumps of blood and tissue. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing proper, nothing solid.

It’s hard for me to wash the dishes now. And it’s hard for me to walk to work.

I take pictures of the apples in the grocery store. I twist their stems, sing the alphabet, hope they break on “J.” I cut out words from The New Yorker and glue them to my wall: sting, window, better. I don’t know what it means to lose a thing you didn’t want, but I know that it feels heavy.

I told Joey about Apple a month after I lost her. And he said “holy fucking shit” over and over while he lay on the floor of my bedroom. He put his hands over his eyes and in his hair and on his jaw.

And then he said, “I would have been around. I would have come back.”

I nodded. I didn’t ask, “Why would you have stayed for a baby?”

Or “Why didn’t the baby stay?”

Or “What is so wrong with me?”

I just kept nodding.

I want a baby. I do. But first, I want a materially beautiful life. A remarkable life. And maybe that makes me awful.

I want a home with built-in bookshelves and an upstairs, and I want to take pilates classes. I want eggs that are from chickens that are mine. I want to have so many blouses, and I want to get compliments, and I want to wear slacks. I want basil. I want honey. I want limes on trees.

I want to have a party. A party where I peel the limes, and slice and juice and zest them. A party where I put the limes in every single dish, where I wear their peels like diamonds. Serve pavlova. Leave the oven cracked.

And I want that to not even be grand of me. I want it to just be normal. Because I’m the kind of girl who’s always peeling limes. For everyone all the time. For the people I hate and for the people I like and for the people I’m sort of neutral about. Because that is simple work — it’s easy, but it means something.

The people I love will peel their own limes. Because for them, I’ll do secret, sacred things.

I’ll wipe their snot up with my hands, let them nosebleed on my good sheets. I’ll carry their baby until it dies, flush it down the toilet.

Joey was the only guy I ever fucked and thought about the fucking the entire time. Usually, I’m somewhere far away in my mind, like at the beach or a hot spring or my hometown movie theater. But with Joey, I was just there. In bed. Listening to him grunting and moaning and yelling.

I told him this once and he said, “That fucks hard.” He could never be serious, even when he wanted to. The closest he got to the word “love” was the word “care,” and that felt more intimate to me somehow. Because I knew he had to reach for it.

When I asked him questions, he would sometimes cry trying to answer them. Like he knew the words, but they were too painful to say. And watching Joey cry was like watching a baby cry. He would shake and grind his teeth together and punch the ground. And I would tap his shoulders like you’re supposed to do before administering CPR. To let the dying person know you’re there.

I don’t sleep well. But Apple made me sleep worse. Two-hour increments: fall asleep at 12, wake up at 2, then 4, then 6.

And now that she’s gone, I have all these dreams that she’s not. Dreams where I’m pregnant and can feel it. I stare at myself in the mirror and lift my shirt up, turn to the side. I have stretch marks and I love it. She’s real and alive. I am too.

The last time I slept through the night was at Joey’s house. The blinds were pulled shut, and he was snuggled close to me like an animal. My arms were hanging off the bed, but I felt sweet and needed.

And in the morning, he asked if I slept good, and I said yes, and he said, “I know. I heard you snoring.” I didn’t know I snored, so I laughed, and he did too and then I fell asleep again. Woke up at noon.

I’ve been doing yoga classes to help with all the sadness. I go three days a week, and I’m the youngest one there.

The Tuesday teacher asks us to imagine we’re a sphinx on hot sand: straight legs, tight core. I’m on a beach in the middle of summer. I’m drawing a halfmoon with my big toe. I’m stacking my body like blocks: pelvis, ribs, shoulders, neck.

The Wednesday teacher says our hips are where we store the bad things. I stretch extra hard in pigeon, try to ring them all out. I feel more of the same. The bad things don’t leave; they just shift. I’m in child’s pose; I’m in happy baby; I’m in fetal position.

The Thursday teacher touches my shoulders and then my head in shavasana, and I start to cry. Then she wants us to sit up but I’m still crying, and I don’t know what to do. I’m a rhesus monkey. Wire mother. Untouchable.

When Joey left me, he was sobbing and choking, pulling at his clothes. He said that he didn’t know why this happens with everyone he cares about. He said that being with me made him feel so anxious he thought he was gonna die.

I kept trying to get him to touch me and he wouldn’t do it. I wanted to be held or felt, made real. I placed my hand in his and he just let me. Then my head was on his shoulder, and he didn’t move.

In my other life, my good one, Apple is born in early March. She screams loud. I’m in the water. I hold her in my arms and call her honey and angel and baby. I feed her with my body, and we live in a red house with a yard. Apple has big blue eyes and curls. She sleeps well but not perfect. And when she wakes up screaming, I hold a pacifier in her mouth and tap it. I sing Neil Young how my mama did. I say “I love you” in a whisper voice. Apple takes ballet classes. She wears basketball shorts. Her room is painted yellow. She draws shapes on her walls in permanent marker. Smudges them with her fingers before they get a chance to dry.

And when she’s older, I tell her that her daddy is a good man. That he’s scared all the time, but he’s trying. That he’s smart, that he’s kind. And she nods her head because she knows. Because he’s good to her, maybe the best ever. Because he spins her around, brushes her hair, makes her toast in the morning. Picks her up from school, plays her music on the keyboard.

And when we’re all home — in the red house with a yard — I hold her and her daddy holds me, and we all sit there, still like a picture.