Blue Lines

BLUE LINES ON A WHITE STICK

Blue lines on a white stick spell trouble. Trouble is the most
concise, briefest way of conveying what the blue lines say:
trouble.
Emma's belly was brewing trouble. She lay on a double bed, her double
bed bedecked in cheap QD sheets and a duvet cover from the Argos
anticipating it. Could she blame her mother for having allowed her to
get the double bed, or rather barely noticing? And welcoming Jason into
it when she sat downstairs watching Jerry Springer on UK Living,
complaining only if the two of them interrupted her sleep when she
finally switched off the pain and went up to bed. Why couldn't she have
been one of those mothers who insisted boyfriends stay downstairs in
the living room, one that wanted to get to know their daughter's
company and prevent exactly this kind of trouble?
Emma rolled a cigarette. That would have to stop. And so would
drinking. She could hardly consider continuing her college course
either, with a huge lump preceding every step. She looked at her
stomach. The skin was smooth, the shape a little plump. In seven months
it would be stretched to its limit with angry red lines marking her
body's reluctance to accommodate another living thing. She lit the
cigarette. She could get rid of it. She could prevent the seemingly
inevitable. Her body needn't share itself; she didn't need to share
herself. She was young, too young for this trouble. Jason would say so
too, and that it wouldn't be fair on the baby.
She sat up and took out an A4 pad and in big capital letters wrote on
the top of a sheet 'MY BABY'. A sickening clumsy lump tried to go down
her throat to her stomach but wouldn't and she sighed- huge heavy
lethargic sighs- and a tear came. She thought of couples sitting on
expensive bedspreads hugging and laughing and kissing in delirium. And
she stubbed out the fag that she no longer had the breath for and let
the rest of the tears come because she knew that it would be her first
and last chance to give in to them. From hereon in she would have to be
strong.

At two o'clock she started, with Jason. Before she called him she
practised speaking, but she couldn't quite lose the rough gurgle in her
throat caused by irremovable phlegm. She still felt the need to clear
her throat while the phone rang in his house and when his father
answered the phone he was greeted with a grunt.
"Hello? Hello? Who's that?" He asked.
"Hi, its Emma. Is Jason there?"
"Yes, yes I think so. How are you Emma? It's been a while since you've
been round?"
"Fine, fine, I'm fine. Did you say Jason was there?"
"I'm pretty sure he is - Marian, is Jason about? - How's college
going? Are they piling on the work?
"Yes, it's piling up."
"And it's only January! I expect there's still worse ahead, eh?"
Emma took a sharp breath of air. "Mm-hmm", was all she could noise.
Her face was getting hot and the air thinner and with the phone pressed
against her face with her shoulder she desperately tried to throw off
her cardigan.
"Here he comes", he finally said to Emma's enormous relief, "He was
asleep. Sundays, you just can't wake him. Here you are, I'll hand you
over. Hope we'll be seeing you soon."
Emma shut her eyes. It seemed to help her in her efforts to be strong.
"Jason?"
"All right? What are you up to?"
"Not much. Actually, I was going to ask you that. Can you come round?
Before my mum comes home."
"Well, I was supposed to be playing football. Can't I just come round
tonight?"
Emma's eyes closed tighter. "No. No. Come round now." She rubbed her
face. "Please."
"Mark's going to be here in half an hour."
"Jason! This is important! Please."
"Are you all right?"
"No, you have to come round."
"All right, all right, I'll come. I'll be there as soon as I can. See
you soon."
She put down the phone and pulled off the cardigan that was hanging
from her wrist. Her cheeks and neck were red from where she had been
kneading the skin with her fingers and her hair had all but fallen out
of the ponytail she had tied that morning. She saw herself in the 'Love
is?' mirror on the wall by the bottom of the staircase and snorted at
her reflection. Instead of applying eye shadow and mascara as she
normally did when Jason was about to come round she just looked and
left, and headed up on the threadbare green staircase carpet. All she
wanted to do was pull the duvet around her and be still.

Jason came that night.
"You bastard! You went to bloody football! I begged you to come here
and you went to bloody football!"
"All right, chill out, what's the big deal? Mark turned up when I got
off the phone to you and they needed me to make up the teams. It's only
seven now, we've got loads of time."
"You don't know what kind of day I've had."
"Tell me."
Emma turned her head away. Jason was sprawled on her big double bed
with sweat patches under each arm. He could have at least had a bath
before he came; he'd had enough time. She tried to remember how she had
felt about him before, just a few days ago. Any tenderness she had felt
had been beaten into submission by a new raging repulse and anger. She
wanted to throw something at him, or throw him at something. In a year
he should have learnt to detect need in her voice, to know when
something was up. But the useless bastard had put the needs of a whole
team of equally useless bastards before her, yet again. And this time
it counted.
"I had something to tell you." She turned her face to his to register
his response but her eyes seemed to get stuck on a whitehead just above
his left eyebrow. What had she ever felt for him? Where was it now? And
why had she supposed he would offer some support to her? He rolled
himself over to her bedside cabinet and started rolling a cigarette
with her tobacco. He did that all the time. There was him with a
full-time job (albeit in a chicken factory packing them hot into
plastic containers) sponging off her, a student. "What did you want to
tell me?" he asked when he had lit it.
Emma drew in her breath ready to relieve herself off her shaking fury.
But as she was about to shout her stomach stepped up with a more
imperative demand. She ran into the bathroom and threw up, noisily.
Jason followed her and stood outside the door.
"Emma? All right in there??"
She could hear his fingers tapping his leg.
"Do you want me to get your mum?"
"Don't you fucking dare!"
"Ok, ok." He looked out of the window on the top of the landing. "Do
you want me to do anything?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know."
The noises from behind the door continued. Jason tried not to listen
but he couldn't not, and a rush of liquid came up through his own
throat and into his mouth.
"Well, I think perhaps I should go," he said after he had swallowed
it. "I?" he drummed his thigh. "My cousins are staying for a bit and I
haven't seen much of them. You remember Ian and Rob? Yeah, they're
round. And you probably want to be on your own."
"Fine."
"What? Sorry, I didn't hear you."
"I said fine! Go! I'll see you whenever."
"I'll stay if you want me to. But I don't think there's much I can do.
Is there?"
"No."
"Ok then. I'll ring you tomorrow. See how you are. Shall I come round
after work? Stay the night?"
"Whatever. Just go."
He hovered, tapping out a little rhythm. "Bye then", he said but got
no reply. She could really overreact that girl and it drove him mad.
'When she's like that, it's best to just leave her to it', he thought.
He'd tried to talk to her, he'd done his bit- and he was only a few
hours late. Then he remembered- it was about her time. She always
changed when it was her period, he couldn't do anything right then.
Sometimes it just wasn't worth trying. He jogged down the stairs in the
hallway that screamed 'council house'. It was probably her mum getting
her down, she often did. And she was so tight with money Emma's
sickness was most likely caused by some out of date meat Sue had cooked
up. Next time he saw her he would ask her if she'd had a dodgy curry.
That was Sue's favourite means of hiding bad meat.
She was still standing there in the kitchen drinking coffee and
watching TV as he went to let himself out.
"Not staying?" she asked him while he put on his trainers.
"No, got to be going" he replied politely, "Got family staying."
"Emma will be disappointed. I thought you two were inseparable."
"Yeah." He smiled, hoping it would appear genuine. "See you
later."
And he left. The bathroom light was still on upstairs so Emma was
probably still chucking, and as he got into his Golf he felt glad to be
out of there. Emma's mum brought out an appreciation of his own parents
he would otherwise forget to feel. As he turned the ignition key he
looked forward to settling into the armchair in his own front room with
a good bit of telly and his mum on side to make him a cup of tea. And
sausage rolls, he remembered, she was making them for his auntie and
uncle earlier, there would be a good spread put out by now. He'd deal
with Emma tomorrow.

With her head on the toilet seat Emma listened to Jason's car start
and drive off. She wiped away the saliva from around her mouth and
lifted her head and flushed the chain. The sickness has started then,
she thought dully.
She heaved herself onto the edge of the bath and started running some
water. She had wanted Jason to stay, or rather wanted Jason to want to
stay. She knew that he had assumed she had PMT, he had her cycle all
worked out- 'so I know when it's best to leave you be'. Or rather, she
thought, so he knew when it was fruitless to stay the night in her
double bed. What was frustrating was that she knew he wouldn't think
about it long enough to work it out, she would have to tell him- he
wouldn't guess until she had a bump the size of the Millennium Dome
sitting on her lap.
"Are you having another bath?" her mother shouted up from the kitchen.
Emma ignored her. She started coming up the stairs. Emma bolted the
door.
"You've already had one today- do you think I'm made of money? What's
that smell? Have you been sick? It stinks out here!"
"I'm not feeling very well."
"You're not pregnant are you?"
She didn't mean it. She said it whenever Emma was unwell. Diarrhoea,
headache or sore throat, there always came the same question. Emma
deliberated shouting back that she was but decided against it mainly
because she couldn't be bothered.
"You had a bath this morning! You was in that bathroom ages!"
"It makes me feel better."
"Yeah, well when you've got your own house you can have all the baths
you want. You'll understand a bit more about money then."
"I'm sorry."
"I should think you are. Eurgh, it smells revolting out here- open a
window! No wonder Jason left."
She trudged back downstairs. Emma stuck her fingers up at the door.
Anger should precede sadness, not follow it, she had watched enough
psychology programmes to know that. So why did she feel murderous in
that box bathroom when before she had just wanted to cry? She felt like
running through the house with a hammer but thought bitterly that the
place couldn't look any worse- why bother? Her mother's garish taste
beggared belief and coupled with an eye for bargains the house was
completed in a 'could anyone really live in this?' theme. The living
room was decorated with pastel patterned wallpaper down to a floral
freeze, with bold green and blue stripes underneath; the kitchen
painted in half-price bubble-gum pink. The curtains came from Oxfam or
Sue Ryder and the odd piece, a settee throw, a lamp, came from QD or
the Argos, if she was feeling flush. The rug with a tiger in electric
orange on black was Emma's pet hate and conversely, her mother's pride,
only ?1.50 from a car-boot sale.
Her own room was nearly bare, in sharp contrast to the rest of the
house. She had bought a double bed, and a cheap cream duvet cover for
it. The walls were cream and blue; she had a bedside cabinet that she
had painted pale blue and a wardrobe and desk in their original pine
effect. On the desk sat a portable CD player, an ashtray, and a stack
of books, paper and pens. On the bedside cabinet sat another ashtray, a
lamp and E. M. Forster's Howard's End. Inside the cabinet were some
aspirin, a diary and a watch she never wore, and three remaining
condoms from a bumper pack of twelve.

Emma poured half a bottle of economy bath bubbles into the water
before she got in. She didn't want to look at her own naked
flesh.
She didn't want anyone to look at it again. At least, not in the way
Jason had- hungrily, impatiently, as though unable to hold back. He
said he loved her when they were in bed. And he said he wanted, if only
the once, to make love uninterrupted. It was him that had caused this
trouble.
She wouldn't go to college tomorrow, she decided. She wouldn't be able
to concentrate. Her mother would be at work from nine until four giving
her the house to herself, almost.
She wasn't alone anymore.
She hadn't been alone for two months now; she just hadn't known it.
And now that she did know, she didn't want to tell anyone.
Not her mother. Not Jason. Not anybody.
She would keep her secret for as long as she could. Jason would find
out eventually as would her mother but not until it was too late.
Jason said young people who had kids were stupid and selfish and it
wasn't fair on the babies. His parents waited until his dad was earning
good money and they had a house and garden big enough for them.
Her mother said having her ruined her life. Her father disappeared as
soon as he heard the word 'pregnant'.
She could sell her double bed and buy a single and a cot.
This baby was hers and needed love. And God knows she had saved enough
while looking for someone to give it to.
She was brewing trouble. She didn't know if what she was doing was
right. She just knew it was what she wanted.