Riding In Cars With Boys by Beverly Donofrio Page B

her—June.” I’d misheard the lyrics.
    Ray drummed his thumbs on the dashboard, jerked his chin in and out, and said, “Cool.”
    I was scared to death in the labor room. First they shaved me, then they gave me an enema, then after I waddled out of the bathroom and back into the room, they laid me in a crib like a beached whale. Immediately, the nurse poked some fingers in. I was three fingers, the middle circle. Five fingers was the biggest. When you stretched that wide it was bingo, birth. The Puerto Rican women came in and left within half an hour, screaming, “Mama! Mama! Mama!”
    There was a pretty woman lying in the crib across from me. “Hi,” she said after the nurse left.
    “Hi.”
    “I’m Louise Baker. This is my first baby. You too?”
    “Yeah. My name’s Beverly Bouchard.”
    “If I scream like those ladies, shoot me, okay?”
    “You think it’s gonna really hurt?”
    “I’m sure it does, but it can’t hurt that much.”
    “How long you been here?”
    “About an hour. I haven’t seen a doctor yet. I go to the clinic.”
    “So do I. I never saw you.”
    “That place is the pits.” She pulled back her long blond hair and began making a braid. “I go to Central Connecticut College. I mean, I did. After I was six months, I quit. My boyfriend still goes there. I’ll probably go back after the baby.”
    “What were you going to school for?”
    “My major? Anthropology.”
    I wasn’t sure I knew what that was, but I’d rather die than ask her. I noticed her legs weren’t shaved. I wished I’d seen her at the clinic. Everybody else spoke Spanish, and there never were enough folding chairs to go around. I’d had to wait a minimum of four hours every time, and if I’d met Louise there, we could’ve talked for whole mornings. By now we’d be good friends. But, probably, a person who went to college would think I was too stupid.
    “Do you have medical insurance?” she asked.
    “No. You?”
    “Do you realize if you don’t marry, your boyfriend’s insurance won’t cover you? We refused to marry. We put our politics in action. Art and I believe it’s an archaic formality binding you together by law. My parents don’t even … oh boy. Here comes one.”
    My pains had stopped altogether. I told the nurse. A doctor came in. He was young and handsome. His hands were slender and long. I’d never laid eyes on him before. “Hello,” he said. He looked at my chart. “Mrs. Bouchard, I hear your pains have stopped.”
    “Yes.”
    “We’re going to give you a little something to get them started again, speed things up.”
    The nurse handed him a needle and he stuck it in my ass. Within ten minutes, I was in agony and there was no breather between contractions. The doctor came back and said, “Okay, Mrs. Bouchard, we’re moving right along. Now, I’m going to give you some Demerol to ease it up a bit.” He gave me another shot in the ass. Before I passed out, I had a hallucination. I saw the kitten I’d had when I was a kid. It was jumping up over and over again, trying to get in the crib with me.
    I don’t know how long I was out before I awoke to Louise screaming, “Oh God, oh God, oh God. Ah ah ah ah aaaahhhhhh!”
    Sweat started raining from every pore of my body. When she stopped screaming, she saw me looking at her through the bars and said, “I’m sorry, but it hurts so much,” then she started crying.
    I wished I could die.
    Louise was long gone when the nurse rolled me onto my back, put my ankles in my hands, and told me to push. It was too humiliating. I kept thinking how even Jacqueline Kennedy must’ve held her ankles in the air and grunted like she was taking a shit. The next time the nurse appeared, she looked between my legs and started breathing heavily. “Okay, Mrs. Bouchard, I’d like you to stop pushing now. We’re paging your doctor. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”
    “I can’t help it,” I cried. “I have to.”
    “Please, Mrs. Bouchard, try