Jumping Off Swings Read online

Maybe this time,

  if I pump hard enough,

  I can jump off

  and fly

  right

  out

  of

  here.

  CORINNE IS DRAGGING ME to the grocery store. She wants to buy cake mix for Caleb’s birthday party. She thinks it will cheer me up to bake a cake. I don’t tell her about the dream I had last night. The same dream I have almost every night.

  I’m in the hospital, holding him. He’s all wrinkled and red, the way he was when he was born. So small and fragile-looking. At first I’m afraid I’ll hurt him. He’s so little. But as my arms get used to him, I relax. I lean forward and kiss his soft little head. His dark eyes look into mine. He’s such a warm little bundle in my arms. Even though he’s tiny, I feel his solid weight against me. Until a nurse comes and lifts him out of my arms. And I wake up cold and weightless.

  “Where’s the damn baking aisle?”

  Corinne doesn’t see me touch my empty stomach. She doesn’t know I trace the scar with my finger before I fall asleep. Most people don’t even know I have the scar. People who don’t know me don’t stare at me anymore. They don’t give me those disapproving looks. They can’t tell by looking at me, the things that I’ve done. They can’t tell I ever had a baby. Or that I gave him away.

  I’m following Corinne down the cereal aisle when I see him. The baby boy. He looks right at me and smiles. I glance around to see who’s watching. The woman pushing his cart is a few feet away, comparing labels on Cheerios and Special K boxes.

  She doesn’t see me smile back at him. She doesn’t see him reach toward me with his tiny hand, like he wants me to pick him up and carry him away.

  I step closer, ready to take him. Ready to lift him out of that seat and run. But then Corinne is behind me with three cans of frosting and I have to help her decide which one Caleb would like best.

  Before we go, I turn toward him again. Corinne turns, too. He sticks out his hand and reaches.

  “Bye-bye,” Corinne says. “Look how cute, Ellie. He’s waving bye-bye.”

  Corinne waves back. She doesn’t understand that he’s too little to know how to wave. Only I know he’s reaching for something. For his mother. For me?

  I start to go back to him. But then the woman is there. He makes a giggly noise when he sees her. She kisses him on the nose.

  Corinne takes my hand. “C’mon, El. Let’s go.” Her hand is warm and strong in mine.

  I squeeze it, and she squeezes back. I start to say OK, but the word gets caught in my throat. So I just nod.

  Corinne pulls me down the aisle, away from the baby. Past Tony the Tiger and Fruity Pebbles and the Lucky Charms leprechaun.

  I don’t turn around, but I can still hear him behind us.

  “Gaaaaaaaaaaa,” he cries just before we turn the corner.

  Good-bye.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks are owed to all the people who’ve read this novel at various stages, and there have been several. Thank you to early readers Lowry Pei, Marguerite W. Davol, Sarah Aronson, Michelle D. Kwasney, Kevin Slattery, Diane Raymond, Patricia and Louis Carini, and everyone in my Hatfield Writers’ Group. Thank you to Cecil Castellucci for believing in me, cheering me on, and saying just the right words to keep me going. Thanks to my WWaWWa sisters, Cindy Faughnan and Debbi Michiko Florence, who read multiple drafts, and who always, always, are there when I need them. Someday, ladies, we really will go to Tuscany. To my agent, Barry Goldblatt, for not giving up on The Novel Formerly Known as Slut. To my kind and generous editor, Joan Powers, who never fails to help me find the way. Extra special thanks to my husband, Peter Carini, as always, for everything. And finally, thank you to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for awarding me the Work-in-Progress Grant for a Contemporary Novel, which provided funding for child care for my then two-year-old son, which in turn provided me with the time to complete the very first draft.

  JO KNOWLES is the author of Lessons from a Dead Girl, an American Library association Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. Jumping Off Swings, she says, was inspired partially by a girl from her high school who got pregnant. “When she came back to school after having the baby, no one said a word about why she’d been away. Her ex-boyfriend acted as if nothing had happened. I used to watch him in the halls and wonder if he’d been changed at all. One night she told me it was her baby’s birthday, but she hadn’t seen him since his birth. I could see the pain in her eyes. I couldn’t stop thinking about the silence surrounding what had happened, but how it must have changed so many people’s lives. I wanted to explore how one pregnancy can affect many people in vastly different and profound ways.” Jo Knowles lives in Vermont.