I apologize in advance for the long post.
As a sixteen year old, my practices were not always, shall we say, the most responsible. They never are at that age, are they? Before I went on birth control, I knew I was pregnant. I guess I had what one might call an announcing dream, if I understand properly what one is.
I dreamt I was in a black and grey fog. My boyfriend (at that time) was facing me, then turned and walked away. I turned around and saw a baby hovering in front of me. It was all red, but not like creepy horror movie red. More like, a child had colored it with a red crayon. It said "momma" and then I woke up.
Later that week, I felt what one might call a quickening inside me. I just knew that there was life inside of me, I never even took a pregnancy test. I didn't have to. I spoke my fears to my boyfriend, who insisted there was no way I could be pregnant. I was living overseas at the time (I was an army brat) in a country where abortions are not legal. I would've had to go on a trip across the border to get one, which was not an option for me.
Two months later, I was still noticing my tummy getting just a little bit bigger, even though I'd all but stopped eating and was exercising more than ever.
Boyfriend and I had a fight over my possible pregnancy. He didn't want me to get a test at the clinic; I guess if we never heard the words then in his mind it wouldn't be real. I said to him, "I'll just have me a little miscarriage, since the last thing I need right now is your ******* child anyway!" We sort of made up, and went to bed. I would often take the last bus to his house, spend the night, and take the first bus home in the morning.
While I was passed out, I had the same dream again. Boyfriend turned away, gray fog, red baby.
This time the baby said "daddy gone." I realized then that the child was referring to its father's emotional abandonment. And that really had been the beginning of the end of that relationship.
I nodded to my baby, and began to cry. "You just can't come yet!" I said. "I can't do what I have to do.
It looked pensive, and said "OK," and disappeared.
Then I woke up with terrible abdominal pains. I began to sob. Boyfriend woke up, held me, and noticed the sheets were wet on my side. He turned on the lamp, saw blood.
"There you go," he said triumphantly. "You got your period."
I nodded and stumbled down the hall to get a tampon out of the box that I kept in his bathroom.
I sat on the toilet to finish what was happening, and when I was done I could see just the smallest lump of tissue among the blood. I said goodbye to my child, thanked it for understanding. I never, ever told Boyfriend what really happened. I flushed the toilet and went back to bed fter having changed the sheets. When he asked why I was still crying, I told him my menstrual cramps were espescially bad.
I still hear that little spirit sometimes. It will ask me, "Time yet?" and I shake my head. "Not now," I whisper. "But not much longer." I can still feel my child waiting. And loving me as I love him. He will be born a boy, I think.