My Name is Kate and I Just Killed My Baby

My Name is Kate and I Just Killed my Baby

  by Duane L. Ostler

  Copyright 2014 by Duane L. Ostler

  The author was formerly identified in prior versions of this book under pen name "E. Reltso"

  This book may not be reproduced, copied or distributed without the express permission of the author. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Cover art courtesy the Library of Congress,

  U.S. Farm Security Administration, 1939, photo by Dorothea Lange

  TABLE OF CONTENTS OF JOURNAL ENTRIES

  April 16

  April 17

  April 19

  April 20

  April 22

  April 24

  April 25

  April 26

  April 28

  April 29

  April 30

  May 1

  May 4

  May 12

  May 14

  May 17

  May 20

  May 21

  May 23

  May 24

  May 25

  May 28

  May 31

  OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

  April 16

  My name is Katherine Anderson. I go by Kate. I am 18 years old, and live on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a little place called Cranberry Township. My Dad is an accountant at a nearby shoe factory. His name is Paul. My mother is a housewife, and her name is Carol. She used to work as a beautician, but lately she's been sick a lot.

  I like pizza and ice cream, and going on dates and funny movies. I used to have my own car, but it's in the shop right now. I have a pet cat named 'Oscar' who is absolutely adorable. He is a big, grey Maine coon, and likes to get into things he shouldn't and wake people up in the middle of the night. I love him lots, but unfortunately he's lost right now. I hope he comes back soon.

  I've gotten good grades in school most of my life, and my Dad and Mom always just assumed I would go to college. I assumed it too until recently. But lately school has become a lot harder, and I'm not sure anymore what I'm going to do with my life.

  I like to swim, and to text on my cell phone, and in high school for awhile I was on the girl's drill team. I like skiing in the winter, and I used to love curling up with a good book in front of a fire afterward. I enjoy cooking and picking out clothes, and wearing new shoes. I guess you could say I'm a pretty typical girl in most respects.

  Oh, there's one more thing you should know about me. I just killed my baby.

  April 17

  You're probably wondering why I ended so abruptly above. After all, to end such a normal description of a normal-sounding person with something so shocking just doesn't add up. Well, if you had a magic window and could look through it and see the way my life has gone for the last while, you wouldn't wonder. It would all be plain to you. I couldn't keep writing after I said I'd killed my baby. I just couldn't. The images of Jonathon were haunting me too much, and the tears started to come again, and it's awful hard to write very legibly when you can't see through your tears.

  My therapist told me I should write this, and that's the only reason I'm doing it. He told me to write the whole story from the beginning, even though it started a year ago. That's when I killed my baby. So I suppose what I said above isn't strictly correct. I didn't 'just' kill my baby. But every day when I first wake up it seems like I just did, when it all comes back to me.

  My therapist told me it would help somehow to write in this journal, to sort through my feelings. It hasn't helped so far. When I looked back today and read what I wrote above, I just wanted to take this journal and throw it as far out into the river as I could.

  But my therapist wouldn't like that. He made me promise to show it to him, and prove that I've been writing. So I overcame the urge to throw it in the river, and decided to write in it instead.

  I suppose the only way any of this is going to make sense is to go back to the beginning, and tell my story in the way it happened just like my therapist said. He would like that. He's always saying silly things like, "No one can understand themselves until they understand their beginnings." Then he goes on and on about how the fourth of July is all about remembering our nation's beginnings, and so are high school reunions and memorial parks and birthdays and cemeteries and museums. He says if we suddenly didn't have all those things anymore, we'd be confused, not knowing who we are, because our beginnings would be missing.

  But of course I don't believe him. If I could somehow forget the beginnings of my story I KNOW I'd be a lot happier. I wish I could forget. Oh, how I wish that.

  But I'm getting off on a tangent, which is what Mom always used to say I shouldn't do, at least before she got sick. "Don't get off on a tangent, Kate--when you start a job, stay with it and get it done." I can hear her voice in my mind, and the memory makes me smile. I wish she would say it again. But lately she hasn't been saying much of anything. And she's not as organized as she used to be. The house was never messy like it is now, and the clothes were never piled up, and the dishes were always washed. Mom never got off on tangents. That is, until recently, and I'm the cause of that.

  But again, I'm off on a tangent. Mom may not be avoiding tangents anymore, but I'm going to. I'm going to try to do everything she ever told me to do. Maybe that way I can make it up to her.

  It all started when I found out I was pregnant. That was about a year ago. Bob and I had been seeing each other for quite awhile. We knew we shouldn't have gotten that physically involved, and I felt horribly bad about it afterward, but it happened. We didn't do it again, I'm glad to say, even though Bob wanted to. I didn't let him. Now, a little more than a month had passed since we'd had our big night, and even though I'd had a nagging worry I might be pregnant, I'd managed to avoid thinking about it. How could I be pregnant from just one time? But lately the nagging feeling had gotten stronger and my clothes had started shrinking and my body hadn't been acting according to its normal clock, so I figured I'd better take the test. When I did, it came out positive.

  Bob was not happy. "This can't be happening!" he kept saying over and over when I told him that night. He ran a shaking hand through his hair and stared at me with a crazed look in his eyes. Then he started to rant and rave about how we should have done things differently. After that he started to blame me for not doing things differently, to prevent this from happening. But I hardly heard him. I was still too much in a daze from finding out earlier that day that the test was positive.

  A baby. I was going to have a baby. Me. ME! A little life was starting inside me, and soon it would come out and be mine. I just couldn't get over it.

  I also didn't know what to think about it. Part of me felt just like Bob, and was horrified and just wanted it to all go away. But another part of me was curious and almost happy, as if I'd always wanted a little one like Jonathon to come into my life.

  Jonathon was his name from the very beginning. I always knew that he would be a boy, and that would be his name. What I'm less certain about is why. Maybe it's because of my Uncle Jonathon who was in the navy until he was killed in a freak accident at sea. Or maybe it's because in fifth grade when my friend Clarice and I used to make up names we'd give to our babies someday, she always laughed and chided me whenever I mentioned Jonathon. Somehow, that made it a helpless name to be defended, just like little Jonathon was helpless now, and needed to be defended.

  Or maybe it's just because I've always liked words with three syllables. Like 'wonderful,' or 'tapestry' or 'anchoves.' Somehow three syllable words just roll naturally off your tongue, and have a wonder
ful feel to them. I used to try and make up whole sentences made just of three syllable words. The best I could ever do was 'Jonathon's wonderful ancestry underwent difficult temptations.' I know that doesn't make much sense, but it did to me when I was in fifth grade.

  So now that I was pregnant, I just knew this baby was a boy and his name was Jonathon. And listening to Bob rant and rave about what a big problem Jonathon was, I suddenly felt like I was back in fifth grade defending his name from Clarice's teasing.

  "Jonathon is not a problem!" I said firmly, looking Bob in the eye. "He's a baby. And nothing you say will change that."

  Bob looked at me as if broccoli had just sprouted out of my nose. "Jonathon!" he roared. "You've given it a name? Are you crazy? Giving it a name just makes it worse! You can't have this baby!"

  I blinked in surprise. "Why?" I blurted without thinking.

  Bob started to wave his hands wildly, and for a minute I wondered if he was going to punch me. "Because you're not supposed to be pregnant!" he screamed. "Do you know what my parents will say when they find out? Do you know what they will DO?" His voice had risen to a screech that sounded almost like a little girl. Then he started waving his finger in my face. "And what about your parents? What will they say? Your Mom will have a cow, for Pete's sake! And I can just imagine how your Dad will blow his top!"

  He was right, of course. I'd known that from the instant the test came back positive. So far I'd managed to shut it out of my mind. But somehow