Nothing that I had encountered in my life up to August of 1996 prepared me for what I would experience for the next seven months: Living with a pregnant woman. I had only ever dealt with pregnant family members, neighbors and students in high school and college, which usually only came in short doses. When I encountered them, they all seemed very happy and excited about what was going to happen (except for Chez). But I found out the hard way what pregnant women are really like when they're away from friends and family and are alone with their significant others: They're receptacles of anger, frustration and depression that don't seem to care where their toxic bile lands and you have no choice but to sit there watching them spill for hour upon hour until they finally fall asleep.
Now at first, it wasn't so bad. Kelz spent most of her time sleeping. Keep in mind that she was also trying to catch up on her sleep from those months of being practically homeless. She would typically wake up after I'd gone to bed and watch TV all night long.
When I was explaining the situation with friends, I would compare it to living with a cat: She slept 16 hours a day, wouldn't interact with me, expected me to provide her food and she was about to have a kitten.
We would go out every once in awhile, particularly when I got paid. But for the most part, we were living in abject poverty, with me trying to provide for the two of us on my meager earnings. (Thank goodness I had declared bankruptcy just a couple of years before. This kept me from being able to get a credit card to try to make ends meet. I did not need more debt in my life at this time.)
While Kelz was living with me, we tried to get her to stop smoking. She wanted to do it for the health of the baby. However, because she had to give up everything else at the same time, like heroin, weed and alcohol, it drove her up the wall that she couldn't get her nicotine fix. She even made me promise not to get her cigarettes for her, no matter how much she begged. I tried hard to remind her of this when she did beg. However, when she really craved a smoke, she threatened to leave the apartment and find someone who would buy her cigarettes. I was being emotionally blackmailed. I knew that if she left the apartment, she would wind up with someone who would get her back into the drug culture. Suddenly smoking tobacco seemed like the most healthy option for the baby. I went out and bought cigarettes.
But I couldn't afford to buy them from the 7-Eleven a couple of blocks away. I had to go to a nearby discount cigarette outlet (which Chez and I had discovered while living together). I bought a carton of the cheapest cigarettes I could get my hands on. The brand was Covington. (Never heard of them? Neither had I.) At the time, the package design featured a roulette wheel, like you were gambling with your life while smoking. Kelz didn't like the flavor, but they were better than nothing.
I did not always have money for cigarettes. So, what I had to do was keep my eye out for cigarette butts that hadn't been burned all the way down to the filter. Kelz was fine with smoking these, because every once in a while, I would come across a Marlboro. And sometimes, I would find a cigarette that only had a couple of puffs taken off of it.
One day late in September, we got notice that someone was going to come by and spray for cockroaches inside the apartment complex. This meant we were going to have to leave for a few hours because there was a specific warning for pregnant women. We went over to the house of one of my co-workers, Riz. She wasn't going to be there that afternoon and said we could just hang out for a few hours.
This happened to be the first day that Kelz looked like she was obviously pregnant. She was wearing my Easter Seals shirt at the time and I noticed just as we were getting into the car. At Riz' house, I found that she had a VHS copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." I watched it in Riz' bedroom while Kelz stayed in the living room. We really didn't talk much until it was time for us to go home.
I didn't think of it, but there had to be a lot that was going through Kelz' mind at the time. She had no idea what was going to happen. She didn't know if she was going to keep the baby or give it up for adoption like she had before. I think that the appearance of the distended belly made her all the more aware that this was really happening and she was worried about how the baby would turn out. Even though she had given up all the other drugs, they were likely still lingering in her system when she first became pregnant and that could have a tremendous impact on the health of the baby.
And I had no clue. But on the bright side, I didn't have to buy tampons again.
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