All the Pieces of You
The hardest part of keeping the new baby a secret from Lily was the fact that she was my little shadow. Unless she was playing with Dulce and Anna Maria or napping—or watching I Love Lucy, her favorite show—Lily was never all that far behind me.
I was very lucky I wasn't sick with this baby. That would have made it harder for sure. Soda was right to call her a Nosy Rosy, though. Ponyboy said she was attentive, because she was always watching and listening. I said she liked to know things. And by 'things', I meant everything.
This baby was going to be bigger, I was pretty sure. I didn't get a belly with Lily for a long time. I already had a little bit of a belly by the time we could tell Lily, and she had noticed. She always sat in our bedroom waiting for me to get dressed in the morning, and more than once she had patted my belly and asked, "Why, Mama? Why?"
I never answered. I always changed the subject by asking her what she wanted for breakfast. You could only see that my belly had already grown when I wasn't dressed. As soon as I had my clothes on, Lily would forget. Truly out of sight, out of mind with that girl.
Two weeks after her second birthday, though, we broke the news to Lily.
Soda was playing with her after work. They had a game they played, where Soda would lay on the floor and Lily would position herself on his feet and take his hands. When Soda straightened his legs out, it lifted Lily into the air. She always laughed and said she was flying. Sometimes Soda would just lift her using his false leg, because it was easier for her to balance on the hard plastic and metal than on his real foot.
"Hey, Lily Bloom," Soda said to her while he had her lifted up in the air.
"What, Daddy?" She asked between her giggles. When she was playing with Soda, Lily only had eyes for her dad. I don't think she even realized I was in the room, curled up in Soda's chair with Patches. I definitely thought the cat knew about the baby, somehow. Patches would lay against my stomach and purr.
I had been too cocky about feeling better with this pregnancy. I wasn't sick, but it was only five o'clock and I was already exhausted. The warmth from Patches didn't help, either. I was trying hard not to drift off.
"Do you still want a baby?" I watched Lily's brown eyes go wide.
"Yeah! A Tommy baby!" Soda folded his legs in so that Lily was much closer to his face.
"Do you want to know a secret?" They were almost nose-to-nose. Even though Soda always said Lily looked more like me, their faces in profile looked exactly the same.
Lily nodded, like she thought what Soda was about to say would be the most important thing in the world. I mean, it was pretty important, but the serious look on her little face almost made me laugh.
He pulled Lily close enough that he could whisper in her ear. Even though I didn't hear the words Soda said to Lily, I knew exactly what they must have been when her head shot up and she smiled at me.
"Baby?" She asked in a whisper, like she didn't believe what Soda had just told her. I nodded at her.
"Yeah, a baby." Lily wiggled her way out of Soda's hands so that she could launch herself into my lap. She landed just sort of Patches, but the cat was used to Lily's constant excitement. Patches didn't even wake up when Lily jostled her all about so that she could hug me.
I smiled at Soda over the top of Lily's head. He was still on the floor, and his hair was all messed up in a way that reminded me of when we were younger. Soda pushed himself up out of the floor. He leaned over to kiss me, our babies caught between us.
We were right. Once we told Lily, the floodgates were open. She did all the work and let everyone else know.
"Mama got baby!" She would tell people, and point at her own belly.
When she told Two-Bit, he only raised an eyebrow and gave use one of his signature lazy grins. "Oh yeah? Tell your mama not to be so dramatic this time around, Lily."
Lily only giggled and hugged Two-Bit's leg. Sometimes I thought Lily had kind of a little girl crush on Two-Bit. She only ever got shy around him.
"No," Grace disagreed with Two-Bit. "Tell your mama to be as dramatic as she wants to be, that way your favorite auntie can come hang out with you all of the time."
Grace had taught Lily to call her 'Auntie Grace', even though they were really second cousins.
"You two gotta cool it or we'll never catch up to y'all," Darry had joked. But he had a surprise of his own. "Or maybe not. The doctor said Charlotte might be having twins."
"Oh, no thanks." I said, shaking my head. "Don't give your brother any ideas."
But the one person we didn't tell was Ponyboy. This was his last semester of college. He was so busy that he didn't get to visit home much at all. That was okay, though, because we decided to have Lily save the news for Ponyboy's graduation when we knew for sure we would all see him.
"Don't tell Pony about the baby," Soda reminded Lily every time Pony asked to talk to her on the phone. "You can't tell him until we see him at his school."
Lily would nod so seriously, her wavy hair bobbing around her head. Somehow, she managed to keep such a big secret in her tiny little body, even if she did hop around in little circles while she talked to her uncle.
I was so surprised she was able to keep it. In May 1972, when Ponyboy graduated, I was four months along. I had a little bit of a belly for sure by then, but you still couldn't see it if I was wearing a looser-fitting dress.
"I'm going to have bruises by the time this is over," I whispered to Soda during the graduation ceremony. Let me tell you, college graduations are boring. This 'short speech' it was starting with had taken almost an hour already.
Lily was getting antsy and kept bouncing or standing up in my lap. When she stood, it was to look at all the people around us and try to get them to wave back at her.
"Come sit with me, wiggle-worm. Give your mama a break." But then Lily thought it was a game, so she went from Soda to Darry, to Charlotte, to Ellie, to Steve, to Evie, stopping only to kiss Tommy, then on to Two-Bit and Karen before going back down the line.
It kept her entertained, though, and nobody minded passing her back and forth. We did that for I don't know how long, until the people graduating started to get called to walk across the stage.
Soda caught her and settled her back into his lap. "Gotta stay still now, Lily Bloom, so you can watch Ponyboy."
That was the only moment Lily stayed still for. As soon as Ponyboy had walked all the way across the stage and Lily had clapped, she went back to her game. This time, though, she stopped when she got to Darry.
"Aw," I heard her say over all the people clapping and cheering. When I peeked around Soda, Lily was standing up on Darry's lap and had her hands on his cheeks. "No cry!"
Darry had teared up, but Lily used her tiny hands to wipe Darry's cheeks. Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the forehead, just the same way that Soda kissed Lily anytime she was upset. It made me smile.
Much later, after all of the graduates walked across the stage, we somehow found Ponyboy in the crowd of people. The only way we even found Pony was because Two-Bit had a stroke of genius and lifted Lily to stand on his shoulders to spot Pony. Lily got so excited when she found Ponyboy that she accidently kicked Two-Bit in the face, though. She didn't even pay attention to Two-Bit when he tried to make her feel bad about it. Lily all but threw herself from Two-Bit's arms into Pony's.
She hugged Pony around the neck and then twisted herself to look at Soda and me. Lily didn't say anything, but Soda nodded at her and she smiled before cupping her hand around Pony's ear so she could whisper to him.
Lily had told Ellie earlier, so we all smiled while we watched Pony's gray-green eyes grow wide. Then Pony's smile grew wide, and he used his free arm to hug first Soda and then me.
"Look at us now, Brookie," he whispered to me. His voice sounded choked up, and Ponyboy didn't say anything else, even if he hugged me tight. I knew even then, on this happy day for him, he was thinking about Johnny and Dally. That boy always was. They were the reason he worked so hard, after all.