Excerpt from IT TAKES TWO
by Bernice Thurman Hunter
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From Chapter 1
Good News?
“Darn!” Carrie flopped back on the bottom bunk and heaved a big sigh. “Jimmy’s finally grown up enough to act like a normal human being... and now this!”
This was the “good news” our parents had just told us at the supper table.
“Your mother’s expecting,” Dad had announced proudly.
“Expecting what?” Jimmy had asked. He was normal, but dumb.
“A baby, of course,” laughed Mom, rolling her eyes at her youngest.
“You’re going to have a new brother or sister.”
We had noticed that Mom was getting a bit fat but we thought it was just the middle-age spread.
“Imagine... at their age.” I snorted. “Mom’s nearly forty-three years old and Dad’s forty-six! I thought it was practically impossible at that age.”
“It’s worse than impossible,” muttered Carrie. “Do you realize what it means?”
“Don’t say it!” I plugged my ears with my fingers. “I don’t even want to think about it!”
I turned and peered at myself in the dresser mirror. Carrie bounced up and stood beside me. Leaning closer to the glass, we began picking at twin pimples on our chins.
“What will all our friends say?” Carrie scowled in the mirror.
“Especially Lorena!” Lorena Ellsworth was an only child and proud of it.
“I wonder how Robbie feels about it?” I said. “He didn’t say anything when Dad told us. And he’s nearly seventeen. What will his friends say?”
“Oh, boys don’t care.” Carrie handed me a Kleenex and we dabbed at the red spots on our chins. “After all, they don’t have to babysit, do they? And dopey Jimmy said he didn’t care as long as it’s a boy.”
“A baby sister might be nice,” I said. “Nancy Case’s baby sister, Martha, is a real doll.”
“Yes, but Nancy’s mother is still in her thirties. That’s different.” Carrie marched off to the bathroom. I followed her and we washed our faces with Noxzema and covered the red spots with Clearasil.
“Why would Mom and Dad want a baby at their age?” I puzzled.
Carrie glanced at me in the bathroom mirror and I got that spooky feeling that identical twins get . . . as if seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes.
“Well,” Carrie puckered her eyebrows. “When we were at Aunt Sylvia’s house last Sunday I heard her say something to Uncle Phil that I didn’t understand. But it’s beginning to make sense now.”
“What makes sense now?”
“Aunt Sylvia said it was probably an accident.”
“An accident! How could a baby be an accident?”
We went back to our room and got into our PJs.
“What else could it be, Connie?”
“I think it’s more like Sarah Rafter’s little brother, Jordan. Sarah’s mother calls him her ‘change of life surprise’!”
We knew all about the change of life. Aunt Sylvia had a Medical Home Advisor — a big thick book almost the size of the Detroit telephone directory — on her coffee table, along with her books on nutrition and exercise. Carrie and I had both browsed through that book when we used to mind Ronnie.
Ronnie was Aunt Sylvia’s boy who never grew up. He had been chronologically the same age as our Jimmy. But Mom had explained that he’d always be a baby in his mind, and we were never to question Aunt Sylvia about him. So we never did.
There was a chapter in the book all about the change of life. The book explained that it was something that happens to women between the ages of 40 and 50, and said that the proper name for it was “the menopause.” I wondered why it was called men -opause if it only happened to women. Anyway, Mom was right in that age group. She would be forty-three on May 16th, 1955, the same day that Carrie and I would become teenagers!
Thirteen! It was the birthday we had been looking forward to all our lives. But now... who knew what was going to happen? Our whole family could be completely spoiled, ruined, decimated (Carrie’s word) by a squalling, squealing, pooping, peeing baby!
From It Takes Two, copyright © by Bernice Thurman Hunter
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