Dark Places

otherwise, they didn’t plan or couldn’t plan, since Diondra’s dad would literally kill her if he ever found out she was pregnant outside of marriage. If he ever found out she even did it outside of marriage, he’d kill her. Diondra’s parents had only one rule, only one single rule, and that was that she must never, ever let a boy touch her there unless he was her husband. When she turned sixteen, Diondra’s dad had given her a promise ring, a gold ring with a big red stone that looked like a wedding ring and she wore it on that finger, and it meant a promise to him and to herself that she would remain a virgin til marriage. The whole thing grossed Ben out—doesn’t that seem like you’re married to your dad? Diondra said it was a control thing, mostly. This was the one thing her dad had decided to get hung up about, it was the one thing he asked of her, and goddamit, she’d better do it. She said it made him feel better leaving her alone, unsupervised, unprotected, except for the dogs, for months at a time. It washis one parental thing: my daughter may drink or do drugs but she is a virgin and therefore I can’t be as fucked up as I seem.
    This, she said, with tears in her eyes. This she said while near her pass-out part of a drunk. She said her dad told her if he ever found out she’d broken the promise, he’d take her out of the house and shoot her in the head. Her dad had been in Vietnam, and he talked like that, and Diondra took it seriously, so she didn’t do any planning about the baby. Ben made lists of things they might need, and he bought some hand-me-down baby clothes at a Delphos flea market right near Christmastime. He’d been embarrassed, so he just bought the whole bunch from the woman for $8. It turned out to be undershirts and underwear, for a bunch of different ages, lots of ruffly undies—the woman kept calling them bloomers—which is fine, kids need underwear for sure. Ben stored them under his bed, which made him more glad he had the lock, he could picture the girls finding them and stealing whatever fit. So true, he didn’t think enough about the kid, and what would happen, but Diondra seemed to think even less.
    “I THINK WE should leave town,” Diondra said now, a surprise, the hair still over half her face, Ben’s hand still clamped to her belly, the baby scuttering around inside like it had dug tunnels. Diondra turned slightly toward him, one lazy boob lolling on Ben’s arm. “I can’t hide this much longer. My mom and dad will be home any day now. You sure Michelle doesn’t know?”
    Ben had saved a note from Diondra, it talked about how horny she was and how much sex she wanted from him
even now,
and nosy-ass Michelle had found it going through his jacket pockets. The little bitch had blackmailed him—$10 not to tell Mom—and when Ben complained to Diondra, she went ballistic.
Your little fucking sister could tell on us at any moment, you think that’s OK? This is on you, Ben. You fucked up
. Diondra was paranoid that somehow Michelle would figure out she was pregnant from those two words—“even now”— and they’d be undone
by a fucking ten-year-old, how perfect
.
    “No, she hasn’t mentioned it again.”
    That was a lie, just yesterday Michelle caught his eye, shook her hips, and said in a teasy voice, “Hey Beee-ennn, how’s your seeeex life?” She was such a shitty kid. She’d blackmailed him on other things—chores he’d left undone, extra food he’d eaten from the fridge. Little stuff. It was always little crappy stuff, like she was there just to remind Ben how cramped his life was. She’d spend the money on jelly donuts.
    Trey made a loud loogie noise in the other room, and then a
thweeewp!
spit sound. Ben could picture the yellow phlegm dripping down the sliding glass door, the dogs licking at it. That was something Trey and Diondra did: they hocked loogies at things. Sometimes Trey shot it straight into the air, and the dogs would catch it in their drooly mouths. (“It’s just body stuff going into another body,” Diondra would say. “You’ve thrown some of your body stuff into my body and it doesn’t seem to bother you none.”)
    As the TV got even louder in the den—
wrap it up you two, I’m goddam bored
—Ben tried to think of the right thing to say. He sometimes thought he never said anything to Diondra that was just pure talking, it was all verbal elbows and arms, trying to fend off her constant annoyance, say what she