Sonya’s Baby: I Need a Last Sentence

Sonya’s face was round and smooth and gave the distinct impression of a cherub. Her hair was dark and highlighted red brown with soft curls crusted by mousse and gel. “Excuse me?” she would always say and crook her neck and raise her eyebrows. And every time we kissed her lips left greasy gloss on mine.

I sat with Sonya everyday on the half-mile bus ride to and from school. I’d climb the steps to board and see her black lined cat eyes above the first seat.

“Girl, what are you wearin?” she’d ask me, or, “What is goin on with your hair?” And then she’d giggle and I’d look out the windshield pretending I was bothered.

Her belly was round and her back was arched and her limbs were thin like a child’s. But she’d wear low-cut tops so I could see her bra, and high heels to assert she was a woman. The boys would oogle and say, “Daaamn” as she wiggled her butt across the commons, but she’d smile that dark-lined smile at me and roll her eyes at them.

On the day she fist-fought Candice Moyez I washed the scratches on her arms. I doused her cuts in stinging peroxide and I iced the bump on her forehead. She talked and talked and never let up about, stupid-bitch this, and fucking-cunt that, while I drew her curly strands into a tie and nuzzled unruly ones at the neck.

“You’ll still keep in touch when I go back home?” she’d ask, and I’d turn my head away.

“I guess,” I’d say, and she seemed satisfied with knowing she’d gotten a rise.

It was only two months before she left that I stopped looking into her angel baby face. She was grinning a secret to herself while I was waiting in feigned nonchalance.

“I’m pregnant,” she told me, almost with a laugh, and I didn’t believe her at first. Then I shoved her with all the force I could muster into the frigid bus window beside her. She snickered at my strength and threatened to punch back but we were getting too near to my stop. I shook my head and sucked my teeth as I stood to walk out of the vessel.

“You still comin over tonight?” she yelled, but I was already out the door.

Options for last sentences:

1. I walked the quarter-mile back to my house with my face dragging on the cement. And when I cried later on that night, shivering in the winter beneath my sheets, I wished as hard as I could for her to know that she couldn’t have punched me harder.

2. And as I walked the quarter-mile back to my house with my face dragging on the cement, I cried too much for myself and her and not nearly enough for her child.

Both of these suck. Or maybe it’s just the whole story. I need help.

With Alotta Love,

zee zee cakes

Tags: fiction, short story, writer's block, writing