You Were An Accident

The day Lucy's baby brother was born was a very exciting day in the Drysdale trailer. It all began before the sun even came up. Lucy was awakened from a nice dream by the sound of her mommy and daddy yelling.

"Just warm up the damn car already. Now!" said Lucy's mommy.

"Well, I thought I was supposed to call your mother to come watch Lucy," Daddy yelled back.

"Lucy can come with us and my mom can meet us there. Just warm up the damn car," Mommy said. Then she came to Lucy's room and turned on the big light. She told Lucy to get dressed very quickly.

"Where are we going, Mommy?" Lucy asked.

"To the hospital to make me skinny again," Mommy said with a smile.

"Why are we going in the dark?" Lucy asked. Just then Mommy said a very bad word and grabbed her big round tummy. She moaned and groaned for a long time and said more bad words. When she could talk again, she said "Just hurry up Lucy, and don't ask so many questions!"

Lucy sat very quietly in the backseat all the way to the hospital. Mommy and daddy yelled some more, but mostly mommy. She said lots and lots of bad words again, along with a very pretty sounding word that Lucy didn't understand.

"Diiiii . . . vooooorce," Lucy whispered the word in the dark of the backseat and liked the sound of it. Oh, what a pretty word, Lucy thought. It sounded like mommy really wanted one, whatever it was. Mommy tried lots of times to make daddy promise to be sure and give her one as soon as the baby was born.

"Promise me! Promise me!" Mommy begged.

Daddy quickly agreed. "No problem," he said. Lucy smiled and crossed her fingers, hoping her mommy could have one. Daddy wasn't very good at keeping promises, but really hoped he would this time. Lucy could hardly wait to see what a divorce was!

At the hospital, Mommy and Daddy went rushing off and told Lucy to be very good and not make trouble. "Just wait for Grandma," they said.

Lucy knew when Grandma had arrived. She heard yelling. A nurse was telling Grandma very nicely to go outside and put her cigarette in the ashtray. She pushed Grandma very gently and Grandma yelled that she would press charges against the nurse for assault. Lucy looked to see if the nurse was carrying a shaker or a box of salt, but she didn't have any! Lucy suddenly remembered what Daddy said about Grandma. "She's loonie-toons," Daddy liked to say. Oh, silly Grandma, Lucy said to herself and giggled. She's just making funny jokes.

After going back outside to finish smoking her cigarette, Grandma came and sat with Lucy. She asked Lucy if Mommy had the baby yet. Lucy didn't know. Grandma said the same bad words Mommy liked to say and then she said, "Well, Lucy. Get comfortable. Having a baby takes longer than making a baby. We might be here awhile."

Making a baby? Well, how in the world did you make a baby, Lucy wondered.

"Grandma, how do you make a baby?" she asked.

"Didn't your mommy and daddy tell you it's not nice to ask so many questions?" Grandma asked.

Lucy laughed. "But Grandma! I only asked one, not so many. Silly Grandma. You're being loonie-toons aren't you?"

Grandma gave Lucy a look that was not very nice, but then she said, "Oh what the hell. I've got nothing better to do."

And so the story began. First, Grandma told her, a mommy gets a fake I.D. or finds a bar that lets in underage girls. The mommy thinks she is a bigshot and flirts with the boys in the bar. Then, the mommy and daddy see each other. They say dumb things to each other and think they're being so smart. They don't know they're just being stupid. Lucy listened as Grandma told her how the daddy buys the mommy a drink, and then another one, and another one, and another one. Once the mommy is good and dizzy, they dance a little, drink lots and lots more, and make googily eyes at each other. When the daddy knows the mommy is fooled into thinking the daddy is nice to look at, and might even be a nice person, he touches her a lot. The mommy lets him, cause she is too dizzy to think straight. She is too busy being a bigshot to use the brains God gave her. Then they touch each other so much that somebody finally says, "Get a room."

After that, the mommy and daddy go somewhere private.

"To a room?" Lucy asked.

"Sure, or the backseat of a car," Grandma replied.

She went on to tell Lucy how a mommy and daddy get naked and put their bodies together and then one day, the mommy is crying to her mommy saying she's going to have a baby, and that it was an accident.

"Is that how I was made?" Lucy asked, still trying to figure out just how they put their bodies together.

"Yes, my dear, Lucy. That's exactly how you were made. The stain on the backseat of your Grandma's car was so big, even I was surprised there was enough left over to make you!" Grandma said. "That was the last time I ever let your mommy drive my car, and she was grounded for a long, long time."

"So, I was an accident?" Lucy asked, not sure if that was a good or bad thing. An accident on the road usually meant people got hurt. An accident in her pants usually meant she got in trouble.

"Yes, you were an accident. And so was your mommy, and your Uncle Bobby, and Auntie Susie, and . . . " Grandma smiled. "So was I!"

She and Lucy shared a laugh.

"Your daddy though," Grandma added, "he wasn't just an accident. He was a mistake." Grandma laughed again and Lucy tried to even though she didn't understand the joke.

"And the new baby mommy's going to have?" Lucy asked. "Was that an accident too?"

"Oh definitely," Grandma said. She yawned then, and looked at her watch. "You ask too many questions, Lucy. Anybody ever tell you that?" she asked.

"Oh yes!" Lucy said. "I hear that all the time."

"Well, hon, you wore Grandma out with all this talk. I need to go for a smoke."

"And when you come back, can you tell me what a divorce is?"

Grandma smiled. "Of course, Sweetheart! That's the next natural step after too many accidents."

She ruffled Lucy's hair. "Where'd you hear that word, Sweetheart?"

"Mommy really wants one. I heard her ask Daddy."

Grandma gave Lucy a great big hug then. "Oh Lucy," she said. "That's the best news I've heard in a very long time."

"I hope she gets one!" Lucy said happily.

"Oh, so do I," said Grandma. "So do I!"

Lucy smiled as she watched her Grandma walk towards the door. She laughed when the nurse came running over to scold Grandma. Loonie-toons Grandma didn't wait til she was out the doors before she lit her cigarette.

Lucy sighed, feeling very happy. "I was an accident," she said to herself. "And because of me and the new baby, Mommy will get the divorce she wants so badly."

Lucy wanted so very much to be grown up right then, and have some accidents of her own, and maybe, if she was a very lucky girl, she would have a divorce too.

In fact, she decided, she would have lots and lots of accidents, and just as many divorces. Lucy could hardly wait!