Pamucklian for Chocolate

Chapter Eight

154 eight A year and a half earlier, when Bree was sixteen years old, shegotpregnant.Shefirstsuspectedshemaybepregnantafter getting sick at school, throwing up into a clay pot she was making in her first period art class. That afternoon, after school, Bree and her friend Ariel took the bus to the local drug store and bought a pregnancy test and walked to Ariel’s house. Ariel’s parents both worked and were not home and Bree went into Ariel’s bathroom and took the pregnancy test and found out she was pregnant. Bree ultimately decided that the easiest way to tell her parents, given how nervous she was to do so, was to videotape herself telling them and then play it for them. She pictured herself gathering them together in the living room and putting in the video, which would play her heartfelt and humbly apologetic admission as she stood next to the television set, making pathetic faces and waiting for the video to end, at which point she would begin fielding questions and comments. Bree later decided, as she began to imagine her parents’ reactions to the video—especially her father’s—that maybe it would be even better, for everyone involved, if her parents watched the video on their own. Without her there. So on Thursday of that week, Bree passed through the kitchen, where both of her parents were sitting at their solid oak kitchen table, took a packaged pair of b.h. james • 155 toaster pastries from the cupboard, and placed on the kitchen table the VHS cassette that contained the video that she had spent just over three hours of the previous night making—using the Camcorder Johnson Davis had purchased six years earlier—rewinding and refilming numerous times before she felt she had it right— and announced quickly and enthusiastically to her parents as she passed through the kitchen door, “Going to school. Made you a movie. You should watch it.” Halfway through third period, Bree was imagining the various scenarios she might face upon her arrival back at home that afternoon when Johnson Davis walked into the classroom. Bree sunk down into her chair as Johnson Davis, having already spotted his daughter and who was now staring at her, informed the teacher, Bree’s Algebra teacher, Ms. Wise, that he needed to see his daughter right away. “And who is your daughter, sir?” Ms. Wise asked. “That one,” Johnson Davis said, pointing at Bree, who sunk down even further. “Do you have a visitor’s pass, sir?” Ms. Wise asked. Johnson Davis, holding his gaze on Bree—who, though she sunk further and further into her chair, held her own gaze back on her father— pulled his wallet out of his pocket and held it up to Ms. Wise, his driver’s license visible in its clear plastic pocket. “Sir,” Ms. Wise said, “you need a visitor’s badge. From the front office.” “I need to see my daughter,” Johnson Davis said. “As soon as you’ve checked in, sir. And received your visitor’s badge. That’s the policy.” “It’s an emergency.” “I’m sure it is, sir. You just need to check in with the front office.” “I’ll be back.” “That’s fine. As soon as you’ve checked in.” “Don’t go anywhere,” Johnson Davis said to Bree, from across the room, finally breaking his gaze as he left. 156 • parnucklian for chocolate Johnson Davis did not return by the end of third period, and Bree did not remain waiting in her third period classroom. And when the little neon green slip came during fourth period, calling Bree to the office, she took the slip and walked out of class and down the hall and out the front door and walked down the street and down another and another to the movie theater, where she sat through the first matinee of a movie about two policemen that she didn’t pay much attention to but that the other three people in the theater seemed to find pretty funny. When the movie was over Bree walked to the public library, where she told the librarian that she wanted to read a novel about teen pregnancy. When the librarian found and handed Bree a book about teen pregnancy, Bree told her no, she wanted a novel about teen pregnancy, and when the librarian said that she would need to check...