The Children's Hospital

46

Years before, Jemma had watched while one of her television heroines, a lady who had recently emancipated herself from her brother and the rest of her huge Mormon family, broke out of a giant egg in a sparkle-spangled bodysuit and sang a song called “I’m Coming Out.” The televised event was supposed to launch her career as a sensuous superstar, but she was too wholesome and inbred-looking ever to succeed at that. Though it had failed, to nine-year-old Jemma just observing it had been a moment of transcendence, and she had always wanted to do it herself. Her brother beat her to it, emerging in unsexy Mormon drag from the papier-mâché egg into which Jemma had ambivalently sealed him to startle the audience of one of the last talent shows his high school was ever to produce. He wore a meticulously recreated spangle-suit and a pair of unnaturally big and white false teeth. Everyone thought it was hilarious, and he was praised for it where anybody else would have been lynched.

“Isn’t this a little too dramatic?” Rob had asked her, when he heard her plan.

“Maybe,” Jemma said. But she had wanted to do it for so long, and circumstances seemed to have conspired to provide her with just the right opportunity: she had a pregnancy to disclose and a roller-boogie contest to win. Well, not to win — it wasn’t a winnable or losable sort of contest. Jemma hadn’t wanted that, and the whole thing was her idea. She had readdressed the issue of turning the surgical suites into a roller rink in the very first session of the new Council, wanting to test both the legitimacy and the limits of her authority. The idea had barely registered last time; this time most everybody thought it was smashing, and Jemma found it was in her power to ignore or override the people who didn’t like it. People were picking partners before the first floor plank had been laid, or the first disco ball replicated. Jemma had wanted to dance with Rob, but by the time she asked him he was already committed to Magnolia. Jemma thought it was probably within her power to take him away from her, but didn’t. She chose John Grampus instead.

She’d remained enthusiastic during the numerous practices with the initially fumble-footed man. His skill increased rapidly, and so did her excitement, up until the time she woke up from her nap on the roof. The sun was setting; the children were all gone. Rob had put a blanket over her, and was sitting near her head, reading a book.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” she said.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. She had thoroughly convinced him of how great it was going to be, and had gone through the whole routine with him over and over, even though he was the competition. Grampus would skate around the egg a few times while the opening seconds of the music played, and then she would claw her way gracefully out of the egg and stand there, as vain as Miss Piggy and as beautiful as Linda Blair. As soon as the audience appreciated her pregnant belly, she and Mr. Grampus would start to move. The routine was more groovy than athletic. There were some fancy spins and a few jumps, enough to make it seem like they were working hard.

She looked at herself in the mirror in their room and wondered if people wouldn’t just think she was fat, rather than discovering that she was pregnant. The colors in her wonderful suit seemed dull — instead of looking like she was clothed in dark rainbows, she looked merely covered with different sorts of smeary cheese. Her hair was wrong, and her teeth were too small, and the suit made them appear brown. She sat down on the bed and considered not going at all, but John Grampus came knocking at the door and calling out for her excitedly. She put on her yellow gown and hung her skates around her neck and answered the door.

She tried to hide in a dark corner to watch the other dancers, but a black light nearby in the ceiling made the white parts of her suit glow like a beacon.

“They’re disgusting,” said Grampus, talking about Dr. Tiller and Dr. Snood. Their outfits were the best part of their routine: Dr. Snood in a silver spacesuit, Dr. Tiller in a silver dress, with a headdress that seemed to be encrusted with pieces of disco ball. They bounced and kicked out their heels and made a rolling motion with their fists. Jemma agreed that it was not very impressive, though Dr. Tiller made the dancing seem stately and severe. “When’s our turn?”

“Last,” she said. “Or never. I think I’m going to chicken out.”

“Oh, come on. If she can do it, so can you. And you did all that work. And you look so fine. Or I bet you do, under that robe. Let me have a peek.” Jemma lifted the sides of her robe. “Wow. Turn around. Ah… you look a little… ah. Well, what does that mean?”

“The usual thing,” she said.

“She doesn’t tell me anything anymore,” he said.

“I didn’t tell anybody. Well, almost nobody.”

“I don’t think she trusts me. She trusts you… she talks about you non-fucking-stop. Wait until you see her costume, she said. It will make you give praise. You’d think she would have mentioned a baby.”

“She was sworn to secrecy,” Jemma said, making it up right there because she thought it might make him feel better.

“But what does it mean. To happen now?”

“People are supposed to be happy for me,” Jemma said quietly. He only stared at his skates, ignoring the show. She’d asked herself the same question before: What did it mean for a baby to be coming here? She still didn’t entirely know how she felt about it, on most days, but she thought that in the broadest context it must be a very good thing. They were going to be in need of babies, weren’t they, though they seemed to have an embarrassment of them, with all the bouncing former NICU players perambulating through the halls? If they were all dried up and sterile, wouldn’t that have been a mark of further displeasure, or doom? She wondered again if anybody else were pregnant, and hiding it, too. Certainly there was enough fucking going on. Maybe her own declaration tonight would draw like declarations from the crowd, with women throwing off their disco frocks, or lifting their blouses to show their full bellies and shout, Me too!

“Well, get in your egg, Mama,” he said suddenly. Rob and Magnolia were dancing, she interrupting her dance with splits and handstands, and Rob doing a backflip every time a particular wah-wah sound came up in the music.

“Can we beat that?” she asked. Grampus didn’t even look at them.

“Is it a contest? Come on. We’re going to be late.” He took her hand, and she let him lead her away to where the open egg was secluded behind a folding screen. He helped her in and then put the top on, fixing it in place with fast-drying cement. She huddled there, listening to the closing strains of Rob and Magnolia’s song, and to the enthusiastic applause they received. She thought of her brother inside his egg, and inside her own egg. Copycat, he said. And, Lame-o. And, Go kick some ass. And, I love you.

The egg moved: Grampus was sliding her out to the middle of the dark floor. A fog machine began to hiss nearby as the first few bars of the music played, and the lights came up — she could see them shining through the walls of the egg, blue and red and purple and gold. Her cue was approaching. She bounced on her heels while she heard Grampus skating in a circle around her; the lady began to sing. She could see Grampus’s shadow throwing out its arms on either side of the egg. In just another moment she would stand up.