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"""My mother slapped me hard enough to turn my face toward the swimming pool, and before I could catch my balance, a warm rush spilled down my legs beneath my maternity dress.
For one stupid second, I thought I had wet myself in front of forty relatives.
Then a contraction clenched so violently across my abdomen that my knees gave way.
Someone gasped.
Someone else said, “Oh my God.”
My heel skidded on the wet stone surrounding my parents’ backyard pool.
I reached for the nearest chair and caught nothing but the edge of a pink tablecloth.
Plastic cups tipped over.
A plate of lemon cookies hit the ground.
Then I went backward into the water.
The pool was colder than I expected.
Cold enough to steal the scream from my throat.
My dress ballooned around me, then dragged downward, and the first thing I saw through the blur of chlorinated blue was the pale underside of the floating tablecloth above me.
The second thing I felt was another contraction.
I kicked toward the surface.
Eight months pregnant, wearing sandals and a soaked dress, I had no business being graceful.
I came up coughing and grabbed the metal ladder with both hands.
Voices broke apart around me.
Nobody seemed to know whether to move.
My cousin Denise was the first person who did.
“Savannah.”
She shoved past an uncle and dropped to her knees beside the pool.
“Give me your hand.”
I reached for her.
Behind Denise, my mother stood with one hand pressed against her own chest as though she were the injured person.
My father had an open beer in his hand.
Brianna stood beside the gift table in a white maternity dress with tiny yellow flowers, staring at me with her mouth slightly open.
Then she laughed.
It was not a big laugh.
It was worse than that.
It was the quick, disbelieving little sound people make when something embarrassing happens at a wedding.
My mother let out the same sound.
My father looked at her, and his mouth twitched.
That was the moment something inside me went quiet.
Not calm.
Quiet.
There is a difference.
Denise got both hands under my arms while her husband, Marcus, grabbed me from the other side.
Together they dragged me onto the concrete.
Water poured from my dress.
I curled around my stomach.
“Something’s wrong.”
Denise knelt beside me.
“Is that your water?”
“I think so.”
Another contraction came before I finished speaking.
My fingers dug into her wrist.
The pain was sharp and low, nothing like the tightening my obstetrician had told me to expect from Braxton Hicks.
“Call 911,” Denise shouted.
My mother finally stepped forward.
“Oh, don’t be dramatic.”
Denise looked up at her.
I had never seen my cousin look at anyone that way.
“Patricia, she is thirty-four weeks pregnant.”
“She fell in a pool.”
“You hit her.”
“I barely touched her.”
The words landed harder than the slap.
Barely touched me.
As if the force mattered more than the choice.
As if I had somehow wandered into the water by accident after politely declining an appetizer.
My father set his beer on the stone wall.
“Everybody needs to calm down.”
Marcus pulled out his phone.
“No, everybody does not.”
Brianna crossed both arms under her belly.
The gold bracelet Mom had given her that morning slid toward her elbow.
“This is supposed to be my shower.”
I looked at her.
She looked irritated.
Not frightened.
Not ashamed.
I had spent thirty-two years finding softer names for things that hurt.
Brianna was sensitive.
Mom was protective.
Dad hated conflict.
I was independent.
Our family was complicated.
Every cruel thing had been wrapped in a word that made it easier to swallow.
Another contraction tore through me.
I made a sound I did not recognize as my own.
Denise put a hand against my cheek.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
“No, look at me.”
I looked at her.
Her mascara had smudged beneath one eye.
She had been crying before I even fell into the pool.
Later I would learn it was because she had heard the argument building and already knew nobody in my immediate family intended to stop it.
At that moment, all I could hear was my mother behind her.
“She ruined this entire day.”
Denise turned so fast her ponytail whipped across her shoulder.
“Stop talking.”
Mom’s eyebrows lifted.
“You do not speak to me that way in my house.”
“I’ll speak however I need to if it keeps you away from her.”
A siren sounded somewhere beyond the neighborhood.
My father rubbed both palms down the front of his khaki shorts.
“This is getting ridiculous.”
I started laughing.
I could not help it.
The laugh came out thin and shaky.
Marcus stared at me.
“Savannah?”
“My father thinks the ambulance is ridiculous.”
Nobody answered.
The siren grew louder.
For two months, my mother had been telling me Brianna needed help.
At first, help had meant rides.
Then groceries.
Then the minimum payment on a credit card Brianna claimed her husband, Kyle, had forgotten.
Then money for a crib.
Then money for a stroller.
Every request came through Mom instead of Brianna.
That was how our family did things.
No one asked directly for what they wanted if asking directly might make them look unreasonable.
My mother carried the demand into the room like a covered dish and placed it in front of you with a smile.
The eighteen thousand dollars had been different.
I had started saving before I was pregnant.
My husband, Evan, and I called it the baby fund even when there was no baby yet.
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It was for unpaid maternity leave, medical bills, childcare deposits, emergencies, and whatever terrifying expense appeared after we became responsible for a human being who could not tell us what hurt.
Evan contributed too, but most of that particular account had come from years of my bonuses at the dental practice where I managed billing.
