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I have a watermelon growing in my stomach.
I'm sure you're wondering how a girl my age could end up in such a predicament. I keep asking myself the same thing. I'm sixteen years old, I'm not a kid anymore, I should have known better. My mother has told me since I was five years old and had my first watermelon, "Don't swallow the seeds, otherwise you'll end up with a watermelon taking root in your belly."
So I can't claim ignorance, can't pretend that I didn't know the risks. I have no defense other than stupidity and youthful hubris, that feeling of immortality that a teenager experiences when on the cusp of adulthood.
It was a dare. That sounds so childish, but that's what it was. Jimmy Dillingham from down the street was over at the house. We were in the backyard by the pool, our feet trailing in the water, eating watermelon and listening to music. I had taken a big bite, the juicy meat of the melon exploding in my mouth, the sweet nectar trickling down my throat. Jimmy looked over, smiled his gap-toothed grin and said, "I dare you to swallow one of the seeds."
I knew it was wrong, I knew that it was something I shouldn't do, I knew that the consequences of such an act could be more than I could deal with. I knew all of these things, and yet it was with no real hesitation that I poked my tongue out at Jimmy, showing him a large black seed poised on the tip, then pulled my tongue and the seed back into my mouth and swallowed, opening my mouth wide to show him that the seed was now gone.
I have to say, I didn't immediately feel guilty like I'd thought I might. In fact, it seemed kind of funny, a lark. We giggled and cracked jokes about it for the rest of the afternoon before Jimmy had to go home. Swallowing the seed actually made me feel rather bold, and I liked the thrill it gave me.
Eventually the thrill faded, however, and I sort of forgot about the incident for a couple of months. I started to feel a little tired, but I didn't think much of it. My mother commented on the fact that I seemed to be losing my appetite, and yet I noticed I seemed to be gaining a bit of weight. Not all over, just my stomach, a round little bump forming in my abdomen.
I think I knew what was happening long before I was willing to admit it to myself. I wanted to force ignorance on myself, as if by denying the truth I could somehow alter the very fabric of reality and make it not so. But my belly continued to swell, and I finally had to be honest with myself. I had a watermelon growing in my stomach.
I wasn't sure what to do. I couldn't tell my mother, her disappointment would be crushing. She had raised me better than this, and I didn't want her to know how thoroughly I had let her down. So I told Jimmy. I thought maybe together we could figure out what to do. After all, it was his dare that had gotten me into this situation in the first place.
"I didn't make you do anything you didn't want to do," was what he said to me when I told him.
"I'm not saying you made me do it, but you were there, you were a part of it."
"This isn't my fault. I was just fooling around, you should have been more careful. This is your responsibility, and I don't want to have anything to do with it."
After that, Jimmy stopped talking to me, avoiding me in the school hallways. Sometimes when I passed his friends, I thought I heard them snickering and giving me strange smiles. Had he told them?
I didn't want anyone else to know. As if I could somehow keep it from being real as long as no one knew about it. I started wearing baggy sweaters to hide my stomach and the watermelon that was growing inside. Some of the kids at school, kids who used to be my friends, started calling me Bag Lady. Even my mother commented on how dowdy I looked, but I told her that baggy and sloppy was the new fashion. I don't know that she believed me, but she dropped the subject all the same.
Months have passed now, and my stomach is getting quite large, the melon almost fully ripe inside me. It has become a challenge hiding it. I think some of my teachers suspect, and perhaps even my mother. She avoids me these days, and sometimes when I catch her eye, I think I see a hopelessness there, as if she's given up on me.
Things are almost to the point where I have no choice but to tell people and take the judgment that is doled out. There aren't many other options available to me. Not any good ones anyway.
Which is why I sit here now, my shirt raised up to my small breasts, staring down at my protruding stomach. I think I can actually see the melon under my skin, trying to push its way out. See it as clearly as I see my own hollow-eyed face reflected in the butcher knife that I took from the kitchen. It gleams in the light from my bedside lamp, its blade sharp and wicked.
Father Hannigan has a watermelon patch out behind the rectory. Would he notice if he got up tomorrow morning to find one more melon in his patch, one that had not grown from the fertile soil there?
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