The Unstoppable Zuri

Like Trash

I tried to take my mind off of things as I sat in my little girl's nursery. I was by the window in the recliner, a pile of freshly-washed outfits in the laundry basket, which was set atop the ottoman so I didn't have to bend.

I checked my phone one more time, then set a folded, floral-patterned sleep-and-play on the dresser behind me. I folded another one. This one was gray and had penguins on it. Because my little girl was coming in the dead of winter, I had a ton of warm outfits for her. I folded a onesie with pink dinosaurs on it, and a bunch with bright colors and ruffles. My favorite one was white with blue butterflies.

Next were her nightgowns, which I had a lot of. Zippers and buttons were going to be near impossible. I made a special tool to do those sleep and plays, along with gripping diaper tabs. It was a pair of needle nose pliers with my EazyGrip handles attached to them. But nightgowns had no buttons or zippers for me to do and undo during diaper changes, so they'd be a great bet for at home.

I went a little bit crazy in terms of nightgowns. I had a lot with moon and star designs, but my favorite was a pink one that said "the snuggle is real." I also got a black and white set with hearts. Even though pink was my favorite color, for baby girls it seemed like there was just so much of it. A lot of her other clothes were pink, so having a break from that with most of her nightgowns was nice.

I looked out the window at the falling snow. Some days it felt like I couldn't do this anymore. I was thirty-six weeks today and it was the day before Christmas Eve. We were on break from school, but my dad was at work. The bakery was slammed today.

I was trying to rest, but dealing with a lot of thoughts, a lot of Braxton Hicks, and a lot of hormones, which led to a lot of emotions. It could be the pregnancy and all that, but it could also be the fact that I worked up the courage to finally go online and delete Elliot from all my social media after all this time.

He unfriended me and unfollowed me from everything the week I ditched him, but I didn't think he was going to block me. I couldn't see anything, even when I did finally go snooping. He blocked me on every single social media profile he had.

I didn't understand. I did nothing to him. I could understand unfriending and unfollowing me because we're broken up, but to block me? When he was the one who hurt and threatened me? What was I going to do to him? I was literally carrying his baby.

When I found out he blocked me on everything, and being the emotional mess that I was, I tried to reach out. All I wanted to know was if Elliot was going to sign the birth certificate or not. No matter what way we looked at this, he was still her biological father, whether we liked it or not. She needed to know who her dad was.

My dad was worried Elliot's name on the birth certificate would lead to custody issues in the future, but Elliot was never going to step up and take care of a baby. Most days he wouldn't even shave or do his homework.

If he was watching the baby, he'd have no idea how to take care of her. The thought of it really scared me. I'd been to multiple parenting classes and learned as much as I could from books and the internet. He was so interested in FPS games that he wouldn't even play Sims with me. Like, he doesn't even know how to take care of a pretend baby.

But I felt like I just needed some kind of closure. I needed to know in advance what to tell the hospital staff when they wondered where the father of my baby was and if he was going to put his name on the birth certificate.

So I reached out to Kathleen and Hershey, because Elliot blocked my number as well. Hershey also blocked me, but Kathleen hadn't. I'd been left on read for about five hours by her and it looked like she wasn't going to answer at this point. I'd known Elliot and his family for five years and they were all just throwing me and this baby away like trash.

I found myself crying, because that was just what I'd been doing when I thought about Elliot lately. We could've had a beautiful family. I wished it didn't have to be this way, with Elliot having his stomach pumped and ending up in Edgewood. Me being a single mom and doing this alone.

I finally took my SATs after Thanksgiving and did well. I figured out what I was going to do with my life. I got accepted into a program at OFCC, our local community college. It was a track program that, if I completed, would give me automatic entrance into the bachelor's, then law program at the local university, OFU.

I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. After what happened to my dad and I, I wanted to be a prosecutor for domestic abuse victims. A voice for the voiceless, I guess. Or, if that didn't work out, maybe becoming an attorney at a local law firm that helped people with divorces.

I'd have a good job and make good money in the future. We'd have our perfect little girl. We could've lived together in a house and had a dog or two, maybe even the koi pond that he dreamed of.

I shook my head, wiped my tears, and kept folding. I only had a few weeks to go until my baby girl was finally here, and there was a lot of work that still had to be done.