March 15
Today, Julius Caesar died. Today, I died. I am dead. My corpse trundles along in a greyhound bus to hell. In my dead body grows a life and for that life in me I am buried by the very person who brought me forth from her womb. That evil one, who I once called "mother" buries me in hell at the end of a greyhound bus ride. I shall be dead there, until the new life in me is brought forth, ripped from my young body and sold into slavery. Then I shall return to my mother's house. And die again.
I just read over what I wrote. Pretty melodramatic, but it's how I feel. She thinks she can get rid of me this little while and then we can be together as a family again, but she's wrong. I don't want this baby, I'm glad it is going away after it's born. But I hate it that this is her will, not mine. She has wanted to bury me from the day I was born, now she will get her chance. I hate her, I hate her, I hate my life.
Why do they call it "family way?"
Six months, six months, six months, six months, six months, six months, six months, six months.
March 17
I'm here now. It's an old convent, only there aren't many nuns because they all died and no new girls came to take their places and I wonder why because it's really kinda beautiful here in a real quiet way. There's a yard or a garden out there for us to walk in and I hope I can read out there, but this room was meant for one nun to live in by herself and that's sorta creepy to think that there were nuns after nuns living in here and praying only and maybe reading just their misallette or Lives of the Saints, and we're living here now just the opposite of what they were, being girls in trouble.
It's a pretty small room, but they crammed two beds in it. There's a statue of the Blessed Mother in a recess on the wall, and the really heavy wood door has a cross and a rose carved into it. Some of the other girls have their own room, but I have to share. She says she's here because her boyfriend is a soldier who died in a helicopter accident before they could get married. How sad. She's read alot of the same books I have. I think I will like her. I finished The Scarlet Letter today.
April 15
I can't write in this journal much. I thought it would be a lot different than it's being. The classes are boring, but I'm with Ellen all the time. We are like Tom and Huck. She's told me four different stories of how she got p.g.--all different. I told her about Jeff and what I thought of the whole thing. We're both showing. I think she's a little farther along than me. Three girls left last week. Will I get that big? It's horrifying. Ellen is so funny. Last night she told me the father of her baby is a martian. She said he had two things. Isn't that rich?
April 30
I have to write this down, but what if someone found this? No one can know, but I must record my thoughts and feelings on this subject. We were looking at our stomachs and seeing how we were showing and Ellen said "I wonder if my boobs are getting bigger? and before I knew it she whipped up her nightgown up to her shoulders. She wasn't wearing her bra, just panties and I looked. I couldn't help it, I was looking at her and she didn't give me warning. I was looking so I looked at her and I saw her breasts and I don't know if they are bigger now or not but when my eyes perceived their open nakedness, I felt a bolt of electricity like a shock from my down there to my heart. It was so unlike seeing bosoms in the Sears catalogs or in art, which I can look at forever. It was so real and I never knew what maybe boys feel but now maybe I do.
May 2
I can't help it. I just think about seeing her breasts that one time and we're still as normal as ever doing our cooking class and English assignments but every moment I'm replaying that memory in my mind like a skipped record. Even when I'm going to sleep, where I used to think about Queequeg or Anne of Green Gables, I think about Ellen. Now, just Ellen.
May 3
I did something. I did the same thing, to watch her reaction. I wondered what a normal reaction would look like. I lifted up my nightgown to see if my breasts were getting bigger, and she stared and stared. "Let me feel them," she said. "What?" "Let me feel them, then later I can tell you if they're bigger nor not. My fingers will remember." And she walked over and stood in front of the mirror and held my breasts in her hands and felt them all over, but it wasn't like being felt up by Jeff. She looked off at the ceiling like she was memorizing a poem and just felt and felt. She even ran her fingers back and forth over my nipples and then I felt that shock again. Then I said, "I'll feel yours too." So she lifted her nightgown and I picked up her breasts and felt them and felt them and she breathed deep and I thought she wasn't liking it and I started to let go but she said no, get a good memory of them.
Maybe we can do this every night and really have a good idea of how they're growing.
May 5
We felt each other's breasts again last night in front of the mirror. I had to stop and get right into bed because I just had to. I couldn't look at her, any part of her body or soul. But then we started to talk about Jane Eyre is Rochester too, that Brontë wanted to be like a man, but couldn't, so that's why Rochester had a wife, hidden. I don't know, but that did put thoughts in my head. I'm Rochester and Ellen is Jane, and we live in Thornefield together and I'm gruff at first, and then I win her over and I kiss her. I kiss her. What an idea. I want to kiss Ellen I think.
May 7
So now I have a word for it.
Well, something is happening to me and her too, I think. Last night we didn't do the breast inspection, but I sat on her bed and we talked after lights out then I crawled in with her so we could keep talking and we felt each other's stomachs. They are poking out a lot now and feel so hard so full. My hands were under her nightgown and patting her belly and then she said "Want to see if my boobs are bigger today?" So I just moved my hands up to her breasts. I just kept touching them and her nipples changed shape. First the dark spot around the nipple was flat, and then it got crinklely. Then she touched my boobs and nipples. I liked touching her at the same time she was touching me, me feeling what she was feeling. I don't know if my dark spot wrinkled up. I could feel her to my bones. Our faces were very close and then we were breathing each other's breath, in and out.
I know that when boys feel up girls' breasts it's a sex thing for them--their penises get hard and then want to have intercourse. But what does the girl feel? Does she feel what I feel when Ellen is feeling my breasts? I didn't feel anything with Jeff, but I know he felt the sex thing enough for his penis to get hard and want to have intercourse with me.
But what am I feeling? I don?t want to have intercourse with her, even if I could. I wanted to kiss her. Our mouths were so close and we were breathing each other's air anyway. I put my mouth open close to hers and she moved her mouth close, and then we closed our mouths in a sort of kiss. Her hands stopped moving but stayed on my breasts. "Janet," she said, "Once my mother told me that touching anyone's body that's not your husband's is wrong, and she meant with girls too." "How did you know that?" She didn't answer and pulled her hands away. She inhaled like a gasp, and turned away from me. I thought she was crying but I wasn't sure. I didn't want to stop touching her. I hugged her shoulders. "Ellen, Ellen, what's wrong?" She asked me something, but I couldn't understand it. "What?" I whispered. "I said," she said turning on her back and I scooted away, "Do you think we're bad to do that?" "No, I was just feeling if your tits were bigger." "Oh really? Is that all? I thought we promised not to ever lie to each other and I can't lie to you even if you lie to me and I was not just feeling your boobs to see if they are bigger I was feeling them because I wanted to and I don't care what you think but I don't think it's wrong." Then she turned away and started balling for sure this time, and curled herself up. "Ellen, I wasn't being-- I wasn't just touching your breasts to see if they're bigger. I was touching them because I wanted to and I don't think it's wrong I don't see how anyone could, what could be wrong with two girls doing this?"
She got a look on her face I'd never seen before. Hateful sort of. "You don't know a lot for reading all those books. Haven't you ever heard of lezbows?" I shook my head. "Lezzies?" No, I couldn't speak but my mouth said it. "They called me a lezbow in fifth grade and I bet they were right!" "What is it?" "A girl who likes girls." "But what's wrong about that?" "A girl who wants to marry girls! stupid, like have sex with them, be the man!" "But girls can't be men, they don't have things, you know, and they don't have that sort of, you know, drive."
Her face lost that angry look. "You really haven't heard of it, have you" Not in any of those books, not at school?" "No. Is what we were doing? lezbow?" "Yes." "But I don't want to be the man. I want to have bosoms that you touch like you do, how can I be lezbow?" "I don't know, I'm not the encyclopedia on the subject you know." We looked at each other and she smiled. "But I've done this with other girls." "You have?" She looked suddenly like she wished she hadn't told me. "No, it's ok," I said, moving back closer to her, "I want to know. I think you're lucky. I never thought about it before. Tell me everything you know." "I'd rather show you."
She put her hands back inside my nightgown and touched my breasts. But this time she also pressed her belly against my belly and pushed a leg between my legs. I let her. Then she kissed me for real and it was the best kiss ever. It was 100% better than any of Jeff's kisses and not because she doesn't have braces, I wouldn't hold that totally against a person. No, it was way better because her mouth was so smooth and soft. Then she put her tongue in my mouth, not like Jeff would but she slid it in real slow so I could get used to it and moved it around in my mouth. Our lips were tight together and our tongues moved around inside the caves our mouths made and I thought this must be frenching the way it was meant to be. We kissed and kissed and I think we fell asleep still kissing. I woke up this morning in her bed, but she was already up, and we had to get to morning prayers.
May 11
I haven't been able to write much. I'll put in the other news then write about the thing I can't stop thinking about no matter what is going on.
I got a letter from my mom on Saturday and she's acting like I'm at camp or something, just gone for a while having fun and she puts in news about Tami Turner and her mother, like she doesn't know that Tami is loose and is going to get herself p.g. too.
Patty Barnes must have had her baby by now. She was really afraid. She told us that she heard that they weren't going to let her have it but her doctor said she was too little to have her baby and he was going to put her to sleep and cut it out of her womb like Julius Caesar, except she wouldn't die. Patty wants to keep her baby but her mother won't let her. I don't want my baby and my mother doesn't want me. It must be passed on down the generations.
School here is a joke. I wish they wouldn't force so many other activities on us though. I hate to sew and Ellen and I have figured out that crochet can just go and go and go and you don't have to do any thinking, it just grows and grows and if anyone asks you what you are making you say "baby blanket." Oh, Ellen. Yes, it's Ellen I can't, I won't stop thinking of right now, she's sitting across from me reading Great Expectations for class. I can see her mouth, her lips. I can see her hands holding the book and I can see her fingers. And that's where my always constant thoughts are. Her fingers. Hands, lips, mouth. Could I truly write it down?
May 12
I couldn't. I couldn't write it. But now I must. This is not sex what we do, but I believe we do together similar things as men and women, but the feeling is not the feeling I've been told. It is not romantic like Romance: I don't want to be her wife, I don't want her to protect me. We are the very best friends. I would die if she weren't here. But plus, we are every night, every night we go to each other as soon as lights out and we kiss and touch each other, and I mean everywhere. Everywhere I have kissed her. I can't believe that I have. I know it must be a thing that maybe prostitutes do, but I didn't know what it was, so they say, not until you've tried everything do you know the possibilities. And are we the only girls to do this? Ellen said that she had never before. She swore she has only put her hands down there on one other girl, her babysitter (who was only 3 years older than her) but she didn't look and she didn't do what we do.
I didn't want to wash my hands this morning. Yes, it's a strong smell, but I like it. I guess I should write it all down like a story but I can't. How could words ever say what it is we do together? What she does to me. How could I describe the rapture? How could I describe the feel of her body? The two of our bodies together? Other people would point and stare at us, at our age, having the big bellies we do, and hate us. But I like how we look together. Our legs wrap around each other and I look down the neck of my nightgown, and we have our panties off, and our stomachs poke out, and touch, and beyond that, our hair down there. And we can touch these hairs together, so black.
I can't write anymore.
May 13
Ok, I have played that memory of the first time over and over in my mind and now I can finally write it. On the day after we kissed, she had to go to visit the doctor and I didn't see her until dinner. We sat together but she wouldn't look at me or talk. I had been so excited all day thinking about her and I thought the day would never stop. And then she cut me like I wasn't alive. So I cut her back, and didn't stand with her at evening prayers. And I just got in my bed and she got in hers, but we didn't sleep. I stared at her across the room. I wanted us to be friends again and I didn't know why we weren't. Was she thinking that she was a lezbow again? Finally I said, "Are you asleep?" "No." "Why did you cut me today? Don't you want to be friends anymore?" "How can you be friends with me? I'm a lezzie." "Maybe I'm a lezzie too." "You wouldn't want to be one." "Well, maybe I only like the kissing part, and not the being a man part. I'm a half-breed." Then we laughed and I went over to her bed and we tickled each other saying "You lezzie half-breed," "You lezbow." Her hair fell all around us and my hair got in our mouths as we kissed again and couldn't stop. Every time I took my mouth away to say something or look at her, I just had to keep kissing her. It was like a magnetic force pulling our lips together putting our tongues in each other's mouths. I can't believe that: in each other's mouths. But that's not even the good part. The Best part. We kissed a lot then. She said, "I feel something queer between my legs, like my period started or something." "Oh no, you're not losing the baby are you?" "Then I could get out of this dump." "You couldn't leave me here alone, I'd kill myself." "Don't worry, I won't leave you. I'm going to check." And she pulled the covers down and looked between her legs. No stain on the sheet, but it was too dark to tell for sure. Then she put her hand between and lifted them to her nose. "Doesn't smell like blood. What do you think?" She put her hand under my nose. "No, not blood." She put them in her mouth. "Doesn't taste like blood.? She put them to my mouth. I opened my lips and tasted her fingers. "No, it doesn't taste like blood. It tastes salty, but not bad or sick or anything." Then I said, "Ellen, I feel sorta wet down there too." "Why don't you check?" So I put my fingers between my legs. My down there was opened, not stuck together. My fingers went in and touched that place and I jumped. "Did you hurt something?" "No, I touched that place." "Your clit." "My what?" "That bump that feels good. That's your clit." "Really. Does everyone have one?" "Girls do." "You have one?" "Of course." "I thought it was just a thing I had." "Maybe yours is different from mine." "Why don't you check." Then she put her hand slowly down my hair and then put her fingers between the lips. I cannot describe how this felt. It was the smoothest luscious softest... I breathed in and she almost took her hand away but I said, ?keep it keep it there." "I have to feel around to see if it's the same," she said. "Go ahead," I said. So she moved her finger up and down the crack, and she rubbed one side of my "clit" and then the other. It felt so so so so so so so so so so good. I can't say. I grabbed her shoulders. Don't stop I said with all my might. It feels really really good. I don't care if it's different from yours. She kept doing it and then after a while it stopped feeling as good so we both stopped. She stopped her fingers and I stopped gasping so much. Then I said that I would do it to her and then I put one finger between the lips down there and I held her with my bottom arm, and she put one leg over one of mine and we kissed as I rubbed my finger on her clit. It felt different from mine, longer I think. She moved her hips in a way and I rubbed back like she moved her hips. Then she put her fingers back on my clit and we did it together in rhythm, till the bed started squeaking and we had to slow down. We took our hands away from each other then she grabbed me and we hugged so tight and she wrapped her legs around me I thought our bellies would burst, I thought she would pull herself right through me.
But this still isn't the good part. The best part. We started kissing again and I could smell our smell on our hands and our mouths were so wide open I had a very horrible thought--or I thought it was horrible at the time but I had to say it out loud. I couldn't keep anything from her, it would feel like lying. I said, "I can smell that smell all over our hands." "Yeah, me too." "I want to kiss you down there." "What?" "I do, I know you think it's sick, but I want to french kiss you down there, if you will let me." "Don't you think it's yucky?" "No, I put my hand down there didn't I? Besides, if you like it, then I would like it too." "Ok." So I slowly slowly kissed my way down her chest straight towards her crotch. I was so scared, but in a good way. She lay very still. I was kissing her pregnant stomach, up and down the hill, and then I was at where her hair started and I kissed down further and further and she flinched. "Should I stop?" "Not unless you want to." "I don't want to." "Ok." Then I kissed her hair, it was sort of like kissing her head, but the hair was curlier, but softer. I lifted her hair away with my hand and kissed her inner most private part. And I kissed her there. I don't mean just a kiss, I mean I opened my mouth and I put my tongue in and I kissed her like I had been kissing her mouth. I put my tongue all around her. I put it all around her clit, I put it right between and even as far as I could go inside her. I put it everywhere I could and I liked it. She really liked it too, I could tell, and she told me later it was like flying and swimming at the same time. She rocked herself like she had been rocking against my fingers before and I moved my tongue back in rhythm with her. She started gasping. I wish we didn't have to be so quiet because she had to choke back some sounds I think. I did this for a very long time, and then she asked me to stop and to kiss her, so I did. And the wetness of her was on my face, and then it was on hers and it smeared all over, and we feel asleep soon after.
June 1
I am a reluctant vessel for a life that is my death. I am a new wineskin with old wine, wine desired by no one, wine unfit for a marriage feast, wine like water, unsanctified by God or Christ. Yet I am a Virgin Mother, But Un-blessed. I am alone crying in the wilderness, yet here I find my Cousin Elizabeth, who carries her St. John the un-Baptised.
We talked about our babies last night. I don't want to keep mine. I don't want to be a mother of some kid that looks like Jeff. Ellen won't talk, she just says she wants this all to be over as soon as possible. She doesn't talk about her boyfriend anymore. But what will happen when the babies come? How are we going to stay together?
She won't talk about her baby. I'm afraid if she doesn't talk about her baby, she will be too sad and mad. Why doesn't she just say she wants her baby to be with some rich family who can't have kids of their own? I want my baby to go to a rich family. Who will dress her in white dresses, and teach her high cultured things, and put her in a private girls' school where she can meet only other little girls who like to read all the best of books in all the best libraries. They will drive her to school and back every holiday in long black limousines, and drink English Breakfast Tea served by servants in black coats and made by cooks in white dresses.
June 14
I have known what it is to climax. I have had the supreme feeling of all feelings. Now I know and I must write it all down. We went to bed together as we have been, we had been waiting all day for this. Our hands were under our nightgowns and all over each other as we opened our mouths to the kisses we had been having in our minds the entire day. They now became real. I really like to touch her, especially her belly now. I like it that our hands are all over my belly, all over my skin, touching me everywhere. EVERYWHERE I mean it. We took our nightgowns off, there was no use in thinking we were going to want them on, in the way, really. Our breasts touched and our bellies touched and our legs touched and our feet even rubbed each other to a good feeling. We kissed and kissed until I felt I was part of her mouth, part of her body and she was all inside of me. We felt each other's bellies and then her baby kicked and I felt it with my very hand. What dear little things we have inside us. I wish she would tell me how she really feels. Why can't she love her baby's new life like I do mine? does she want to mother it? I think since her mother had her so young and all, by herself she thinks she can too. That's crazy. Why do what your mother did?
Anyway, we felt her baby kick and we looked at each other with open eyes. "Did you feel that?" I said. "You felt it too?" "Did your baby kick?" "Yeah, I guess so." "Has it done that before?" "No, do you think something's wrong?" "No, maybe she's a lezbow too?" "And then we laughed and laughed and kept saying "Four Lezbows in the bed" just to crack each other up whenever we could remember to do it. So then what? So I guess we were kissing and putting our hands everywhere. We had our hands down between each other's legs and we rocked like that, then she put some fingers inside me and I just had to stop touching her because she was pushing her fingers in and out sort of like when Jeff did intercourse. "Does it feel like a boy?" "No, not really." "Do you want it to?" "No, I like it. I like it." So she kept doing it, she got down there closer under the covers and really did it steady. Then I felt the most wonderful thing, she put her mouth on my clit and she didn't stop what her hand was doing, the in and out in and out. And first my feet started tingling and then there was like a burn on my skin, not a painful burn, but like my skin crawling, but not in a bad way, and then it felt like what she was doing was sending me up and up until I reached the top and I almost made a noise in my mouth, but I couldn't so I pulled the pillow over my mouth and then most wonderful unstoppable fire ran through my body from her mouth to the top of my head and it bounced back and forth like a wave over and over and got slower and slower. She kept pushing in and out but I said "wait" and my voice choked. She said "are you ok?" "Yeah, I think so." "Did you climax?" she said. "Yeah, I guess so," but I could barely speak. I wanted to enjoy the feelings of it so I tugged on her shoulders and she kissed me over and over. I kissed her hands, I kissed her hands and she kissed me and my face and I could smell my smell all over everywhere. I don't ever want to stop doing this with her. What will happen when the babies come? I'm not going back home. I must be with her forever.
Four lezbows in the bed.
June 18
Ellen said she started touched herself down there when she was just a little girl. There is not a time when she can't remember doing it to herself. I remember that I started rubbing my clit (tho I didn't know the word then) every night before I went to sleep when I was in the 7th grade. She said that she would roll up a sock and press her legs together and rub the top of herself until it happened. When she puts her mouth on me down there, it's only a matter of time before I climax. But when I do it to her, she doesn't climax. She says something is missing, but she can't or won't say what. Maybe I should ask her to try the sock and leg pressing treatment. It seems pretty unfair that I get to climax and she doesn't. I wonder why that is?
August 17
The long hot endless summer. Everything in the garden is growing around us. We swell like first the plums, then the peaches, then the melons. Each in its turn cultivated, harvested, sold. Our time will come. To what market will my fruit be sent? And what will happen to me, the fertile field? Who is the farmer who owns me?
This is my first entry in two months. Everything is fine so why write? Ellen and I sleep wrapped up in each other every night. We read, we talk, we're in school. We get monthly checkups. The babies grow and we grow closer. This is what love is meant to be. When I say I love you to her, now I know what I'm talking about. Now I understand the ancients, the romantics, the poets. This is love, and I will never know another. Her face. I can see her face in my mind's eye right now. But not the face that anyone has ever seen, in the dim light of our little cell her face in ecstasy. It is her face in the highest pleasure a woman can know, and her face is like that because of her my hands are, where my mouth is.
I wonder if doing it is like this for men and women? It must be similar for me, because the poems all seem to describe what I feel. But I have never read a poem by a woman that describes a feeling like this with a man. Maybe I missed something. But what if this with women is one way and doing it with men is another? Now that I've known both, I'd have to say I prefer women. This must be what it is like for men? They feel this when they have intercourse with women. No, it can't be. Because I'm feeling so much like she is part of me, because I know how she touches me I know how it feels to be touched in certain places so I know how she feels. And we're not like males at all. We're not grabbing and pushing and we don't trick each other into things. I would just die if I did something to her that she didn't want me to do. What is sex? Is this sex? It feels like how men describe it, but it's not like I've known it, and what else could it be? I have to find some lady poets.
August 30
I went in today and talked with Miss Forbes the social worker about the adoption. I said that I was pretty sure I wanted the baby to go to some nice family and that I didn't want to change my mind. That's how I feel now but I've gotten kind of used to having it down there. I thought I was going to die when I got here, but now I feel more alive than ever before. I would have never known Ellen, and never known the exquisite pleasure of her and her to me.
But she won't tell me what she's going to do. I wish I knew what to say that would make her know it was ok to tell me. I wish she could feel as sure as me. But now, I have to start worrying about the labor. They tell us things in classes, and it just makes me nervous. I hope they just put me to sleep.
September 15
He said it should come soon. He put his hands in me again and (it is so so so unlike what Ellen does. Just the opposite, really) he said that I was softening up nice, whatever that means. I really like having it inside me now. I can't imagine not being this way, and not living here with Ellen. I don't know how it's going to get out of me. I'm so small down there and my belly is so big. I hope they just put me to sleep.
September 16
Last night we started to kiss but it seemed like Ellen had something on her mind. I'm not surprised it was the babies. It's hard to be anything but pregnant right now. We've gotten pretty used to it, because it's hard to think that we were ever anything but. But last night she was thinking about where her baby was going to go. I said "Look at how big we are now. I think we're changing shape." "Yeah, they told us we'd drop right before the babies come." "I know, they said that, but I didn't know what that meant." "How come you think you need to know everything before it happens?" "Why are you being cross with me?" "I'm not being cross, I was just asking a question." I didn't feel like saying anything after that. I was starting to get mad, and I didn't want to, I wanted to kiss some more, but there was no way I was going to when she was acting like that. Finally I said, "After the babies come, we'll be able to touch our bellies and our legs and our breasts together just like last spring. I can't wait until it's all over." "Maybe you can't wait, but what will happen to us after the babies come? I can't figure out how we can be together." "Ellen, have you decided?" "Oh, stop it. You sound like a Worker." "I don't want to sound like a Worker I was just asking because I thought maybe it was on your mind." "Of course it's been on my mind and my back and my bladder. It's pretty hard to ignore." It was good to be laughing about something. I hate it when she's cross. So I asked her, "Do you want to be a mother now?" "No." She wasn't laughing anymore. "I never wanted to be a mother." " Do you want some nice lady to mother your baby like what's going to happen to my baby?" "No." I was afraid to ask this, but I did anyway because the babies could come any minute and I couldn't wait any longer: "Why not?" "Because I want someone to love me." "Ellen, I love you." "But you can't like a baby can. I want someone who will love me forever no matter what." "I can." "You can't promise that. You're too young. You can't know that. Don't you know about life? Haven't you read enough books to know that you just can't know? But a baby will love its mother no matter what." I realized that she was right. I guess I couldn't know. But I could promise anyway. And so I did, but she didn't say anything.
After a while, I asked, "Ellen, don't you think your mother wanted a baby for the same reason you do?" "My mother didn't want me, I just came by accident. My parents had to get married." "But don't you think it might be possible?" "I guess that might have been part of it, once she was pregnant." "Do you love her now?" "Not like she wants me to. She doesn't understand how I love her. She thinks I'll always do what I want, and that if I loved her I would do what she wants." "See, why do you think your baby is so different?" The question stopped us both. It was so horrible. Why have children at all? We didn't know. Ellen started crying, but real quiet. "I want someone to love me. Someone I love," she whispered. "I will always love you," I whispered back. "Even if we're separated, even if we aren't friends?" "I will always, always love you." "Even if I keep my baby?" "Yes." "Even if we can't be together?" "Yes, where ever you are, I will always be loving you, always, always."
"I need to sleep now," she said, and she turned away on her side. I lay on my side behind her for a long time, as well as I could, my belly heavy between us. We didn't sleep or talk. I woke in the night to go to the bathroom, and then went to my own bed.
September 17
It's happening. I can't write much because Ellen went to tell Sister Mary Thomas that it's happening and then I'll be doing it, having a baby. I had to put down that Ellen told me this morning what she is going to do. She said she is going to give her baby away, and then I fell this strong cramp and I knew it was a labor pain. She looked so sure when she told me, because she said "Remember what you said last night?" "Yes." "That's why I can do this. Don't ever forget." "I won't."
September 21
I haven't been able to write. They put me under and the baby came and they took it away. I know it will be living in a nice nice big house with a nice rich family just like I want her to because that's what feels right. That's really what is going to happen but somehow it feels like a thief in the night came in and stole something I really needed. But I can't be so sorry for myself. Ellen had her baby too, two days after me. They were going to send me home before her, but my mom called and said I can't come home until Friday, so that's when Ellen is supposed to go home too, except that we are not.
We will exchange our bus tickets for California. Out west we can live on our own, on a island near the ocean. We will build a little house out of driftwood and clam shells. Ellen wants to be a barmaid, and I want to be a reporter for a newspaper. We will never get p.g. again.
Now if you are reading this, you can't tell. I've told you everything up to now that was the very truth, and if you tell anything now, our lives will be on your hands. You know everything in this diary because you deserve to know the things that we had to find for ourselves, but you must not tell and you know why. I didn't know until today that I must leave the notebook behind for the next girl to find. We must keep this going. This is how you can live through this all. You and your roommate will take our places. Keep writing everything down. There's plenty of paper left.