Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash
After Pam’s fourth miscarriage, she notices how little her friends console her now — a few broken-heart emojis / some tough-girl muscle-arm emojis / even one shocking, “girl, you ain’t missing nothing” — before they circle back to their collective rant about husbands and babies, which is really starting to bore her.
Partially because if she responds to anything, their response is crickets, but behind the scenes she assumes they have another text thread going that doesn’t include her: can you believe what Pam just said? / she has NO idea what this feels like / I wish Pam would just shut up.
One Saturday morning, when her pillow is soaked with tears from scrolling through photos — of dogs, babies, and toddlers / laughing, crying, or pointing at the sky / at beaches, farmer’s markets, and playgrounds — her husband yawns and rolls over to discover what a mess she is / gently but firmly pries her phone from her fingers / asks “Why do you look if it hurts so much,” wiping her cheeks dry with his thumbs, “maybe you need different friends?”
Her first reaction is outrage — how dare he tell me what to do, I’ve known some of these women since elementary school — but then she thinks about how tears welled up in his eyes, too, he’s so obviously on Team Pam, he’s possibly the only person on Team Pam, so she starts off with baby steps: stops hearting photos on social media / stops responding on the group chat / doesn’t chime in on which restaurant to go to for their monthly girl’s night out, in fact, she stops going to girl’s night out altogether, all to the soundtrack of yet more crickets.
She intends to delete the entire text thread soon, snip that delicate noose from around her throat, but she hasn’t yet, and she isn’t sure why; actually that’s a lie, she knows why: she’s hoping they’ve noticed her absence / that they’re discussing her on the other text thread / maybe they’re drawing straws / and the one with the shortest straw has to reach out and find out why she’s acting like this… or she could be fooling herself and they’re all thinking, good riddance.
She steels herself for both.
Dawn Tasaka Steffler is also on Team Pam. Find more of her stories at dawntasakasteffler.com.
