Baby Steps Read Online Free Page A

now,” she repeated with greater force. She sounded tired.
    I heaved myself up off the couch, where I was sitting between two of my girlfriends, pathetically trying to catch Adrian’s eye and having no success. “What?” I said sullenly.
    â€œWhy are you wearing a turtleneck?”
    I blushed furiously but tried as well as I could to play it cool. “I just like it. I like the way it looks.”
    â€œUh-huh. Let me see your neck.”
    Shit.
    My mother hooked a finger into the ribbed knit of my sweater and peered down at my neck. Considering how I felt at that moment, Adrian might as well have sucked the letters S-L-U-T into that little indentation over my collar bone.
    â€œWhy do you have hickeys on your neck?” she asked me. Her voice was calm and even.
    â€œAdrian and I made out.”
    â€œNo, no, no,” she said. I started to protest but she held up a finger. “If you are having sex, we are going to Planned Parenthood right now.”
    â€œI didn’t!”
    â€œLis.” She said it in that voice that told me she saw right through me. “I told you once and I don’t want to ever have to tell you again: If you lie to me, you get in trouble. If you tell me the truth, I can help you. If you think you’re grown up enough to have sex, then you’re grown up enough to tell me so we can handle this.”
    I could sense my friends in the living room, hanging on every word. I glanced behind my shoulder.
    â€œSend them home,” she said.
    As my friends filed out, their heads down, some of them smiling sheepishly with that at-least-it’s-not-happening-to-me attitude, I tried to hold back the tears. I could feel the confession welling up in my throat. When the last of them exited our kitchen and my mother shut the door, I burst into hysterical tears.
    â€œI did it! I’m sorry! I hated it! He doesn’t even like me!” I couldn’t even get myself to say the word “sex,” I hated it so much. I was absolutely certain I would never have sex again.
    My mother didn’t say anything. She just took my hand and pulled me out to the car and let me cry all the way there.
    I’ll never forget what that building looked like. It was nondescript—rectangular, brick—but what I saw was a distinct aura ofshame hovering over the roof and billowing into the parking lot, the kind of place you drive by and think, Those sorts of people go in there. The kind of place liberal mothers took their wayward daughters to get birth control pills. And now I was one of those people.
    I tried to act like I didn’t care and none of it mattered, but that experience kept me from having sex again for two more years, even though I was now officially on birth control. I waited until I had a real boyfriend who actually loved me, and we’d dated for months first. Then I decided that was my first time. It was the perfect do-over.
    The memory of that early experience still stings a bit, but much less so because of the way my mother handled it. She never shamed me. She never made me feel less than anyone else. She just did what had to be done, and knowing I could tell her the truth was a huge relief. It instilled a sense of responsibility in me. “Your body is a gift,” she told me. “Be careful whom you give it to.” And I was careful after that because she was right.
    Lisa Loverde-Meyer was what you would call a bona fide “hippie chick.” She was also a rebel, a truth teller, a spiritual seeker, and my best friend. She had eyes even bluer than mine, under long eyelashes, and a space in between her two front teeth, which my daughter inherited. She was Italian and looked it, with long brown hair and olive skin.
    My mother grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, with a mother who looked like a 1950s movie star. My grandmother was a dressmaker and she owned a dress shop where she sewed custom clothes for rich southern ladies. She aspired to