The Waffle House Index

Sandra didn’t belong here. Her ash blonde bob, stiff but modern, her clothing — cashmere sweater, camel hair coat folded carefully across her lap and her diamond-studded hands folded across each other— each element was selected specifically to let everyone in the clinic know that this was not the sort of place she frequented.

She sat, back rigid on the equally unyielding blue plastic of her chair, just another chair in a row of 10 identical chairs. The furrows in her brow deepened as she peered through veiled eyelashes at the people around her, specifically the women around her, rating them on what she called the Waffle House Index. In Atlanta, everyone knew you could tell how much class a person had based on the likelihood they’d wind up waiting tables at a Waffle House by the time they were 25.

The scale was easy to deploy when she wanted to size someone up at first glance. Sandra herself was, of course, a one on the scale, meaning not bloody likely to ever work in a Waffle House, not very likely to even set foot in one unless her kids begged for some hash browns, “scattered, smothered and covered,” and she was too tired from Pilates to argue that night.

The girl across from her was about an eight on the WHI. With her overdone eyeliner, black dye job grown out so two inches of dishwater blonde roots were showing and breasts squeezed up and over the neckline of her too small tank top, that lady looked one missed car payment away from putting on a yellow name tag and asking “What’ll ya have?” to truckers by the freeway.

When they called Eyeliner to the back and she opened her mouth to say goodbye to her boyfriend, slouching next to her — quite a catch that one, un-ironically sporting a stained muscle tank over his pale, scrawny frame — Brie saw the girl’s teeth were yellow and askew and noted the nasally twang of a mountain accent.

‘Oops!’ Sandra smiled wryly to herself. ‘I was wrong!’
That girl was definitely a nine on the Index, working her way to a 10 if she didn’t get to a dentist and fast.

Sandra pursed her lips. She didn’t mean to be ugly, but that was pretty much what she’d expected when she made the appointment at the clinic for her daughter — a room full of white trash hoochies supported by their equally trashy mamas, or maybe by a prize like Mr. Muscle Tee over there, sullenly dragged along by an insistent girlfriend, but what was a mother to do?

The thing was, there were other kinds of women in the waiting room too. Women she wouldn’t have expected to be in this sort of situation. A mousy grad student reading Kafka in her college sweatshirt, a teary-eyed wife in athleisure holding her husband’s hand. The one thing they all had in common was that everyone was studiously trying to avoid eye contact with any other person in the room.

What a predicament. When her daughter called her at 2 am from college, sobbing that she was “in trouble,” Sandra hadn’t hesitated for a second. Apparently, Emma had met a man at a hotel bar on a university trip to New York last month and now she was five weeks pregnant with an unexpected souvenir.

She hadn’t driven her daughter to six years of dance classes to perfect her posture, hadn’t sat through hours of violin performances and SAT practice tests and orthodontist appointments, hadn’t paid for four years at a private liberal arts college so that her child could wind up a damn TEN on the Waffle House Index, knocked up by some fool who wouldn’t even claim responsibility, working night shifts so she could take care of a baby all by herself. They simply weren’t those kind of people.

‘And yet, here I sit,’ she thought wryly.

Time was of the essence with the ridiculous Heartbeat Laws in Georgia so she told her daughter to come on home, that mama would take care of everything. When her husband rolled over and asked if everything was okay, Sandra just rubbed his shoulder and told him to go back to bed. No need to upset Daddy with this indiscretion. She woke early the next morning, called the clinic and, as though scheduling a pedicure, made the appointment for her daughter’s abortion, even paid extra for the twilight anesthesia, before she’d even had her coffee.

She rolled her eyes heavenward. They’d never been churchy people. Maybe they should have spent more time with Jesus.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Emma was in one of the sterile rooms off the hallway, talking to a counselor. She had already endured the state-required ultrasound — the fetus was five and a half weeks old. Did she want to hear the heartbeat, SEE the ultrasound? Decidedly not. And now she had to sit through this mental health interview before moving on with the rest of her life.

“Are you here of your own free will today? Is anyone forcing you to terminate this pregnancy?”

Emma looked at the glass of the small window, stippled and opaque for privacy, wondering what the weather was doing out there. She thought of her mother in the waiting room, determined to make things right for her perfect little girl, telling her not to mention any of this to anyone. She thought of her father, the disappointment in his eyes if he knew how irresponsible his precious little girl had been.

“Emma, is anyone forcing you to terminate this pregnancy?”

No, no one was forcing anything. The thing was, her mom didn’t know the truth, not really. That Emma really wasn’t sure WHO the father of this baby was — that she had met a guy in New York and there had been that one crazy night in his hotel room high above Times Square, but she had also been seeing a guy on campus, this gorgeous guy who seemed to really like her but, with about as much brains in his head as a potted fern, she knew there wasn’t a future for him in her life. She had just been busy with school and lazy about taking her birth control pills and she got caught. Dummy. This was not who she was!

After missing her period, she told herself she was just stressed because of finals, and even when the nausea started to hit her at random times, she attributed it to a stomach bug. But, sitting in her car after she nearly puked on her sorority sisters from the smells at their fave revolving sushi restaurant, she was fairly certain she had been deluding herself. She drove, after midnight, to a Wal Mart forty five minutes from school to buy a pregnancy test where no one knew her.

Bag in hand she rushed, red faced, to the bathroom and closed herself in a stall. It was so quiet she could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights and the crinkling of the bag seemed to scream “I am taking a pregnancy test in a Wal Mart bathroom!!” She ripped open the foil pack with her teeth and removed the cap, shifting around to pee on the absorbent tip. The package said to wait four minutes but a pink cross popped up before Emma could even say a desperate prayer for a negative result. Oh she was PREGNANT. No doubt about it. Her face crumpled and she sat heavily back on the toilet, sobbing quietly into her lap, the test squeezed in her fist. Ain’t motherhood grand?

Her mama didn’t know, but she had gone to her campus boyfriend first, and, unbelievably, he had been the most gentlemanly of Southern gentleman about the whole damn thing.

His boyish look of shock was quickly replaced by chivalry. “If you want to get married, we’ll get married,” he declared grandly. “My family loves you, my dad will help us out! We can make it work.”

But Emma didn’t want that life, didn’t want to be a mother yet, didn’t want to marry out of necessity and be saddled to this golden retriever of a man for the rest of her days. She had plans; graduation, a career to look forward to, and this was definitely not the right place on the timeline to be a mom. Her mother had this scale she used to judge people, her “Waffle House Index,” and having a shotgun wedding in a maternity gown at 22 was definitely Waffle House white trash express.

So she had called her mother, with her grandiose ideas of proper behavior and family honor and lied a little bit to get her onboard. She knew her mother wouldn’t be happy, but she would help. Her mom also had a Visa Black card to pay for the appointment, hallelujah.

“No. No one is forcing me to terminate this pregnancy,” she said firmly.

The nurse nodded and handed her a release form to sign and then, without ceremony, sent her to get undressed for the procedure.

In a little stall, with a small television playing an ancient rerun of I Love Lucy, Emma removed her clothes and slipped into a worn, cotton gown. She folded her clothing carefully, and placed them on the bench in a neat pile. She didn’t want to be seen as the girl who’d throw her clothes in a pile and leave her underthings hanging out for all the world to see.

The nurse had asked her to take a seat until she was called so she waited daintily on the blue plastic seat, hands folded in her lap, tugging her gown closed behind her. Over the madcap noise of Lucy and Desi on the television, she could hear another sound and cocked her head. It was like a vacuum, like a vacuum cleaner sucking up… jello? What the hell? And then she realized what she was hearing and wrinkled her nose. She wished someone had left the remote. The volume definitely wasn’t loud enough.

In a few minutes the nurse returned and led Emma, bare foot, into a dim operating room. They passed another nurse on the way, slowly leading an anesthetized, glassy-eyed young woman toward a door at the end of the hall. With her raccoon eyeliner and homegrown dye job, that other chick would surely have been a 10 on her mom’s Index!

A doctor stood by the bed, smiling gently. Suddenly it became very important to Emma to show this man that she wasn’t like that other girl, that she was better, smarter, a good girl…that he shouldn’t judge her based on the circumstances that led her here — that she was trying to make all that right!

“Emma, I’m Doctor Marcus. I’ll be taking care of you today.”
He reached out a hand to shake. The gentleness in his eyes was killing her. Was it compassion or pity?

Climbing onto the orange pleather gurney, she smiled sweetly at him, her mind spinning. What must he think of her? What did he think of this job? Did he have children of his own? Did he think she was a whore? A murderer? but she sensed no judgement from him. “Fake it till you make it,” her mom would say. She met his eyes confidently. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Marcus” she chirped in her best job interview voice.

“The procedure today is simple and will just take a few minutes, and then you can get on your way,” he told her. “You’ve elected to have twilight anesthesia. I think that’s a good choice. Why don’t you lay down and we’ll get your IV going.”

Emma took a deep breath and lay back, offering her arm to the anesthesiologist.

“I see your chart says you are from Lake Oconee,” Dr. Marcus mentioned. “I’ve done some golfing there.”

This was Emma’s chance to set herself apart from the other patients! If she could just pretend this was cocktail hour at the clubhouse everything would be all right. She tried to lift her head to look at his face again, but the anesthesiologist urged her to lay back.

“Yes! We own a place at Reynold’s Plantation,” she told him, wincing as the needle poked into the vein at her wrist. “Have you played the Ritz course there? It’s really lovely in the spring.” Take that, Raccoon Eyes! We are not the same!

“Ah, my wife and I love that course,” he said. “The azaleas are gorgeous in the spring! Now Emma, if you could just count backward from 100 for me.”

Emma began to count. “100, 99, 98, 97…” She thought about the vacuum sound she’d heard and tried to twist her head to see what might have made that noise with no luck.

“90, 89, 88…” Her mind began to drift a bit and she thought of her mother and wished she could hold her hand right now.

“80, 79, 78…” What was the girl with raccoon eyes doing now? Was she sad? Relieved? Was her mother holding her hand now?

“70, 69, 68…” That girl had laid right here on this same table, not 10 minutes ago.

“60, 59, 58…” She was here to fix her life just like Emma.

“50, 49, 48…” It didn’t matter what her hair looked like, or her makeup, or her circumstances.

“40, 39, 38…” They weren’t so different, Emma and Raccoon Eyes.

“30, 29, 28…” All the women here, they were all the same, just the same, once they made it to this table. Not better or worse, but the same. Frightened, resourceful, brave.

“20, 19, 18…” What the hell did her mother know anyway? But for the grace of God, anyone could become a 10 on the Waffle House Index. Who was she to judge?

Tears slid from Emma’s eyes as the darkness descended.

“10, 9, 8…I’m a 10, I’m a 10, I’m a 10,” she whispered and then was unconscious.