Chapter 31

I could have boinked all night, I could have boinked all night
And still have begged for more
I could have spread my wings and boinked a thousand ways
I’ve never boinked before

I’ll always know what made it so exciting
Why all at once my heart took flight
I only know when they began to boink with me
I could have boinked, boinked, boinked ALL NIGHT

Okay, I wasn’t Julie Andrews. In my head, I sounded like Julie Andrews.

September 8, 1985. 4:42 a.m. A day that will go down in history. At least in my history.

I was pregnant.

I’d been boinking the heck out of the boyz for two days. I hung the ‘out to boink’ sign on the phone and didn’t leave the bedroom in Burnside North except to eat. My body had told me in was TIME. Eggs were ripe. Red had told me months ago that Alexandra and James were going to be born in May. Count backwards and you get August, I know. But I knew – KNEW – that these two were going to be early. So, May. Late-middle of the month. I wasn’t exactly sure, but May 23 was the full moon.

Me, pregnant. I sat up in bed and looked at the guys, still asleep. When should I tell them? Not just yet, I’d wait ‘til I could pee on a stick. Besides, right now, Alex and Jimmy were the size of a pin-head. Maybe four cells each. Ooo. One of them just reached eight.

[Lexi, stop that. You can’t watch each cell division for the next nine months! You’ll go crazy.]

Okay, okay. I’ll stop.

Ooo. The other reached eight.

I need to pee. It can’t have started yet, right? I crawled over Rock. He’d sleep through anything. I hummed ‘I could have boinked all night’ to myself while I sat on the toilet.

I couldn’t go back to bed. I’d be itching to wake them up and then not tell them. I’ll go to the kitchen and make food. Food is good. After all I’m eating for three now.

[If you think like that, you’ll weight 250 pounds by the time they are born. By the way, how sure are you that you’re REALLY pregnant? It could be just a psychological fantasy and... ]

I am sure. Okay? Bet on the outcome. Or the TWO outcomes.

I opened the cabinet where we kept the vitamins. What kind of gyp is this? One-a-day and a Vitamin C pill. I’m supposed to take a lot more than that. Vitamin A and B and C – at least the whole alphabet, I’m sure. Is there a vitamin Q? Then there’s stuff like Iron and Folate and...

Red, could you please download a list of all the vitamins I need to take now?

An instant later, my mind was filled with a list, plus a list of what can go wrong if you don’t take something. Like: B12 helps prevent neural tube defects. No. I don’t want to know what that is and all the other stuff. I’ll be obsessing.

Red, just the vitamins and supplements I need. Not the bad stuff. I’ll go crazy thinking about that. And maybe a list of the food I can eat. Getting the good stuff directly from the food will be better than pill form. Right?

[Okay, Lexi. Sorry about that. It was just a page from a medical text about nutrition. Did you know that nutrition was not formally taught in American medical schools until the 29^th century. It was routine elsewhere, but not in the US.]

Probably that’s why the rate for deaths in childbirth is so high in the US. Nuts, huh? I mean, not compared to Ethiopia or someplace. But compared to Sweden.

[Lexi, about 800 women die every day in childbirth world-wide. The US rate is 700 per year. For comparison, in Sweden, the rate is 4 PER YEAR. I’m sure you won’t have a problem. I already checked the future news.]

GOD! That’s terrible! Why is it so high here?

[Almost everybody in Sweden has insurance, and practically nobody is poor.]

I guess my billions are doing some good for me. But we gotta make sure that gets spread around the res more.

[Why not set up a trust for every single tribe. Put X number of shares in each one, to match the population in the tribe. Then go visit and tell them what you’re doing and how every member will get something. There are over eight million indigenous people in the US and Canada. If you gave each one $1,000 that would be eight billion dollars. We can’t do that, yet.]

Yeah but if – or when – we take all the wealth of the hydrocarbon companies, that’s trillions of dollars. That would be ... uh.

[We can’t TAKE the wealth of those companies. We’re only going to produce energy, remember. Some of that hydrocarbon production is for medicine, or for food production, or a million of other things. And yes, for gasoline and electric power. But, even if you wind up replacing half of that wealth ... Let’s just say that it will be enough to spread around.]

Good. Okay. Let’s do that.

[Can we start with a smaller goal, Ms. Whirlwind?]

Okay, okay. I get the picture.