I nodded again. She hadn’t said anything that I wasn’t already thinking on my own, but it all sounded much more solid and sensible coming out of her mouth instead. “And what about Dad?” I asked. And Gracie. I wasn’t sure which of them would be the most agonizing to tell, both conversations feeling so equally impossible.
“I think . . . I think we should wait to tell Dad, at least until after we’ve seen the doctor,” my mom said, her words slow, hesitant. I didn’t think that she’d ever kept anything from my dad before, certainly not something this significant. I hated that I was the reason. “I think it’s better to keep this between us and the girls until we know more.”
The more I thought about my dad and Gracie and watching their faces as they heard my news, watching their eyes lose their glow, all their pride and trust, the more I started to shake—a shattering tremble from the tips of my toes to my knuckles to my eyelids. I could feel my heartbeat pounding, banging in my temples.
Why me?
I curled up into a ball on my bed, closing in on myself and hoping that I could somehow black out and escape my body, even for a few minutes.
But then I felt my mom curve herself around me, my smaller body completely folded into and against hers, my limbs, my head, my heart no longer just a part of me. With her touch we’d become one: my body, her body; my pain, her pain; and as she absorbed me into her, the shaking slowed.
Cradled like that, closer to my mom than I’d been in seventeen years, I drifted off to sleep.
“I’m sure that Dr. Keller will be in to speak with you in just a few more minutes now,” the assistant said, poking her head in to grin at us for what must have been the fifth or sixth time since we’d been escorted to the exam room an hour earlier.
“Oh yes, of course, not a problem at all,” my mom said, smiling back, a few more teeth than usual showing between her tight lips. She had her eyes open wide, but I could see the hint of purple on her lower lids, peeking out from beneath the concealer she’d used to hide the past forty-eight hours without real sleep. “We’re just so glad she scheduled us on such late notice.”
I’d been glad, too, relieved when my mom had called the office Monday morning at nine o’clock on the dot, the minute they’d opened, and they told her I could be squeezed in at ten. But the gladness had faded as soon as I’d breathed in the office perfume of latex and rubbing alcohol and cheap citrus sanitizer, and felt the cold papery rustle of the exam table under the ultrathin cotton of my mint green gown. It had all become too real then, too official.
The assistant had handed me a plastic cup and pointed me to the bathroom straightaway—luckily, I’d prepared myself this time, and had drunk five solid glasses of water before leaving the house. I wanted to run back to my bedroom, lock the door behind me, and ignore everything for another few days or weeks or months. Ignore everything until it all disappeared and life went back to normal. I wanted to replay that last day of junior year all over again—ask off from my shift like I’d been tempted to do and celebrate the night properly, avoid Iris altogether. But no, here I was instead, sitting half naked with my mom in an OB/GYN office that was almost as cold as Frankie’s walk-in freezer.
I had met Dr. Keller before, once or twice—she was the doctor who had delivered my Gracie—but I was only ten at the time, so I didn’t remember much, really, other than a pile of flaming red curls and extraordinarily bright pink lips. I’d never had cause to see her for any other reason of my own since then, given that I was still under eighteen, and, despite the current circumstances, still not sexually active.
My dad was under the impression that my mom and I were visiting the standard family doctor, seeing as my “stomach bug” had failed to improve at all over the last two nights. I’d done my best to avoid him the day before, hibernating in my room, tiptoeing to the bathroom, pretending to be sound asleep when he cracked my door to check in on me. But he had persisted, at one point knocking with a tray of scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast and chamomile tea, and I had no choice but to prop myself up against my pillows and smile weakly for at least a little while. Mom had taken Gracie with her to a charity luncheon she was hosting at the historical society, and afterward dropped Gracie off at Aunt Vera’s house for a sleepover with our cousins, six-year-old Lucy and three-year-old Danny. I couldn’t help but feel relieved—the longer I could put off being the big sister again, the better. I wasn’t ready for Gracie.
But being alone together at the house had left Dad feeling even more determined to watch over me. He’d sat on the edge of my bed and done most of the talking while I’d taken tiny bites and forced myself to swallow. I’d tried my best to listen while he’d told me about his day, little anecdotes from church that morning—he’d put my name on the prayer list and Pastor Lewis had sent me his blessings for a speedy recovery—and his plans to clean the gutters and start repainting the garage walls that afternoon, before summer was over and he’d lost the motivation. His list of self-appointed chores never seemed to get any shorter. As an accountant, he spent hours every week hunched over a calculator, which was probably why he could never stop moving around on the weekends, fiddling with this, tampering with that.
But every time I’d looked at him, all I’d been able to see was the confusion and disappointment that would soon take over everything else that he felt for me. I’d kept thinking about how it could be the last simple, easy, lighthearted conversation we’d have for months, maybe even years. Because the truth was, even though I couldn’t gauge exactly how he’d react, I did know that he’d never be as accepting as my mom. I wouldn’t be that lucky twice.
The doorknob rattled again, and I looked up, expecting the assistant and more of her excuses. But this time it was Dr. Keller standing in the doorway, staring down with a furrowed brow at the clipboard in her hand. The nurse had weighed me and asked me to fill out a basic information sheet when we first got in—my age, the date of my first period, previous medical history, relationship status, the reason for scheduling an appointment. I had left the section about sexual history notably blank, even if it was just a temporary postponement of the inevitable. But I couldn’t bring myself to add zero sexual partners, not on the same form that made it clear I was there for a pregnancy test. Writing the two entirely contradictory statements side by side in black and white was too ridiculous, too illogical, and I wasn’t prepared for a stranger to look at me as if I was insane. Not yet.
Dr. Keller glanced up to smile at both of us, and my stomach lurched, dropping what felt like a solid six inches below where it rightfully belonged in my body. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t have this conversation. Not with a certified scientific expert.
Breathe, Mina, breathe.
“Sallie! My goodness, it’s been so long. And, Mina! I would never have recognized you. Gorgeous young lady! Sallie, how’s the baby? Not a baby these days, I suppose, eh?” She grinned at my mom as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
“Oh, Gracie’s doing just fine, thanks. So hard to believe she’s already seven this year . . .”
“This business certainly makes me feel my age, that’s for darn sure,” Dr. Keller said, settling herself down on the rolling stool and wheeling across the room until she was right in front of me. “Seeing all the babies who aren’t actually babies anymore around town . . . Constant reminders of how many years have passed.” She sighed, loud and long, a very dramatic sigh that I suspected was part of the doctor shtick she used with all her patients, an attempt to make us feel more comfortable and at ease. My mom chuckled, so maybe it worked. I was always bad at those sorts of predictable, rehearsed adult interactions—I just never knew how to play along. I wished that I had a script for that moment, a line-by-line manual to walk me through the entire appointment, help me to say all the right things, ask all the right questions. To save me from seeming like a totally delusional freak.