“See that?” she asked, running her finger slowly along the grainy image. “That’s your baby, Mina. At first glance the size and formation is exactly what I’d expect for someone at the end of her first trimester.”
I had stopped breathing, every last particle of my body suspended in disbelief, every last bit of energy focused on that strange tiny shape in the center of the screen. My baby.
My baby.
“And if you watch closely, you’ll see a small flickering, a very rapid movement . . . See, right here? Like a little valve opening and closing, opening and closing. That’s the heartbeat. That’s your baby’s heart, Mina, beating at just the rate I’d like to see at this stage.” She turned a dial on the monitor, and it took me a few seconds to process what I was hearing. Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, much faster, louder than I would have expected, like a galloping horse or a train speeding down the tracks. That was the sound of my baby’s heart.
I was listening to my baby’s heart.
This was real. This was all real.
My mom choked next to me, a hiccupping sob that seemed to shake the entire room. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen, couldn’t stop listening to the thumping that seemed to ring louder and louder and louder in my ears. My whole body pulsed with the sound, every beat triggering a chain reaction, a tingling, prickling sensation that flowed, raced, and burst through my veins.
A heartbeat, a baby, a new life—inside of me. Part of me.
Though I’d already known deep down I couldn’t possibly give this baby up, couldn’t cut off its astonishing, miraculous little life before it began, couldn’t hand it over to the arms of a stranger—if there had been any lingering doubt in my mind, it was gone. It was obliterated with that heartbeat.
Maybe my decision was selfish; maybe it was reckless and self-destructive and naive.
But there was no question, not a fraction of a second’s consideration: I would have this baby.
I would be a mother.
“You believe her, Sallie?”
The words made me flinch from my hiding spot at the top of our wooden spiral staircase. I pressed my head down between my knees and fought the urge to run back to my room, to blast music from my headphones and numb my eardrums with something other than the sound of my dad’s angry, accusing voice.
“You’re telling me that you honestly believe that this is, this is . . .” he stammered, sputtering, and I didn’t need to see him to picture his frenzied gestures, his strong hands waving and clawing at the air for words. “You believe that this is some sort of miracle, Sallie? A sign from God? Who does she think she is, the leader of the Second Coming? Do you even hear what you’re saying? This is goddamn ridiculous, and I can’t believe you’d entertain any of it for a minute.”
“She’s not lying, Paul. She’s not.” Mom’s voice was quiet, a whisper in comparison to his roar. I edged farther out along the step, careful not to cause any creaking that would give away my position. I’d been in this same exact spot so many times over the years, waiting and listening for a hint of Santa or the Easter Bunny, eavesdropping on my parents’ private conversations on nights when I wasn’t ready or able to fall asleep. I’d overheard them bickering at times, petty domestic disputes, but I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’d actually heard my parents yell at each other.
My mom and I had seen this coming, which is why she had asked to talk to him alone first—to clear the way, to take on the worst of the initial shock and disbelief. I had argued that it wasn’t fair to her, but after listening in on them, I knew that she’d been right. I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
As soon as we’d stepped out of Dr. Keller’s office that morning, I’d told my mom that I was keeping the baby. It didn’t feel right, I’d said, to end something that should never have been able to happen in the first place. There had to be a reason for it that we couldn’t understand yet, a reason that this was happening to me, to us. I couldn’t give the baby away for the same reason—I couldn’t live the rest of my life wondering who she or he was, why they were put here, how I had been chosen.
The wondering would make me insane. The wondering would ruin my life.
If Nate had been the father, if I’d gotten pregnant the normal way, would I have made this same decision? I still would have had to spend the rest of my life questioning who she or he would have, should have been. But I didn’t know. And I couldn’t know, not for sure. I only knew what I had to do now, in this very abnormal set of circumstances. I had no alternate reality.
Mom had nodded, and that was the end of the discussion. I would have to face the actual logistics at some point, some point very soon, of course: how to explain my situation to outsiders, how to support myself, where to live, whether to go to college next year or indefinitely postpone it. But those were questions for later, when reality—this brand-new form of reality—had time to settle in and slowly, little by little, mold itself into my daily life in a way that made any sort of sense. March. I would have a baby in March. I could already hear the frantic ticking in my ears, the countdown of the clock that was as real and as crucial as my own heartbeat.
My mom and I had spent the rest of the morning and afternoon curled up on the sofa together, waiting for my dad to come home early from work, all primed for some “news” that my mom had told him she needed to share. Talking and crying and replaying every part of the exam, the sonogram, the next steps. I had set up another appointment for the following week—my first trimester screening, a more specialized round of blood work and ultrasound evaluation to identify potential risks and abnormalities.
I had called Hannah afterward, too, since I felt guilty about ignoring most of her calls—practically on the hour, every hour—for the past two days. I could hear her relief rushing through the phone. Relief that I’d told my mom and taken the next step, and relief that she wasn’t the only one looking out for me anymore.
Izzy, of course, hadn’t called, and I hadn’t called her, either.
“Stop it, Sallie, just stop it. Listen to yourself!”
My dad’s yell brought me back to my precarious position on the stairs. I could hear his anxious footsteps battering against the tile floor, looping in circles around the kitchen table where my mom sat, soaking in his fury. “Our seventeen-year-old daughter fucked up, and she doesn’t want to face the consequences. And you’re accepting that. You’re encouraging it! You’re letting her live in a dream world where bad decisions and guilt don’t exist.” The pacing stopped, and suddenly everything was quiet. Too quiet. I couldn’t hear anything but the late-afternoon breeze hitting the screen door at the bottom of the stairs, the rhythmic tap-tap as it flapped against the doorframe.
“I want to talk to Mina,” my dad finally said. He was quieter, almost subdued, but his tone was colder, more demanding. I preferred shouting to the sound of this new voice, the voice of a stranger. “I don’t want you doing her dirty work, Sallie. She can look me in the eyes and tell me the story herself. And then she’s calling Nate and he’s coming over here. We all need to have a serious family discussion.”
“No!” I clamped my hand over my mouth as soon as I’d screamed it down the spiral tunnel of the stairwell, but it was too late.