Then the angel departed from her.

But what did Mary really think after the angel just up and departed, vanished back into thin, heavenly air? I wanted to read about her struggles, her shock, her disbelief—that she was “much perplexed” didn’t quite cut it for me. I wanted thoughts and feelings that would make her real and three-dimensional, a human being rather than a character meant to impart some kind of lesson in faith and obedience.

After I exhausted the relevant Bible passages, I started reading about miracles across the centuries, across religions, and across the globe, the history of the beliefs and the history of the word miracle itself. Miracle—mir-a-cle—a mid-twelfth-century Middle English word derived from the Old French miracle; from Latin miraculum, “object of wonder”; from mirari, “to wonder at”; and from mirus, “wonderful.” Mary, it turns out, wasn’t even the first symbol of miraculous birth to be found in historical and religious literature—the idea of divine conception had been around long before her, in Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Japanese, Greco-Roman and Hellenistic mythologies, Hinduism, and Buddhism. There were commonalities laced throughout all of these ancient belief systems—deities emerging through physically impossible conceptions, and the inexplicable nature of divinity itself.

But why is this a narrative that human beings keep latching onto, keep grasping at as truth, as proof of some supreme being? Why did the divine need a womb at all, really? Why not just spring out of the ground, or fall from the sky? Materialize out of nothing and nowhere?

I kept hoping that something would jump out at me from a page, a word or an image, some cryptic message that would somehow illuminate everything I was going through. But so far—nothing. I wasn’t closer to any sort of explanation than I’d been in August, staring at those damn pee sticks in the woods.

I grabbed my English notebook from the rubble pile and flipped open the front cover. An essay with a big red C stared up at me, and I quickly jammed it in the back pages where I could at least temporarily pretend it didn’t exist. It was my first C in the history of my education, and in English of all classes, my strongest subject. My favorite subject. Reading and writing had always just come so naturally to me, so effortlessly, like breathing and walking and eating. English was the only college major I had ever seriously considered, the only future I could picture for myself. Teaching, editing, writing—anything that involved words on paper, thoughts pinned down in black and white.

But now I had proof that I couldn’t even count on a guaranteed A in English, not if I planned on doing nothing to really earn it. This particular essay had been the first of the school year, written about The Scarlet Letter, appropriately enough—an analysis of knowledge, sin, and the human condition. One would think I’d have excelled at the topic, but the C seemed to say otherwise. I had already read the book on my own two years earlier, so I’d figured it was reasonable to rely on online summaries and critiques the second time around. I’d been so proud the week before when I’d managed to cobble together the entire paper in less than three hours. Safe to say, all pride had vanished.

I felt as if I should care more than I did. I should care enough to beg the teacher for a redo. I should care enough to start reading the copy of Heart of Darkness, the next book on our list, that was sitting on my nightstand. I should care—but I didn’t. I was scared of what my parents would say if they knew, and of what other students would think about my stunning fall from the top. But when it came down to me and what I really felt, the part of me that had held so much stress and ambition and fear about school . . . that place now just felt hollow. Perfect grades had lost their power over me. Grades couldn’t define me anymore. It was petrifying, all of a sudden existing without the clear spectrum of success that I’d held myself up to for the last twelve years. Grades made it easy to label yourself: As meant you were a success, you were smart and capable and in control. Cs meant you were mediocre. You needed to study longer, try harder.

I was on my own now, with no clearly set marks to validate my progress. Real life didn’t quite work like that, I was learning. Real life seemed much more pass or fail to me.

I sighed and tossed my English notes back in the heap. Tomorrow would be Friday, and then I’d have the whole weekend to catch up. I would make to-do lists for each of my classes and systematically cross off each assignment, one by one, powering through all of Saturday night if I had to. I’d worked too hard for too many years to ruin it all so close to the end. I didn’t need all As, but I still needed to pass. I still needed to get into college. As soon as the most urgent schoolwork was done, I’d go back to the applications. Reassess, reevaluate. Come up with a new, more functional plan of attack. A plan that somehow figured in caring for and supporting a tiny, helpless, fatherless baby on my own.

I sat down at my desk in front of the computer, scanning mindlessly through a few e-mails before my fingers typed in modern-day miracle on autopilot. I’d searched slightly different combinations and variations of the same words almost every day, hoping each time that I’d find a story I’d somehow missed before, some hint that even one other person in the entire world had experienced something remotely similar—that genuine miracles were happening if people were open and willing enough to believe.

There were the standard stories about miraculous healing, and who was to say what really happened in those cases? Amazing genius doctors and brain-numbingly innovative medications and procedures? Pure and simple good luck? The human body could perform some pretty spectacular, awe-inspiring feats sometimes—that much seemed inarguable. But the spontaneous growth of a baby sans sexual reproduction? That would be a first—or a second, depending on who you asked.

A knock at the door made me jump.

“Mina?” my mom called out from the hallway, her voice low and tentative. Before this had all happened, she would have opened the door without giving me the chance to respond, the knock more on principle, an alert rather than an actual question. But privacy lines had changed. My life inside my room was suddenly much more my own, my one free space to think and cry and breathe.

“You can come in, Mom,” I said, closing the window on my computer screen and turning in my seat to face her. She stepped in and shut the door, glancing at me briefly before looking away, her eyes twitchy and unfocused.

“What’s up?” I asked, nervous because she was nervous. Her anxiety was contagious. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

She nodded as she perched herself on the edge of my bed. “I’ve been wanting to talk about this ever since . . . well, ever since we found out the news. But I also wanted to give you time to think on it by yourself, to come to your own decisions. I didn’t want to push you.” She paused, and we both stared down at her hands, her fingers spinning her thick band of bracelets in jangling circles around her wrist. “The thing is, sweetheart, you’re going to be showing any day now. To be honest, this morning at breakfast I thought I noticed a bump for the first time. A very small bump, but this is just the beginning. It’s only a matter of weeks, maybe even days, before people start to talk. Before they start to ask questions. And I just want to know that you’re prepared to give them some sort of answer. Now, I will fully support you on whatever answer you want to give—that’s your decision—but I don’t want you to be caught off guard when it does happen. And it will happen.” She exhaled for what seemed like the first time since she’d walked into the room, her face flushed from the exertion of pushing it all out.