While I breathe . . . I hope.
I set the canvas down on the windowsill and slowly moved closer to him. “Jesse. This is the most special gift anyone has ever given me.”
I smiled up at him in the dark and watched as his head dipped down toward my upturned face. Before I even realized it was happening, his lips brushed against mine, warm and pillow soft, still so sweet with frosting and cider. His hands brushed lightly against my cheeks, and I instinctively wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer as I kissed him back. I reached up to twist a strand of his hair, his striking black hair, the color of fresh ink and midnight sky. And for a few seconds I was completely happy, spiraling and soaring in sparkly golden clouds, angels singing, every cliché I’d ever heard suddenly becoming strangely, brilliantly true. It was as if something had burst open inside of me, some radiant sparkle of joy that had never had a chance to show itself before that moment—a prize, a reward, for finding my way to this place, this person.
But then, in a sharp flash of reality, I could feel my belly pressed oddly and uncomfortably against him, the unnatural fit of his flat stomach clashing with my round one. The entire moment dipped and swayed and slipped out of my grasp.
I was pregnant, and the baby was not his. I was pregnant, and my life was a mess.
I was pregnant—and I had no right to be kissing anyone at all.
No matter how much I wanted to be.
“Jesse, no.” I forced myself to pull back. “We can’t be doing this. It just doesn’t feel right. I have too many things to figure out, and I won’t drag you into it. You’re too good of a friend, and I don’t want to jeopardize that.”
“What if I want to be dragged into it?”
“It’s not fair to you. And people are already talking enough as it is. We don’t need to add fuel to their ideas.”
“I don’t care what people are saying. You should know that about me by now. We know the truth, so screw their lies.”
“I do care. This is my life.”
“Are you worried about what Nate would say?”
I laughed without meaning to, and the sound of it made me wince. “Nate? No, of course not. Nate can say whatever he wants. Nate and I have nothing anymore.”
He paused a few beats too long.
“Okay. I understand.” He turned around and looked out over the pitch black of the driveway. “It’s too much right now. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have just kissed you like that.”
“You didn’t make me uncomfortable. I just . . . It can’t be like that. Right now my life has to be about the baby. Only about the baby.”
“I get it. Don’t worry, really. I get it. Let’s just pretend that never happened, okay? It’s cold out and you don’t have a jacket, so you should get back inside, anyway.” He gave a small wave and tugged his hood up as he jogged toward the truck.
A nauseating swell of regret made me want to call out after him, but I pushed it back down. I would have to erase that kiss from my mind. An eighteen-year-old single mom didn’t have time for romance and all the complications that came along with a relationship. Especially not when she had an angry mob of strangers to deal with first and foremost.
Jesse would understand. Jesse would move on.
And hopefully, someday, I would, too.
the third trimester
Ten days.
Ten flaps left to open on the Advent calendar hanging on the kitchen wall.
Ten more pieces of star-shaped chocolates to pop out of the ten remaining small windows that opened into the cozy winter village scene—round puffs of smoke rising from the chimneys, bundled-up carolers open-mouthed on front stoops and grinning children peeking from behind curtains, a glowing tree in the center town square.
Ten days before Christmas and then maybe, just maybe, life could get a little bit easier. Not surprisingly, the whole “pregnant virgin” story seemed especially popular during the holiday season. But soon it would be a new year, with its own new stories. People disappeared come January. Crawled back into their own little houses and their own little lives and didn’t poke their heads out into the fresh air again until the first early spring breeze come late March. And by late March, I wouldn’t be a pregnant virgin anymore. I would be a mother, and maybe at some point the media and all the thousands of people who couldn’t get enough of Virgin Mina would become bored. They wouldn’t forget—the story, the idea, the image of my face would still linger in their minds, a memorable curiosity to turn over through the years, to pull out occasionally when dinner conversations became entirely exhausted—but I would no longer be a subject for prime-time TV. Reporters would run out of angles, the story would be flat and stale. The well would run dry.
And then I would get my life back.
The house phone started ringing, and two chimes in I remembered that I was home alone and that no one else would be answering. My parents and Gracie were Christmas shopping at the mall, but after the news broke, I’d stopped going most public places other than school, really. Shopping online might lack Santa’s village and twinkling greenery, but it also lacked gawking moms and wide-eyed kids without filters—kids like the boy last week who stopped me at the grocery store and asked how I knew that my baby wouldn’t be a flesh-eating alien who could eat its way straight out of my belly. Oh yes, online shopping would most definitely do just fine.
I’d left my job at Frankie’s behind, too, in the aftermath. It was hard to put an end to the income flow, but it had all become too much—the stares, both real and imagined, and the religious imagery plastered all along the walls. It wasn’t only the eyes of the customers I could feel tracing my movements around the room. The life-size Madonna portrait was like the Mona Lisa, her gaze pinning me down no matter where I stood. And besides that, the need I’d had to stay connected to Iris, to catch her again on that off chance—it felt less confined to Frankie’s now, after that moment in the cafeteria. Maybe she was just as likely to show up anywhere at all. Maybe she’d know where to find me no matter where I went.
I sighed as I pushed myself up from the kitchen table, where I’d been flipping mindlessly through a special new mothers magazine Hannah had picked up for me at the pharmacy. My mom was still collecting last-minute RVSPs for a holiday party that she was holding at the historical society the next week, and I felt guilty ignoring a call from any of the sweet old ladies who generally attended my mom’s events.
I grabbed for the phone right before the answering machine could click on.
“Hello?”
“I’d like to speak to Mina Dietrich, please.” The voice was high-pitched and booming, and I detected at least a slight Southern accent in those first few words.
“Mina speaking. And this is . . . ?”
“Gladys from Richmond. Richmond, Virginia.”
“Hi, Gladys from Richmond. Can I . . . can I help you with something?”
“I’m just calling to tell you that I think it’s downright disturbing, this blasphemous black Devil lie you keep on spreading around our God-fearing country. During the very season of Our Lord, nonetheless! You ought to be so powerfully ashamed of yourself. And your parents! I don’t know how your parents sleep a wink at night.”