Текст книги "Immaculate"
Автор книги: Katelyn Detweiler
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
“I . . . I know we’ve always said that, guys, but I thought that was just us being scared. And naive. I would never discourage either of you from trying to go where you really wanted to go. You’re my best friends, no matter where we live for those four years. Nothing’s going to change that.”
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much for the heads-up,” Izzy said, refusing to look at her. “Has it been three minutes yet, Meen?”
I hadn’t let myself peek at the sticks once since I’d handed them to Hannah. No easy feat, though Hannah’s shocking news had, at the very least, distracted me better than I could have imagined possible. A cold, clammy sweat prickled down my neck as I nodded and pushed myself up off the ground, turning back toward the bank where we’d laid the sticks.
“So just a reminder: it’s a blue minus sign if you’re not pregnant, and a pink plus if you are. And the other test is pretty self-explanatory: pregnant, not pregnant,” Hannah explained, her mothering instinct back in full force, as if the previous conversation hadn’t ever happened.
I walked slowly, each footstep torn somewhere between running and freezing. I wanted the answer as much as I didn’t want the answer. I could see the tests right below me, waiting to be read, but I didn’t let my eyes focus at first, keeping the indicators a blurry haze. I closed my eyes and squatted down, taking a deep breath.
I opened my eyes.
Plus, plus, pregnant, pregnant.
I was pregnant.
I, Mina Dietrich, an absolute and utter virgin, was pregnant.
Four tests couldn’t be wrong, could they? Not with all the other symptoms I’d had during the past few months, and not with my fears about Iris’s warning. But how could they not be wrong? How could any of this actually be happening to me?
“What should we do now?” Hannah whispered. She and Izzy were hovering over me, staring down at the evidence in front of us.
“I need to let Frankie know that I can’t come in tonight,” I said without even pausing to reconsider. For some reason that was the first and only immediate reaction that came to mind. The only answer, the only step forward that made any sense. Even in the face of the most fantastical crisis imaginable, I could still be relied on not to forget to call out of work.
Under normal circumstances, Izzy would have made endless fun of me for being so dedicated to Frankie’s, but now she was ominously silent. I was afraid to look up at her face, to see whatever was lurking behind her eyes. Izzy couldn’t hide anything, not from me and Hannah, no matter how hard she sometimes tried. Her eyes always insisted on telling us everything we needed to know.
“Let’s get you back to the blanket,” Hannah said, reaching for my hand. “Your cell phone is there in your purse, and then you can lie down while we . . . while we process everything.”
I gave a weak nod and let them pull me up and steer me. My stomach pinched at the sight of the leftover food, the basket that my mom had packed less than two hours ago for our special tree house picnic. My mom. My adoring, gracious, astoundingly perfect mom. How could I ever possibly tell her about this? How could she believe me? How could she keep trusting me and loving me and being proud of me?
Too much. The idea of telling my mom was more than my mind could begin to comprehend, not when I’d only known the truth myself for a few entirely surreal minutes.
I pushed those thoughts to the furthest, blackest corner of my mind, and reached for my phone. I brushed past a few missed calls and messages from Nate, clearing my throat as I dialed Frankie’s. The phone rang five, six, seven times, and I exhaled in relief. A voice mail would be much easier and faster: no questions, no elaborating. Just as I expected the beep of the automated message, I heard a sharp click and a breathless gasp on the other end.
“Frankie and Friends’ Pizzeria. This is Jesse. How can I help you?”
“Oh, hey. Hi, Jesse,” I said, flustered. I had barely talked to him since the night we first met. A few necessary words here and there about when to clean, what to clean, but nothing that didn’t relate to dishes and mops and window spray. He was too intertwined with Iris in my mind. He was a witness—living, breathing, irrefutable proof that she had been at Frankie’s, that I had talked with her. That she existed at all and wasn’t a complete figment of my overactive imagination. Besides, I could only imagine what he thought of me afterward, running away from a harmless old lady, barely acknowledging his presence ever since. Though frankly, there seemed to be something a little off about him, too. He was friendly enough to the waitresses and to the other guys in the back, but he still seemed remote to me, distant, as if his body might be there, scraping pizza pans, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. I sometimes had to repeat his name a few times before he’d hear me, before he’d snap out of whatever cloudy daydreams kept him floating through his life.
“Mina?”
I almost dropped the phone, startled that he’d recognized my voice so easily. “Yeah. Yes. It’s uh . . . me, Mina. I . . . I’m sick, Jesse. Really sick. Stomach bug or something. I was up all night puking, and I still am, actually, and really there’s no end in sight, I don’t think—” Hannah coughed, and I cut myself off. “So, yeah, please tell Frankie that I’m really, really sorry, but I just don’t think I can make it in for my shift tonight.”
“Sure, no problem, Mina. I’ll help hold down the fort without you here. Feel better, okay?”
“Thanks, Jesse.” I hung up and fiddled with the phone, pecking at random keys to avoid the awful, frightening silence that hung in the air between us.
“Say something, Mina,” Hannah said. “Please, please say anything that makes all this more reasonable. You have to know how confusing this situation is for me and Izzy. I want to believe you. We want to believe you. Don’t we, Iz?” She looked over at Izzy for encouragement, but it was obvious that Izzy was avoiding both of us, staring off toward the creek instead. Hannah gave up on her and refocused her attention back to me. “Help us to do that, Mina. Please. Help us.” I barely recognized her voice, which was usually so warm and alive, like sunshine and bells. It was all hollow now, sad and desperate, begging for explanations I couldn’t give.
“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” I said, lifting my head up to face them. I refused to cry again. I refused to look away. “Iris . . . What Iris said to me is the only answer I can think of, and trust me, I know how absolutely crazy that sounds, I do. I really do. But I didn’t have sex, not with Nate, not with anyone. I didn’t have anything even remotely close to sex. That’s all that I know. That’s all the explanation I have.” I paused, grabbing, clawing at my mind for anything more I could give. “Maybe there’s another reason besides pregnancy that I’d get those results? Some sort of sickness or condition that would cause a false positive?” I said it, but I didn’t believe it. The words felt wrong, in my heart and on my tongue, but it was one small offering I could give them, however temporary.
Hannah looked almost satisfied, the corners of her tight, pursed lips relaxing as she considered this new and improved option. Izzy still said nothing. The silence had seemed best, preferable to confrontation at first, but it was starting to enrage me, scrape at my last bits of patience. Who was she to judge me? I had done nothing wrong, not to her, not to anyone. I didn’t deserve her anger, especially not now, not on top of all the other emotions threatening to tear apart my entire world at the seams.
“Say it, Isabelle,” I said out loud, surprising even myself with the sharpness of my voice. “Say whatever you’re thinking. Let’s just get it over with. In case you didn’t fully realize, I have a lot to deal with at the moment, so let’s get this conversation out of the way. Okay?”
She breathed in and out, balled her hands into fists, and turned her gaze toward me. For the first time in my life, I didn’t recognize the look I saw in her eyes. I didn’t see my Izzy. Her dark chestnut eyes were so cold and accusing, so hostile.
“Fine. You want to know what I’m thinking, Mina? You want to know what I’m really thinking?” She was yelling so loud that I worried my parents would hear all the way up at the house. “I think you’re a liar. I think for the first time in your perfect existence, you made a mistake. Mina Dietrich made a massive, ugly, undeniable mistake. And instead of just accepting it and admitting it and handling it like any sane, normal person would do, you’ve decided to make up the most outrageous story I’ve ever heard in my life to cover yourself. I can understand you not wanting other people to know the truth. I get that. But I can’t understand you looking your two best friends in the eye and telling them such a huge fucking lie. I can’t understand, and I won’t understand. You’re so obsessed with being this perfect Mina who everyone expects you to be, but you don’t have to act perfect for us. I don’t care about any of that Menius bullshit. I just care about you being real.”
She paused then, her eyes still drilling into mine, willing me to say something for myself. But there was nothing. She was wrong, but I had no way of making her believe that.
“Fine then,” she said, pushing herself up off of the blanket. “If you don’t want to make this our problem, you want to keep this to yourself, then great. You handle it. Best of luck, Mina. I’m out of this. Are you staying or leaving with me, Hannah?”
Izzy had wasted no time in establishing the line, making it clear that there were two very separate, very distinct sides. There was her and there was me. There were the nonbelievers and the believers. There was no middle ground, no space to be found in between.
“I’m staying,” Hannah said. My heart banged against my rib cage, but I resisted the urge to fling my arms around her and hold on for dear life, at least while Izzy was still watching. I may have won the first battle, but I had the feeling that it would be a long, uphill fight.
Izzy stomped off toward my driveway without another word or a backward glance. I lay down on the blanket, knees tucked into my chest, and rested my head on Hannah’s lap.
“Thank you.” I closed my eyes and burrowed more closely against her, breathing in the familiar scent of lavender perfume and plain Dove soap. “Thank you for being here.” She reached down and started stroking my head. We stayed like that for a long time: no talking, no analyzing out loud, just her hand weaving through my knotted hair, her occasional humming mixing with the soft ins and outs of our breathing.
I was just starting to nod off when Hannah’s cell phone rang, breaking through our temporary peace.
“It’s my mom,” she said, glancing down at the screen, and I nodded, lifting myself from her lap. While she talked, I busied myself by packing up the food and the plates, accepting the inevitable reentrance into my real life waiting outside of our woods.
“I should go soon,” Hannah said, squatting down next to me after hanging up with her mom. “I feel terrible leaving you, but my parents made these dinner reservations with my sister and our grandparents ages ago. It’s probably the last time Lauren will be out with all of us before she has the baby.” She flinched at baby, a look of guilt flashing across her face. “Is that okay? I’ll stay if you need me to.”
“No, you go.” I patted her hand. “Really. You’ve already helped me so much today. You’ve been so amazing. Beyond amazing. I’ll be fine by myself.”
“Are you . . . are you going to tell your mom now?”
“No.” I shook my head, adamant. “Not tonight at least. I need a little more time by myself to let it all sink in, consider all the possibilities.”
“The possibilities,” she said, nodding. “So do you think . . . Does that mean that you might get an abortion? It might be the easiest way, Meen, as hard as it might be at first.”
“No,” I said, without even pausing to consider. The word sounded surprisingly sure and confident coming out of my mouth. But why? Why was that my answer? Hannah was right: it would be easiest. No one else besides her and Izzy would ever have to know about any of this. Not my parents. Not Nate.
But I would know. I would always know.
And I didn’t think I could live with myself if I made the decision to make it all go away. I didn’t feel as if it was even my choice to make.
“You don’t have to decide right this second, Meen. But think about it, at least. Think about what it would mean for college, and for all your big plans, the books you want to write, the places you want to visit. Where would you get the money? And the kids at school . . . What will you tell them if you keep it? Or even if you give the baby up for adoption, everyone will be asking you for explanations once it’s obvious you’re pregnant.”
It was too much, too many questions all at once, and I wanted to shove my fingers in my ears and scream as loud as I could to drown it all out. But I saw the tears on her cheeks, and I knew that it was only because she loved me. She cared about me too much to watch me throw everything away.
I took a deep breath and squeezed her hand. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can decide anything until I see a doctor and get some actual tests done. I guess I’ll just go from there.”
She nodded, satisfied for the time being. “Promise me you’ll go soon, this week. I’ll go, too, of course. I don’t want you to be alone. And like you said, it really could be something completely different that caused those results. We don’t know anything for sure, not yet.”
“Of course,” I said, though I hated leading her on.
“And promise that you’ll call me absolutely whenever you need to talk. I don’t care if I’m in the middle of dinner. I don’t care if I’m sound asleep. Just call me.”
“Yes, yes, I will. Promise. Now let’s go back to the house. I don’t want you to be late because of me.”
While she folded the blanket, I walked to the creek bank and picked up the tests, stuffed them back into the boxes, and buried them at the bottom of my purse. I glanced up at the tree house one last time—we both did—and then we left, arm in arm, walking back through the trees.
• • •
Hannah was helpful in making excuses to my mom, building up the vicious stomach bug that had struck me down out of nowhere in the middle of our otherwise reportedly perfect picnic. I sat, pale and quiet, at the kitchen table. At least I didn’t have to make any effort to act the part of the poor, sick girl.
“I’m so sorry that your picnic was ruined, girls,” my mom said, resting the back of her hand on my forehead to check for a fever. “And only a few days before school starts, too. Such awful timing.” She pulled back and frowned, her eyes looking misty, before leaning over to kiss the top of my head. She was so delicate, so careful, pecking me as if I was a fragile treasure that could crack under the weight of her lips at any second.
A horn honked from out front, and Hannah’s face looked torn between relief and guilt.
“Have fun tonight, Hannah bear,” I said, catching her eye. I winked at her and mouthed a silent thank-you, and she gave a small, tight smile back, probably more for my mom’s benefit than my own. She didn’t need to bother—my mom was too absorbed in her nursing duties, already taking inventory of whether we had enough saltines and ginger ale to get me through the night.
“Bye, Mina. Bye, Mrs. Dietrich,” Hannah said, another round of honks firing from the driveway.
“Bye bye now, Hannah. Tell your parents I said hello, please, and thanks again for taking care of my Meen today.”
“Of course, Mrs. D. Anything for your daughter,” Hannah said, turning to push open the screen door that led to our side porch. “And, Mina, I’m sure I’ll talk to you soon.”
I nodded to myself as the door closed behind her, leaving me far too alone in the kitchen with my mom.
“Where’s Dad?”
“Picking up Gracie from the birthday party and then bringing a pizza home from Frankie’s for dinner,” she said, distracted, her head buried in the depths of our cluttered, overflowing pantry. “They should be here any minute, actually.”
I didn’t want to see either of them, any of them, not then, not that night.
“I’m going to go lie down,” I said, pushing myself up from the table. “I just want to sleep for a while, and hopefully I’ll feel better when I wake up.”
“Are you sure I can’t make you something first?” She pulled her head out of the cabinet to face me, her brow wrinkled in concern. “Scramble some eggs, maybe? Chicken broth? I’d feel better if you had a little something in you.”
“I’ll take some crackers upstairs with me, okay? I’ll be fine.”
She nodded as she came over to give me a long hug, and I could feel her eyes following me as I disappeared up the narrow winding staircase.
• • •
I lay in bed until long after the sun went down and long after the hum of crickets and the flicker of fireflies started up in the darkness just beyond my window screen. I could have turned on the air conditioner, but I wanted to hear the sounds of the night, the familiar country chorus that made me feel less alone. I had listened, too, as Mom chatted to her sister Vera on the phone downstairs in the kitchen, and as Gracie and Dad laughed their way through Toy Story. I had listened to Gracie’s inevitable grumbling as she was sent upstairs for bedtime against her will. She had tapped on my door a few times, cautiously called out my name. I could hear the worry laced in her soft, sweet voice, but I had still stayed silent, playing the sick girl who was too dead asleep to be disturbed, until she gave up and shuffled off to her room. Finally, sometime after nine, I had heard my parents both come up, brush their teeth, and talk quietly in their room for a few minutes before the bedside lamps clicked off.
After sending a few frantic apology texts to Nate for missing all his calls that day, and explaining how terribly sick I was, I shut off my phone for the night.
I couldn’t think about him or about anyone else right now.
How? How could this be my life? How could this be real?
Miracles, divine intervention, supernatural phenomena, whatever you wanted to label it, didn’t really happen—not in the real world, certainly not in the twenty-first century.
And even if somehow, some way, genuine miracles occurred that were totally inexplicable and defied everything we knew about science and the human body—and there couldn’t be, my mind just couldn’t comprehend that for a second—why would God, or whoever was in control of this decision, pick me? Who was Mina Dietrich in the grand scheme of things?
Sure, I was raised as a Lutheran, and my mom and dad were both fairly religious. I went to church a few times a month and volunteered at Vacation Bible School, more to appease my parents and to be a good role model for Gracie than because of any strict religious code of my own. Some of the stories were interesting and entertaining and all, but that was what they’d always felt like, ever since I was old enough to really think about them on my own—stories. Very old, very distant stories that had never seemed wildly relevant to my personal existence.
Had I ever really believed in God, though? In Jesus? Did I believe in them now—did I have to believe after this? The Virgin Mary had always seemed like a character to me, a sweet, muted woman draped in blue for the nativity play, a pretty porcelain face in old paintings and stained-glass windows—not a living, breathing woman who had once walked this very same earth. Who had once had her own life yanked out from under her and turned upside down by the truth of her destiny, a baby with no human father. Did I believe in her?
I realized now how odd it was that I’d gone through the motions of Christianity for my entire life without ever really dissecting what I felt about any of it. There had always been more crucial things to think about—school and grades and cold, hard indisputable facts, geometry and physics, grammar and history. But there had to be something, didn’t there? Some force that brought us here, some sort of higher power that knew what could become of all the atoms and molecules and compounds floating around in the universe?
It was unlike me to not have an answer. It was unlike me to have somehow let such a big question go.
My room was sweltering, but still I was wrapped up in my blankets, sweaty and buried, hiding beneath the nest of feathers. The person I wanted to hide from most was me, and I didn’t know how to make that happen. Because even in my dreams—that is, if I would ever be able to fall asleep again—I knew I couldn’t escape myself, my thoughts, my fears. My body.
By the time I counted twelve chimes from the old grandfather clock downstairs in our living room, I couldn’t be alone in my room anymore. I couldn’t be alone with myself. More than anything or anyone else in the world, I needed my mom. I needed her arms around me, and I needed her to know everything that I knew. Because as terrible as everything in my life felt in that moment, the most terrible, excruciating part was keeping it all a secret from my mom. I’d never hidden anything important from her before, and I couldn’t hide this, either. Not even for a night.
I kicked off the blankets and rose from the bed like a sleepwalker, lifted up and tugged toward the hallway by invisible hands. A bright shaft of moonlight spilled through my thin, gauzy curtains, illuminating the full-length mirror that hung from my door. I reached out for the knob, but froze, caught by my reflection.
Was I showing? Could I see? Could other people see?
I was shocked that the idea hadn’t occurred to me earlier, not once during the countless hours of solitude I’d spent in my room that night, reflecting and analyzing, poring over every last detail, every piece of evidence again and again and again.
Goose bumps prickled up my arms, the hairs standing on end, as I carefully, little by little, lifted up the edge of my T-shirt. I stared at myself, first from the front, then from the side. Front, side, front, side. My stomach looked so pale, so ghostly white against the shadows behind me. I cupped my hands over my belly and studied my profile. Was that a bump? A tiny, minuscule, almost entirely nonexistent bulge, but still, could it be the beginnings of a bump? I dug my palms harder, deeper against my skin, and closed my eyes to concentrate. I felt rounder, fuller somehow, I was sure of it. It was certainly nothing that anyone else would be able to see, not yet.
But it was only a matter of time.
I pulled my shirt back down and crept into the hallway, my bare feet knowing every creaking wooden floorboard, every slope and splinter, every inch of the way along the pitch-black path to my parents’ bedroom. They always left the door slightly open while they slept, a habit from the days when Gracie and I were little and helpless—a nightly routine that they’d never been able to leave behind, no matter how old we’d gotten or how independent we’d become. I had hated this on the nights when Nate and I were downstairs together, cuddling on the sofa, wanting at least the veil of privacy, but seeing the crack now made my heart swell.
I pushed the door open farther, just far enough that I could poke my head through and peek into the room. My mom flinched and jerked herself up at the first squeak of the hinge. I could make out her panicked face in the moonlight, her eyes darting around the room until she found me standing in the doorway. I put one finger on my lips and pointed to Dad, and then motioned for her to follow me out. She fumbled for her glasses on the nightstand and swung her legs over the side of the bed, an instant transition from deep, sound sleep to active and alert motherhood. Within seconds we were both safely down the hall and inside of my room, and I closed the door behind us.
“What’s going on, Mina?” she asked, her tired face tense with worry. I noticed wrinkles that I hadn’t seen before, furrowed around her eyes and fanning out from her frown. “Are you feeling worse? Can I get you anything?”
“No, I’m fine. I don’t need you to get me anything,” I said, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “I just need to talk to you. I need to tell you something.”
“Okay, then tell me something,” she said, her voice sounding confused but still patient as always, and she walked over to lean in next to me. “What’s this all about, Meeny? You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring myself, too,” I said. My voice cracked. But I couldn’t dissolve into tears, not until I’d pushed the whole story out into the void between us. I closed my eyes and forced myself to speak. For the second time that day, two times more than I would have ever liked, I described everything that had happened—meeting Iris, what she had said, what I had said. I told her about the last few months, all the strange symptoms, and I told her about that morning, that afternoon out in the woods.
She didn’t say anything. No questions or observations. Not a single word the entire way through.
After I finished talking, ending right at the point when Hannah and I had walked back into the kitchen and lied about our day, I lifted my head up and turned to face her. She was staring at me, her golden brown eyes fixed on mine and burning with a kind of motherly love that even I had rarely seen, and only in fleeting glimpses. A look that was so raw and unfiltered, a look that captured so many instincts and so many emotions—passion, devotion, fear, distress, adoration, sympathy. I was stunned that someone could feel so much—feel so much for me.
“Mina . . .” she said, her voice quiet but firm.
I breathed in and held the air deep inside of my lungs.
“Mina, I believe you.”
She believed me. And I hadn’t even needed to ask.
She reached out before I could react, and rested her palm against my flushed cheek. “Mina, I may not understand one bit of why this is happening to you or how this is happening to you or what any of this craziness means for any of us at all . . . but I do know one thing in this world, without a doubt, without any uncertainty”—she shifted to face me straight on and wrapped her hands tight around both of my shoulders—“I trust in you. I believe in you. You’re my Mina, my baby girl, and I can see right through those amazing blue eyes of yours. I can see exactly what’s inside, and I know like only a mother could know for sure that you’re not hiding a thing from me, not a thing. So if you’re crazy, then I’m crazy, and we’re just going to have to be crazy together, all right?”
“All right.” I nodded hard, up and down, up and down, still amazed by her reaction. “So . . . so what should we do next?”
We. The word felt so right on my lips.
“Well, I think I should call Dr. Keller on Monday, tell her we need an appointment as soon as possible. We have her run the standard tests, make sure we know exactly what we’re dealing with. I think it’s best we don’t tell her too much at this point. Just the basics, the symptoms, the tests you took today. We’ll fill in the gaps when we need to. I don’t want to raise too many unnecessary questions—not yet, anyway.”
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.
