Immaculate (12 page)

If a virgin like me could suddenly wake up pregnant, wasn't
anything
possible?

A nearby chair slammed against the tile floor—along with the unlucky but deserving football hero who had been leaning too far on its back legs—and the cafeteria broke out in its typical round of applause and catcalls. I shook off my questions like an odd, hazy dream and looked back over at Hannah. She still seemed caught up in our conversation, hesitant to say anything too hopeful or too positive for fear of misleading me. I saw the struggle going on behind her eyes, the internal battle as she tried her hardest to think of an optimistic follow-up.

“Hannah . . .” I started, then stopped, debating what I actually wanted to know and what would be better left unknown. Curiosity won out—I was never one for tucking questions away for later. “Can you tell me what people are really saying about me and Nate, and me and Izzy? They must be coming up with some sort of creative explanations, right?”

She sighed and stared out the big bay window next to our table. I already wished I hadn't asked—I didn't want to push between her and everyone else at school any more than I already had. Her reputation and social ranking were in free fall, plummeting just as fast and steadily as mine were, like a tiny, fragile hummingbird chained to a massive barbell. Not quite the golden senior year we'd been anticipating.

“I'm sure they are, Meen, but no one's saying anything in front of me, either,” she said, turning back to look at me. She didn't seem angry that I'd asked, thankfully, but I could still see unfamiliar shadows on her face—it was like a sparkly, glowing piece of the Hannah I'd known forever had somehow gotten lost, had faded away. Because of me and because of everything she was putting herself through to make my life easier. “I think I've made it pretty obvious whose side I'm on. And to be honest, I don't even want to know, since it'd be all lies, anyway. Hearing it would just make me hate people for gossiping about something they know nothing about. It's easier to pretend that they're not talking, to smile along like everything's fine, everyone's okay, and just get on with this last year together.”

She was right: it was probably better not to know. But I still couldn't help the urge to find out more. I could ask someone else, but I had barely talked to anyone but Hannah and my teachers since classes had started. I didn't want to do or say anything that would put the spotlight on me, at least not more than it already was.

“Yeah, we'll see. But you're probably right. Best not to know.” I looked over at the clock and leaped up, scrambling out of my chair. “We should head out now, ahead of everyone. The more I can avoid all their beady eyes in the hallway, the better.”

We grabbed our trays and started toward the exit, my head ducked to avoid any accidental interactions.

“Hey, Meen, isn't that the busboy from Frankie's? What did you say his name was? Jesse Spero?”

I jerked my head up, almost smacking straight into the bright yellow trash can in front of me. It
was
Jesse, wearing the same green cap and another blazer, though this one was a faded camel brown with a matching bow tie at his neck.

“Shhh!”
I hissed at her, turning my back to him. “I don't want him to see me.” I threw the rest of my sandwich in the garbage and ducked behind a nearby pillar. “I didn't realize he went here. I thought he was homeschooled or something like that.” Not that we'd had much actual conversation—but I could have sworn I'd overheard him mention homeschooling to one of the guys in the kitchen. Obviously, things had changed, because here he was at Green Hill High.

He was sitting alone at the table closest to the trash and the dirty tray counter, which was, hands down, the least desirable property in the cafeteria. It was the zone where all the loners sat, scattered a few seats away from one another at the long rectangular tables, a random mix of goth hermits and special needs kids and the occasional new student, like Jesse, who either hadn't found any potential friends to rescue them, or didn't care to be rescued in the first place. I had always felt a small burst of shame when I rushed passed their tables, wondering if there was anything I could or should do to make their lunches even just a little bit less lonely and miserable. But I was realizing now that that was probably presumptuous of me—that maybe they didn't mind being alone. That maybe not everyone cared about everyone else's opinions as much as I did. Jesse certainly didn't seem to notice or worry that his social status was at any sort of risk. He had a thick book in his hand with an unmistakably sci-fi cover, and he looked far more interested in that than the fact that he was potentially hurling himself into isolation for the rest of his high school career.

I envied him. I wished that he could teach me to stop caring. To let go.

The end of lunch alarm blared, and students started swarming from all directions, buzzing in circles around me. Just as Jesse put his book down and glanced up, I ducked my head and ran. I pushed through the double doors and into the hallway, leaving him and every other face I couldn't stand to see safely behind me.

• • •

A few hours later, back in the sanctuary of my room, I stared down at my backpack, deliberating: to open or not to open. To face reality, or to keep pretending that grades and GPAs had ceased to exist. The zipper was stretched dangerously close to splitting from the jumble of textbooks and notebooks and folders that I had somehow managed to magically squeeze inside. I'd been in school for almost a month, but I couldn't recall learning much, if anything at all, and I'd barely so much as touched a textbook outside of class. I had, of course, signed up for almost all advanced-track classes. And while this meant less day-to-day busywork, hugely significant essays and tests and projects were looming on the horizon. The exceptionally close horizon.

Before I could change my mind, I yanked the zipper down and dumped every last spiral pad and piece of paper out onto my bed. I couldn't put off what I could see with my own eyes, the physical evidence of just how momentously screwed I'd be if I didn't start being the student everyone expected me to be again, and soon.

It wasn't that I was doing nothing with my nightly study time in my room. I was reading and researching into all hours of the night, every night, but I wasn't enlightening myself about the finer points of European history or calculus or classic American literature.

I had two tall stacks on my desk, towers of books I'd ordered online and books I'd scavenged from my parents' bookshelves. A–Z pregnancy guides with week-to-week growth charts and how-to's and suggestions: what to eat, what not to eat, caffeine or no caffeine, how much exercise is too much exercise and how much weight is really acceptable to gain? I had already read through five different books, highlighting and penciling notes in the margins, notes that I'd typed up afterward so that I could reread the most important ideas again and again and probably even again until I was convinced that they had been permanently seared into my memory.

I didn't know why I was having this baby, but that only made the whole process infinitely more terrifying. What if I did something wrong, one tiny little thing, an innocent accident, and that ended up hurting or . . . ? Just thinking of anything worse made me break out in cold sweats. The fear hit me harder every day, every morning when I woke up worrying that I would somehow let this baby down. Let Iris down, disappoint whoever or whatever was holding the strings behind all this.

How could the War of the Roses or the limits and infinitesimals of calculus possibly rank on the priority list? No matter the exact cause or the exact reasons behind it all, I knew that this baby was more important than getting straight As—becoming a mom was more important than becoming the valedictorian. Because who was I in all this? Who was I in comparison to the life I was carrying?

I was a vessel, a mode of transportation, a way for this child to get from one place to the next, one world to another. I was a human incubator, a machine that just happened to have lungs and a brain and a beating heart.

Did all soon-to-be mothers feel this? All of them who had conceived in the normal way? Whether it was intentional or a slip, whether it was a one-night stand or a loving husband, a defective condom or a perfectly laid-out plan—did every pregnant woman feel as if she had suddenly stopped existing as an individual? That she had handed over the keys to her independence the moment she decided to keep the baby? I couldn't imagine
not
feeling this way because, really, when it came down to it—wasn't
every
baby its own kind of miracle? Just because science could explain the hows and whys of reproduction didn't make it any less amazing that a sperm met an egg and nine months later a living, breathing baby was born. My hows and whys were unusual, yes, but maybe the end result was the same.

I liked this, the idea that I wasn't the first or last new mom to feel this way—so selfless and humbled in the face of something much bigger than I was.

My baby was, according to my reading, roughly five ounces, five inches long that week, or about the size of an onion or a small potato—for whatever reason, every pregnancy source liked to compare the fetus size to fruits and vegetables, though there was nothing particularly cute to me about measuring my baby against a lumpy brown root vegetable. She or he was just beginning to start forming body fat, rubbery cartilage was turning into bone, and tiny ear bones were developing, which meant that maybe, just maybe, my voice was being heard. Was becoming familiar, even. Little eyes had moved to the front of the face, complete with eyebrows and eyelashes—eyes that could now sense light and make small side-to-side movements. Eyes that would maybe look just like mine, wide and blue and relentlessly curious. She or he could wiggle fingers and toes, and sometimes, if I closed my eyes and really focused on the inside of my body, I swore I could feel the movements.

Those
were the facts that really mattered.
Those
were the details I needed to be learning and absorbing every spare minute I could find.

But pregnancy books weren't the only books I was fixated on. I'd slipped into the church library two Sundays before—my first and only time there since it had all began—and taken out as many books as I could find about miracles in general and about Mary and the Immaculate Conception—which, contrary to what I'd spent my whole life assuming, was a doctrine concerning Mary's mother's conception of
her
, not Mary's conception of
Jesus
. It was
Mary
who was born free of any original sin, free of all stains and blemishes—blessed with the purifying grace normally conferred in baptism. From the moment she was born, from the very beginning of her life, Mary had already been chosen.

And what about me? When had this become
my
fate?
My
path to stumble down?

I was desperate, ravenous for clues. I'd pored over the books, searching for whatever slivers of insight I could find. I'd read and reread different translations of each passage in the Bible that centered around Mary—the conception, her fateful meeting with Gabriel, the reactions of the people who loved her. But I kept coming back to Luke, the passage that was most familiar to me:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

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.