Immaculate (9 page)

But the speculum was cold, so cold and so foreign, a piece of metal that didn't belong in my body. Dr. Keller was talking me through the exam, words like
spatula
and
wand
,
gonorrhea
and
chlamydia
,
standard procedure
. She used her gloved fingers next, less intrusive than the speculum, but still strange and unfamiliar, pushing against my cervix, my ovaries, my uterus. The sound of her voice fluttered around the edges of my subconscious, like a radio station coming in and out of service, clear to static, static to clear.

“Mina? Did you hear me? I said you can sit back now and put your legs down. I'm done with this part of the exam.”

I opened my eyes and blinked a few times, readjusting to the present.

“Everything looks normal and healthy,” Dr. Keller continued. “The uterus felt enlarged, which is to be expected. And I did detect that your cervix was softer than it would typically be in a woman who wasn't pregnant, and there was a bit of a bluish discoloration. This is called Chadwick's sign, and it's perfectly normal to find in the first trimester.”

Dr. Keller pushed back her tray of tools that sat between us and wheeled herself closer to the table and to me. “Before your mom comes back in, I'd like to talk a little bit more about your sexual history. I know it's not an easy topic to talk about, especially as a teenager, and I didn't want your mother's presence affecting your ability to tell me everything. I'm your doctor, Mina, and you can rest assured that everything you tell me is entirely confidential. Because you're a minor, I legally should have a father's name to fill in our forms.” Her clear gray eyes were locked on me, sympathetic and sensitive, but still determined.

“I wasn't lying to you earlier, Dr. Keller,” I said, speaking slowly to keep my voice steady and strong. “I haven't had sex. I don't know why this is happening to me.”

She opened her mouth to respond, paused in a silent O, and then closed her mouth and pursed her lips. “Mina,” she started again, “when I was examining you, I did find that your hymen wasn't intact. Now, that in and of itself can't confirm whether someone is a virgin. Tampons and certain physical activities can cause the hymen to tear long before sexual intercourse. But you are pregnant, Mina. I can confirm that.” She shifted on her stool, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

“I understand that you may be having some difficulty accepting the situation. It's not out of the question for people to deny what's happening to their bodies, especially if the circumstances leading to your pregnancy were . . . difficult or upsetting.” I could see her hands fidgeting on her lap, and I watched as she spun her pen in circles like a miniature baton. I wanted to help her, wanted to somehow put her mind at ease, but I couldn't tell her any of the things that as a doctor she needed to hear. “Are you in a monogamous relationship currently, Mina?”

“Yes, I have been for two years.”

“Heterosexual or homosexual?”

“Heterosexual.”

“And have there been any instances of abuse, physical or verbal?”

“No! Absolutely not.” My hands squeezed around the sides of the table. She was just doing her job. She was just trying to help. “Nothing like that at all. We're very happy and healthy. We're a normal teenage couple.”

We
were
happy and healthy
, I thought, correcting myself, my stomach turning over at the realization. We
were
a normal couple.
Were
. I didn't know what we would be anymore, if we'd be anything at all. I had avoided two more calls from Nate that morning, and I'd sent a single text back saying I was still too sick to really talk. It was a pathetic excuse, and if he wasn't so busy at the conference, he would have questioned me more. But I couldn't put him off for much longer, especially since he was getting back from DC that afternoon. We still had an anniversary to celebrate. I had a present for him, wrapped and waiting on my desk, a watch he'd been admiring at the mall over the summer. I'd spent so many shifts' worth of money on that watch; we couldn't break up
now
. The reasoning was so silly, so meaningless, that I almost laughed, but I made myself refocus on Dr. Keller and her sharp, curious eyes that seemed to be recording everything about me.

“Are there any problems at home?” she asked. “Any history of physical or verbal abuse that you want to talk about?”

Jamie shuffled her feet, and her shoes squeaked against the tile floor, breaking my attention. I'd forgotten that she was there, too, that it wasn't just Dr. Keller who was privy to every last intimate detail of my body and my life.

I looked back at Dr. Keller, my eyes pleading with her to believe me. “No. My family life is amazing. My parents would never in a million years hurt each other or me or my sister. I'm not lying to you, Dr. Keller. I'm not. But I can't expect you to accept that.”

Dr. Keller sighed, a resigned exhale. “Mina . . . I won't ask you any more questions right now, because I think you need a little time and space to think this through. You've been hit with what I'd assume is a major shock, and we all need time to process these sorts of experiences. We all come to accept things at our own speed and in our own ways.”

I nodded to appease her.

“But I am going to recommend that you talk to someone about this, Mina. Someone who's not a family member or a friend. Someone with experience who can help you to start sorting things out. I'm going to pass your name along to a counselor who works with a lot of other teens who have gone through the sorts of decisions and circumstances you're facing. I think it'd be incredibly helpful for you to talk some of this through with a professional.”

I nodded again, though I doubted that I'd actually talk to anyone. I barely had the energy to convince
myself
that this was real, let alone a complete stranger who would be dead set on helping me to see otherwise—dead set on helping me to see a truth that wasn't actually true.

“Now, in terms of next steps, we first need to determine how far along you are. Can you remember when you had your last period?”

I thought back, squinting as I combed through my memories to the beginning of the summer. “End of May, early June, I think. Somewhere around then.” Hannah's parents had just opened her pool, and I'd had to slip one of her mom's tampons from the bathroom cabinet.

“All right,” Dr. Keller said, jotting down some notes on my patient sheet. “That means you could be as far as twelve or thirteen weeks in, near the beginning of your second trimester. The baby would be due in early March in that case, but the ultrasound will give us a better sense of more precise dates. You still have some time, Mina—you still have options in terms of how you handle this pregnancy. Do you want to discuss abortion now? I'm here to answer any questions you might have, any questions at all. I can give you information about adoption resources, too, of course.”

“No,” I said quietly, shaking my head. “I don't have any questions about that. Not right now.”

“Mina, I really think you . . .” she started, but decided against whatever was next. Instead she just nodded, looking away from me for the first time since she'd sat down. “Unless you have anything else you'd like to talk about first, I'll have Jamie call your mom back in. But only if that's what you feel most comfortable with.”

“Yes, definitely,” I said. “I want her in here with me.”

The sight of my mom reemerging a few seconds later was more of a relief than I would have expected. I hadn't realized just how much braver I felt when she was close to me.

While Dr. Keller and Jamie tinkered with a machine mounted on a cart in the corner, my mom and I hugged—a tight, desperate hug. I pulled back when Dr. Keller started wheeling over the ultrasound equipment, a computer screen and keypad with coils of cords and plugs and attachments hanging from the side.

My mom helped me settle into a prone position on the table, my feet propped back up in the stirrups. I closed my eyes as Dr. Keller ran a small device back and forth over my bare stomach, opening them only when she said that she wanted to try a transvaginal ultrasound, too. She showed me the probe she'd be using—a bizarrely penislike stick covered in a condom and gel. I'd be losing my virginity to a machine. I almost laughed out loud at the thought, a deranged, crazy-lady laugh that I just barely stopped from reaching my lips. I squeezed my mom's wrist with one hand and grabbed the metal table rail with the other as the probe entered, pushing farther and farther in, making my body feel less and less like my own.

After a few tense seconds I heard a beep from the monitor and looked up as the screen came to life. I couldn't see much of anything at first, just darkness with a few hazy, wavy clumps.

“We should be able to detect the heartbeat in just a moment with the Doppler fetal monitor,” Dr. Keller said, tapping at the keypad as she kept her eyes on the screen.

“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.

chapter six

“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.

“Mina?” both parents called out at the exact same moment.

I hopped to my feet and grabbed the banister for balance before turning and running back to my room. I slammed the door behind me and pushed my back up against it for support. The old farmhouse latches on our doors were worthless—a little well-placed banging made any lock reversible within seconds. I bent over, hands on my knees, gasping and heaving to refill my lungs with air. I could hear stomping on the stairs as my dad's feet got closer and closer, the softer steps of my mom just behind him.

“Mina! Let me in.
Now
. We need to talk.” His fist pounding on the door sent a prickling wave of vibrations along my back. I stepped away and turned, holding my fingers down over the latch to keep the hook from coming undone.

“I'm not calling Nate, Dad. I don't care if you believe me or don't believe me. That's your decision and I can't change that, but I'm not bringing Nate into this. Not today, and not like this. I tell Nate on my own terms.”

“I'm not having this conversation through a slab of wood, Mina. Open the damn door, or I'm getting the ladder and coming in through the window. Your decision.”

I sighed, accepting my defeat. Hiding behind a closed door was pointless. I needed to change tactics and calm him down, start building back the trust somehow.

“Fine,” I said, yanking the latch up and swinging the door open. His cool blue eyes opened wide, surprised that I'd surrendered without more of a fight. “Let's have a calm and rational conversation.” I walked over to my bed and sat on the edge, hands folded on my lap, looking up at him. “Mom's told you everything that she knows and everything that I know. I didn't have sex with anyone, Dad. I didn't, I really didn't, as ridiculous as I know that sounds. I don't understand why this is happening either, or why me, why any of this, any better than you do.”

He loomed over me, rigid and stone-faced, a statue with my dad's clothes and my dad's features, but still just an imitation, someone, something, very different from my actual father. My mom came over to the bed and sat down next to me, wrapping her arm around my shoulders. I could see my dad's eyes shift from me to her, his forehead crinkling in disappointment.

“I would like at least a little show of support in all this, Sallie. I don't want to be the only sane parent in the house. The only person who sees that all this is completely ludicrous. Complete bullshit.”

I winced, my ears unable to process my usually warm, devoted father talking about me like I was trash, a disgusting, despicable liar. I could feel my mom's body shaking next to me, but she stayed silent, letting him push all his ugly words out into the open.

He glanced back at me then, apparently finished with my mom, and cringed. “I can't even look at you right now, Mina,” he said, turning to stare out the window instead, running a hand through his already rumpled thick brown hair. “I feel like I don't even know who you are.” The words ripped through my chest, like an anchor being yanked straight out of my heart, leaving a big, gaping, bloody hole in its wake.

“I didn't sign up for a third kid, Mina. How are we going to handle this? Or, better question, how are
you
going to handle this? Are we supposed to play the daddy and mommy while you go off to college and have your own pretty little carefree life? Have you thought about any of this at all? Do you even grasp the fact that your life will never be the same? This changes everything, Mina.
Every
damn thing. All the dreams I had for you, all the dreams you had . . .” He choked up at the thought, putting his fist to his mouth to stifle the sob. “How could you do this, Mina? How
could
you?”

He started crying. My strong, invincible father. Weeping right in front of me. I had only seen him cry exactly four times before, twice for each of his parents—the moment that he'd heard each had passed away, and the point at the funerals when the caskets were lowered and the handfuls of dirt were thrown on top, forever separating my nanny and my pop pop from life on the surface, from green grass and sunlight and the first warm breeze of spring.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” I whispered. “I really am.”

His breath hitched and he looked up at me, expectant and hopeful. He thought that he'd cracked me, that I was finally going to confess all my horrendous sins.

“I'm sorry . . . but that doesn't mean that I did anything wrong. I'm sorry that I'm hurting you, but I can't apologize for being pregnant. I can't apologize that I'm having this baby. I didn't ask for any of this. Believe it or not, this wasn't my life plan either. This wasn't my big dream for myself. I may not have it all figured out, but I have six months to get my act together.” I breathed in, balled my fists, and looked him directly in the eyes. “I can do this, Dad. I can. And I will.”

As I heard those words come out from between my lips, felt the full shape and size and weight of them, I believed myself. I really believed myself. I had accomplished everything I'd ever put my mind to, mastered any class, any project, any hobby I'd tried, no matter how difficult it was at the start. I had always kept trying, kept pushing myself further and further. I'd never failed. And I wouldn't fail at this, either. I wouldn't fail when it mattered the most.

My dad lowered his eyes and shook his head slowly in a daze. “I thought I'd gotten through to you. But clearly I haven't even made a dent. I don't know what it's going to take.” He sighed, lifting his hands to massage deep circles around his temples. “Call Nate and tell him to come over. Now. I want to hear what he has to say about all this.”

“No.” I crossed my arms tight to hide my trembling hands. I couldn't. I wouldn't. I needed more time.

“He needs to know, Mina. This is his problem, too.”

“This is
not
his problem. It has nothing to do with him, Dad. It's not his child. It's mine. And yes, he does deserve to know, and yes, our relationship will change because of this, but I get to decide when and how he finds out.”

“Give me your phone.”

“Don't make her do this, Paul,” my mom pleaded, speaking up for the first time since she'd come into the room. “You shouldn't force something like this on her, not so soon. Please, Paul. Give her more time.”

“Now, Mina,” my dad said, ignoring my mom.

“No!” My heart was skipping, banging in my chest, and I could feel the beads of sweat creeping down my neck.

He was quicker than I was, his eyes darting around the room until they spotted my phone on the nightstand directly in front of him. He lunged for the phone and grabbed it, skimming through my contacts list. His fierce eyes locked on mine as his finger hovered over Nate's number, testing me, waiting for me to react.

“Are you asking him to come here, or am I? If you don't do it, I will, Mina. This is nonnegotiable.”

My stomach was twisting and churning, but I couldn't stop him, I realized. This was happening, I couldn't fight it—I would be telling Nate that night. Though, if I was being honest with myself, it probably didn't matter when, where, or how I told Nate. I knew how this would go—how this would end—regardless of how we got from point A to point B.

“Fine,” I said, my voice so thin and shaky, I barely recognized it as my own. “I obviously can't stop you. But I won't ever forget that you made me do this.”

My dad nodded as he pressed the dial button and handed me the phone.