In the Beginning (Anthology)

by Laureen Cantwell

  I called Gabe that night after I got home from Bonnie’s to tell him that I did have doubts, and we became closer friends as a result. We met every week in secret while Molly and Jared were busy with practice. When his parents were still away at work, we would discuss the stuff that didn’t make sense to us and, after months of talking, we finally arrived at sex. Why would it feel good if God didn’t want us to have it? How could it be inherently sinful, but also necessary for the creation of life?

  The whole “virgin” thing annoyed me. It never made sense to me that having sex would somehow change me, that I could become less valuable just because I wasn’t a virgin anymore. I explained this to Gabe.

  “You’re worth more to me than your virginity,” he assured me. Then, he put his hand on my thigh, I scooted closer to him, and he kissed me. Then we had sex. Just like that. It was fun, and easy, and we liked it, so we decided not to stop.

  “Seriously,” I told Gabe. “If I’m late to Bonnie’s, they’ll wonder where I’ve been.”

  “Maybe if you learned how to speak your mind, you could break free from the death grip that Molly and Jared have on you. Then, you and I can have ice cream night together any damn time we please.”

  Gabe finally got up to put some pants on. I checked myself over in his full-length mirror, trying to look less tousled and more innocent. I adjusted my sweater so that my bra straps didn’t show and untangled my hair with my fingers.

  “Fuck,” Gabe said, and at first I ignored him. He was always cursing. Stubbed toe? “Fuck.” Red Sox lost a game? “Fuck.” Failed a Calc exam? “Fuck.”

  But then he kept repeating it, in quick succession, his voice high pitched and quavering.

  “What?” I asked, turning from the mirror to face him, finally alarmed.

  “I think the condom broke,” he said.

  And so began the story of the world’s second virginal conception.

  Nine weeks and two missed periods later, I felt unbearably ill during youth group. By that point, my nerves and my nausea had twirled together in a hopelessly tangled braid. I couldn’t tell the difference between my anxiety and my morning sickness. They both gave me headaches, made me vomit, and kept me from sleeping.

  The lights in the church auditorium were dim. The blue and red stage lights above the worship band fused to make the whole room a dull violet. On stage, Jared focused on the neck of his bass guitar, carefully plucking strings. The vibration of the bass notes gave me goosebumps and made my bones jingle together like the pipes of a wind chime. Molly concentrated on her keyboard. Her black hair looked navy under the lights. The air was clouded with the raised arms of worshipers. Their hands waved side to side in rhythm with the synths and the guitars, and their voices called out to the Lord.

  The violet lights made the room hazy. Everything blurred together. My stomach lurched in time with the bass drum. The sickness felt like a mini car inside my belly—revving up, gaining speed, and crashing into my stomach lining over and over again, unable to break free.

  I had to get out of there.

  The crowd parted as I moved toward the exit, their arms dancing like strands of seaweed rippled by ocean waves. I stumbled out of the youth auditorium and into the brightness of the church’s main foyer. The closer I came to the door of the women’s restroom, the sicker I felt. I couldn’t make it to a toilet. I pushed past the bathroom door, lunged to the countertop, and vomited into the sink. Puke splashed up, splattering my pink cotton dress and clouding my reflection in the mirror with speckles of wet beige.

  People say you’ll glow. I was learning that was just some bullshit that husbands tell their wives to make them feel beautiful when, in reality, they look like death. I didn’t glow. My blue eyes had turned gray. My honey blond locks had acquired a green tint. My skin was dull and spotted with new bright red clusters of acne. Thankfully, my belly wasn’t big yet. Sometimes while I wait in the checkout line at the grocery store with my mom, I’ll see a tabloid magazine with Jennifer Aniston’s photograph on the cover with a big, bold headline that reads, “PREGNANT!”—But she isn’t really pregnant, she just looks like she is because she ate a really big lunch that day, and the photo was taken at a bad angle. That’s how my stomach looked, like how Jennifer Aniston looks after she eats a cheeseburger.

  I was pregnant. Three weeks prior, I took four pregnancy tests in the girl’s locker room at school after lying to Coach Anderson that I had my period and couldn’t participate in swim class that day. All four tested positive.

  I couldn’t work up the courage to tell anybody. I didn’t know what to say. Admitting that I was pregnant would also mean admitting that I cheated on Jared and that I was no longer a virgin, two facts that I didn’t want publicized. I knew my parents would be devastated, Molly would be disappointed, and Jared would be heartbroken. I couldn’t even face Gabe. As soon as I found out that I was pregnant, I stopped meeting him at his house for our weekly discussions. Gabe called and texted me over and over again when I stopped showing up. I had been more honest with him than anyone else in my life, but I couldn’t tell him the truth now. His constant texts asking me where I was and if I was okay started to drive me insane, so I finally texted him back, I decided I can’t be friends with an atheist, either. He didn’t question me any further.

  My first thought after the pregnancy tests turned positive was to get myself to the nearest clinic for an abortion. I could go back to being my normal Virginal-and-Definitely-Not-Pregnant self, with my Virginal-and-Definitely-Not-Pregnant friends. Each time I came close to going through with it, my body wouldn’t allow it. Once, I even called the clinic and scheduled an appointment. I sat in my car in my driveway with my keys in the ignition for an hour and a half, trying to convince myself to drive to the clinic to get it over with, but my body was stone. I was weighed down by the tall stacks of pro-life pamphlets at church, at youth group … at home. The words of Pastor Caleb’s Sunday sermons and my parents’ lectures whirled around my brain like a hurricane. I couldn’t go to the clinic. I couldn’t have the procedure. I had to stay pregnant.

  The worship band faded away into silence. It must have been eight o’clock by then; youth group was ending for the night. The bathroom door creaked open. I knew it was Molly even before I turned to look at her.

  “Em?” she asked.

  “Moll?” I responded.

  “Are you alright?” she questioned, eyeing the vomit-filled sink.

  “I feel so sick,” I answered, making my voice quaver. “The burrito I had earlier is killing me.”

  Mexican food, Indian food, period cramps, too much coffee, excessive protein, and the stomach bug were among the excuses that I had given Molly for the past eight weeks. Her silence signaled that she had stopped believing me.

  “I’m fine, Molly. Really. I’ll be right out.”

  “Emma, should we talk?”

  I feigned a laugh to make her concern seem silly.

  “You really want to talk about the massive burrito diarrhea I’m about to have?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. Her voice was soft and serious.

  “I’ll meet you in the foyer in a few minutes, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I exhaled as the restroom door swung closed behind her, but my relief was interrupted. The door opened again, this time so slowly that the hinges sounded like they were letting out one long, high-pitched scream. Whoever was opening the door seemed timid, like they feared that there was a monster behind it.

  “Molly. I told you I’m fine,” I said.

  “Molly sent me. She said that you would try to tell me that you’re fine, but that you’re not fine, really.”

  No. Please, Lord. Let him go away. Please. Let this not be real. Pleasepleaseplease. Make this not happen. Anything but this. I prayed, but Jared did not vanish. He was there in the women’s restroom, and not even God Himself could get him out of there.

  “Jared! You can’t be in here! What if someon
e else comes along? What if there had been another girl in here?”

  “Molly is guarding the door. She said you’re alone.”

  Jared glowed. Unlike me, he was always glowing. The stage lights made his forehead glisten with sweat. He was breathing irregularly, still trying to slow his heartbeat from the excitement of the worship band performance. His mouth was serious but his eyes smiled, like he was trying to—but couldn’t—hide his post-show high in order to sympathize with whatever sickness I was experiencing.

  “Come on. You know you can tell me anything,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  He wrapped his arms around me and planted his lips on my cheek. The sweetness of the kiss made thunderbolts of guilt rumble through my body. My confession hung at my lips like a hiker dangling off of the side of a cliff. The hiker’s hands started to slip. His grip became weaker, and the idea of letting go seemed like it would be a relief. I had spent too long hanging on.

  “I’m pregnant,” I said.

  He laughed nervously.

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  He stepped back from me.

  “How? We never …” he started.

  “I know …”

  Jared’s face melted like a watch in a Salvador Dali painting. I backed away as he squared his shoulders, afraid that he might lift his arm to hit me. But his slap came in words.

  “Slut,” he said. The blow almost knocked me to the floor.

  “I’m not—” I started.

  “You told me you were a virgin. We promised we would wait for one another.”

  “I am a virgin,” I said, because a small part of me wanted it to be true.

  “You’re pregnant,” he argued.

  “I know.”

  “So, what do you want from me, Emma? Do you want me to believe the Holy Spirit impregnated you? You want me to think that a little angel came to you and made you the next Virgin Mary?” His voice grew angrier and faster with each word he spoke.

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Whose baby is it?”

  “Nobody’s.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Tears burst from my eyes, streamed down my face, and trickled along my neck.

  “I didn’t cheat on you,” I lied. “I didn’t.”

  “Then how is any of this happening?”

  I should have told Jared that I was curious. I should have said that I was sixteen and had never seen a penis before. I wanted to know what one looked like, and Gabe Albright’s was the nearest one available. What I should have said was that I was an idiotic, hormonal, impulsive teenager, and that I should have known better. I should have said that I was sorry. But all I could say was, “I don’t know how it happened, Jared. I swear. I don’t know.”

  “I loved you,” he said. The past tense verb rung in the air of the bathroom like a gunshot. “I really loved you.”

  “You can still love me,” I whispered. “I’m still a virgin. I didn’t cheat on you. I don’t know why this is happening to me. You can still love me.”

  As I pleaded, he backed away from me. He started off slowly, but as he swung the bathroom door open, he broke into a run through the foyer and out the exit of the church.

  “Jared,” I said. I meant to scream his name so he could hear me, but it came out as a dry, hoarse whisper.

  Molly stood in the doorframe.

  “Is it true?” she asked. She had heard everything from where she was standing outside the door.

  “Molly,” I said, trying to calm her.

  “Is it true?” she pushed.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She shook her head at me disapprovingly.

  “Molly,” I said again, but she was already shutting the door behind her, leaving me alone in the bathroom again. Just me and my baby and the puke-speckled mirror.

  I decided I’d tell my parents the next morning before school. When I walked down the stairs from my bedroom, mom was making pancakes and dad was getting ready for work. She poured batter in thin circles onto the griddle pan on the stove while he adjusted his tie in the hall mirror.

  “Morning,” Mom said, smiling.

  “Morning,” Dad echoed.

  “Good morning,” I told them. Before giving myself the chance to hesitate, I said it: “I’m pregnant.”

  Their reactions were not surprising. They spent the next twenty minutes asking “How?” and “When?” and “Why?” over and over again. The first time I gave answers: “I don’t know” and “Two months ago” and “It just happened.” When they kept asking the same questions, I realized that they were not really looking for the answers that I could give them. Dad called out of work. I missed the school bus. The pancakes on the stove burned.

  Finally, they got to the question that I did not want to answer: “Who?”

  “I thought Jared was a good kid,” my dad said, undoing the buttons on the wrist of his white shirt.

  “He is,” I said.

  “No ‘good kid’ gets my daughter pregnant,” he countered.

  “It’s not his,” I said.

  This almost made my mom faint. Her skin turned so white, so quickly, that I thought she might vanish into thin air.

  “Whose is it?” my dad said. He was furious. For every degree my mom paled, my dad turned a deeper red. I planted my feet firmly on the kitchen floor, bracing myself to hear the word again. Slut.

  But the doorbell rang.

  My parents were frozen in their rage and disappointment, so I ran to answer the door. It was Jared. He was wearing the same outfit he’d worn the night before at youth group, a short-sleeved red and blue, plaid button down, and dark navy jeans. His whole outfit was wrinkled, like he had fallen asleep in his clothes last night and rolled right out of bed when he woke up. He held a bouquet of yellow daisies in one hand. I was shocked to see him. After our conversation the previous night, I’d assumed our relationship was over.

  Jared was smiling, and that scared me. He had a goofy look in his eyes, like when he’d told me he loved me for the first time.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” I asked.

  He squinted at me and rapidly shook his head back and forth, like that was the dumbest question I could have ever asked.

  “I had the dream,” he said, reaching his arm out to hand me the flowers.

  “Dream?” I asked.

  “The angel. ‘Do not be afraid,’” he quoted. “The dream.”

  The protagonist of every cheesy movie ever made, eventually comes to a fork in the road where she has to make a big decision that shapes the rest of her whole life. Maybe the protagonist chooses to pursue her dream of opening a cupcake shop instead of going to law school, like her parents always dreamed she would, or maybe she chooses to leave her seemingly perfect husband to date the unstable-but-oh-so-charming man she met while away on a business trip. Whatever she ultimately chooses, her decision defines her. I’m still not sure what type of person I am for choosing to go along with Jared’s dream. His dream was a product of exhaustion and confusion and desperation. No angel had come to him. I knew that for sure. Maybe I should have told him this. Maybe I should have given him a Psych 101 lesson on my doorstep. I should have told him the residue of the day can seep into our dreams and reflect our anxieties. He had the dream because he wanted to have it, or because he thought he should have it. There was no angel, really. He had imagined one.

  Instead, I reached out and took the bouquet of flowers from his hand.

  “I’m sorry for not believing you,” he said.

  “I’m not a slut,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. I should have listened the first time. I shouldn’t have run away.”

  I felt my little baby do a somersault inside my stomach.

  Could I really pull this off? Could I really trick Jared and his mom and my parents and our c
hurch friends and the kids at school that I had been blessed with God’s second child? It seemed impossible, but it seemed equally impossible to admit that I wasn’t a virgin or that I had cheated on Jared. A virginal conception wasn’t the truth, but it was what would make everyone happy. I reflected back to my many conversations with Gabe. Could a lie ever be better than the truth? Could a lie be excused if everybody benefited from it?

  “I forgive you,” I told Jared.

  And, as if I wasn’t a huge scumbag already, I put my hands on my belly and said, “We both forgive you.”

  Jared took a step forward and pulled me toward him. My face squished against his chest as he hugged me.

  “Thank you,” he said into my hair. “We’ll do this together.”

  He let go of me, and we stared at one another for a little in silence. Outside my house, with Jared, I was the chosen vessel of God’s second savior but, inside my house, I was still an unruly, troublesome, teenage girl who had broken her vow of purity.

  “My parents don’t believe me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “My parents. They don’t believe me. They think you got me pregnant.”

  Jared, who wore his virginity on his chest like a badge of honor, marched past me and into the house, where my parents greeted him with the opposite of enthusiasm. I pivoted around and followed behind him into the kitchen.

  “Listen,” Jared said in his Please Take Me Seriously, I’m a Young Adult Voice. “I’m a virgin. She’s a virgin. It’s crazy, but it’s happening.”

  My mom couldn’t look at us. She kept her face turned toward the window overlooking the backyard. Dad looked at Jared the way you would look at a three-year-old who’d stuck a crayon up his nose.

  “I don’t know what you two are trying to pull over on us …” Dad started.

  “How could you turn your back on your faith like this? How could you turn your back on your daughter?” Jared questioned, his voice sharp and violent.

  “Don’t question my faith,” Dad growled. He walked toward Jared and did not stop walking once he reached him. He kept walking forward, pushing Jared by the shoulders. Jared fumbled backward toward the door.