Stretch Marks

by Kimberly Stuart

  The baby needn’t have worried, Mia later thought, as music at Ebenezer took various forms. When the congregants had let the singing die down and had rustled and creaked into the pews, they merely exchanged one melody for another. Pastor Reginald Jenkins prayed from the pulpit and Mia was washed in a second wave of music as the people of the church voiced their agreement in prayer.

  “Heavenly Father,” Pastor Jenkins prayed, “we praise You.”

  “We do,” Silas said, his voice one of many responding to that of the pastor.

  “Jesus, Son of God,” Jenkins continued, “we glorify You.”

  “Yes, Lord,” a woman behind Mia said in a joyful voice. She clapped her hands once for emphasis.

  “And Holy Spirit,” Jenkins said, his voice alive with supplication, “we give You our hearts.”

  “Take ’em, Lord!” Silas said, stomping the floor once with his foot.

  “Almighty God, three in one, we say this morning that we need You. We hunger for You. We want You to meet us here.”

  The woman behind Mia was humming along with the pastor’s words. Mia glanced at her mother and saw she was watching the pastor with eyes wide open.

  “Before we get too far into this, though, Lord, we should tell You we are sorry. Sorry for the sins we’ve committed against You. King David wrote that our iniquities …” Pastor Jenkins paused and drew out the final s in the word. “Our iniquities separate us from You.”

  The congregation pulsed with sorrow at his words. Mia shifted in her seat.

  “We ask you to cleanse us white as snow, O God. Do as You’ve promised, bridge the gap between Your holiness and our imperfection, and make us clean.”

  “Yes, Lord!” A man near the back boomed his petition. Several people clapped in agreement.

  Mia’s mind drifted to the church she and her family had attended in Highlands Cove. Parkview Presbyterian participated in a much more subdued worship format, as far as she could remember. The pastor had read his prayers from a paper on the pulpit. He’d taken his time, looking through scholarly reading glasses perched on the very end of his nose, enunciating each word with deliberate care. Mia knew this to be true as she, like her mother, had the habit of watching people pray when everyone else bowed their heads and closed their eyes. That morning at Ebenezer, Mia wondered how things had changed at the church of her childhood. She’d like to see, for example, if the Sunday school curriculum still boasted an impressive selection of felt-board Bible stories. The various incarnations of a pale and emaciated Jesus on the cross had given her nightmares, regardless of her teacher’s assurance that this was the same kind and gentle carpenter featured in other scenes healing sick people and patting the heads of children in bathrobes.

  Mia sat with her eyes closed, half-listening to Silas and Pastor Jenkins continue their prayerful volley. Her thoughts lingered on the church of her childhood, where she could still feel the squishy carpet indent as she walked into the sanctuary with John and her parents. She’d studied Christianity in some of her college courses, once through a feminist lens, another time through the eyes of colonized tribal groups in nineteenth-century Latin America. Merging these academic experiences with her own spiritual upbringing had seemed impossible, laughable even, especially since the Rathbuns had discontinued their church attendance by the end of Mia’s junior-high years. A short time later her parents divorced and not long after that, Mia’s father was dead. She recalled a few Parkview representatives at her dad’s funeral and she thought someone from the church had brought a casserole or two in the weeks following his death. But by that time, any worthwhile connection to the church had eroded and Mia had never had reason to return.

  A chorus of amens drew Mia out of her reverie. Pastor Jenkins leaned forward with both hands on the pulpit and took stock of his congregation. A man in his late fifties, he was beginning to gray around the temples and the cocoa-colored skin of his face crinkled with joy of full years already behind him.

  “Brother Silas, I see you’ve brought some visitors with you today.”

  Silas rose slowly to his feet, straightening his jacket and collar as he stood.

  “Good morning,” Silas said. The congregation called out in a parallel greeting. “I have the honor today of worshipping with two lovely ladies who live in my dear Trump Palace.” The congregation laughed in appreciation. “From the fourth floor I present the lovely Mia Rathbun.”

  Silas gestured for her to stand and she did so begrudgingly. She smiled at the people watching her with kind faces. They called out in greeting and she waved, the color full on her cheeks.

  “Miss Mia is expecting a baby this fall, so you ladies might take note and try fattening her up a bit.”

  The women in the group nodded their approval and blanketed Mia with quiet well-wishes.

  “And from the first floor, our newest neighbor, Ms. Barbara Rathbun, Mia’s mother.”

  “Hello,” Babs said, waving gaily. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

  Mia sat down quickly, hoping to encourage Babs to do the same.

  “This is my very first time in an African-American church,” Babs said.

  Mia felt her heart pounding through her shirt.

  “And I must say, I think I’ve been going to the wrong worship service my whole life!”

  The congregants chuckled and one shouted, “Amen!” Mia let the breath she’d been holding captive escape her lungs. It could have been so much worse, she thought. At least she didn’t try to lead the group in a chorus of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

  Pastor Jenkins made a few announcements from the pulpit. The ladies’ ministry was holding a bake sale to raise funds for a neighborhood school. A family from the congregation had lost their home to a fire and needed donations of furniture and clothing. The offering plates were passed without ceremony and Mia noticed most put something in the plate. Babs threw in a twenty and kept her attention on the pastor as he began his sermon.

  “Let’s open together in God’s Word to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Chapter six, verse two.” Pastor Jenkins waited a moment while the hushed ruffle of pages filtered through the congregation. “Paul writes, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.’” He read the verse again, slowly and with each consonant more pronounced than the first reading. Pastor Jenkins looked up from the worn black Bible he cradled in one hand. “Anybody bearing a burden this morning?”

  Several worshippers raised their hands, speaking their agreement and shaking their heads at the weight of what they carried.

  Babs raised her hand in the air and leaned over to nudge her daughter. She patted Mia’s belly and whispered, “Raise your hand, sweetie. This is a time to be open with our needs.”

  The excitement in her voice made Mia want to jump out one of the windows that lined the aisles. She shook her head firmly and hissed, “I’m here. Don’t push it.”

  “Paul did not make a polite suggestion that we carry each other’s burdens.” Pastor Jenkins’s voice trembled with the beginnings of a melody. “He didn’t say we should only try reaching our brothers and sisters on our cell phones when we’re stuck in traffic or when we have nothing better to do.”

  Silas chuckled with several others in the group.

  “He didn’t say to bear each other’s burdens because we’re nice people and we want people to know it.”

  “Oh, Lord.” The woman behind Mia tsked to herself.

  “No, Paul said we must bear the burdens of our brothers and sisters because it is the law of Christ. Not a polite suggestion, but a law. I’m not sure about the people in this room, but I’ve never thought a law was a rule I could take or leave as the mood hit me.”

  Babs liked this analogy and shouted, “Amen!” Hers was the only voice raised in the small moment and Mia felt her cheeks color again. What would Dr. Finkelstein say if sh
e could see me now? she thought. Mia, a self-proclaimed agnostic, languishing in a church service next to the mother who could take credit for funding the orthodontic bills for two of Liza Finkelstein’s children. It had not escaped Mia that using part of her father’s inheritance to pay a therapist to exorcise the emotional demons created by Babs was ugly irony. But as Dr. Finkelstein liked to remind her patients, we do not choose our families, but we can choose what to do with the havoc they wreak.

  Pastor Jenkins had begun a lively discourse on what it meant for Ebenezer Church to be bearing the burdens of those in its community.

  “We need to stop expecting people who don’t know Jesus to act like they do!” He pounded once on the pulpit with a closed fist.

  Babs made some sort of circling motion with her hands and then drew them into a prayerful pose in front of her chest, eyes closed and head nodding. Mia wondered if perhaps Babs was mixing her recent experience at yoga with the trip to Ebenezer. Regardless, Mia knew she had neither the emotional fortitude nor the bladder strength to make it through what was sure to be an animated section of the sermon for her mother. She inched her way out of the pew and toward the back in search of a restroom.

  Grateful for the solitude, Mia lingered over the sink, washing her hands and checking out each pore on her face. She rummaged in her bag for lip gloss and a hairbrush. Mid-search, her cell phone vibrated against the outside of her bag. She checked the caller ID and froze with the phone vibrating wildly in her hand. After a deep breath she answered.

  “Hello.” She couldn’t bring herself to speak with a familiarity he no longer deserved.

  “Mia?” Lars’s voice sounded close enough to be in the same room. He was silent for a moment and then, “How are you?”

  Acid pushed into the back of her throat. “Oh, you know. Pregnant, abandoned by the father of my child, getting huge. Couldn’t be much better.” The bite of her sarcasm surprised Mia a bit but she hadn’t exactly rehearsed for the moment.

  Lars cleared his throat. “Um, did you get my letter?”

  “I did.” Her heart was racing so she sat on a folding chair by the window.

  “So is it okay that I called?”

  Mia sighed. “Lars, I’m not sure what you want from me.”

  “I don’t want anything,” Lars said quickly. “I mean, I’m not exactly in the position to be asking favors here.”

  “Good point.” Mia leaned her head back, letting it rest on the smooth pink tile of the wall behind her.

  They were silent, long enough for Mia’s breathing to calm and her emotions to start spiraling slowly back to the new normal.

  “How are you feeling?” Lars ventured.

  “Fairly well. The first few months weren’t so hot. I couldn’t eat much more than crackers and the occasional banana. But now,” she sighed. “Now I’m in the second trimester and feeling better.” She felt a sudden and overwhelming need for him to be there with her, see her, touch her belly, and talk to the baby she wasn’t sure she could face alone. Be honest, be patient, be myself. She heard Dr. Finkelstein’s slightly nasal voice intoning the mantra in her psyche. Be honest … and tell him I can’t stand what he did but I also can’t stand being alone? Mia felt, rather than heard how hollow and pathetic that sounded. She sat up in her chair, willing her spine to harden.

  “Where are you right now?” Lars asked.

  “Oh.” Mia’s thoughts flew back to her present location. “I’m in the ladies’ room of Ebenezer Church on the South Side. I’m here with my mother and Silas.”

  She heard a rustling noise as Lars adjusted the phone to his ear. “Did you just say you’re at a church with your mother?”

  “Right. And Silas. Remember Silas from the first floor?”

  “Of course I do.” Confusion dripped out of Lars’s voice. “But you’re at his church with your mother? Isn’t she on a ship somewhere?”

  “Actually she lives on the first floor of our building. My building.” The need to self-correct wearied her. “It’s amazing who sticks by a person when she really needs it.” She thought of Pastor Jenkins and the sermon that thundered on upstairs. Bearing another’s burden isn’t as poetic as it sounds, she thought, the weight of her belly pushing down on her legs until she shifted in the chair.

  “Listen, Mia,” Lars said. “I really want to try making things better. But placing blame will get us nowhere. We’re in this together.”

  “Really? Because the word together usually implies more than one person and so far I’ve been pretty much on my own in this.”

  “I know and I’m sorry. Didn’t you read the letter? I’m sorry, Mia, and I’m trying to make it right. Can you help me out here?”

  “Mm,” Mia said as her only reply.

  “Can you at least talk without getting so defensive and angry?”

  She waited a moment. The baby walloped one side of her womb as a prompt. Alone. The word took its time floating in a lazy arc through her mind. “I’ll try,” she said.

  “Great. That’s great,” Lars said. He sounded relieved. “I’ll let you get back to, um, church.… I didn’t know you were religious.”

  “I’m not,” Mia said hastily and then felt guilty for saying it. “Sometimes it’s just easier not to argue with my mother.”

  “I remember that,” Lars said, a bitter note dropping into his voice. “I’ll call soon. Good-bye, Mia.”

  Now there’s growth, she thought as she walked slowly back to the sanctuary, her feet whispering their way across the carpeted lobby. At least this time he said good-bye.

  15

  Sounds of Silence

  The office of Dr. Mahoney experienced a decorative renaissance during Mia’s first trimester. New carpet, new paint, and a series of black-and-white photographs glorifying the pregnant belly made over what had been a spatial tribute to beige and sea foam green. Still-fresh paint fumes pummeled patients entering the waiting room. This caused no small bit of consternation as Dr. Mahoney’s patient population was particularly sensitive to strong odors, even those of the latex, nontoxic variety. To remedy the situation, the receptionist offered, free of charge, the use of disposable surgical masks for those patients desiring an olfactory filter while they waited.

  A line of pregnant women sat in the new brightly upholstered chairs. Those early on in their gestational stages sat with exemplary prenatal posture and paged through the array of pregnancy and child care magazines. The women who tended toward waddling rather than walking looked significantly less impressed with the periodicals and breathed impatience with the very idea of pregnancy. A woman sitting next to Mia had given up on her maternity wardrobe entirely and wore a top that did not, unfortunately, reach to the bottom of her enormous belly. Mia averted her eyes and vowed never to reach the point of not caring that she showed her groceries, as it were, to a waiting room full of strangers.

  Mia caught the eye of a woman sitting opposite her and Babs. She followed the woman’s bemused expression and lighted on her mother.

  “How can you stand not using one of these?” Babs said through her surgical mask. She inhaled into the stiff blue material. “Those odors have to be carcinogenic. Or brain-cell killers.”

  Mia listened without comment.

  Babs pointed once more at the basket of masks. “They’re free!” she said, triumphant.

  Mia glanced around the room. Several of the women with little to show thus far in their pregnancies clutched the masks, but any woman beyond those first volatile months seemed oblivious to the paint smell. For Mia’s part she was grateful for the cause of the fumes and took comfort in the bright new colors of the office: lime green, lipstick red, turquoise, deep purple. She thought the change was inspiring, much more lively than the early nineties motif of pastels and floral art formerly on display.

  Babs marked her spot on the article she was read
ing in Star Weekly. She moved her mask to one side and whispered, “I hope you showered this morning.”

  Mia looked askance at her mother. “Pardon?”

  Babs raised her eyebrows in preemptive reproach. “The poor man has his nose in foo-foos all day. I would hope yours would represent our family well.”

  Mia stared at her mother, who donned the surgical mask once more and returned to her magazine.

  “From the looks of his color palette, this doctor must be some firecracker.” Babs spoke with the reverence she held for every physician she’d ever known. Mia had watched firsthand as Babs targeted the doctors and their spouses who traveled on cruises she worked. The vacationers were usually very patient with Babs and her pandering to the medical elite, though Mia knew of at least one instance in which an anesthesiologist had asked to be reassigned to a different excursion group when he found out Babs had aligned her workweek with his picks for recreation.

  “So? What’s he like?” Babs leaned forward in anticipation, for the moment forgetting about the mask. Doctors had this effect on her.

  “Dr. Mahoney?” Mia asked, doing her best to keep a straight face. “Oh, he’s a firecracker all right. And I’m sure you two will get along like old pals.”

  Babs sighed happily. In just one afternoon she would get to see the ultrasound of her first grandbaby and meet a physician. Mia saw the contentedness settle in Babs’s eyes and face.

  When the nurse led them back to an open examination room, Babs took her time perusing the framed diplomas lining one wall. “Ooh, Northwestern University for undergrad. I think that’s where Emeril went. Or maybe that was a different Northwestern.”

  Mia left her purse on a chair and climbed the one step up to the exam table. She forced herself to have tall posture, even on what felt like a paper-lined pedestal.

  “Dr. Mahoney went to medical school at the Mayo Clinic! Can you believe that, Mia? Remember Great Aunt Ruthie McGilvra? She had her gall bladder removed at the Mayo Clinic. It’s a wonderful facility. That Arab sheik person died there just last week.”