“You’ll need to take off your skirt and top and your underwear,” she says, closing the door behind her. I change and lie face-up on the table, with the sheet wrapped around my lower half. When Dr. Palmer returns, I see her start to put on a pair of white gloves, and I close my eyes.
I’m on the beach. Salt air eases in through my nostrils, filling my lungs, making my chest expand. Sky a deep blue higher up above me and farther out, where the water deepens, free of seaweed and rocks.
“You still with me, Indira?” Dr. Palmer’s voice shakes me back to this place—stark fluorescent lights, pressed-board ceiling tiles, the smell of disinfectant and harsh soap. Crinkle of examination table paper. Cold medical utensils against me. The doctor looks up from down by my knees. I feel sick.
“Good. That part’s done.” She takes her gloves off and tosses them, scrubbing her hands in the sink. “Everything looks just fine. Based on your weight and measurements, I’d say you are approximately twenty weeks along.”
I sit up, rearranging the sheet tightly over my legs.
“Does the father know you’re pregnant yet?”
“It doesn’t have a father.” I get the feeling I’m going to have to say that many, many times.
“You sure you don’t want to—”
“No!”
If she’s taken aback, she doesn’t show it. “Where were you living before, Indy?” she asks instead.
“By my aunt.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s not here.”
“Does your aunt know about the baby?”
At one time, I would have said a definite no, that Aunt Patrice would never let me be in the house if she knew. Now I remember her face in the kitchen yesterday, how she ducked Ms. Wilson’s calls. I’m not so sure anymore. I shrug.
“You think you can tell her? Or someone else in your family? Someone close to you?”
I think of Grammy in that nursing home, her face distorted with shame. The room’s starting to do that shrinking thing. “Maybe,” I lie.
“Good. Now, I’ve written down for you to come back during regular hours and let the technician do an ultrasound for you. I’m sending you for a few blood tests, too, and you’ll have to give us a urine sample at the same time.” She reaches for the stethoscope on the counter. “I’ll need to open the gown now so I can check your stomach,” she says, motioning for me to lie back again. She presses different spots on my belly, feeling for something. “Indy, I have to ask you again about the baby’s father. Do you know who he is? We need to . . .”
I tune her out, focusing on breathing deeply, eyes on the ceiling. I imagine sand under my toes, imagine my hands, palms pressed together, fingers stretched out, base to base and tip to tip, mirroring each other. I imagine tree pose, feet rooting me down, head stretching up, hair sprouting out like summer leaves, lush and shady.
The room has gone quiet.
“You have any questions for me?” Dr. Palmer asks. At least she’s stopped asking about a father, about my family.
“Are you sure it’s okay?”
She smiles. “Your baby? Yes. Heard the heartbeat for myself.”
Heartbeat. There’s a heartbeat. “You did?”
“I asked if you wanted to hear it too, but I think you were distracted. I’ll let you listen. Why don’t you take a few minutes and get dressed first?” she says, stepping out into the hall.
When Dr. Palmer returns, she has me sit again, with my shirt pulled up, and puts the stethoscope against my belly, listening through the earpieces. She repositions it a few times. “Oh, you’ve got a real swimmer in there. Bouncing all around the place. Hold on. Hold on. Yes, I found it.” She hands me the earpieces, and I put them up to my head. First, nothing special, just a noise like wind or rushing water. Then she adjusts it slightly and the sound comes whooshing in.
Tickythumtickythumtickythumtickythumtickythumtickythumtickythumtickythum. It’s so quick it makes my fastest, in-my-ears heartpound seem like a slow drumbeat. I close my eyes. This time, I’m not escaping. I’m trying to focus hard, to catch the sound of this thing in me. Every beat is so big, so loud, so there. Wanted or not, it’s there. Like me. “You hear that? Some people say it’s like horses galloping,” Dr. Palmer says.
“Is it scared?”
“No, the fetus’s heartbeat is always very quick. Perfectly normal for five months in.”
I could listen all night, but finally, she reaches for the earpieces, cleaning off the stethoscope and hanging it up. Below her row of instruments, I catch sight of a shelf crammed with books.
“Have you been reading up on what’s happening to your body and your baby?” She slides two or three books off the shelf and hands them to me. The Big Pregnancy Book; Your Baby; The First Nine Months.
I shake my head. “I already have a book. One from my grammy. She put all her own stories in there.”
Dr. Palmer smiles. “She was really looking out for you.”
As we walk down the hall together, I feel another flutter again. This is real. This is my baby.
• • •
In the car, Joe brings me right back down to earth.
“You thought about what I said? About the father?”
I turn to look out the window, watching us fly past houses. The island is slowly starting to wake up, people waiting at the bus stop, cars beginning to clog up the roads.
“Well, you need to think about it. Is this person going to be coming by the retreat?”
“No!”
“Good.” Joe glances over at me when we stop for a red light. “I might not know your full story, but I know someone’s done something wrong, Indira. You were underage, end of story. You need to speak up about it.”
Something about Joe’s words rubs me the wrong way. I can’t tell her everything; I know Joe well enough to understand that if I do, it won’t be a single conversation, but the start of many long ones, and I’m not ready for that. But I am ready for her to know what kind of person I am. I don’t want her to look at me the way Aunt Patrice did. I don’t want anyone to see me that way ever again.
“I don’t have a boyfriend. You mightn’t believe me, but I don’t.”
“So you broke up with this person?”
“No.”
“You’re still seeing this person?”
“I never had a boyfriend. I was never with anybody that way.” I don’t mean to say it out loud, and as soon as I do, I know I’ve said too much. I can see Joe’s face change: the scolding look disappears, replaced by surprise and concern.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.”
I can tell she wants to push more, but the light turns green, the car behind her honking furiously. I turn back to the window, letting the breeze whip my face. It’s straight driving the rest of the way to the retreat, and even though Joe doesn’t ask again, I know it’s only because she understands I won’t answer. She must sense there’s something more, something big. It’s a wonder the car doesn’t crash; I can feel her staring at me the whole way.
• • •
“This yours?” Dion holds out the cell phone to me, an ate-the-whole-rum-cake grin on his face. His forehead is shining in the Saturday-morning sun.
“Oh.” I take it, brushing off bits of grass and leaf clippings clinging to the screen. Sand grains are wedged in its grooves. It’s a miracle the screen isn’t cracked, only a few scrapes on the case. “Thanks.”
“I found it there.” He points over to a cluster of scrubby beach plants.
“What you was doin? Landscaping the sand?”
“Looking to see who sent what flying in there. You’d be surprised what I find. Once, it was two cups from the kitchen, and a fifty-dollar bill underneath. Next time, a gold necklace inside an empty crab shell.”
I wait to see if he’ll ask what I’m doing here so early, if he’ll mention my being pregnant; if Joe hasn’t told him, he must have figured it out on his own. When he says nothing, I slip the phone
into my pocket. The battery’s dead; I’ll charge it later. “So I tried a new pose. Ballerina or something.”
“Oh yeah? Helped your balance?” he says, taking my cue.
“I fell out of it three times.”
“Man, you ain a pro till you fall out of a pose.” He slides a plant out of its pot, its flowers trembling like enormous peachy-pink bells, and drops it carefully into a hole in the ground. “Try it, let me see. Go on, I’ll look away while you get into it, if you shame.”
“I ain shame of nothing.” I tilt forward, lifting one leg off the ground, stretching my body out. There’s an instant, fleeting and sweet, between precarious and perfect, where I find a bizarre stillness. Then I feel myself teetering and let go, windmilling my arms to catch balance that only comes when both feet are back on the ground.
“Okay, so it’s dancer’s pose, not ballerina, so you ain gotta dip and twirl,” he chuckles, starting to dig another hole. “First, you gotta clear your mind. Next, pick one thing to stare at. And then you concentrate, and you relax. You don’t fight. You bring up the arm on one side. Then you get the balance on that other leg, bring the other hand back to your foot, and you lift slowly and—” He stands up and demonstrates, easy, no big deal. Glances over at me. “Wanna give it another try?”
I shake my head and he laughs as he comes down, taking up his shovel. “Take it easy, girlie,” he says. When he’s far enough away, I scan left, right. It’s clear. Breathing first, then finding a knot on the almond tree’s bark. I focus on that while I bring up my right arm. Bend my left leg so my toes point toward the sky. Bring my left hand back and hold that foot. Wobble, then down. Deep breath. Start again. This time, I am up, reaching, arm forward, leg backward, body in the middle, other leg an anchor, holding me. Part of me wants to laugh, to dance, to twist and shake and bounce with pride. The other part wants to stay here, just be. I feel graceful and strong.
“Hey, you’re doing it!” Dion calls from across the grove, and breaks out into a jig, shoulders one way, hips the next. As I start to laugh, I feel myself falling out of the pose. I let it happen, the falling, the laughter. Know the ground will surge up to catch me, let me try again.
• • •
At lunch, Dion, Maya, Susan, and I pile up plates with lentil stew, brown rice, some of Dion’s subversive kale, and pumpkin fritters. We eat sitting on the beach, in the shade. The sea is rough today, the tide creeping up higher and higher, nearing our bare feet.
“You should grow a whole bunch more veggies.” Susan stuffs a forkful of kale into her mouth. “This is better than anything we can buy.”
“Hey, give the cook some credit,” Maya pipes up.
“Yes, Maya. We all know you could cook,” Susan says, pacifying.
“Yeah, well.” Dion rests his plate on the sand, crossing his legs. “We got plenty room for more veggies, but you know what a certain someone ga say bout that.”
“What?” I ask.
“ ‘This is a yoga retreat, not a farm.’ ” Maya does a perfect impression of grumpy Joe.
“ ‘The garden,’ ” Susan says, her words muffled by a fritter, “ ‘is for beauty and serenity.’ ”
“ ‘Vegetable patches smell like manure,’ ” Maya chimes in again.
Susan chuckles. “What Joe don’t know is, Dion dug up squares of grass all over the place. Peas out behind the kitchen, Swiss chard by the office, ten rows of carrots beside the laundry, and pumpkin in the back of the cabins.”
“And manure pile up on all,” Dion adds.
Their chatter is homey, making a soft space for me to sink into. In that space, though, problems intrude on my peace. Smiley and her smart ideas. Get with Churchy, sleep with Churchy, let people think it’s Churchy’s. Yet people believe I’m the slut. But no one would ever think anything bad of little Smiley. My mind wanders to Grammy, stuck in that awful place with its stale smell. What if something happened to her and I had never told her goodbye? Living in that place must be slowly draining her life away. But she sent me here, she told Mamma to do it. And she knew, she gave me that book. That book, which I’m wishing I had now.
“This one already in deep meditation.” Dion’s voice brings me back to the beach. “What you thinkin about over there?”
“Nothing.” I glance over and catch Maya staring at me. “This food is good, Maya.”
“Thanks,” she says, then turns to Dion. “You wanna bring me another plate of the fritters?”
Dion pops the last forkful of food into his mouth. “Indy, you want anything?” he asks as he gets up. I shake my head.
“I’ll come with you,” Susan says, following him. When they’re out of earshot, Maya edges over close to me.
“How you doin?”
“Fine.”
“I have three children, you know.”
“That’s nice.” I try to sound calm. My hands go to my belly and this time I don’t stop them. My body feels more and more unfamiliar, rounder, firmer in the middle instead of soft. The baby kicks back in response.
“How many months?” Maya asks softly.
I set my empty plate down on the sand. “Joe told you?”
“I had a hunch. Anybody could see it if they know how to look.”
“Apparently everyone know how to look.”
“You scared?”
“A little.”
“Your mummy here?”
“No,” I say. Then I add, “My grammy is, though. In an old folks’ home.”
“Well, you ain gotta be scared. Your body will know what to do when your time comes. And you ain by yourself, you know. Joe, me, Susan, we all had children. All of us been through it. You can even talk to your grammy.”
“Were you scared?” I ask her. “With yours?”
Maya leans back on her elbows, stretching her plump legs out on the sand. “Yes, with my first. My mummy passed when I was in my second month, and I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know Joe and Susan then, and my friends didn’t have kids yet. I never felt so alone. But I had a good nurse, she sat and talked with me, and she told me what was going on, how I had to open up to a certain size, and then my body would push and the baby would come out.”
“Did it take long?”
“Everybody’s different, but the first time can be slow. I was in labor for sixteen hours. Susan, hers was twenty-two.”
“Almost a whole day?” Grammy’s book didn’t say anything about it taking that long. Or maybe I missed that part. I’ve avoided thinking about what happens in four months, when a whole baby has to come out of there.
“Like I tell you, every situation’s different.” Maya reaches over and pats my arm. “Hang with us. You’ll be fine.”
“Fresh lunch top-up, delivered right to your table, ma’am.” Dion swaggers over, a dried palm leaf draped over his arm like a rustic butler as he presents the plate to Maya.
“Gimme my food. Your silly self,” Maya laughs.
“Brought you a drink. Veggie wine.” Dion winks at me, handing me a glass of beet juice. “Maya, some guests asking for you, they had some questions about your food.”
Maya hoists herself to her feet, dusting the sand off her legs. “Remember what I tell you, Indy,” she calls over her shoulder.
Settling back into the sand, I taste the juice.
“How is it?” he asks.
“Sweet.”
Dion smiles over at me. “They say that one’s good for the mothers.”
I sigh, sitting back up. “Anybody around here don’t know?”
He picks up a sun-bleached seashell, flicking it away. “Nothing stays a secret forever.”
I don’t think he’d be so carefree about bringing it up if he knew the whole story. Maybe it’s okay that he doesn’t know. I’ve finally gotten away from Gary. Maybe it’s better if Dion thinks I got this baby with a boyfriend. It’d be easier than telling him what really happened. So far, Grammy knows, and Churchy, and telling them didn’t help me one bit. “Really think that’s true
?” I say. “About secrets?”
“Well, sure. The truth wants to dance in the light.”
I think it over. Not all truths are the dancing kind, but maybe they do need to be told and heard, even the ugly ones. Grammy already knows my secret; it’s time I know hers. I have to find out why she gave me that book.
“Hey, Dion,” I say. “Could I get a ride with you after work? Out to Sunset Home?”
16
THIS TIME, I HURRY through the old folks’ home, heading straight for the room.
“Grammy?”
A different woman looks up from the chair. All Grammy’s stuff is gone, the cane replaced with a walker. The curtains are drawn against the daylight. My lunch threatens to come back up, and I’m starting to get that tight feeling in my chest. No. I have to do this. I swallow hard.
“Excuse me, you know where the other lady, Ms. Ferguson, went?”
The woman scrutinizes me with beady eyes. A pointy nose juts out of her sunken face.
“I’m her granddaughter, I came to see her.” My voice is getting louder. I shouldn’t be shouting at her, but why isn’t Grammy here? “She was right here last time.”
“Nurse! Nurse!” the woman starts calling. “Oh, Nurse. Whoa, Nurse.” The same worker from before comes bustling out of a room, clutching a spray bottle and a rag.
“What is it, Ms. Ruth?” the worker asks, irritated. Then she sees me. “Can I help you?”
“My grammy. She was in this room.”
“This girl yellin. Get her outta here, Nurse,” the woman orders.
“Ms. Ferguson? From the island?” My voice is too loud now. I know I should breathe deeply, but I can’t in here. Is Grammy wearing diapers now? Did they move her to another home? Is she even alive—
“Get her out, Nurse. And she pregnant, too, look, you could see she pregnant. What any pregnant girl doin here? Too much fuss. Too loud. You too loud. You and that baby. Too much noise.”
“That’s fine, Ms. Ruth, you settle down, I’ll show her out,” the worker says. She turns to me. “Come, let’s go. This ain no time to visit, we tryin to get them cleaned up and ready for dinner.”
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