Immaculate (30 page)

“I c-can't . . .” he stuttered. “I can't believe you just said that to me. I can't believe that's what this meant to you.”

“It's not,” I said, pleading. “I didn't mean that. I care about you, Jesse, I really do, I just—”

“I can't talk about this right now, Mina. I can't even look at you right now.” His feet fumbled as he backed away from me toward the door. “I just need to go.”

“Don't . . .” The word cracked on my lips. He stepped out of the room, leaving me, his footsteps quiet and cautious down the stairs.

I was mad at myself for yelling at him, but at the same time—didn't I deserve to be angry? Didn't I have that right?

I'd never asked for any of this, and now I was rebuilding my entire life. For a decision that had never really been mine to make. I hadn't gotten drunk or been knocked up by some stupid one-night stand. I hadn't even had sex—let alone unprotected sex—with a serious boyfriend.

I'd be fast-forwarding through the college years, the years where it was okay to be a little bit irresponsible, reckless. Selfish. There'd be no becoming best friends with my freshman roommate, no flirting with the cute boy sitting behind me in English Theory 101, no getting too drunk and making careless, awful decisions, and spending the next morning laughing over all of them with my new friends, glad—proud even—to have made them.

I'd spent my whole life walking a narrow line, trying not to make mistakes—not to make a
single fucking mistake
. Was that why I was chosen? Because somebody up there thought I was so goddamn perfect?

“I'm not perfect, Iris!” I screamed, shaking off the blanket and grabbing at the first thing my eyes landed on to throw—Nate's anniversary watch, still on my nightstand, though I'd stopped wearing it weeks ago. I hurled it across the room, gloating at the satisfying thump as it hit the wall. “I'm not fucking perfect, and I want my fucking life back!”

Silence. Nothing but the dark, empty house to answer to me.

“Did you hear me?” I yelled, louder this time. My throat burned. “Take it back, Iris! Take it all fucking back! I know you're there. I've seen you. I've seen you, Iris! Stop hiding!”

“She won't come back, Mina, not when you talk to her like that.”

I shrieked, my heart pounding in my chest, before I realized that it was Gracie. She was standing in the doorway, soft light from the hallway framing her tiny body.

“What are you talking about, Gracie?”

“Iris. She won't come if you're screaming at her like that.”

“What do you know about Iris? You've never seen her. I do. I see her, Gracie. I haven't told anyone, but I still see her sometimes.”

“I see her, too, Mina. She's everywhere.”

A chill prickled along my spine as I stared at her, my mouth gaping open.

“How . . . ?”

“She's there when you need her most, I think. When you're really sad, or maybe when you're really happy, too.” She pushed herself onto the bed and crawled to squeeze in next to me. “When I get mad at school about something somebody says about you, or when I can't sleep at night because I'm scared about what's going to happen to you and the baby . . . that's when I see her. She never says anything, but she smiles at me. She smiles with those happy green eyes. And that's enough. I always feel okay again when I see her.”

“But I don't get it. How did you know it was Iris? How did you know about her green eyes? I never told you that.”

“I just knew.” She shrugged. “Who else would it be?”

“Why haven't you told me?” I asked, my lips still shaking.

She scrunched her face. “I don't know. I guess I was worried you'd think I was making it up, maybe. Because even though I think she's real when I see her, she always disappears right away. Like a ghost or something. I was scared no one would believe me.”

“I believe you, Gracie,” I said, and sighed. “I'll always, always believe you.”

I knew that I hadn't just imagined Iris at school or at church, or in that depressing old restaurant. She was real, just like my baby was real.

I don't really want Iris to take you back,
I said in my head, desperately hoping that the baby could somehow hear me. I felt hot and sick with shame, as if flames were burning holes through my stomach.
I didn't mean that, not at all. I wouldn't trade you in for anything or anyone.

Both of us were silent after that, and when Gracie's breathing fell into a slow rhythm next to me, I closed my eyes and prayed.

Not to God, because I still wasn't sure who or what that was.

But to Iris. I prayed to Iris.

• • •

I woke up on New Year's Day puffy-eyed but determined—determined to make the best of a fresh start. I wrote up a list of resolutions, which I'd never done before, and every single one revolved around the baby. Because that was what this New Year would be: all about the baby. Not about me. Not what I wanted. Not
who
I wanted. There would be time for that—for me—later, after the baby was born, and after life settled again. But I couldn't sit around sulking and brooding. It was a relief, really, to have no choice but to pick myself up and move past it all. Just one more reason I was glad to have this baby growing inside of me. I was learning what it really meant to be
selfless
.

I needed to apologize to Jesse, but I didn't know where to begin. I didn't know of any words that could possibly undo the ones I'd already used. So I decided not to call, not right away. I needed time to get the apology right, and besides that, he deserved some time away from me. I didn't have to wait long, though, because he called me the day after New Year's, the day before we'd be going back to school for the new semester.

“I finished the video,” he said, all businesslike and matter-of-fact. “Do you want me to come over tonight to show you guys?”

“Sure. That sounds great,” I said, cringing at the false, cheery ring of my voice. I opened my mouth to say more, but the words stuck in my throat. Jesse was silent for a few awkward beats, too, before he said a clipped good-bye and the line went dead.

I sighed, frustrated with myself. I needed to say something—he deserved that much at the very least. I was scared to lose him, but I was just as scared to get any closer. There seemed to be no winning here, no easy way to crawl out of the big hole I kept on digging.

I called Hannah and invited her over, too, hoping that she'd buffer at least some of the awkwardness. I still hadn't told her about any of it, not even that first kiss on my birthday. She suspected something, I could tell, but she hadn't asked, and I hadn't offered. I was too conflicted—and now too ashamed—to explain myself, even to her.

Jesse and I barely glanced at each other when he walked into the living room a few hours later. Hannah filled the void, just as I'd predicted, telling us all in great detail about her resolution to read a book every week for the next year, fifty-two books in fifty-two weeks. As she rambled, my whole family huddled around Jesse and the TV.

“I'm pretty excited about how it turned out,” Jesse said, sounding anxious as he inserted a disc and fidgeted with the settings on the screen. “But don't be afraid to offer up any constructive criticism. You all need to be happy with it, too, of course.”

We all fell silent as the video started playing—a shot of my house with the rising sun glowing just behind it, squares of light shining from my bedroom window and the kitchen, where my mom was probably standing, pouring her first mug of coffee.

And then, in a blink, it was my face, my voice. “I wake up every morning and the first thing I think, every single time, is
I'm pregnant. I'm having a baby
.” I was sitting at my desk, my hair still wet from my shower, just about to read through the newest website posts. “At first, in the beginning, that was a bad thing. Like I was waking up from a nightmare, and then I'd remember that it was my reality and I'd want to pull the covers over my face and hide from everything for the rest of my life.” I smiled as the camera zoomed in, a small, sad smile that didn't reach my eyes. “But it started getting easier every day, a little bit more and more. Now when I wake up, I think
I'm having a baby!
and I remember that I'm not alone in my bed, that there's this little human being right there inside me. I hope that every mom feels that. That every mom feels like her baby is her own special miracle, just like I do.”

I talked about Iris next, though I didn't use her name, and I didn't reveal everything she had said either, or all the little, more peripheral details—the way she dressed, the way she talked, the way the blue of her old veins had almost shone through her translucent skin. Somehow it didn't feel right to tell the camera everything. I wanted to keep most of Iris for myself. But I did explain, of course, that she'd left me with a cryptic message about the world's troubles, and about the mysterious baby to come. I told them about the dream I'd had that night, the symptoms that popped up one by one soon after. Watching myself on the screen now, studying each tiny twitch, I could see fear etched on my face, but there was more than that—reverence, maybe. Awe.

From there, viewers would quickly get a heavy dose of the many low points to come—me reading some of the more disturbing online posts, including a note that suggested I actually be crucified in public, both as my punishment and as a lesson to others. “If we let her go, we're just begging God for an apocalypse.” There were many less sinister, just plain cruel posts, too, about my baby weight, about how ugly and pathetic I was, about how desperate I must be for any kind of attention. I wasn't crying while I read any of them out loud, which I was proud of—I looked surprisingly calm, actually, just exhausted.

The camera moved on as Jesse guided us through a standard day, Gracie chattering about baby names over frozen waffles, blatant stares and whispers as we navigated the hallway to my locker. I pulled out a note that had been wedged in the locker vent, tossing it on the ground without bothering to read it. I hadn't realized at the time, but Jesse had panned the camera down and focused on the sloppily scrawled message:
You're not special. You're just a slut.
Not one of the more eloquent letters, but at least not as damning as some. There was a rapid montage of me in classes—a lot of yawning and staring off into space, slouched at my desk and avoiding any kind of student or teacher interaction. Doing my best to be invisible. I hadn't realized how obvious I'd made it that I was so completely detached from all of it—except for one brief slip in European History, the frown on my lips as I looked down at the graded exam that had just landed on my desk, a bright red
C
at the top.

As difficult as it was to see myself on film—my expressions, the way the world responded around me—the interviews that followed were even harder to watch. Jesse had done most of the shooting without me in the room, so the footage was new to me.

“It's hard to be in school sometimes because of what some of the other kids say.” Gracie was curled up in a ball on the sofa in our living room, her little fingers twisting the frayed blanket on her lap as she avoided looking up at the camera. “Like today . . .” She paused, and I could tell from the pink in her cheeks that she was trying her best not to cry for the recording. “Today someone asked me how I can still love my sister when she's such a liar. They said I was just as bad as her for going along with everything, and that our whole family should just leave Green Hill. Even my best friend won't talk to me, but you know what? That's okay, because I don't want to talk to her, either. I can't be friends with anyone who is mean to Mina.”

“Are you excited, then? About the baby?” Jesse's voice came quietly from behind the camera, prompting her.

Gracie's eyes lit up. “Of course I'm excited! I'm going to be an aunt! I know that Mina is really young to have a baby . . . and that there's been a lot of bad things happening because of it. But I think that this baby happened for a reason, and that it's meant to be this way. And I also think that Mina is special. This baby will be special. I just want to be the best sister and the best aunt I can be, because Mina needs me. My family needs me.”

My mom came next, talking about how she had believed me from the very first second—trusted with her all-knowing motherly intuition—and how proud she'd been to watch me, my transformation from daughter into mother. My dad was more vague regarding what he believed or didn't believe about my story, but he trembled as he admitted that he'd turned his back on me for too long. He'd let his own expectations get in the way of protecting and supporting me.

“I will never, ever abandon my own family again,” he said, staring unblinking into the camera, even as his voice broke and a stream of tears ran down his cheek. “Not for anything. Not even for a moment. I've learned a very valuable lesson from my role in all this.”

I looked over at him as the video played, at his face hidden behind his palms, hands kneading into his tired eyes, and I felt myself step toward him. I had already forgiven him that night on the porch. Or at least I'd said the words out loud then, because I'd wanted to wash it all off. I'd wanted to take us back to normal as quickly as possible. But I felt it again now—I
really
felt it. We—every one of us in that room—had learned lessons. We were all changed, and we were probably better people because of it. My dad wasn't perfect, but he was trying his best. That was all any of us could do.

“I forgive you,” I whispered, wrapping an arm around his waist as I leaned into his chest. “It's time for you to forgive yourself, too.”

He didn't say anything back, but he didn't have to. He hugged me, and we stayed like that, tangled up together, as the footage played on.