Heather(59)

“My daughter made that one.” She touches the beads and smiles to herself. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Anna,” you say, your throat too clogged with worry to get the rest of it out.

“Anna, nice to meet you. Sorry the car is such a mess; hard to keep up with the little ones, you know.”

She gestures behind her and it is only then that you register the two car seats, the plastic rattles and dinosaur figurines on the floor, the fine orange crumbs that maybe were Cheez-Its or Goldfish crackers before getting pulverized in tiny fists, under tiny feet.

Tammy is nothing like you thought she’d be. You realized you expected someone younger, hipper, more like Miss Hamilton. Even now speeding along with Tammy in her minivan you feel the urge to call Miss Hamilton, to tell her the truth. To be with her instead.

“You’re quiet. It’s okay. Most of the girls are when I pick them up. But you’ll feel so much better once you meet with Brenda and Fran down at the center. Believe me, swear to Jesus I’ve seen it so many times myself. Girls just like you, desperate and without anybody in the world to talk to, to help them, and don’t they just walk out of there whistling—whistling!—like new women, seeing the world in brighter colors.”

You smile, surprised at the cheer with which she’s talking about it, this thing. Talking more openly than anyone you’ve ever heard, really. This mother with crushed crackers and a sticky film of spilled juice covering her car. “That will be good. I haven’t told … I haven’t talked to anyone. No one knows.”

Even describing how the secret is a secret makes you feel unburdened, without having to even use the words you’ve been afraid of, the ones you’ve been avoiding, kept in a dark box in your mind for all these months.



* * *



After twenty-five minutes in the car Tammy pulls up to a ranch house painted a faded blue gray. There’s two other cars parked in the yard, a maroon Oldsmobile and a station wagon with wood paneling along the sides.

“Here we are!”

By the door there is a name, Preston, and underneath the name a paper label edged with masking tape: Women-First Pregnancy Crisis Center. It is written in faded marker, black turned navy blue.

Tammy lets herself in. “Fran? Brenda? I’m here with Miss Anna.”

They step into a living room with crocheted blankets thrown over the back of the sofa in lumpy piles, hooked rugs on the floor, another cross on the wall—this one white, with a mournful Jesus draped across it. Little bowls of potpourri on the end tables. How can they do everything here, you wonder. You had expected a doctor’s office like the one your mother took you to when you needed shots as a child. White walls and fluorescent lights, padded tables covered with paper that crackled when you moved. A thought rises up that you try to quiet. They can’t help you here. You concentrate on the potpourri, the sickle of a dried orange nestled among the flower buds and cinnamon sticks until you feel someone else enter the room.

“Hello there, I’m Fran. Please, make yourself comfortable. Brenda will be right out too.”

Fran is older than Tammy, with woolly hair cropped close to her head and deep wrinkles around her mouth. She wears a crewneck sweatshirt with a turtleneck underneath, and still rubs her hands together and complains of the cold. “Brenda is my daughter,” she confides.

“Is she a doctor?” you ask.

Fran looks at Tammy for a moment, something passing between them, before looking back at you. “Brenda, please come meet Anna.”

You expect Brenda to greet you in the bright scrubs you remember from those visits all those years ago, the rubber gloves that the doctor snapped on her wrists, but instead she’s just another woman like Tammy and Fran, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt that says HARRAHS CASINO RESORT across the front.

“Anna, can I get you anything? Tea? Water?” You smell something new, now that you’ve gotten used to the potpourri, and then a glance to the kitchen floors helps you make sense of it. A litter box, one that has not been cleaned in a while.

“No thank you.”

“We’re here to take care of you, Anna. Maybe you’ll change your mind about a drink. Whatever it is you need, you just let us know, okay? This is a precarious and special time for you. We’re here to look after you.”

Even though you sense something is essentially off about the situation, you feel relieved, the way you did on the phone. You try to relax, to let their reassurances wash over you. They are here to take care of you. When was the last time someone offered to get you a drink? Not since your mother.

“Tell us a little about what brought you here,” Tammy says, tilting her head.

When you speak, the words come out so quietly that they are nothing more than a whisper. “I just want it to be over. I just want to go back to how it was. I want—I want my life back.”

The women exchange looks again. Let your words hang in the air for a long time, long enough that you start to wonder if you are allowed to want those things. But if they don’t agree with you, why would they say they can help you in the first place?

Fran puts a hand on your knee. “Anna, there are things in life that we can’t take back. I know it doesn’t seem right. But we can’t go back in time. We can’t turn our backs on blessings we are given. Even if those blessings come to us in ways we aren’t expecting. And it would be a shame to waste those blessings. To think of them as burdens.”