“I mean you really can’t tell.”
“Well, you haven’t seen me without these artful garments.” She pulled back her long tunic, and yes, she most certainly was quite convex.
“Are you sure you have your dates right?” I asked and then added, “I didn’t even know you were in love.”
“I am, with this guy right here,” she said, pointing to her belly. “But I must admit I never met the papa. I picked him out of a book for his great brains and curly hair. So I know I have my dates right, down to the hour. I’m thirty and I know that’s not old for having a first kid, but it just seems like the right time for me. If I ever meet my grown-up prince, he’s going to have to consider little boys value added.”
“You already knew you were going to do this when you came to Stefan with your idea.”
“I was pretty sure I was going to do it. That was a big factor in why I wrote to him. I wanted to make myself right with the universe before I welcomed my son into it.”
“You’ll have lots of aunties to fuss over him.”
“I didn’t count on that part! They already fuss over me! I gained no weight for the first few months, but twenty-five pounds in the past two months. I may not show much, but I feel the size of a sumo wrestler. I feel like my body gets across the room before my brain catches up to it.”
“Are you going to stay here after the baby is born?”
Becky said, “Of course. This is my house, and it’s my home. And it’s my job. I’m going to have someone help me with the day-to-day for the first few months.”
“Are you worried about living with…？”
“With addicts? I’m not. Are you worried about living with Stefan? Of course you’re not,” Rebecca said. “But don’t feel bad for wondering. It’s a legitimate question.” She added, “None of these women was ever violent, Thea. The only ones they hurt were themselves.”
We ate ropa vieja, black beans and rice with tomatoes and corn fritters with the residents with crema Catalana and espresso to follow. These women could cook. Seeing them sitting there in the candlelight, the youngest a freckled twenty-two-year-old, the oldest in her fifties, with a froth of silver hair that fell past her shoulders, it was difficult to imagine any of them so desperate for a drink that they had lost families, careers, homes. It hadn’t occurred to me when I called Becky that we would be having dinner with them, and that all of them would know my son’s role in The Healing Project and its establishment of The Alice Hodge Safe Home. About that part, they could not have seemed more grateful or complimentary. A couple of them were local, and knew about Stefan’s history. A few had watched the public television episode we had shot at our house. Another had seen a photo of Belinda with Stefan as part of the Mother’s Day broadcast of Say Her Name, a PBS special last year about college girls killed by their boyfriends, including Belinda, and Jill’s activism against domestic partner abuse.
“It must be so hard,” said the beautiful woman with the cloud of silver hair.
“It is,” I admitted. “It’s getting better, but it will never go away.”
“You probably feel so guilty. It’s not your fault.”
I didn’t know where to look or what to say. The expectant silence stretched. I half expected Becky to jump in and throw up some kind of conversational diversion. When she didn’t, I realized that this was a house where banter had no place and deep revelations were everyday fare.
“I struggled with that. We both still do. I felt remiss for not knowing everything my own son was involved in.”
“But you raised him,” said Margo, one of the younger women, a kindergarten teacher who had nearly died from liver damage. “As a mother, wouldn’t you ask yourself, what should I have done? If he was abusing her all that time.”
Should I correct her? I knew how it would sound. These were AA women, who knelt on the Twelve Steps like stations of the cross, and they brooked no excuses.
“He didn’t abuse her. That is what some people believe. That is what Belinda’s mother believes. But I believe that whatever violence happened that night, however it happened, happened just that once.”
“What did happen?” asked Margo.
Again, their blunt inquiry left me speechless. I glanced at Becky, who made the slightest gesture of a shrug. “Belinda died from a blow to the head with a golf club,” she said. “Thea, do you want to add more about that?”