Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

“Maybe! I don’t know! Anyway, I’m pregnant; I had like multiple tests and everything.”

There was a pause. Bernice didn’t know how to react.

“Are we like happy?” asked Bernice. “Are you going to keep it?”

“Bernice,” Sally said, skipping over the question. “Do you know what this baby’s due date is? Do you know—can you figure it out?”

“Can’t the doctor figure that out?” asked Bernice. Meanwhile, Laverne answered the door. It was her boss. She clapped her hand to her head and bowed at the knees.

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Sally. “I’m saying, do you know? Never mind. I’ll tell you. It’s November eleventh!”

“Eleven eleven?”

“I know!” Sally gasped.

“That’s auspicious.”

“Auspicious for twinning. For twinning souls.”

“I mean, who knows if the baby will even come on its due date, though … sometimes they—”

“Listen,” Sally jumped in. “Remember when we were kids, and our parents got divorced, and I had that stupid crush on Sam Thomas—”

“He said you wore him out,” Bernice reminded her.

“Yes, exactly, and we were like, bah, boo on love, boo on romance, who needs it?”

“Who needs boys!” said Bernice.

“Do you remember, though, the conversations we used to have about arranged marriage? I mean, really, we were like twelve or something when we thought of it. When did we get so smart?”

“Of course I remember that,” said Bernice. It had been a few years since they’d talked about it. Bernice thought Sally had forgotten. Laverne was putting on her coat and hat and grabbing her purse in a very purposeful manner. She had a ritual for these things—a way to put on the hat, the coat, to clothe herself for the world outside the apartment set.

“Do you remember what we talked about—”

“Oh, no, Sally. No, hold on—” Bernice got up and began to walk toward the front door.

“We wanted to have two babies,” Sally repeated. “And like we would raise them, and then separate them—”

“Yeah, I remember those conversations.” She found herself in the kitchen, pulled out a sauce pan, and slammed it down on the stove.

“And they would love each other. They could marry each other, be perfect for each other—”

“Sally!”

“And now,” Sally went on, breathless and sniffing up her tears, “Look at this? I’m pregnant and due November eleventh! Bernice, we can do it! We can make that happen!”

“No,” Bernice had now filled every burner with a different cooking pot, all empty. Finally, she reached into the pantry, behind the flour and sugar, and pulled out a bottle of gin.

“What?” Sally sounded distracted, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“No! That was all purely hypothetical.” Bernice drank from the bottle.

“Listen,” said Sally. “All we need to do is get you pregnant right away. No problem, right?”

“But my due date won’t be the same as yours. You’ll be—”

“Doesn’t matter, Dean says,” said Sally. “We can still go into labor on the same night. You just take the herbs or whatever.”

“What?” Bernice scoffed. “Dean says?”

“I told him all about it. He thinks it is a wonderful idea.”

“Wait, does Dean know you’re talking to me right now? Does Dean even know you’re having a baby?”

“Say you’ll do it. We even have an idea for who we can get to make you pregnant.”

Bernice drank again from the bottle. “We?”

“I need to know if you’re in this with me or not,” Sally said.

“I can be in it with you, but I’m not getting pregnant beside you, Sally. You have to see this is crazy.”

“I can’t be all by myself!”

“But you have Dean! Right? You’re in love.” Bernice snapped. Then she felt sorry about it, sorry she had sounded so mean.

“Please, Bernice, just think about it. Can you just do a reading? Just look at tea, or dream about it, or something. Please. You know you can see what’s right for us. I’ll trust you; just say you’re with me!”

“No. I can’t see things in tea.”

There was a long pause.

“You can live at the farm with us. I mean, considering everything, and Dean driving up to Michigan all the time, I really do need someone with me. Please. It’ll be just the two of us. No Dean, like most of the time, anyway. Just you and me.”

Sally vomited into a snowbank on the way in to Bernice’s house. There was no warning. First she was smiling, then bending, and the vomit came out her face, with barely enough time to lean over. Bernice watched from the window, then opened the door for her and handed her a tissue. When she marched inside saying, “I’m fine. I’m just sick,” Bernice had said, “No, you’re pregnant.”

Sally pulled off her coat and flopped into a chair. “Oh, shit,” she said. “I might barf again. Seriously. This is pregnancy? I feel like I’m about to die.”

Bernice stood behind the chair and put one finger on each of Sally’s temples and began to press and release, press and release. She closed her eyes and hummed softly.

“Shouldn’t you have your hands down here?” Sally asked, pointing to her stomach.

“The baby’s not there yet,” said Bernice. “Anyway I can’t read him yet. I can only read you.”

“Ah, but you know it’s a him,” Sally pointed out.

“Because I’m already reading you. Be quiet.” Bernice resumed her humming a little louder. Sally closed her eyes.

After a few minutes, the teakettle boiled.

“You already have the tea on,” said Sally. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know you can do it, Bernice, and I’ll do whatever you say. Whatever you see, we’ll do it.”

“I don’t see,” said Bernice.

Sally opened her eyes and looked around, and then again without warning she quickly sat up and unleashed a thin stream of vomit into a spider plant beside the chair, barely leaning over in time to keep it from going down the front of her shirt. Bernice went for the teakettle, and for a handful of paper towels. Sally began to cry. Sally rarely cried. Once, on the basketball court, she had taken a vicious kick to the knee that ended in torn ligaments and six months in a metal brace, and never shed a tear. But now, her eyes were brimming.

Bernice fussed with the tea, came back over with two mugs steaming in her hand. She handed Sally a mug, and Sally saw there was a metal tea ball filled with loose leaves sitting down at the bottom. Bernice sat down on the coffee table next to Sally, and held her mug up to her face, blowing on the water.

“Think and drink,” she said. Bernice had said this exact thing to a hundred clients before. As for the practice of reading leaves, she had learned just how to do it, from books and from her training—how to interpret an arrow as anything from an impending miscarriage to the location of a lost dog. Sally put her hand on her belly and opened her mouth to speak but Bernice shushed her. She allowed no talking while the tea was being drunk. Sally drank hers as quickly as she could cool it off, and when she had drained the liquid down to the top of the metal ball, she set the cup down on the low table and said, “Ready.”

Bernice opened the ball of tea and shook the loose leaves into the cup, and began to swirl them.

“We ask a question,” she said. Sally opened her mouth again but Bernice shook her head. “Shhh.”

Bernice swirled and swirled the tea leaves in the dregs of Sally’s tea, and then dumped the rest of the tea out into the saucer, leaving the leaves and twigs stuck around the bottom of the white cup. She watched the leaves and sticks settle and stop in the shapes they would take, and stared into the mug.