Abby Geni - The Lightkeepers

I have always been a small person. Less than five feet tall. Skin and bones. I eat like a bird (in the colloquial sense, rather than the true one, since most birds are actually gluttons, according to Lucy). I have never been able to gain weight. Sometimes it feels as though I skipped right over puberty, missing out on the curves I was promised in childhood. My breasts are tiny enough that they do not require a bra. I don’t have much in the way of hips. No gut. No softness at all.

But there was no mistaking what I was seeing. The incipient swell of the belly. Firm apple-breasts. A voluptuous figure. I could not take it in. I could not think of that woman as myself. She was a stranger. A stranger framed on the tiny screen of my camera. A stranger on the coast of the Farallon Islands.

I sucked in a shuddering inhalation. I batted the tears from my cheeks. The image hit me like a tidal wave. The woman stood in profile. Her jeans were tight, encasing thighs that had begun to thicken. If she had been wearing layers — a hoodie or a sweater — her stomach would have been concealed. But she was dressed only in a T-shirt, which clung. Her hand was extended, cupping the nose of the seal pup. It was a sweet moment of connection. And there, between the two figures, hung a dark orb. Ripe fruit.

I wiped my eyes. I sat up in bed, trying to steady my breathing. My hands were shaking so much that I could hardly hold the camera.

The woman in my photographs was pregnant.

IT HAS BEEN a month since I last wrote. I have needed time. It has taken me a while to come to terms with my current state. The revelation has filtered through me like sugar in tea — glittering, swirling, only gradually absorbed.

I have stayed apart. I have avoided taking walks with Mick and Forest. I have ignored Galen altogether. Lucy and I, as usual, have repelled one another like magnetic poles. I have spent whole days in my room, examining the photographs of myself in the fog. I have not always been sure whether I am awake or dreaming. I might find myself in the kitchen, running water over my hands, or on the porch, swaddled in the wind, and I will pinch myself surreptitiously, making sure.

I have dreamed at night of the seal pup. I have dreamed of the ghost. A luminescent figure. A fall of white fabric. A chilly silence. In these nightmares, she is the one who is pregnant. The ball of her belly glows like a lamp. The fetus inside is a squiggle of neon. I have dreamed of Andrew too. A monstrous elephant seal — an alpha male, all blubber and swagger — has lumbered across the granite, flinging his limp sock of a nose back and forth. As I watch, he has thrown back his head and given Andrew’s laugh, note for note. I have dreamed of myself on the grounds, standing at my tripod, photographing a woman and a seal pup. As I frame the two figures in the viewfinder, I have wondered who the woman might be. I never seem to recognize her. In my dreams, she has remained faceless, in shadow, without identity.

I have told no one. I have said nothing out loud.

Yet the evidence is everywhere. It feels as though I have suddenly learned to see color or sunlight — a thousand details that have been there all along, omnipresent but unnoticed. Yes, I have put on a few pounds. I can feel the extra bulk when I sit down, a cushion at my middle. Yes, I always need to pee. Yes, I’ve been having hot flashes. Sometimes it feels as though there is a furnace in my stomach, a fiery oven sending up a plume of heat. Yes, I’ve had food cravings. Food aversions. Exhaustion. I have been sleeping like a teenager, craving ten, eleven hours a night. I have known and noticed all these things, yet each has struck me as being unconnected to the others. Isolated symptoms. Pinpoints of color on a canvas. Products of the islands.

Now, of course, I can see the mosaic. I can see the complete pattern.

Even my hair has changed, full and thick. It reminds me of a sad little orchid I once tried to keep in Washington, D.C. During the winter months the plant shed its petals and refused to grow, sitting like a green statue in the waning light. But when a colleague of mine took it off my hands, flying south to Florida and placing it on her porch, the orchid bloomed into a frothy explosion of petals. My hair seems to have been transported to its proper climate at last.

And, of course, I have missed my period. Several periods. I have not thought about it, since my cycle has always been irregular. I flirt with the kind of low body weight that can put a person’s menstrual rhythm on pause. Besides, I no longer have any reason to look at a calendar. In a bathroom cabinet, tucked alongside the sink, there is a stock of tampons and pads, a pink treasure trove. The men avoid the area assiduously. When I first came to the islands, Lucy, Charlene, and I all made inroads into the supplies hidden there, nibbling away like mice at a stockpile of grain. But I cannot remember the last time I needed to visit the place.

FINALLY I TOOK the leap. This was a few days ago. I waited until midnight, the sky soaked with moonlight, the big dipper dangling over the cabin. Galen was in bed, Mick and Forest snoring, Lucy humming in her sleep. I headed into the bathroom, where there was a full-length mirror, the only one on the islands.

I almost didn’t go through with it. For a while I hovered, irresolute. I thought about going back to bed and slipping beneath the blankets. Turning out the light. Returning to the state of denial I had maintained for so long.

I reminded myself that I could not be sure of anything yet. There was no stick for me to pee on. There was no gynecologist’s office to visit. The impression I had gleaned from a faraway self-portrait taken over a month ago was hardly a solid diagnosis. I reminded myself that many of the traditional markers of pregnancy had eluded me. I hadn’t been vomiting at all hours of the morning. I hadn’t been exhibiting any nesting instincts, leaving the mopping and sweeping to Lucy. Since I never wore a bra, I hadn’t even been able to verify whether I could still fit into my usual cup size.

In addition, the symptoms I had experienced were far from conclusive. There was a credible rationale for each one. The weight gain might be nothing more than the normal spreading of age. My food aversions might have arisen from our dreadful meals, all that Spam and tuna. My sleepiness might have been triggered by the incessant, wearying chill. Perhaps the islands were playing tricks on me. Perhaps the whole thing was an illusion, an error, one more bizarre dream.

I sat down on the toilet, still clad in my jeans. I laid my head in my hands.

I had come this far. I would see the thing through. It was time to connect the picture with the person — the figure on the screen with my own flesh and blood. It had been a while since I had looked at myself naked. Before Andrew. There on the cold tile, I kicked off my pants. I peeled off several layers of T-shirts. I even shed my socks. Sucking in a deep breath, I turned and faced the mirror.

My belly, broad and golden, protruded over a tangle of pubic hair. My breasts were swollen. There was no question. There was no mistake. The weight was not limited to my torso. Extra flesh had been relegated to my backside. Even my thighs were affected: soft columns, the muscle concealed by new deposits of fat. My stomach glowed in the light like the waxing curve of the moon. I laid my hands on that globe. It felt like years since I had made contact with my own skin.

For the next few minutes, I conducted a thorough investigation. My belly was taut and springy, the consistency of a basketball. I had always imagined the pregnant paunch to be slack and plush, but mine was firm and rubbery — a shield, rather than a pillow. My breasts were heavy. I cupped each one. Fibrous beads seemed to have to have taken root beneath the surface like bulbs in earth. Milk ducts. I gave one nipple an experimental squeeze. Yellow fluid oozed out in honeyed droplets.