Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

People say they realize things in a flash, a bright bulb going off. Not Mira. She knows this doctor is right because she feels a dull thud in her chest. Her heart slows to a lizard’s crawl.

“With a baby?”

The doctor smiles. “Yes, a baby. About four months.”

“But I’ve never had my period.”

He nods. “It’s not impossible for a girl to ovulate before her first period. That’s when the egg goes into the uterus. It’s been known to happen — more frequently than you would imagine.”

Egg, uterus. All of this she thought was simply about Pavlova’s shoe, her desire, his desire, her need, his needs. That stupid brief, terrible thing he did — they did — made a baby. What has she done? It’s unfathomable.

He moves a little closer. “Whose is it? I can keep a secret.” But she won’t say anything to the doctor. There are no words yet for what has happened. She is too close to the volcano, she must be still.

He continues: she can press charges, he says. She can make whoever it is pay. “Does anyone know about this?” he asks.

She shakes her head.

“This is not your fault,” he says. “I know you’re scared.”

She’s not scared, though. Not like he thinks. He can never understand her world. She’s alone now: they were lying on the floor — and now she has a cat body with a baby inside.

“I can’t remember,” she says.

He sighs. He tells Mira to wait while he calls her mother into his office and they talk privately.

Back home, Mira and her mother sit across from each other on her mother’s bed. “How did this happen?” her mother says.

Mira puts her head in her hands, but no tears come. “Are you going to tell Dad?”

Her mother looks at her for a long time. “Was it a boy at school?”

She thinks: it could have been Oliver, if everything were different. It could have been. “Not from my school,” she says. She thinks about the other girls and things they did. Things she could have done if Maurice hadn’t always been there. “I just met him once. We rented a room at a hotel. They invited some boys over. I never saw him again.”

“What was his name?”

She shakes her head.

“Did he force you?”

If she says yes, they will look for him, for someone, to blame. She remembers some things — her own wild laughter, the Monopoly game, Maurice’s pale face. If there are people to blame, she is surely one of them.

“No,” she says, sweating. “Please don’t tell Dad?” She can’t cry now, when it would help. “Please don’t make me go back.”

Her mother sits down on the bed. “I have to think about this.”

Several days later, Mira’s baking cookies with Brian when her mother comes into the kitchen. She takes Mira into the living room, which is empty. Mira now has her mother’s full attention. Her laser-like eyes are focused on Mira more than Mira can ever remember. Brian is humming in the kitchen. The streetlights are flowing in the windows. Her mother touches dried flowers in a vase on the table, then pulls her hand away quickly.

“My whole life I’ve been keeping secrets. You know that, right? That’s why you came to me, right?” her mother says. “ I left everything behind. It was the right thing for me. I was maybe too young when I had you or maybe — I don’t know.” She flushes, but it’s a soft kind, not a blaze.

Mira stares at her mother. She’s wearing a bandanna, like in the old days.

“You should know this — having you was the greatest moment of my life. It may be hard to believe but — it changed everything. A new life does that.” It takes Mira a moment to realize that her mother is crying. Not the kind of crying people do on TV, loud and desperate, but a delicate kind of crying. It’s like something is trying to get inside her mother and the tears are being pushed out.

“But you left . Then why did you leave?”

Her mother holds Mira’s gaze. “I left to — I had to — find myself.”

Mira thinks about this. Can you really lose yourself? And if you do — how do you find yourself again? Has she lost herself too? Is that what has happened to her? She surprises herself by not being angry. She says, “Did you? Find yourself?”

“Well — we all have many parts to ourselves it turns out. But I–I did find something — so, yes, I think I did. I mean, I have.” Her mother does not wipe away the tears, which have spilled onto her eyelashes and beneath her eyes. “But I have caused you suffering. I see that. You have paid for my lack of self-knowledge.” Her mother stares at her for a long time. Then she finally wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. “Oh, Mira,” she says. “I am sorry this happened to you. I am sorry I left — and—”

Mira nods. She understands that her mother does not know what she should do. She could get rid of the baby or she could have it. Either way, what she understands is that it — this — has happened and can’t be undone. Her life will never go back to the way it was.

“Do you know what an abortion is?” says her mother.

Mira nods.

“In some ways that is easier. In other ways, harder. But you can never be rid of a child.” Her mother wipes her wet eyes again. “Whatever you decide, I can give you this,” her mother says. “You can start again. I can give you that. I had that. And I can give you that.”

It’s a decision free of effort. Like deciding she wanted to be a dancer with Maurice standing before her, asking her, telling her she had to decide. A decision made possible by someone telling you have to choose. It must be yes or no, not both, not neither. And for this reason she trusts her decision completely. “I’ll have it. The baby.”

Her mother looks straight at Mira. “Okay. You’ll have the child.” She touches Mira’s shoulder. “Give it to a worthy couple. Then move on. Start over.”

Mira gives her mother her cat eye stare. Mira’s hands are covered with dough. She nods, starts to sob, really sob, heavy tears. “Please don’t tell Dad.”

Her mother’s eyes are lit with a too-bright light like they used to have in her studio, but her mouth, around it, is tired. She is quiet for a long time. “I won’t ask who? why? when? where? ever again. I won’t scream. I won’t tell. I’m not a Betty Crocker mom.”

Then her mother does the most incredible thing. She gives Mira a hug. It’s not a simple hug, it’s complex and in stages. She presses Mira’s back with both hands and then clasps Mira to her chest.

She’s never really sure if her mother kept her word. After that, her mom and her dad have murmuring conversations at night, but her dad stays away. Once she overhears her mother’s voice rise, and she says “on your watch,” before her voice lowers again.

As the months move on, through the fall, Mira walks the five sunny, then rainy, blocks to Mission High School. It’s a huge public school. She is one of hundreds moving through this crumbling stone building while tired teachers look on. She listens to the teachers who speak half in Spanish and throw erasers at the kids — the ones in bandannas and with mustaches. No after-school drama clubs, no cabs whose waiting drivers ferry students to and from ballet class. But it’s easy to survive here compared to SAB and Professional Children’s School. Here, invisibility is an asset. She’s in the back of class hunched over the desk to hide her growing belly.

She is too fat for ballet now. Her arms stay skinny but her breasts and stomach grow. Her body, which has always behaved so well compared to other girls’ bodies, has completely stopped doing so. She eats and eats. This is a new kind of hunger, and one she can’t defeat. She buys oversize shirts with company logos on the front and jeans she can leave unbuttoned. She buys Maybelline eyeliner — black — and draws lines above and below her eyes like she sees the girls on the streets do.