“Sure you do.
I
know. Nobody’s popping in here unless we let them in. I think you’re safe,” he says with a trace of sarcasm.
Derry props an elbow on her belly and chews a fingernail in frustration.
Linden couldn’t possibly understand. No man can.
This is her chance to experience, on some level, the miracle that can never be a reality for her. No, she can’t carry a baby in her womb, but she can wear maternity clothes and notice strangers’ glowing smiles as she waddles about her daily business. And in September, or perhaps October, she’ll have a baby in her arms, just like a real mother.
Rose promised. And this time, nothing can go wrong. This time, Derry isn’t just counting on the donor—the donor is counting on her.
According to Rose, the thirteen-year-old girl from a strict, ultrareligious family was date-raped after she snuck out to go to a party. She’s hiding the pregnancy from her parents, knowing they’ll disown her if they ever find out.
“How can she hide a pregnancy for nine months?” Derry asked Rose.
“It happens all the time,” was the woman’s disconcerting response. “Especially with kids her age and size. They just wear baggy clothes and nobody has a clue.”
“But . . . isn’t that wrong? How can you go along with something like this?”
And how can I?
How can she go through with faking a pregnancy and a home delivery so that the girl’s baby can be passed off as hers? Rose told her and Linden that nobody would ever find out. There would be no adoption, no financial paperwork whatsoever, and the birth certificate would be legitimate.
“But . . . how can that be?” Derry asked incredulously, unable to accept that the plan could be as simple as it seemed.
“It happens every day, all over this country,” Rose told her. “Women give birth at home all the time. Do you think none of those babies have birth certificates?”
But . . . it’s wrong.
“Of course it’s wrong, Derry, technically. But it would be more wrong to let this distraught young girl give birth in an alley somewhere and put the baby into a garbage can. I’ve seen it happen over and over again in cases just like this one. That’s why whenever a girl in her predicament comes to me for help, I help. I do what I have to do. We all do what we have to do. This isn’t a game. There are no rules. We’re saving babies’ lives.”
Rose’s passionate discourse made it sound like Derry would be heroic to take on this challenge.
She must have said more or less the same thing to Linden when Derry asked her to explain the situation to him. She knew that if Linden heard it from her, there was a good chance he’d tell her she was out of her mind and would have nothing to do with this bizarre charade, despite the appeal of not having to pay a dime for a baby.
Derry wasn’t in the apartment when Rose spoke to her husband. She couldn’t bear to be. She knew that their marriage would be over if her husband dashed her fragile hopes just when they were on the verge of making their dreams come true.
So she left Linden and Rose alone with her parental fate in their hands. She went to the playground down the block and she sat on a swing in the rain, praying the whole time that her husband would somehow come through for her.
After all, it wouldn’t cost him anything. And it wasn’t as if he had never done anything morally ambiguous in his life. Hadn’t he wired the apartment for illegal cable? Hadn’t he rolled back the odometer on his old car so that he could sell it for more money?
But this is different,
Derry told herself.
This is huge.
Still, it helped to know that Linden wasn’t above cheating, under the right circumstances. Especially when he had financial motivation.
To this day, Derry has no idea what Rose said in the apartment that afternoon, only that Linden later commented that the woman could talk a cow into volunteering for the slaughterhouse.
That, Derry told him with a shudder, was not a welcome comparison.
“I don’t think Allison would change her mind about coming without calling to let us know,” Julie comments, as Peyton’s apprehension escalates by the minute.
Where on earth is Allison?
“It’s Mother’s Day,” Nancy points out. “Maybe she’s busy with her kids. She has two older ones, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, but she said they didn’t have any special plans this afternoon,” Wanda says. “They spend Sundays with their father.”
“But it’s Mother’s Day.”
Wanda snorts. “Have you ever met Allison’s ex-husband?”
“I take it
you
have,” Rita says.
“No, but he’s a bastard. She’s told me enough about him. Whatever, she said she really wanted to be here today because her due date is so close, and she needs to hear all about cardinal movement and delivery empowerment. There’s a full moon this weekend and she’s afraid she’ll deliver early.”
“A full moon?” Peyton can’t help echoing. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Rita says full moons can trigger labor.”
Peyton shoots a skeptical glance at the midwife.
To her surprise, Rita shrugs. “There’s actually some documentation of that.”
“Well, then, she probably went into labor.” Emanating impatience, Tisha checks her watch. “Can’t we just start without her?”
The lone newcomer at today’s meeting, Tisha is an outspoken nineteen-year-old who reeks of cigarettes and looks closer to thirty—apparently thanks to hard-living high school years. Her pregnancy, unlike the others’, is unplanned.
Given the fact that she’s fully made up in this heat and exhibiting her swollen belly between a snug cropped top and low-slung shorts, Peyton can’t help comparing her to one of those self-absorbed Hollywood starlet types you see flaunting their bellies in magazines.
Especially after listening to her complain about one symptom after another in the first fifteen minutes after they met. Just when Peyton was on the verge of informing Tisha she really didn’t want to hear any more, and that she’d be doing herself and the baby a favor if she quit smoking, the woman apologetically said, “I’m really sorry I’m unloading on you, Parker.”
Parker?
Peyton opened her mouth to correct her, but Tisha went on, her voice quavering a little, “It’s just that when you’re pregnant and single, there’s nobody to talk to, really. Nobody who understands. I feel so alone.”
A wave of empathy washed away Peyton’s irritation. “
I
understand. We all understand. That’s why you’re here.”
Now, feeling a vague uneasiness over Allison’s unexpected absence, she finds herself annoyed with Tisha all over again.
Before she can speak up, Wanda utters the words that are on the tip of her tongue. “Tisha, if Allison went into labor, Rita would know about it. She’s going to deliver Allison’s baby.”
“Well, maybe she missed the call,” Tisha persists.
The midwife reaches into the pocket of her slacks and pulls out a cell phone. “I carry this with me wherever I go. I’m on call twenty-four-seven, just like room service at the Waldorf Astoria.”
“
You’ve
stayed at the Waldorf Astoria?” Tisha asks dubiously, looking the midwife over from her unfashionably thick, overgrown gray-streaked bangs to her plain white Keds.
“Hell no. Who do I look like, Trump?”
As they all laugh at Rita’s sassy response to what could have been perceived as an insult, Peyton finds herself liking Tisha even less than she did upon meeting her, and liking Rita even more.
The midwife’s easygoing smile and quick sense of humor are a welcome addition to today’s gathering. As Nancy has pointed out more than once, and as Kate affirmed after her son’s birth, Rita has borne two children of her own. She’s been through the rigors of labor twice, and her bedside manner is proof.
Peyton isn’t entirely sold on home delivery and childbirth, but she’s definitely anxious to hear what Rita has to say.
Not until Allison arrives, though.
She shifts her position, wondering if it would be rude to get up and stretch for a moment. Beside her, Julie is tapping her foot rhythmically against the leg of the coffee table, and Wanda has sighed more than once.
“Just think,” Nancy says brightly, gazing around the room. “Next year at this time, you’ll all be mommies celebrating your first Mother’s Day!”
“Yeah, and just think, last year at this time I was going to my prom,” is Tisha’s glum response.
“Cripes, who invited Debbie Downer?” Wanda mutters to Peyton.
“She’s one of Dr. Lombardo’s patients. Nancy said she needs us.”
“Yeah, well, the last thing we need is to listen to that for the next few months. Somebody needs to set her straight and if she keeps up that ’tude of hers, it’s going to be me,” Wanda retorts under her breath, before going to answer the abrupt ring of the telephone.
She returns a few minutes later. The group falls silent at her grim expression.
“That was Allison’s mother. She went through Allison’s organizer and found out about today’s meeting. She wanted to know if she might have shown up here.”
Wanda pauses, taking a deep breath and steadying her bulk against the doorjamb.
Peyton’s nagging worry for her friend escalates into full-blown fear even before Wanda goes on, “Her mother was in a panic. She kept talking to me in Spanish, but what I think she was saying is that nobody has seen Allison since she went to bed last night. They’ve already called the police.”
Across the river in Bayonne, Mary Nueves sits beside a cradle in the moonlight, rocking it gently with her foot, humming the Spanish lullaby her mother hummed to her forty-one years ago. She knows, because her mother told her when she gave Mary a music box that played the melody as a gift for her first pregnancy.
Mama’s lovely voice was silenced forever almost three years ago, but the music box sits now on top of the little white chest of drawers nearby, beside a neatly folded stack of receiving blankets and Onesies that have to be put away.
Laundry to be put away, another load to be folded, dishes to be washed . . .
So much to do.
But Mary can’t seem to bring herself to do anything other than rock the baby.
She’s waited so long for her to be here. So very long. That she arrived on Mother’s Day is a meaningful gift from heaven—one last perfect gift from Mama, as far as Mary is concerned.
A footstep creaks in the hallway.
Mary stops humming.
The door slips open a few inches, and her husband is silhouetted in the shaft of light that spills into the cozy little room.
“Are you still awake?” he asks in a hushed tone. “You should get some sleep. She’ll be up for another feeding soon.”
“I know, I can’t help it. It’s her first night in the world. I don’t want to leave her alone.”
He laughs softly, peering over her shoulder into the cradle. “She doesn’t even know you’re here. She’s sound asleep.”
“I know. But I just want to sit here and watch her. We’ve waited so long for this, Javier. So many months . . .”
“So many
years.
I know.”
Mary sighs with contentment and stops rocking the cradle, careful not to jar it as she stands at last. She reaches over to the dresser and lifts the music box. The brass key beneath it gleams in the moonlight as she winds it.
The tinkling strains of a lullaby fill the room. Mary gently sets the music box back on the dresser, remembering the day she hurtled it against the wall in despair. Miraculously, it didn’t break.
Was that after she lost that first pregnancy? Or her second? Or third?
It’s all a terrible blur.
And it no longer matters.
It’s all behind them now: the countless miscarriages, the many futile attempts at conception, the dashed hopes when they accepted Mary’s infertility—and again when they realized they simply couldn’t afford to adopt . . .
It’s all behind them, like a nightmare that vanishes the very moment you open your eyes.
Less than eighteen hours ago, as the morning sun cast its first pink rays over New Jersey, this tiny, precious daughter was delivered to Javier and Mary Nueves.
They named her Dawn.
It was a fitting name, Rose said with a smile, having exchanged the delicate bundle in Mary’s arms for the prosthetic stomach she would no longer need.
“I can’t believe she’s really here,” Javier says now, gazing down at the baby, bathed in the silver glow of the full moon.
“Neither can I. It’s been so hard, Javier. So incredibly hard . . .”
Years’ worth of pent-up emotion escape Mary, and she finds herself sobbing. Her husband pulls her close, crooning to her in their native tongue until the tears subside.
“Did we do the right thing?” Mary asks, searching his eyes for the guilt she can’t quite seem to suppress.