Immune

Part II

Photo credit: Nik

Sandy, the nurse at the clinic, looked bored. She sat a desk, a half-done crossword puzzle and an open bag of potato chips in front of her. She smiled when she saw me. In the beginning I had seen the pity in her, the tenderness she tried not to make obvious. But that shifted to genuine affection when she learned that I was planning on raising the child myself, instead of dropping it one of the ubiquitous care homes, where most of the children stayed until they became too violent to be managed.

Sandy squirted some anti-bacterial gel on her hands and then led me to the exam room. As always, I was nervous at these visits. I carried small, like my mother had. I only really started to bulge now, in my fifth month. My grandmother had said my mother’s “half-moon pregnancy” was the cause of the wine stain, but even as I kid, I knew that wasn’t true. Still, I worried and it didn’t help that I was surrounded by women heavy with twins or triplets or more.

I sat down on the table and Sandy helped me lift my legs up. She rubbed gel across my stomach and then went over it with the ultrasound scanner. I watched the bow-shaped fetus twinkle on the screen and transform into different black and white views.

“Does everything look okay?” I asked, and Sandy knew that was a double question.

“Looks good. No sign of any abnormality, and no sign of anything cosmetic. Of course, we can’t always tell with that.”

She wiped the gel off my stomach and we chatted for a little while. She told me that ultrasound visits had continued to go down. Now that most people knew what the children were for there was less prenatal concern. Just before I left, she opened a drawer packed with pamphlets on breast-feeding and handed me one—a show of faith, since most kids born today didn’t want to suckle.

I drove by Lake Stoddard on my way to work. The kids had now set up an encampment at the lake and I saw a curl of smoke coming from the middle of the tents and makeshift shelters. When I arrived at the Department of Health and Safety Statistics, I saw Carol’s Range Rover with the hulking shape of Pastor Zeff sitting behind the wheel. I pulled up next to him and watched his big frame lumber out of the car and settle into the passenger seat next to me.

He put his hand on my stomach and I put my hand over his, feeling his sharp knuckles. In the midday sun, the lines around his eyes looked more like cracks and this reminded me of how little time we spend together outdoors.

“God came to me last night. Woke me up in the early morning and I’ve been awake since,” he said.

I knew that when God came to Pastor Zeff it was always with an order, a commandment that left little room for interpretation. Before I could ask what it was, he told me: “We have to announce this pregnancy far and wide. ‘Shout it across the land,’ God says.”

“Announce it? What? Why?”

“The people need to know,” he said.

“Why?” I asked again.

“They need to see my commitment to the Proliferation. That I’ll even go outside my marriage for it,” he said. “It’s all set up.”

“Set up?”

Then he explained that a major network—the one whose owner had been an early convert to Zeffism—would interview both of us tonight in their studio. I sat up and winced.

“Don’t worry,” Pastor Zeff said, and he tapped out the address of the studio on his phone, sent it to me, and told me to be there at 6. He brushed his hand over the stained side of my face and whispered “immune, immune, immune,” and then opened the car door. Just before he stepped out, he added “don’t want to jeopardize that now.” He reached in again, rubbed my stomach and flashed a wide grin, before heading back to his car.

I sat in the car for a long time after that, feeling dizzy and tasting the waves of acid as they rose from stomach. Finally, when I was sure I wouldn’t fall if I tried to stand, I walked to my office, avoiding eye contact with anyone I passed on the way. When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was the shredded sonogram images—the ones I had pinned to the corkboard over my desk—in a little pile on the floor. I spent the rest of the morning piecing them back together as much as I could. Then I taped them, along with the newest sonogram, to the outside of my office door so that Carol couldn’t miss them.

                                                                      * * *

The interviewer only asked me one question: “When is the happy day?” to which I quietly told him and the rest of the country my due date. Later that night a group of kids set fire to an old age home and Pastor Zeff said it was sign.

                                                                      * * *

I was eight months along and still working. I wanted Carol to see me waxing for as long as possible. One day, when I was sitting at my desk, looking over a dataset that showed that girls of the Proliferation were almost equal to boys in the commission of violent crime, I felt my stomach twist and break into pain like I had never known. I started to the bathroom, trying to walk while squeezing my legs together. I crawled through the door and lay on the cold tile floor, feeling like my insides were being filleted. I’m not sure how long I lay there until the pain started to come in pulses that, to my surprise, grew increasingly less intense until all I felt was exhaustion.

I still didn’t budge, except to reach out my arms to feel the cold of the floor on them. I wasn’t sure I could walk, so I just lay there stranded on a beach of stained white tiles. I was counting them, when I heard the door open and saw the low-heeled pumps that Carol always wore coming toward me. She was looking at her phone in her hand and when she saw me her face went quickly from surprise to satisfaction.

She came just outside of the orbit of my arm’s reach and from that angle she was a tall and straight as a knitting needle. Half of her calves were uncovered by her skirt and spider veins spiraled across them, like little galaxies. For a few seconds her eyes moved from me to her phone. She tapped a few times and scrolled down. Then she started reading, and I recognized immediately that these were the online comments from my interview with Pastor Zeff.

“The reason veils exist.”

“Is there a makeup artist in the house?”

“Ack! Cut your head off!”

“That poor kid. Imagine that being the first face you see.”

I closed my eyes tight and imagined Pastor Zeff’s voice telling me I was immune.

Carol entered a stall and locked the door. She kept reading and I heard her start to urinate.

“Criminally ugly.”

“I wouldn’t blame the kid if her kills her. With that face who wouldn’t be scared enough

to murder?”

I felt something warm and wet touch my cheek. I opened my eyes. Carol was peeing on the

floor and a yellow line traced an angular pattern of grout from the stall to me. I got up as fast as I could—which was still pretty slow—and steadied myself by holding on to the hand dryer. I wobbled to a stall, peeled off a length of toilet paper, and wiped my face.

“I’m sure in power outage she looks good.”

I made my way back to my office and locked the door, gulping breaths as I went. After I maneuvered into my desk chair, I cradled the bulge in my arms. Pastor Zeff had chosen me and there was nothing Carol or anyone else could do to change that. After a little while, I walked out to my car. I stayed in the parking lot staring at the building for a long time, as if I knew I would never be back. That night I dreamed of a time when I was twelve and a kid in my class threw his coat over my head and said “that’s better.” I saw his face—the constellation of pimples across his forehead and his chapped lips. I heard the laughter, and saw the quiet pity of a Jehovah’s Witness girl who sat a few rows away from me in class when I threw the coat to the floor.

The next day I went in for another ultrasound. This one had been quickly arranged by my doctor because of the episode at work. Pastor Zeff drove me and waited in the car. Sandy ushered me into the exam room with a stony face. She had seen the interview, it was obvious. Her manner toward me had changed so much that she almost looked like a different person. Even the way she rolled the scanner across my belly seemed different—quicker and with no commentary about the fetal preview.

I missed Sandy’s warmth and, trying to pry conversation I out of her, I said, “Probably the first singleton you’ve seen all day…”

“No, but the first I’ve seen who had such … er … purpose in the world,” she said.

This made me angry, but I held my tongue. My doctor had promised to call later with the results, but I wanted reassurance from Sandy before then, so I stayed quiet and stared at the image on the screen. When Sandy was done, she handed me a couple of paper towels to rub the gel off my stomach. It was only when she turned her back to wheel the machine into the corner that I asked if everything looked normal. When she said it did, I answer with “Praise Zeff.” Sandy’s shoulders tensed and she pretended that she was still busy with the machine so she didn’t have to turn around. I threw the paper towels on the exam table and left.

Pastor Zeff drove me home. When we reached Lake Stoddard, he slowed so we could take in the children’s encampment that had grown so much that it almost encircled the lake. A couple of girls who looked to be about thirteen were on the sidewalk. One held a stick in her hand with something on top of it. I leaned forward and squinted and that’s when I saw it was a cat’s head. Pastor Zeff saw it too and smiled. What sins could that cat have possible committed to be killed? I wondered and immediately tossed that thought away, like some bit of food that had rotted in the back of my fridge. We turned into the underground parking lot of my high rise and Pastor Zeff helped me out of the car. He even walked me all the way to the building’s elevator.

My doctor called later that day and reassured me that the ultrasound showed no abnormality. Still, he wanted me stay on bedrest for the rest of my pregnancy. He asked if I was aware of a popular meal delivery service, as if he knew that I had no one to cook for me.

My due date was still five weeks away and I passed the time mostly by watching TV and anticipating the next delivery from Pastor Zeff. He had sent a crib, a basinet, clothes, diapers—everything the baby needed. His visits became more frequent as I came closer to delivery. He sat at the edge of my bed, explaining his new conviction that the child would be the one to lead the righteous Proliferation in the final slaying and renewal of the world. I was carrying the final deliverer—that’s why there was only one of them. “One” he said and held up a finger. Pastor Zeff now smelled as is if he no longer bathed and his hair was greasy and long.

The kids were getting ever more violent. The few police officers left who weren’t Zeffite had given up trying to apprehend young perpetrators. I left the news on all the time now, even when I slept. A group of pre-teens broke into the home of couple of retired professors, tied them up, and gouged their eyes out. Twin sixteen-year-olds garroted a security guard with the drawstring of a sleeping bag.

When I felt the first contraction, I was watching a story on the midnight news about how four fifteen-year-olds had beaten a woman to death with metal baseball bats. One of them stripped her of her bloodied clothes and wore them for days afterward. The spasm started in my back and wrapped around me as I were being squeezed in an internal vice. I reached for the phone to call Pastor Zeff, but stopped myself before grasping it. The contractions grew so bad that I screamed into my blankets. I picked up the phone a few times, but something always kept me from punching the single, speed-dial button I had to him or calling an ambulance. Water flooded out of me and the contractions steadied to the point that I couldn’t count between them. My back felt like it was on fire. Then I felt her breaking through and I pushed after her. It was like trying to force a watermelon through a straw. This is impossible, I thought. I saw my body split down the middle and the halves run away in different directions. I pushed until I heard her cry.

The blood-marbled infant was no bigger than a shoe. I cradled her in my arms and cleaned her with the sheets. That’s when I saw it. The wine stain was almost identical to mine. It sprawled down half her face, like a purple hand. I rubbed her face again with the sheet and she shrieked. I bundled her up and tried to quiet her and myself.

I felt a mild pumping in my lower abdomen and the placenta slid out of me. It looked like roadkill and my stomach trembled a little when I saw it. I left the baby on the bed and went to kitchen for a scissors, hearing her scream the whole time. When I came back to the bedroom, the stain looked even darker to me. I snipped the umbilical cord with the scissors and put on a pair of pajama bottoms and old sweater. I picked up the baby and headed out to my car. It hurt to walk, but I still took the stairs for fear of running into someone in the elevator.

When I got to the car, I put the baby in the little well on the floor between the backseat and the back of the passenger seat. I slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. Even to press the gas lightly with my foot hurt. Driving slowly, I headed to Lake Stoddard and soon saw the jagged landscape of the encampment. I drove up as close as I could to it and left the car still running in the street. I scooped up the baby. Dawn was just starting to crack the sky open and everything was quiet, even the baby, who had fallen asleep. A set of three boys with white hair slept outside on pieces of cardboard. They heard me approach and sprang up. These kids woke up quickly, like dogs.

“What do you want, ugly?” one of them yelled.

The other kids began to rouse and soon a little crowd formed around them.

I handed the baby over to one of them, a girl whose eyes had a film over them, and then, before she could respond, I started to run, pain shooting up from between my legs to my neck. The kids chased after me. I could hear their numbers growing, as my body surrendered to the pain and exhaustion. My body refused, uncompromisingly and with little deliberation, until I was barely walking and the footfalls behind me grew as loud as a million banging hammers. I fell to the ground, and just then I felt something I had never felt before. I think it was freedom.