Save Me, Sinners

George doesn’t like spending money would be more accurate, and doesn’t like being seen in public with my mother. Never mind they’d never have to pay for a thing in my place. “We’ll go shopping before that,” I tell her. “Get you something sexy to wear, how’s that?”

Mama laughs, and that suspicion in her eyes is finally replaced with scandalized humor. “Oh, now… I don’t know about all that. I love you, baby girl.”

“I love you too, Mama.” With that, I’m finally out the door. Spooked, sure, but I’m at least reasonably certain my secret is still intact.

Not forever, though. In the mornings, I make a habit of checking the mirror to see if I’m showing. Day to day, I can’t really tell—probably the change is too gradual to track that way. Which is why I took a picture shortly after I had it confirmed and, like it or not, I look different.

Maybe Mama didn’t even have a dream. Maybe she’s just trying to find a way to get me to admit it. I feel awful for hiding it from her, but she would tell George and the boys, and they’d be all over it. Especially George—I’d never hear the end of how I got knocked up out of wedlock, never mind the fact that George has been married three times.

I have another checkup with Annie, so I head into town, keeping a wary eye out for any sign of Jake. Avoiding him is getting to be ridiculous. After having spotted him going into Ferry Lights a couple of times and even staying late at Red Hall to make sure he left before I did, I’ve started seeing him everywhere. I’m not even sure it’s him half the time, but I’ve left a nearly full cart of groceries at the store just because I thought I saw him walk into the aisle next to the one I was in.

Now, I expect him to pop out from behind any given corner, or show up at Red Hall, and the worst part is that I find myself hoping he will every time I stare at the slight bulge of my tummy.

What makes me more messed up? That I almost want him to know so that maybe we can work things out, even after he tricked his way into my p

ants? Or that I worry about the media shit-storm that would fall on my head if it got out? It’s a toss-up.

Mama dreamed about a storm, too. Who knows, maybe she really is a prophet.

As usual, being out in public makes me flustered and nervous. Any day now I’ll be heading outside with a shawl over my head and oversized sunglasses hiding my face like a fugitive. Annie gives me a sympathetic smile when she sees me.

“Let’s get you on the table,” she says. “Let me give you a lavender belly massage. It’ll help you both relax.”

“I know you probably believe in prophetic dreams,” I tell her, once I’m lying down on my back and I’ve gotten her caught up on recent events. “But it’s still kind of crazy, right?”

“Mother’s intuition, if you ask me,” Annie says. “How’s that?”

A mental check of my current state tells me that whatever other holistic bullshit Annie does, there really is something to the idea of a belly massage—whether the lavender helps or not. “I don’t know about Mama,” I tell her, “but you’ve got some kind of magic, for sure. Much better.”

“Good,” Annie says. “It’s not good for either of you to be stressed like this. If you’re going to stay uptight, maybe I should see you a little more often. I can get you in three times a week, if you don’t mind a kind of weird schedule.”

“You don’t have to go to all that trouble,” I tell her. Three times a week is almost three grand for Annie. Over nine months? She’d be losing more money than I can possibly ask her to give up.

“It’s no trouble,” she insists. “Let me put you on the books. Just promise me you’ll follow the schedule. I’ll lay it all out through your due date and push it to your calendar.”

I sigh. Am I a charity case? I suppose I must be. “You’re too good to me, Annie. I don’t deserve it.”

“If not for you, I wouldn’t be where I am,” she tells me. There’s a pause after that.

I know what’s coming.

“It’s your decision,” she starts out, “and you know I support you no matter what, but… have you been in touch with Jake?”

“I have been the opposite of in touch,” I admit. “It’s insane, Annie... it has to be the hormones. I see him everywhere. Everywhere, Annie. I was in the bathroom the other day at the gym”—she gives me an approving nod, because the gym was her idea—“and I couldn’t hear the person in the stall next to me, and could not shake the idea that it was Jake, that he’d somehow followed me in and was waiting for me to come out so he could confront me about the baby.”

Annie bites her lip. She looks concerned, and with a sigh she tells me why. “Hon, I have to be honest with you.”

“Please do,” I sigh. It’s not like Annie has the ability to not say what she’s thinking, even if she does have infinitely better tact than I do.

“Paranoia? High stress? Irrational fears? Does that sound familiar?” She says it gently enough, but it still sends a shiver down my spine.

“Shit,” I breathe. “I didn’t even…”

The story about the gym? Seeing Jake in the grocery store even though I know damn well that man doesn’t buy his own goddamn groceries…

Those are the sorts of things my mother might say; the kinds of irrational things she’d call me about to come and dispel.

“You just need to manage your stress, Janie,” Annie says, one hand on my bare belly. “So come see me, three days a week. An hour at a time. Keep going to the gym, and…”