BELINDA HAD NOT gone to the Jolly Shopper as the policeman had asked. She had gone home and was now sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed she shared with Raymond, looking out the wide window into the backyard, which was a rough tangle of untended greenery. The day was warm and summery; but the leaves of the lilac bushes were getting rusty, and the sweet peas were sparse upon yellowing vines. Belinda wondered where she would be exactly one year from today.
The book lying open on the bed in front of her had been published in 1974. She wished she’d noticed that before checking it out of the library. A lot of progress must have been made in twenty years.
She had always expected that her mother would return someday. At first, of course, she had expected her all the time. Every time she heard footsteps on the porch, even though she knew they weren’t her mother’s footsteps because her mother’s footsteps were unmistakable, nevertheless, every time the mail was delivered or the paper; every time a neighborhood kid came by wanting bottles or cans for his hockey league; every time a representative of a religious sect knocked on the door to invite them to heaven; every single time, for a while, Belinda had thought, when someone came to the door, It’s Mom. And when the phone rang, too, she had thought it would be her mother, with an explanation.
The book had a section entitled “Old Wives’ Tales,” which it said were “destructive” and “demoralizing.” Belinda appreciated the controlled anger that permeated these paragraphs. She felt soothed by them, even though she hadn’t heard any old wives’ tales, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway: she was just browsing her way through this book on her way to the last chapter—“Induced Abortion.”
Her father had never been willing to discuss it. He’d shown Belinda the note, which she had to agree was far from satisfactory. Her mother’s handwriting had been shaky, but that was to be expected, Belinda was glad of it, because it wasn’t a commonplace thing to desert your family, and a person’s hand ought to shake while trying to explain it. She hadn’t explained it, though.
Belinda drew up her knees and hugged them. Would she have to live the rest of her life without knowing why her mother had left her?
She pulled the book around to her right side and thumbed through some more pages. Ovulation...implantation...genetics: “What will your baby inherit?... The statistical chance of your baby inheriting any particular trait, good or bad, can be determined with reasonable accuracy.” Belinda wished they would stop referring to “your baby.” The growth inside her wasn’t a baby, for heaven’s sake. Not yet.
Her mother hadn’t just died. Her mother had been murdered. Belinda knew that she hadn’t actually accepted this. She understood what had happened, but this comprehension hadn’t yet progressed beyond the intellectual to become part of her. She stretched out her legs and put a hand on her heart, curiously. It was amazing, how nonphysical anguish could produce actual physical pain. She had thought she was getting over it when all of a sudden she was pregnant, and this brought it all back. And then, to make matters worse, her damn mother had shown up, finally, and...
Belinda turned more pages in the pregnancy book. She came to some drawings, black-and-white drawings sketched with a surprising delicacy. She leaned closer. “Day 21.” She couldn’t make out what that drawing was supposed to represent. “Day 24.” “Day 28.”
Exasperated, Belinda turned to the text: “Fourth Week. The pregnancy is embedded and grows rapidly during this week so that by the twenty-eighth day, or at the end of the fourth week, it is just visible to the naked eye.” Belinda shut the book.
She remembered a soft spring day when her mother had been gone for perhaps six months. Belinda had been sitting on the front step, waiting for something, she couldn’t recall what, maybe waiting for her father to give her a ride to school or for a girlfriend to come by. Anyway. Waiting. Some daffodils were growing next to the porch. The branches of the maple tree were still bare, but the sun was warm on Belinda’s bare arms. She was wondering how much time had still to pass before she would see her mother again when she heard a car, gradually became aware of its slow approach, and she launched into a daydream that this was her mother’s car; her mother had gone off to make her fortune and was now returning—eagerly, full of joy—to Belinda and her father; she’d be driving a little red car, a Porsche, maybe. And then the real car came into view, and it was red. Belinda’s heart leapt, and she stood, clutching the post that supported the porch railing. The car passed slowly across the screen of Belinda’s vision, from right to left. It was driven by a gray-haired man. He glanced her way, and Belinda’s gaze was so focused, her posture on the front step so tense, that the stranger lifted his hand in greeting as he passed.
Three and a half months. How many days was that? How many weeks? She opened the book again. The drawing labeled “Day 60” showed a baby sea creature; but Belinda was past day 60. “Day 80,” she was past that, too, a humanlike creature, with ears, and eyes, and fingers, and toes. “By the end of the thirteenth week,” read the text, “the baby is properly formed... The remainder of the pregnancy is designed not only to allow the fetus to grow to a size at which it is capable of independent survival, but also to give all the vital organs in the body sufficient time to mature and develop the highly complex processes which are essential for independent survival.”
Belinda turned another page: “Fig. 11 The Abdomen at the Twelfth Week of Pregnancy.” She was sitting cross-legged again. She picked up the book and rested it on her ankles and studied the drawing of the tiny creature floating in amniotic fluid. It looked to be a genuinely restful place, the fetus floating free, there, kept safely anchored by the umbilical cord—like a dog on a leash, she thought, or a toddler in a safety harness.
“Sixteenth Week. By the end of the sixteenth week the limbs are properly formed and all the joints are moving. Vigorous movements continue but are rarely felt by the mother. The fingers and toes are normal, and fingernails and toenails are present. The head is still relatively large for the size of the body, but fairly rapid growth continues to enlarge the body. Primary-sex characteristics continue to develop, and the sex of the infant is now obvious to the untrained observer.”
“A wonderful, terrifying adventure,” her mother had said when Belinda asked her as a child what it was like to have a baby. It seemed to Belinda, though, that there was a big unnatural separation between birthing a child and being a mother. You wouldn’t think it possible that somebody could desert the baby with whom she had had this “wonderful, terrifying adventure.”
She flipped to the last chapter and started skimming. “The termination of pregnancy before twelve to fourteen weeks,” she read, “is usually quite simple. After fourteen weeks it may be much more complicated...”
Belinda closed the book and lay flat on her back, legs stretched out, arms at her sides. She saw the afternoon light pooling on the ceiling and thought that she really ought to go outside and start putting the backyard in order. She closed her eyes, which caused tears to run down her cheeks. Shit, thought Belinda, I am so damn sick of crying.
“Belinda.”
Her eyes flew open. Raymond was standing next to the bed.
“I didn’t hear you,” said Belinda.
“I walked from town. Had to leave the truck in the shop.” He knelt on the floor next to the bed.
Raymond looked at Belinda intently, so engrossed in her that she almost felt embarrassed. She knew that he had seen the book lying next to her.
“Belinda, we can be different, you know.”
She could tell that he wanted to touch her. She shook her head.