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It is a restless and fitful sleep, filled with dreams of being chased, of being caught in giant spider webs, of being buried underground. Each time I rise out of the depths of the horror of the dreams, I am pulled back by drowsy tentacles coiling around my neck and my arms, dragging me under again. Morning comes with a bright sun shining through the window . . . and confusion. Where am I? Why am I here? I roll to sit up, but immediately let myself fall back, overwhelmed by nausea and a sudden spinning of the world. I let the sleep drag me down again, still trying to untangle the mystery of my surroundings through the throbbing in my head.
Voices and hands are on me, feeling my skin, cool cloths are placed on my head, and I’m helped to the bathroom where I sit on the toilet with a trash can in front of me. Expelling everything, forcing all of the bile and toxins from my body, purging my soul of my darkness. I believe I will die when I am taken back to my foreign room and the chills overtake me. I am burning, my skin is hot but my core is ice. There is nothing to do but sleep, falling into the black, where not even dreams dare to tread.
***
At some point in the next night, the fever begins to break and I stop shaking and start to sweat. The voices around me become more clear, and I recognize them. Cici, with a cool cloth on my forehead and then my cheeks, her words just low murmurs, not making sense. When she sees my eyes open, she goes to the intercom and calls down to Janice, “She’s awake.”
“Hey you,” she says, settling back by my side, her hand brushing my hair away from my face, her fingers light and cool against my skin.
“Hey,” I croak, and she helps me to sit. I draw a little water up a straw. It hits my stomach, and the cool water sloshes in the empty space there. I am suddenly famished. Before I’m even finished with the swallow, the door opens and Janice comes through, followed by Dr. Smith, his stethoscope swinging from his neck.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, moving the earpieces of the stethoscope into his ears, putting the back of his hand to my forehead.
“Hungry,” I say and am glad my voice comes out with its normal strength.
“That’s a good sign.” He presses the stethoscope to my belly and shifts it from one place to the next, listening. The tension in the room is palpable, and when he speaks, I finally breathe. “The baby sounds just fine.”
Relief washes over me, even though if she weren’t fine, if she had died in the heat of the fever, then all of my turmoil would disappear in grief that would fade, and I would move on with my life without ever having to look back and worry that I had done the right or wrong thing. But I would never wish her not to be, and it feels right to know it. I am not that person.
“Do you think you can make it downstairs?” Janice asks, working on arrangements to get me food.
“I’d like to shower first.”
“Of course.” She smiles and nods, turning back to the door. The memory of my conversation with her in her office rushes back, and I no longer know if it was one of the dreams or if we really talked. Did she really have a daughter when she was twelve, or was that one of the spiders talking?
***
Cici is transformed. The bones of her face are pushing back through, and her bloat has completely washed away. She is dressed in loose jeans and a snug t-shirt, and all the form of her previous body, her before-pregnancy body, is coming back. Her breasts are huge, of course, and she has to change out the pads in her bra every hour or so from the leaking of the milk, but the biggest change is the light in her eyes. When she had come back, and her eyes had been so empty and dead, I was scared that she would never be the same again. Her light is back now, and brighter than I ever saw it. I was sick for forty-eight hours, and she has only three days left before she is planning on leaving. They give us a week, which is standard, but she is leaving on Thursday in hopes of making it to California and her cousin’s house on Saturday morning.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as we sit down with plates of food drawn out from the refrigerator, because I have to tell her, she has to know. I didn’t know what it would be like—how could I? Cici only smiles at me, putting leftover mac-n-cheese into a pan on the stove. That little girl Shelly makes a mean mac-n-cheese. She also makes something she calls “Stuff” and it’s maybe the best thing I’ve ever eaten, the variety of flavors don’t all hit you at once, but in a series of spicy, sweet, and savory. God. It’s good. She won’t tell anybody what she puts in it.
“For what?” she asks, glancing at me while she stirs the mac. I wait for her to come back and try to convey my meaning in a look.
“About the baby,” I say, whispering as if nobody else knows she had one and let him go.
“Don’t be. You didn’t do anything. It’s all good.” The light in her eyes doesn’t waver.
“Good.”
“You’ll see. It’s really horrible the first day, but that’s just all hormones and shit, then the next day you wake up and your body starts to feel like it used to, and your head says that he’s got good people taking care of him, and you know they are good people because you chose them to take care of him. It’s okay. It’s right.” She pulls the pan from the stove, sets it on a hot pad, and spoons a big mound onto her plate.
“Good,” I say again, still feeling like she isn’t being quite honest.
“I’m fine,” she says, putting a forkful into her mouth.
“Good.”
“You know how I chose them?” she asks, and I shake my head. “You know they send you these booklets, all about them, trying to convince you that they’d be the best parents for our kids. So I got six, which is a lot, but I didn’t like anybody from the first set. So I sat down and thought about what I wished my family had been like, and if I had been adopted, what kind of people I would have wanted. Basically, I gave him the parents I should have had.” She says the last with triumph. “He’s going to get to go on vacations. The dad is from Greece, and she has family in Spain. They grew up here. So, they’re both, like, American, ya know? But they have ties to their families in other countries. My boy is going to learn other languages, and he’s going to have cousins all over the place. The dad has like six brothers, and some of them are here and some of them are overseas. My kid is going to have a big family. He’s going to have such a great childhood.” She is glowing.
I hadn’t thought of it like that, really—that I could choose the type of family she would have. I could choose for her to have teachers for parents, or rich business people, or artists, or a stay-at-home mom. I can give her the people I hope to be someday. Wow.