Now the baby moves you must give it a name, the others said when I woke up the following day. They had already breakfasted and seemed to have been discussing me. You can’t just keep calling it Baby.
We can help you choose, Therese offered, hopeful. She followed Marisol and me around like a dog. It was hard to like her, though I knew this was ugly of me.
I spent some time in silence that afternoon with my list, in the garden, batting flies away from my face. It felt like a decision too big for anyone to make but there I was, making it.
I chose, but I don’t want to tell anybody the name, I said when I came back in, the door swinging behind me. Not until the baby is born. Everyone shrugged, but left me alone. It felt good to have that kind of secret inside of me—nothing sordid, nothing damaging. A little sun-warmed stone in my stomach.
I’m your mother, I said to the baby later in private, but coming out of my mouth it seemed presumptuous. Someone was going to call me out on it. Mother, I tried out again, flushing bright red.
When we remembered, we measured our bellies again and wrote the figures down. We put up a tent in the main room so that there was somewhere to be alone, a pocket of privacy in the claustrophobia of the cabin. At night I slept on the bare mattress breathing in the smell of Marisol’s hair, the shape of her skull tucked under my chin.