A Spark of Light(103)

Her driver had pictures of his children stuck to the dashboard of his Kia. “Going to be a hot one today,” he said as they pulled away from the curb, and she silently cursed. She didn’t want a chatty driver. She wanted one who was mute, preferably.

“I guess,” she said.

He glanced into the rearview mirror. “You in town for the convention?”

She imagined this. What if there was a convention of unhappily pregnant women? What if they filled an entire conference hall? What if there were breakout sessions for Self-Doubt and Stupid Choices? Or a sitting area where you could cry, and a soundproof room where you could curse as loud as you wanted at a man, at your rotten luck, at God?

What if there was a keynote, with a motivational speaker who could truly convince you that tomorrow was going to be better than yesterday?

Scratch that. It wasn’t the pregnant women who needed a convention to educate them. It was the people who were rushing the gates, telling women like Joy she was going to hell.

“So you’re not a dentist?” the driver said.

“What?”

“The convention.”

“Oh,” Joy said. “No.”

She had entered the Center’s address into her Uber app but now she wanted to get out of the car. She wanted to walk. She needed to be alone.

“Can you pull over here?” she asked.

“Everything okay?” The driver slowed and put on his blinker, rolling to a stop.

“Yeah. I just need to … This is great. I got the address wrong,” she lied. Never mind that they were literally beside a parking lot with a defunct video store that was boarded up. “It’s just around the corner.”

“Okay then,” the driver said.

Joy started walking. She felt the sun on the crown of her head; it might have been a blessing. She could hear the car rolling along behind her, slowly crunching the gravel on the side of the road. Pass me, she thought. Jesus Christ, leave already.

The Kia pulled up beside her, and the driver rolled down the window. Joy felt like crying. Why today, of all days, did she have to get the Uber guy with a conscience? “Ma’am,” he said, “you forgot this.”

She came closer and saw that he was holding up the blue blanket that had been in two of her dreams. It had not been in the backseat with her.

Joy blinked at it. “That doesn’t belong to me,” she said, and she kept going.

—


IZZY WAS YAWNING AS SHE drove. She hated night shifts, and she had worked long enough as a nurse in the ER at Baptist Memorial to be able to avoid them. But she had willingly swapped with a colleague, Jayla, because she had to take the next two days off.

She had already been on the road an hour and a half, and she had another hour left, and she knew this because she had Googled it multiple times, as if the answer might change. But still, rather than leaving Oxford at six A.M. as she had intended, when her shift ended she had taken the elevator up to the birthing pavilion.

Nobody had stopped her from going into the nursery; she had her ID clipped right to her scrubs. To her surprise, though, there had been only a single baby. It was a little boy, swaddled in a blue blanket. He had a name card: LEVON MONELLE. One tiny fist had punched the air, and his mouth had been wide open. Izzy had watched him cry and flail around a little bit, and then through some miracle of guidance, his hand had landed on his lips and he’d started to suckle.

You were never too young to learn to be self-sufficient.

She had stroked a finger down the tight mummied wrap of his little body. Was it dishonest to not tell Parker she was pregnant? Or would it be worse to tell him, and then break up with him?

Izzy had grown up with her face pressed so hard against reality that it was impossible for her to believe in mythical creatures: fairies and unicorns and men who cared more about Izzy’s future with them than about her past. She had tried to picture herself in Parker’s world, learning how to ski and spending fifty bucks at a movie on seats and popcorn and sodas without feeling guilty. But if she became that woman, she wouldn’t be Izzy anymore. And wasn’t that who he had fallen in love with?

It was better this way. Parker would never know. He wouldn’t be forced to stay with her out of some misguided sense of honor or chivalry. Once he had space and time to think it over, once he settled down with someone more like him, he would realize she had done him a favor. Someone who had grown up getting by day to day just didn’t have the resources to dream about the future.

When Izzy had left the little room, she’d stopped at the nurses’ desk. “How come there aren’t more babies?”

The nurse had looked at her like she was crazy. “They’re in the rooms with their mamas.”

Izzy had felt like an idiot. Of course they were. Even now as she drove she wondered about Levon’s mother. Had she needed to get a good night’s sleep? Was she sick? Was he?

Izzy was afraid the answer was also something any vaguely maternal female knew, which was why she hadn’t asked the L & D nurse. If she needed confirmation that she was making the right choice, she’d received it.

The GPS on her phone told her that in two miles, she would be turning right. She put on her signal, following the directions carefully because she was not familiar with the roads in Jackson, Mississippi. But even with her detour to the nursery, Izzy knew she would be fine. Barring unforeseen traffic, she would reach the Center in plenty of time for the first appointment of her abortion.