Coda (Songs of Submission #9)(38)

“You have to start eating,” I reprimanded myself. “Someone else is counting on you.”

I surprised myself. What was I doing? I didn’t want a baby. I just wanted to make Jonathan as comfortable and happy as possible for however long he had. That was it. Not raise children into orphanhood.

I breathed heavily and tilted one leg. Inside the thigh, the word Jonathan’s became visible. I was marked, written on, branded with his name. I closed my eyes and asked myself what I wanted to pray for.

Was I relieved? Disappointed? What would change? Would I throw caution to the wind and let my sons and daughters go through puberty with a brave and dead father? What was I agreeing to?

I didn’t know. But I knew things were going to change. If we were having a baby, then f*ck it, I’d just deal with it.

A smile stretched across my face as if it were someone else’s face. I felt the muscles tense and expand, felt the swelling in my heart one felt when one smiled with joy. I felt as if deciding to deal with it had cracked open part of me, and that smile spilled out.

I opened my eyes. This was awesome. When did it get awesome? Had I been holding on to the desire for his children without realizing it? Had it crept under the covers with me? Had it been in my diet? The air I breathed? When had this glee snuck into my heart?

I pressed my eyes shut against tears. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want my body to have any confusion. The burst of emotion came from a place I didn’t know existed. Some string of code in my DNA, some hormonal rush that was more biological than logical.

I was overjoyed. Thrilled to bursting. I jumped up and, still naked, ran to the tablet. I couldn’t wait to tell him. The metal and plastic were cold in my hand as I woke the device, then I stopped. I wanted to hold him. I wanted his reaction to myself, to own it the way he owned my orgasms. I wanted to feel his strength and his warmth around me when he found out.

Instead of calling him, I made reservations to go home.

When I put the tablet down, I saw the Sharpie on the desk. I picked it up, went to the bathroom, and stood in front of the mirror. My body looked the same to me. I turned every which way and saw no difference. His name between my legs was barely visible when I stood, just a few unreadable hashes of black. I popped the cap off the marker and pressed the tip to the skin below my navel.

“Upside down and backward,” I said. I looked in the mirror. That just confused things.

Right is left and up is down. I drew a J with my right hand and, convinced I was doing it correctly, continued until I’d written Jonathan’s baby across my abdomen.

Then I laughed so hard I lay on the bed and cried with joy.

chapter 26.

MONICA

I couldn’t contain myself. It was twenty minutes to boarding, and I fidgeted around the terminal, wishing I’d taken the Gulfstream. I picked up the phone. As much as I wanted to call Jonathan… I didn’t. Not yet. I wanted to see his face and hear his breath. I wanted him to hold me so close I could feel that motherf*cking heartbeat.

“Mom?”

“Monica, are you all right?”

She was wide awake, and it was four in the morning in Los Angeles. If I’d called at noon, she would have been sleeping. That was Mom. I’d learned to accept it.

To say my mother’s attitude about me had changed after I’d married Jonathan would be a gross understatement. And now she’d be the first person to hear the news from my lips.

“I’m pregnant.” Silence. I didn’t realize how quickly I’d been circumnavigating the terminal until I slowed down. “Mom?”

A woman rolled over my foot with her square bag and gave me a dirty look. Fuck her.

“Monya.”

“Are you all right?”

“Am I all right? Are you asking if I’m all right? My only daughter marries a dying man in the hospital, nurses him back to health, and gets pregnant with his baby, and you ask if I’m all right?” I started to reply, but she cut me off. “How can I not be all right? I’m so happy I cannot even speak. My God, a baby. A baby.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I was glad I’d told her, but I didn’t feel the explosion of joy I’d hoped for. The reveal was kind of a letdown. It needed to be Jonathan, but in front of me.

“Where are you?” she asked. “How far along? Do you have the sickness?”

“I have no idea, but I had kind of a little period a couple of months ago, so the doctor figures two months. And I’m not sick at all. I mean, there was a little flu going around, so—”

“Do you have it? You can’t catch anything.”

Between the worry in her voice and my flight number being called, I lost track of the conversation. “I know, I know. My plane’s boarding. Just don’t say anything to anyone. I haven’t told Jonathan yet.”

“You can’t tell him.”

“What? Why?”

“Anything can happen.” Her voice took on that mysterious, awed tone it got when she talked about the inscrutabilities of God. “You have to wait until you’re twelve weeks. You don’t want to disappoint him.”

“Disa—”

I realized what she meant in the middle of the word. She’d miscarried a few times and had just bled the babies away without ever bothering my father with the gory details. She was who she was. The fact that I was a different person completely, healthy and young with every reason to carry a baby to term, didn’t matter. She would worry about stuff because that was what she did.