If any such thing is there like they say, and they say that god is everywhere, then god is here, in this night sky and in my brain, in places where this isn’t happening, and here where it is, and in all times between and before and beyond. I am trying to feel god because I am pregnant and because I’m afraid and there’s no one to tell. Like my dad says, like they tell us at church, if you end up pregnant that means you asked for it, and if you’ve asked for it, then there’s only one life worth saving, and it isn’t mine. There’s no one to tell, or there is, but there’s no way of knowing who’s safe. Sometimes I think maybe it’s BetsyMs.JimenezBetsy or how Ms. Jimenez is “a godforsaken lesbian.” I imagine standing on Betsy’s stoop or in Ms. Jimenez’s yard, imagine the screen door propped open, imagine the concerned face of Betsy or the tender face of Ms. Jimenez, imagine what they’d say if I told them, something like “it’s all going to be okay, Trina.”
Sometimes, imagining this, I can feel right up to how it used to be, a feeling that lasts a few seconds, and it’s like the shore when drowning, like movies from childhood, the ones where adventurous women charge into the world, and the world rewards their smarts with lives of happiness and love. Ms. Jimenez would probably remind me that I’m still a child, especially since she’s my teacher, but I can’t think of myself like that without thinking about what’s inside me.
I try not to think of it. I’m pretty sure that at eight weeks it has legs and a heartbeat, as these were some of the reasons the government used before things changed. To me it’s like those houses at Halloween Horror Nights, where you think you’ve gotten to the end but it keeps going, or how ticks sometimes stay under the skin even after you’ve tweezed them, or like the galls that mess up their hosts so badly that the original plant stays hidden.
I try not to think of it, the way it comes back, his voice warning, don’t even think of telling…
This is a true story, a hidden truth. I am telling it the best I can.
In class, I’m afraid to put my hand up. I’m not big enough to notice, but now I sense that everyone has x-ray vision, even Ms. Jimenez, who looked right at me as she read, “begin, and cease, and then again begin,” and I couldn’t breathe for what I took those words to mean.
Those words are everywhere, invisible, in my house and in my yard and in a house and a yard near mine. Everyone says “it happened to” Betsy, too. It must be true, because a few months later she showed up back at home with an ankle bracelet and has been there ever since. There are things I know about her without knowing, by the way she looks at me like we’re soldiers. Before things changed, there used to be a postcard in her bedroom window that said Smash the Patriarchy. I thought she was old, but she must have been fourteen or fifteen, the same age I am now.
Maybe I can sense who’s safe to tell, but I’m not sure what safe means beyond that. In my imaginings, we step inside past the screen door and into the light of Betsy’s porch or Ms. Jimenez’s kitchen. We sit down. They tell me about the plans put in place for “these kinds of situations.” A terrible fear spreads through me as I picture what those plans are describing:
*
It was The Back Before. Greg and I sat at the metal table during second period lunch. That was the day he came out to me, saying that he’d known for a long time, that he felt like he’d been waiting on his voice to speak itself. I took his hand under the table, gave it a squeeze to mean no matter what, to mean always, and then I looked at him and said, “no matter what,” said, “always,” and we laughed all the way up to the ceiling.
He spoke that day and then his voice kept speaking and it was beautiful. It was in the way he carried himself, in the way he answered in class. It was like he honored whatever knowledge he’d stored in himself, and it was obvious that he was free, and, once free, people started to notice.
They say at church, “does not forsake.” They say, “shadow of.” It wasn’t long after that Greg left Florida altogether, after the so-called proud boys waited for him on his usual walk home and broke three of his ribs. Days passed without him, and I could feel something had happened by the way my stomach went empty, and when I texted him, he wouldn’t tell me any of it. I would learn it later, after he had already left.
He returned to school an unfree shadow of himself. We didn’t laugh. In this way the year went on. Sometimes, in his company, it used to occur to me that all we have is all we are, and how what we are can be as near or as distant as the planet we stand on or some far-off universe. I loved him, was all, simpler than anything else.
*
They say the only job I have now is love. And they say no one will love me for what has happened. That is how they put it, as if the baby had fallen from the sky and I were fallen from heaven.
A thick fear settles on me as I picture the options someone like Betsy might describe. Dad says, the church says, the scripture says, “as you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones,” and Greg said his voice spoke itself, and Ms. Jimenez said “cease, and again begin,” and Mama used to say, “I hope one day you have one just like you.”
*
In school, they asked us to write our best and brightest dreams. For the good of the country, the prompt reminded me. I thought:
I wrote, “For my country, I’d like to be a good neighbor, a good wife, and a good mother.”
*
Tonight the sky is a shadow of the lemon sky day. My heart whistles through my body like wind through a playground. Outside the window is the road and Betsy’s house and then nothing. She stands outside, smoking and frowning through the rain, and says as I stop in the street, “The world is just trash and anger anymore.” I don’t know if I believe that, the way I can’t seem to believe that the baby inside me is a baby at all, the way I can’t picture keeping it or giving it up. So heavy in front of her, I can’t say anything.
*
The screen door stands open. The light spills out. Ms. Jimenez waits, knowing what I’ve come there for, knowing without knowing what I carry, her face patient and soft, and we have time. I open my mouth. I say sometimes falling stars are the most beautiful. She says, “as on a darkling plain.” I nod and close my eyes and wake up on a table, and the choice is over, and the room is a shore. The shore is a voice that can speak anything, can say, for example, god, pregnant, pregnant, life, Betsy, Ms. Jimenez, lesbian, teacher, eight weeks, legs, heartbeat, government, baby, baby, postcard, Smash the Patriarchy, Greg, came out to me, the so-called proud, broke his body, baby, keeping it, giving it away.
Has it already happened? Is it happening? It keeps happening, the way time seems to go backward and forward.
The voice says my best and brightest dreams are a warm safe home down a tree-lined street with a mother and father who love me the way I love Greg, which is to say no matter what, which is to say always. In my best and brightest dreams, my time is filled with dreams, and I lay under the stars and imagine far-away places, make plans to explore them, laugh and cry and sing aloud to the songs I love. In my best and brightest, no one touches me without my permission. I go to the ocean and stand at the shore. I find out who I am. The voice says choice, and its shore goes on forever.
