“I am alive, despite her wishes,” he said. He patted his chest as proof. “Stand up, Opal.”
Nobody knew what to do. Opal looked toward Bertie, who was studying Jagr with dull eyes like a taxidermized bird, the kind that hung in the Colonel’s sitting room. She felt her baby kick. The chair was hard on her bottom, and she had the urge to shift her weight for comfort, but she didn’t dare move.
Tuttle spoke next: “What’s the meaning of this?” He stood now, too.
“My wife.Madame, she calls herself now, I understand from the papers. She’s sick. Unwell. She has a condition. I’ve come to take her home.”
“You mean to tell me you are married to Madame Doucet?” Tuttle asked. Jagr corrected his pronunciation. He stood. Was he delighted? Enraged? Opal couldn’t read him.
Now Jenkins stood, too. Dixie licked the tip of her pencil and continued writing.
“She ran away. Six months ago,” Jagr said. “She tried to poison me. I nearly died.”
Opal sat motionless in her chair, tapping her front teeth, concentrating her worry there. Only she could hear the click, click, click of her teeth. She’d read when some women give birth, the midwife places rags in their mouths to bite upon because screaming might startle a baby. A baby startled at birth would be plagued its whole life with a weakened constitution. When her neighbor in Gallipolis gave birth, they’d stuffed her mouth with gauze for just this reason.
From her periphery, Opal watched Bertie rise. The Colonel’s gaze was trained on the Mind Box. He took notations, then set down his pencil and adjusted some knobs. He didn’t look up, not at Opal, not at Tuttle, who spoke next.
“Arrest her this instant. Police!” he called. “Police!”
Jagr continued forward, down the aisle. He held his hat upside down in his hands now, like it was the offering basket at church. Hewasmaking an offer: “I won’t be pressing charges,” he said. “She’s sick. She has a condition.”
“Is it true?” Jenkins asked.
She tried to stand, but the motion was difficult, not because she was pregnant but because the leather strap encircled her head.
Dixie scribbled. Her pencil sounded like a whip as it scratched the paper. Bertie wiped her brow with her glove. She began stumbling backward toward the door, holding her middle.
“Her condition,” Opal heard someone murmur.
“You’re married?” Jenkins asked.
She tried to face the Colonel, but the wires impeded her movements. The band was too tight. Her headache was a rock in her skull; if she could unzip her skin, it’d tumble out. She found it hard to concentrate on anything other than the pressure there, and then the pressure migrated lower, to her abdomen.
“To whom?” one of the men asked.
Opal didn’t answer. Now her whole body was throbbing, thumping, cramping. What did it matter, to whom? She tried to catch Bertie’s attention, but she was heading toward the door. She could feel the heat of the Colonel at her back.
“It’s her condition. You see what we’re dealing with here.” Jagr tried to get closer to Opal, but Jenkins stopped him. “She is lucky I’ll allow her to come home at all. Opal,” Jagr commanded. “Stand up. Opal.”
But she wasn’t Opal right then.
I am not Opal. I am not me.Let her be anyone else. Let her be far away. And for a moment again, she felt it—the vacuity, a sense she occupied a different body in a different life.
The Colonel continued to observe readings from the Mind Box, jotting down his findings in a notebook. His eyes darted back and forth. His cheeks were flushed.
“My wife is hysterical, clearly. It must be her pregnancy—the hormones can lead to psychotic stupor,” said Jagr. “She has a condition. A nervous condition. Headaches. Blackouts. I’ve always told her pregnancy would make it worse. I believed her to be sterile. But—” He scratched his beard, calculating an equation in his head.
“Pregnancy?” said Tuttle. More audience members found their way to the exit.
The pressure in her head was now too much for her. Her whole body tightened, and she braced herself. She heard a strange noise in her head, awaa-waaing, like the cry of her baby making its way to the light. She still had more than a month, according to her calculations.
“To whom is she married?” the mayor asked. Now the entire committee faced Opal, whose head was bound up with straps and nodes. She couldn’t speak for the pain.
The Colonel made a few more notations in his log. He set down his pen and looked up at the men.
“Please,” said Jenkins. “Tell us, please.”
“To whom are you married?” asked Tuttle.
