Layla has gone still, turns slowly to face Callie again. She braces for another one of those furious, withering stares, but that’s not what she sees this time. For a second Layla’s lower lip betrays her. Trembles like the child she still is.
“Please, take care of yourself, okay? If not for yourself, then at least for your family, your friends. I only spent a little bit of time with Amanda but it’s so clear how much she loves you. I’m sure she’s not the only one.”
The look fades and Layla sets her jaw, hardens before Callie’s eyes. “My life and the people in it are absolutely none of your business.”
She stomps away and climbs into the passenger seat of a black Honda Accord, which reverses out of their spot and peels out of thelot like they’re being pursued. Callie catches one last glimpse of Layla from the passenger-side window, as she traces her mouth in lipstick, smacks them together to admire the color in the rearview. The color so bright as to be a warning, like the red of a poisoned apple in a fairy tale.
ANNABELLE
Sabrina is still asleep when the volunteer—Tammy—guides the white minivan into your driveway. You realize you are shaking as you stare through the window next to the door. In your bag, all of the money you’ve saved from this summer, which was meant for so many other things. College application fees. Books. But you’ll deal with all that later. You’ll make more money somehow. You have heard about other girls who had to pay for the whole thing themselves, girls who have had to ask the boy to contribute and come away with nothing. You are glad for all of those long, empty hours at the ice cream stand, though now you’ll have to find another job to pay for the SAT registration, for more study books because you don’t want to mess it up twice. But you’ll figure all that out once you sort this out. Once you are on the other side of whatever is going to happen today, this thing you have only heard the faintest whispers about.
You wonder if you’ll bleed a lot. You wonder if it will hurt. If they will have to cut you open. You run a finger over your scar. It wouldn’t be the first time, at least. That you have a part of yourself split apart and sewn back together again. It won’t be like Sabrina’s ministrations, the way she sucked in the breath between her teeth every time she pierced your skin with the needle, as though she felt it too. But maybe it’s better that way.
Tammy waves at you through the windshield, rolls her window down, calls to you. “Come on in, honey.”
You open the door. The car smells like cinnamon and underneath that, a sour smell, like old milk. A wooden cross dangles from therearview mirror, swings as she backs out of your driveway. A lanyard strung with plastic beads hangs with it. Tammy sees you eyeing it.
“My daughter made that one.” She touches the beads and smiles to herself. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Anna,” you say, your throat too clogged with worry to get the rest of it out.
“Anna, nice to meet you. Sorry the car is such a mess; hard to keep up with the little ones, you know.”
She gestures behind her and it is only then that you register the two car seats, the plastic rattles and dinosaur figurines on the floor, the fine orange crumbs that maybe were Cheez-Its or Goldfish crackers before getting pulverized in tiny fists, under tiny feet.
Tammy is nothing like you thought she’d be. You realized you expected someone younger, hipper, more like Miss Hamilton. Even now speeding along with Tammy in her minivan you feel the urge to call Miss Hamilton, to tell her the truth. To be with her instead.
“You’re quiet. It’s okay. Most of the girls are when I pick them up. But you’ll feel so much better once you meet with Brenda and Fran down at the center. Believe me, swear to Jesus I’ve seen it so many times myself. Girls just like you, desperate and without anybody in the world to talk to, to help them, and don’t they just walk out of there whistling—whistling!—like new women, seeing the world in brighter colors.”
You smile, surprised at the cheer with which she’s talking about it, this thing. Talking more openly than anyone you’ve ever heard, really. This mother with crushed crackers and a sticky film of spilled juice covering her car. “That will be good. I haven’t told… I haven’t talked to anyone. No one knows.”
Even describing how the secret is a secret makes you feel unburdened, without having to even use the words you’ve been afraid of, the ones you’ve been avoiding, kept in a dark box in your mind for all these months.
After twenty-five minutesin the car Tammy pulls up to a ranch house painted a faded blue gray. There’s two other cars parked in the yard, amaroon Oldsmobile and a station wagon with wood paneling along the sides.
“Here we are!”
By the door there is a name, Preston, and underneath the name a paper label edged with masking tape:Women-First Pregnancy Crisis Center. It is written in faded marker, black turned navy blue.
Tammy lets herself in. “Fran? Brenda? I’m here with Miss Anna.”
They step into a living room with crocheted blankets thrown over the back of the sofa in lumpy piles, hooked rugs on the floor, another cross on the wall—this one white, with a mournful Jesus draped across it. Little bowls of potpourri on the end tables. How can they do everything here, you wonder. You had expected a doctor’s office like the one your mother took you to when you needed shots as a child. White walls and fluorescent lights, padded tables covered with paper that crackled when you moved. A thought rises up that you try to quiet.They can’t help you here.You concentrate on the potpourri, the sickle of a dried orange nestled among the flower buds and cinnamon sticks until you feel someone else enter the room.
“Hello there, I’m Fran. Please, make yourself comfortable. Brenda will be right out too.”
Fran is older than Tammy, with woolly hair cropped close to her head and deep wrinkles around her mouth. She wears a crewneck sweatshirt with a turtleneck underneath, and still rubs her hands together and complains of the cold. “Brenda is my daughter,” she confides.
“Is she a doctor?” you ask.
Fran looks at Tammy for a moment, something passing between them, before looking back at you. “Brenda, please come meet Anna.”
You expect Brenda to greet you in the bright scrubs you remember from those visits all those years ago, the rubber gloves that the doctor snapped on her wrists, but instead she’s just another woman like Tammy and Fran, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt that saysHARRAHS CASINO RESORTacross the front.
“Anna, can I get you anything? Tea? Water?” You smell something new, now that you’ve gotten used to the potpourri, and then a glanceto the kitchen floors helps you make sense of it. A litter box, one that has not been cleaned in a while.
“No thank you.”
“We’re here to take care of you, Anna. Maybe you’ll change your mind about a drink. Whatever it is you need, you just let us know, okay? This is a precarious and special time for you. We’re here to look after you.”
