Immaculate (26 page)

All is calm, all is bright

The song somehow sounded new coming from Iris, so much more profound, entirely raw and visceral, as if she were singing the words as they came to mind—as if the lyrics and the melody were being created right then and there. As if she were weaving them all together. For me.

Round yon Virgin Mother and Child,

Holy Infant so tender and mild.

I was terrified to look away, to risk losing her again, but I needed to know that Jesse was seeing her, too. That I wasn't imagining her, not this time, not last time either. I looked up at him, squeezing his elbow to get his attention. “Do you see, Jesse? Do you see?”

He looked down at me, head cocked in confusion. “See what?”

“Iris,” I said, fighting to keep my voice low as I pointed at the altar. “It's Iris. Singing.”

He glanced at the altar and back at me, his face looking even more bewildered.

I turned back to the choir, frustrated. How could he not have noticed as soon as I did?

But as my eyes fell on the woman singing, I realized why Jesse didn't understand. She wasn't Iris, or anyone who looked remotely similar to Iris. She was a tall blonde woman, curvy even in the folds of her oversized choir gown, who had been my fifth-grade Sunday School teacher. The same woman who had sung the “Silent Night” solo the year before, and the year before that, and every other year for as long as I could recall.

What was
wrong
with me? Was I going crazy?

Throughout all this—through Iris, the pregnancy, the idea of an actual
miracle
, all the absurd and all the irrational—I had always trusted in myself. I had always believed in my own mind.

Because if I couldn't do that, how could I believe in anything?

My throat clenched around warm bile, and I shut my eyes, the pinpricks of flame all around me suddenly too much to take in. Tiny lights everywhere, flashing, flickering behind my eyelids. I needed to leave, needed to be anywhere that wasn't this room, this song. I blew my candle out and pressed Jesse back so that I could slip out from the aisle.

“Mina,” he said, breathing against my ear, his fingertips brushing my wrist.

“Never mind what I said. I just need some fresh air,” I whispered, pushing past him. “Stay here. I'll be right back.”

I ducked my head and pushed through the side entry, careful to close the door softly behind me. I started toward the bathroom, but as I rushed through the hallway, my eyes were drawn to the dimly lit cement stairwell that led down to the lower level of Sunday School classrooms. I veered off down the steps, to guaranteed solitude. The hallway was pitch-black when I reached the bottom of the stairs, and I groped along the wall, fingers fumbling until I found the switch. A lazy bluish light spilled over the walls, every inch lined with bulletin boards and crafts, watercolor Bethlehem scenes and sparkly pipe-cleaner angels. The air was damp and cool, permanently infused with the scent of glue sticks and markers.

The doors I passed were all a blur, until I reached the room clearly marked as the second-grade classroom with a six-foot number two in bright red glitter—Gracie's class. I pushed the door open and flicked on the lights. As I stepped inside, my eyes instantly froze on the elaborate display in front of me, a life-size nativity scene that spanned the entire length of the back wall. Gracie had come home from Sunday School for the last few weeks gushing with enthusiasm. She was so proud of their work, and now I could see why. My feet drifted forward, one step, two, until I could reach out and rub my hand along the crinkly blue construction paper of Mary's tunic, the prickly bits of real hay glued inside of the manger that held a smiling baby Jesus. I'd seen so many versions of this scene in the books stacked in my room, my online scouring for answers—so many different interpretations from every artistic period of the last two thousand years. But none of them had held this kind of power over me. None of them had ripped through my chest, squeezed and pounded at my heart like this second-grade art project. Maybe it was the sheer size of the display, or maybe it was because it was Christmas Eve, and I was still shaking from seeing Iris. Maybe it was because it had been pieced together by seven-year-old hands, Gracie's hands, so sweet and innocent, with its asymmetrical faces scrawled with crayons, the jagged scissor cuts.

“I'm not crazy!” I yelled to the mural, to no one at all. “I'm not! I'm
not
 . . .”

My knees caved and I sank to the ground, my outstretched hands sliding down along the bottom of Mary's thin paper robe. The tears came fast and heavy, and I pressed my lips against the top of my shoulder to muffle the sound. Not that anyone could hear me from the basement, not as they sang their hymns and recited their prayers above me. I cried, even though I didn't know exactly who or what I was crying for. For me? The baby? Our future? For all of it, maybe—for every struggle I'd been through already and for every struggle I knew we'd still face.

I needed Iris to
really
come back. I needed her to explain things, to make it all easier. I needed to know why my baby and I were meant to fight through this. What were we fighting
for
?

“Mina?”

A sob caught in my throat, and I wheezed as I lifted up my head.

“Mina, are you okay?”

Jesse was hovering over me, his lips and eyes and forehead all sharp and pinched toward the center of his beautiful face.

I looked away. “I told you not to follow me.”

“Yeah, well, I'm glad I didn't listen. You shouldn't be alone down here. Not like this. Not on Christmas Eve. Come back upstairs with me.”

“Like it's that easy to just put on a happy face, right?” I could feel the anger rising through me, the anxiety and resentment I had hidden so well and for so long. “How do you think
Christmas
makes me feel, Jesse? You can't understand. No one can.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but I cut him off. “I mean, seriously, for two seconds pretend that you're me. Pretend that you're some potentially crazy modern-day Mary impostor who believes—who
actually fucking believes
—that she could be the human carrier for some kind of twenty-first-century miracle baby. Another Jesus type maybe, but who the hell knows? Maybe it's the Devil, maybe it's a demon spawn, some sort of evil black angel who will take over the whole—”

“Stop it, Mina!” he yelled, wrapping his hands around my shoulders and snapping me upright to face him. “Stop it. You know you don't mean any of that. You're not crazy and this isn't some demon baby. I don't know what this is, Mina, but it's not bad. It's not, and you know that. You can feel it, just like I do.” He paused, loosening his grip on me. “I know that whatever is happening to you is somehow good. It's meant to be. You just have to believe that. It's the only way, Mina.”

I closed my eyes for a few seconds and breathed. I wanted to believe him. And I did, in my strongest and best moments, the times I was convinced that miracles could exist and that I—I was lucky. I was part of a life that would be everything but ordinary. But seeing Iris up at the altar had made me question myself—and questioning any piece of this led to a slippery slope.

“I'm sorry, Jesse,” I said, reaching out for his hand as I pulled myself to my feet. “I shouldn't have talked like that, not to you. You didn't deserve any of that.”

“Don't worry about it. All forgiven. Really. 'Tis the season and all that.” He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling at the edges, and I realized that his hand was still wrapped in mine. I wanted to pull him closer, lean my cheek against his thick red sweater. I could feel myself moving in, the air between us tightening.

“We should probably head back upstairs,” he said, taking a step back as he dropped my hand and pretended to study the nativity scene. “The service might be over by now.”

I nodded dumbly and started toward the door, unable to meet his eyes.

My family had been looking for us, their jackets already on as they stood waiting by the front doors. The lobby was mostly emptied at this point, which was a relief. I was in no state to mingle with the merry crowds.

“Where were you guys?” Gracie asked, pulling away from them to hand me my coat. “You left during your favorite part.”

“I'm sorry, sweetie. I just needed someplace quiet for a few minutes to be alone.”

“But you weren't alone. Jesse left, too.”

I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. The tears, the awful things I'd said. I needed to apologize. I needed to tell him about that glimpse of Iris, about how unsteady I was afterward. He would understand.

As we made our way down the steps to the sidewalk, I leaned in, careful not to brush against him as I whispered. “I'm sorry again, about all that. I need to tell you something later. About . . . Iris.”

Before he could answer, a blinding flash came from somewhere in the dark lot in front of us. I jumped, grabbing on to Jesse's arm to steady myself.

The light flashed again, and this time I saw the person directly behind the flash, the man holding the camera in front of his face. A photographer was there to take a picture of me on Christmas Eve. The new virgin worshipping the old. Too sickeningly appropriate for him to pass up.

Jesse moved to block me from the camera, but the flashes kept coming, faster, closer.

“Leave my daughter alone,” my dad growled. I peeked from behind Jesse's shoulder to see him approaching the photographer, who was much shorter and smaller than my dad's solid six-two frame. The man cowered and brought the camera down behind his back, protecting his goods.

“I'm done, I'm done,” he said, taking big steps backward. “I'm leaving now.”

“I want those pictures deleted first.” My dad was matching him step for step, the distance between them shrinking. “Give me your camera.”

“You're crazy, man. No. I didn't do anything wrong.”

“You're stalking my daughter and taking pictures without her permission. Outside of church on Christmas Eve, damn it. Don't you have any decency? Any respect?” He was spitting, he was yelling so hard, angry white flecks glistening under the streetlamps.

“I'm just doing my job. I have kids, too, you know. We all have our work to do. You do yours, I do mine.” The man's voice was louder now, less shaky and intimidated, and he'd stopped moving away.

“I feel sorry for your kids then. I feel sorry that their dad puts food on the table with money he made taking advantage of innocent people's lives.”

“And I feel sorry for you that you actually believe your daughter is innocent.”

In a hazy blur, my dad hurled his head toward the man like a bull, knocking him flat on his back against the pavement.

“Dad, no!” I screamed as Jesse lurched forward.

“Paul! Paul!” My mom's pleading shrieks cut through the darkness, and Gracie's softer, weaker cries followed like an echo.

I stood frozen where I was, too numb to react. They were fighting because of me. I was ruining Christmas. My hands rushed to cover my stomach. My belly looked so big under the padding of the jacket, a ball that seemed too impossibly round to be a part of my actual body.

“Jesus! You're fucking crazy!” The man screamed as he picked himself up, camera nestled protectively under his arm. Jesse was fighting to keep my dad controlled, tugging his arms back to lock him in place. “You're just lucky my camera didn't bash open on the ground, or we'd be going straight to the police station right now, you asshole.”

My dad was seething, but he'd stopped fighting against Jesse's grip. “You tell the cops. They haven't done a damn useful thing for my family. They haven't lifted a finger to stop people like you from intruding in our lives.”

“If you want us to go away, tell your pretty little daughter there to give up the bullshit. If she admits that she had sex, she's suddenly just like every other stupid knocked-up kid out there. But as long as she gives us a story, we're not going anywhere.” He spit on the ground, just barely missing my dad's shiny brown oxfords, before spinning away from us and jogging across the dark lot.

“Merry Christmas, everybody!” he called out over his shoulder, leaving the five of us standing there, silent in his wake.

• • •

Christmas morning was anticlimactic after that—no calls from the cops, thankfully, though we all flinched every time the phone rang. Police, angry zealots, reporters who would stop at nothing to get a holiday feature. There were too many potential land mines lurking behind each ring to risk picking up the phone. Family or friends calling to wish us a merry Christmas could be filtered through the answering machine.

The present opening was somber, except for Gracie, who still squealed over every shiny pink package she tore open. Her big gift—a baby doll that ate, drank, peed, and pooped—seemed a bit young for her, considering that she'd cried last spring when my aunt gave her a doll for her seventh birthday, saying that she was a big girl, too old for dolls anymore. But she'd insisted on this particular doll, plastering wish lists to Santa on the refrigerator, the kitchen table, my parents' nightstand, the bathroom mirror—anywhere and everywhere to make sure the request couldn't possibly be overlooked.

“I need practice to be the most perfect aunt ever,” she had said to me when the commercial for the doll played on TV. “I can feed her, hold her, put on diapers—just like I will with your baby, Meen.
Our
baby.” I hadn't known if I'd wanted to laugh or cry when she'd said it.

Everything Santa brought me was baby related, too—a few red and yellow unisex footy jumpers, a night sky–themed mobile with a smiling man in the moon and twinkling stars to hang over the crib, and the crowning present, a beautiful bright green stroller with every kind of attachment and compartment that a new, helpless mom could ever possibly need. Gracie proceeded to push around her doll—“Baby Mira for miracle,” she proclaimed—in the stroller for the rest of the afternoon, making tireless laps around the living room and kitchen.