Frances McGuire lay in bed in the darkness and listened to her younger sister breathing softly next to her. The harder she tried to drift off to sleep, the more agitated she became. Careful not to wake Marianne, she peeled off the blanket, eased out of bed and tiptoed to the living room. She tucked her feet under herself on the rose print sofa and stared into the darkness.

Pregnant. She had to be. She’d never been late for a period in the four years since she’d started. And the father had to be Chris. Ugh. Chris Hanover, a budding alcoholic. Every date they’d had, he’d picked her up in his red MG and they had driven straight to his house where they each downed several bourbons at his parents’ bar. She had no doubt he was a drunk. Even at school, the bitter smell of liquor wafted from his mischievous smile. She knew there was no future with him, but he was terrific fun. So she’d kept dating him.

Now this. Anxiety washed over her and she trembled. What in the world will I do?

She thought about her recent acceptance letter from the University of Washington and the partial scholarship she’d worked so hard for. Her dreams of teaching shattered and flew off to eternity in jagged little pieces.

Footsteps approached the living room from her parents’ bedroom down the hall. Fran warily watched her mother knot her pink chenille robe and brush silver curls from her eyes.

"What are you doing up, Fran?" Her mother stood over her, arms folded under ample breasts.

"Couldn’t sleep, Mom," she said folding herself up tighter.

"It’s three a.m. and you have school tomorrow. Don’t you think you should go back to bed?"

"I’ve been trying," she snapped. "Just can’t do it. You go on. I’ll be all right."

"Okay. Just be quiet. I’ll see you in the morning."

Her mother turned to leave and Fran blurted, "Mom. I’m pregnant."

Her mother froze in mid-stride. The cuckoo clock on the wall ticked in the silence.

Finally, she wheeled and hissed, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Fran. How could you do this to your father? To me? To this family? It’s a disgrace."

"What? Do this to you?" Fran couldn’t believe her ears. She hadn’t been getting along with her mother, but this indifference stung. "What about me?"

Her mom sighed. "What about you, Fran. Everything is always about you, isn’t it?"

"I can’t think of anything that could be more about me than this, Mom."

"You’re your own worst enemy." Mom shook her head. "And you’re right. This is entirely about you and you’re going to have to do something about it. You’ll have to marry the father. Who is it?"

"Nobody."

"Sure, Fran. You’re the Virgin Mary." Mom chuckled. "Who is the father?"

"Someone I won’t be marrying, that’s for sure."

"You mean you’ve risked pregnancy with someone you’re not even serious about? That’s stupid, Fran."

"It doesn’t take a genius to know I’ve been stupid, Mom. But that was then and this is now. I don’t know what I’m going to do."

"I’ll tell you one thing. Your father’s Parkinson’s is getting worse. I have raised the five of you. I don’t have the strength and we don’t have the money to raise any more."

"I had no intentions of asking you to, Mother. I wouldn’t wish that on a stranger let alone any baby of mine."

"Thank God you have that much sense. What about adoption?"

"I can’t just give my baby away."

"You’re barely eighteen and can’t seem to take care of yourself. How are you going to care for a baby? On your income from the A & W? That’s a joke."

"I’ll figure something out."

"Have you considered abortion?"

"That’s not an option, Mom. That’s something I just can’t do."

"And thank God for that. What are you going to do, then?"

"I guess I’ll have the baby and raise it myself."

"That’ll be interesting," was her mother’s parting shot.

Well, Fran thought, I guess that answers that question.

Fran had no delusions about how the news of her pregnancy would be received by her friends. One girl in her crowd, Jenny Smithers, had become pregnant the year before. Her best friend hadn’t kept the secret as promised and Fran and the others had gossiped and laughed about it behind her back. One by one they’d abandoned Jenny as if her pregnancy was contagious. When the school found out, she was asked to leave.

It was the sixties, but it seemed to Fran that sexual enlightenment extended only to the act of lovemaking, not to understanding and friendship when consequences had to be paid. So, for the last four months of Fran’s senior year of high school, she wore the tightest girdle she could stand and distanced herself from her friends.

After graduation, Fran drove the sixty miles to Seattle three times in her parent’s old Ford. She walked downtown from store to store filling out endless job applications. The baby was beginning to take its toll on her strength and fluid pooled in her feet and ankles until they shone like sausages and ached.

When she was finally offered a job as a full-time salesclerk at Bateman’s Jewelers, she felt, with commissions, she could probably meet the budget she’d planned. Then she used every cent of her savings to lease a furnished studio apartment three blocks from work. Yes, she thought smiling. It’s not the end of the world. I can make this work.

The day she left home, Fran and her dad stood silently breathing the acrid exhaust at the Greyhound station. As the bus door squealed open, Fran kissed him on the cheek.

"Bye, Dad."

With tears puddling his soft brown eyes, a mirror of her own, he handed her a piece of folded paper. Fran set her new blue Samsonite down and unfolded the paper, a check for five hundred dollars.

"Good luck and God bless, Frannie," he choked. "Come see us when you can."

She cried all the way to Seattle.

When her time came, Fran spent hours in labor in a tiny cell of an antiseptic room. Faceless white uniforms and frigid hands entered and left countless times. Time stretched grotesquely with worry, loneliness and excruciating pain. Would this night never end?

When they finally told her the baby was coming and wheeled her into the delivery room, Fran saw the first familiar face she had seen all night. She lifted herself on an elbow and grasped his hand. "Dr. Manion. Oh, God, Dr. Manion. Help me. This is so hard and I’m scared."

He smiled, easing her onto the gurney. "You’re going to be fine. Just work with us now and you’ll be fine."

But it wasn’t fine. After sixteen hours of painful contractions, Fran wondered where she would find the strength to push this baby into the world. She wasn’t fine until a hand finally placed the ether mask over nose and mouth. She frantically clasped the mask hard to her face and inhaled deeply.

"Hey, little miss," a throaty voice chuckled. "Slow up on that stuff."

Gratefully, Fran stepped off the world into a dreamless sleep.

When she woke up, she hazily realized she was in a hospital ward. She thanked God they had placed her by the window. Around the edges of pale blue drapes seeped a gray morning light, the best the miserly Seattle skies had offered in months.

She placed her hand on her abdomen. It was flat; not as flat as before, but… With a start, she knew the baby had been born.

The shushing of nylon-clad thighs and squeaking rubber-soled feet approached the curtains drawn around her bed. Metal clips scraped the overhead rod and her privacy curtain parted. Fran’s eyes fixed on the blanketed bundle and she held her breath. She opened her arms for her baby and wondered, Is he all right?

The curtains closed and their space took on a light of its own. Warmth spread from his little face, his closed eyes, his tiny nose, his compressed little lips. Her skin tingled. She smiled at the stocking cap on his head. Shifting herself up in the bed, Fran said, "Hello, little guy." She kissed his forehead. "Hello, Matthew."

She drew him to her breast, crooked in her arm, no longer part of her body, but, more simply, part of her. She gently peeled the nubby sleeper from his hands. She let his fingers clutch her. He peered at her from his little cocoon and touched her heart with his tiny black eyes. Between them, there was not a sound, not a movement, but an understanding.

And Fran knew her life was forever changed. "It’s just you and me, little son. You and me."

Copyright ©2000 Jeanne Berent.  All Rights Reserved