wasn’t impossible for a nun to get pregnant, but he doubted there were any who’d choose to be out and about in their robes once their condition became obvious. But he listened, watching Mom turn the rosary ring on her finger, as if she were praying.
“I didn’t want to be insensitive and pretended I didn’t see her bump, but as she joined me and collected fruit herself, she started the topic of babies. It was a strange experience, but I told her about our problems with conceiving. She touched my abdomen and told me I’d surely have a son of my own very soon. And then… she just turned and made her way down the path leading deeper into the forest. I called out after her, and when she looked back, her stomach was completely flat, as if I’d imagined her baby bump. And a month later, I found out I was pregnant with you,” she said, voice trembling.
Adam’s head was full of chaotic thoughts when he met her reddened gaze. She was mentally sound, even if her zeal sometimes skirted the line between religious devotion and fantasy. But he also realized that this wasn’t the first time she advised him not to travel to that remote region of the country.
“Is this why you didn't let me go on a school trip to the Bieszczady? Look, Mom, I don’t want to say you didn’t see what you saw, but maybe there’s a logical explanation for it? You and Dad ate wild berries. Maybe some of those weren’t what you thought they were?” he offered, trying his best to not sound accusatory, because Mother despised any and all drugs.
She grasped Adam’s fingers in her own sweaty hand. “I am not crazy. I beg you not to go. Nothing good awaits you there. We will never find out how you really came to be, but it’s for the better. Let’s leave it behind and trust the Lord protects you.”
Heat turned Adam’s head into a pressure cooker. Did his own mother just suggest he’d been some kind of devil baby that needed special protection in order to stay on the righteous path? Was this why she’d been so insistent on keeping him close to the Church since he could remember?
“Mom, you probably just got pregnant because you and Dad relaxed—”
“No! Adam, listen to me. Dad was tested when we tried for a second child, and he… is incapable of having children.”
That made Adam frown. “I’m a miracle child then. Let’s leave it at that.”
“You were born with a tail!”
Adam stilled, staring at her with his insides churning, and the scar on his tailbone itched. “What?”
Dad chose this moment to come back with the jar of fruit. “Here we go. Dessert.”
“Dad! Mom just told me I was born with a tail! What? Is that true?”
Adam expected Father to laugh it off, so he froze to the chair when that didn’t happen. What in all hells were his parents hiding? Why had they never told him any of this?
Father’s frown was deep and contemplative. “Hm. Well… yes, but it was really small. The doctors told us it happens more often than people think.”
Mom’s voice got a higher pitch. “It was not! It was the length of his entire body!”
Father put the large jar of compote in the middle of the table before opening the tableware cabinet and pulling out Mother’s most precious china bowls. “Honey, you were panicking, and unwell. I’m telling you it wasn’t nearly as long as his body.”
“I can’t believe this. And that time he sleepwalked all the way to the train station? And managed to sneak on board a train to Sanok? Where do you think the devil was leading our Adam, if not back there? I’m going to be sick,” she said with tears in her eyes, and rushed out of the room before slamming the bedroom shut.
Adam wanted to follow her, but Father grabbed his arm. “She’ll be okay. It’s just a very sensitive topic. For the record—because I’m sure she told you this story—I saw no pregnant nuns. There’s no convents in the area either. If you ask me, I think it was hallucinations. We participated in the Ivan Kupala night festivities and drank a mushroom broth offered by the local wise woman. We didn’t think and just had a whole cup each. It’s embarrassing, but if that drink somehow made it easier for us to create you, then that’s all that matters.” He smiled and patted Adam’s