Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,56
insult. She had something in her hand. “Look, your period is supposed to start now. See?”
It was the chart from Jenny’s desk, the calendar marked with a red dot on each day that Jenny had her period and a red circle when it would probably start the next month. Jenny gulped in air and blinked at the red circle on tomorrow’s date.
“Now can we stop this nonsense?” asked Cathy.
“I know she was a real baby,” Jenny said.
She was, I whispered, angry at Cathy for being so dismissive. Of course she was real. I could see the baby’s lopsided grin and feel her chubby fingers clutching at my clothes and hair.
“I was supposed to keep her safe,” Jenny insisted.
“Her?” Cathy felt Jenny’s forehead for fever, but she did it with such a lack of sympathy that I tried to swat the woman’s hand away. “There is no her,” Cathy sighed.
“She would have looked like him,” Jenny cried.
My heart ached at this. She would have looked like James, this baby girl who was not to be.
“Heaven forbid,” Cathy whispered. Jenny didn’t seem to hear, but I flew up and tried to shove Cathy out of the room. The woman jumped as if a bee had flown in her face. She searched the air but could not see who or what had attacked her, I supposed.
“Honestly, Jennifer,” said her mother. “Do you think the doctors would miss something like that when they examined you and did all those tests?”
These words gave me pause. As soon as I let go of Jenny, the girl took in a long breath. The tears stopped.
“You don’t want to have that boy’s baby, do you?” Cathy asked.
Jenny blinked and rubbed her eyes dry with her nightgown sleeves. I was taken aback by how suddenly she’d stopped crying. The idea struck me that Jenny had never been pregnant. It was only a thought, a possibility that came to me just before I left her body.
“Well?” Cathy demanded.
“No.” Jenny looked dazed. I knelt beside her and took her hand.
“There was no baby,” I whispered, but the loss caught in my throat.
Immediately Jenny’s tears were back, rolling down her cheeks. I let go of her and jumped away.
They were my tears.
“You did not have a miscarriage.” Cathy held a box toward her and Jenny pulled out a tissue, rubbed her eyes and face.
“Okay,” she told her mother. “I get it.”
My baby, I whispered. To see if I was right. Jenny’s chin began to tremble and she pressed the tissue to her eyes.
I was the cause of her grief. My sorrow was making her ill. My Jenny, whom I would fight demons to protect, I was haunting her. Being so long away from heaven had clouded my thinking. I tried to shift my thoughts to something that wouldn’t grieve her so, but I could only think of how I was darkening her spirit and how I might lose her and how I had no one on earth but her.
She sobbed into her hands.
I took a step back from her and she pulled in a deep breath. I took another step away and she dried her cheeks and tossed the tissue into the trash basket. I backed away into the bathroom wall, and Jenny’s voice sounded stronger and brighter.
“I’m okay,” she told Cathy. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
My heart shrank as I stepped backwards into the dark, through the wall of the house, into the still night garden, away from my girl.
The backyard was as far as I went at first. I hid against the garden wall. I knew I would have to leave her—it was clear I was hurting her. The worst part was that I had no idea what damage had already been done. I wanted to be safe and fly far away, but something about it still felt like a sin. I was abandoning her.
I worried my hands together, which strangely seemed to create a small cloud of mist to form around me, sparkling the bricks with dew. I couldn’t leave her a note and was afraid any message I might try to send through words or thoughts might upset her. So at last I resolved to go back the way I’d come.
Having scaled this mountain before, you’d think I would find it easier to climb the second time, but I couldn’t see how it worked. Heaven felt to me now as far away as Wonderland or Oz—I believed, but I had no map. No key. I felt