OUR SECRET BABY

by Paula Cox

  It is better this way. She has her own shit, the cult and all that stuff, and I have my own shit, too.

  People like me, and people like Kayla, just aren’t made for closeness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kayla

  “Look at those leaves, Kayla. I’m going to have to get some strong men in here to rake them, oh yes. That’s the best thing about deep autumn, if you ask me. It gives an old woman a chance to have a sneaky peek at some ripe young men. Oh, don’t look at me like that. What’s the problem with having a sneaky peek at some young men, preferably with big arms and troubled faces? My husband had small arms and a bland face, so you see the issue. But he left me a great deal of money, so I suppose a lady cannot complain.”

  Macy sits by the window of what I think is called the drawing-room, looking out at her large tree-lined garden, brown leaves cascading down onto the grass. Macy is a seventy-eight year old widower with a full head of silver hair which flows down to her shoulders, a kind wrinkled face and angry stark blue eyes. Her tongue is quick, and her temper can be quick, too. I was told the moment I walked through the door to apply for the position that she would not hesitate to fire me. “I’ve already been through ten housekeepers in so many months,” she’d said. “So you better be on your toes.”

  I am on my toes; since I started here three weeks ago, having moved from Missouri to Lawrence by way of bus and rodent-skills which include stealing and lying, I have been on my toes.

  Macy turns to me as I place her lunch—or luncheon, as she calls it—on the table. “Oh, what is this?” she says, holding a knife to the window. I study it, and it looks clean. Macy holds it to the autumn light for a long time, and then tucks into her meal. “I like to get preemptively angry sometimes, you understand,” she explains, dabbing her mouth with an embroidered napkin. “It saves me the trouble of deciding whether or not I need to be angry.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  When Macy eats her lunch, she likes me to stand near the door, but not to leave unless she gives me the signal. She’s the sort of woman who likes to talk just to hear the sound of her own voice, but I don’t mind that. For somebody like me, who prefers silence and nods to sharing parts of myself, an overtalkative boss works just fine.

  I look past her out into the garden, Lawrence in the background, a short drive to the inner city. “A perfect position,” Macy often says. “Close enough to entertain but far enough for leisure.” I look at the leaves, piled up high, and I think about how when I was sitting at Dante’s window, the leaves were just starting to turn. I try not to think of him, but often my mind returns to him, especially at night when I’m alone and images of his thorn-tattooed`, muscled back are clear in my mind, the sensation of him inside of me between my legs, his phantom breath on my neck. His hands, roaming . . .

  “You are in the clouds, Kayla,” Macy says. “You are either thinking of a man or thinking of multiple men. Now, are you love-struck or are you a hussy?”

  “Neither, ma’am,” I say, making sure to keep my voice neutral.

  “Please repeat back to me what I just said.”

  The first time I daydreamed whilst Macy was talking, I failed this test. Since then, I’ve made sure to listen even whilst daydreaming, listen without hearing for the sole purpose of repeating her: “You said: ‘In this life even an older woman needs a man to gawk at. Yes, gawk, and when I say gawk—’”

  “You worry me, child, with that impression. Do I really sound so condescending?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Macy waves at her plate of food, empty now. “I am done.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I collect the tray and make for the door.

  “I have a good feeling about you, Kayla,” Macy says.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Macy Idell Hammer née Lafferty’s house is massive. As I walk with the tray from the drawing room to the kitchen, I walk down long, wide, high-ceilinged hallways, the sort of hallways where each sound is reproduced in the shadowy spaces above my head as an echo. I walk past old pictures and even past a suit of armor owned by Macy’s late husband. It is like walking back in time. I take the tray to the kitchen, wash up, and then return to my cleaning routine.

  As I go around the house—more of a mansion, really, but Macy doesn’t like calling it a mansion because it sounds “gauche”—my mind returns over and over to Dante, as it has almost constantly this past month. I keep thinking about the way he would kiss me, hard, as though he was drowning and I was his only source of air. I keep thinking about his hands gripping my shoulders and lifting me up as though I was weightless. I think about looking into his face and seeing his black eyes go wide as he entered me, surprise in his face, surprise that we were sharing such pleasure.

  I go from room to room, and then it is time for my break.

  I leave the house and go to the above-garage apartment, one of the perks of working for Macy. I haven’t made the apartment mine yet; I have never made any place mine, not really. As I walk through the front door, a wave of queasiness comes over me and I rush to the bathroom. I’m not sick. It’s been the same these past two weeks. Queasiness will come over me, but I will not vomit. I need to go to the doctor, but I don’t have health insurance and I fear that if I go to the doctor it will end up being something which costs more than I can pay. Plus, what if one of the Movement folks hears about me somehow?

  I eat my lunch sat at the window overlooking the garden, watching the leaves and thinking of Dante. My lunch is a simple ham and cheese sandwich with a glass of water to wash it down, and an apple for afterwards. I eat all this, and I think about the men at the club, wolfing down their burgers and fries. At least I don’t have to deal with Ogre anymore, I suppose. But still, not dealing with Ogre also means I don’t have to deal with Dante, either. I often wonder what he’s doing, if he’s looking for me. I doubt it, somehow. That last month, we were already drifting apart. He was probably relieved that I left; he’d become tired of his fuck-toy. He probably has a new woman.

  As I take my plate to the sink to wash up, that thought makes me shiver. I am over him. I have told myself this countless times. I was over him the second I climbed out of the window with a bag of clothes and enough stolen cash for bus tickets. But when I picture him lying in bed with another woman, perhaps telling the same stories about the orphanage and his mother, Sandra, that he told me, I shiver. Maybe she tears her hands down his back, just like I did. Maybe they kiss as deeply as we did. Maybe all the things I thought were new and fresh for him just because they were new and fresh for me—the closeness, emotionally and physically, the sharing—are just routine for him.

  “He was using me,” I mutter, firmly, to make myself believe it. “He never wanted me.”

  I wash the plate, and then get back to my duties.

  I clean until dinnertime, and then cook Macy a light meal of boiled potatoes and braised rabbit leg (an internet video helps me along with the recipe, which is far fancier than anything I’ve made before). I bring it into the dining room, where she sits at the end of a long table, looking woefully alone in such a large room. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling and long, gold-framed mirrors reflect the light which shines from ornate lamps in the corners.

  Macy waves a hand at the chair next to her. “Sit with me,” she says.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I sit down as Macy tucks into her food.

  After a sip of sparkling water, she says, “Do you know the difference between men and women, Kayla?”

  She is not expecting an answer, so I do not give one.

  “The difference,” she goes on, “is not all that difficult to devise, once one has made the correct observations. Firstly, one must assess what drives them sexually. Women are driven by safety, emotional and physical safety, where men are driven by naught more than animal desires. Secondly, we must ascertain their wildest dreams. A woman’s wildest dream is absolute comfort and safety, whereas a man’s wildest dream is to be
absolutely free. Thirdly, what do they do in a crisis? Ah, here we have something in common. A woman will protect her own; a man will protect his own.”

  She talks absentmindedly without paying much attention to what she says. I sit with my hands in my lap, patiently.

  “Or maybe none of that has nothing to do with it,” Macy says, offering a wicked smile, her blue eyes glinting. “Maybe men are just dogs and women bitches, and that’s all there is to it. What are your thoughts?”

  “My thoughts, ma’am?”

  “Yes, your thoughts. You have thoughts, don’t you, girl? What are they?”

  I think, knowing by the way she looks at me she will not let me dodge the question, and then say: “I think that both men and women can be very cold or very warm depending on who and where they are, ma’am. I do not believe that what is between your legs has much of a say-so when it comes to that.”

  Macy smiles at me, a respectful smile, and then says: “You will take your dinner with me from now on, Kayla. I will hire a chef for dinner and we will dine together. No, no, I won’t hear another word on it.”

  I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Macy eats for a while longer, and then pushes her tray away. “Ten housekeepers in ten months, but I think the eleventh will be the last.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Oh, call me Macy,” she says. “I’m not that old!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kayla

  I no sooner place the breakfast tray down than the nausea hits me. It hits me fast and by surprise, so that I cannot look professional as I run from the room, hand over my mouth, Macy letting out a cry of shock as I drop the tray onto the table. I sprint through the house, down the long hallway, until I come to one of the bathrooms. It feels strange, vomiting into a fancy toilet like this, but my stomach doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. I puke up what feels like weeks of food, and then sit next to the bowl, breathing heavily and waiting for the sick feeling to pass.

  I have been sitting for around five minutes when Macy knocks on the door. “Are you okay, dear?”

  I wipe my mouth with tissue paper. “Yes, ma’am,” I say, heart pounding with panic. This is it: end of job; end of apartment. “I am sorry, ma’am.”

  “Sorry? May I come in?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Macy walks into the bathroom, looking down at me with kind eyes. “Oh, Kayla,” she says. There is more kindness in her voice than I expected. “How long have you been feeling like this?”

  “Around three weeks,” I admit. “But this is the first time I’ve been actually sick.”

  I climb to my feet unsteadily, wipe my mouth once more, and then drop the tissue paper into the toilet and flush. I want to go to the sink and splash water into my face, but Macy is standing there and I don’t want to look more unprofessional than I already look.

  “I must’ve caught a bug, ma’am,” I say. “But I am sure I can still continue with my—”

  “A bug!” Macy interrupts. “A bug, she says!” She turns to the hallway as though a crowd is assembled. “Oh, the innocence of youth!” She turns back to me. “You do not have a bug, dear. You’ve got a bun, in the oven.” She points at my belly. “I would bet this house on it.”

  “A . . . a baby?” The word sounds alien on my tongue.

  “I would think so. Wait here.”

  She leaves me alone. I take the chance to splash water in my face and to wash out my throat with mouthwash. My eyes are bulging and red in the mirror. As I study my reflection, for a second I’m sure Dante is standing behind me, staring with jet-black eyes into my face. I shake my head and the image dissipates. Macy returns and hands me a couple of boxes. I look down as she thrusts them into my hands: pregnancy tests.

  “The previous housekeeper left those behind.” When she sees my look of panic, Macy says, “She was not fired because she was pregnant. She was fired because she was incompetent. I will give you some privacy.”

  She leaves the bathroom and closes the door. I hear her footsteps receding down the hallway, and then look down once again at the tests. Pregnancy tests. That is impossible, surely? I laugh gruffly at that. It’s not impossible; it’s entirely possible. Dante and I slept together for three months and never used protection. Yes, it’s entirely possible. But though I know that, it still seems ridiculous. Me, Kayla Pearson, rodent, with a bun in the oven. I almost don’t want to take the test just in case the ridiculous is true, but I have to find out, don’t I?

  I sit on the toilet for what feels like eternity with one stick held in the bowl and the other laid on the counter. I want to be sure, and yet at the same time I want the toilet to open up and suck me down into the depths of the earth where I don’t have to think about things like this. On top of everything, and now this . . . but maybe I won’t really be pregnant. Maybe it will be a bug, like I told Macy.

  I complete the tests and lay them on the counter and pace up and down, waiting.

  Finally, enough time has passed. I look down at the tests. For a moment, I see them as negative. But then I realize my mind is just playing tricks on me. The negatives become positives. I stare at them for a long time, wondering if they’ll turn back to negatives. But they don’t. They remain positives.

  I am pregnant.

  I close the toilet seat and slump down on it. My breath is coming too fast, my palms too sweaty. My head spins around and around until I feel like I am sitting on a rollercoaster which is twisting upside down. I clutch my belly as another wave of sickness hits me, this one all the harder with the weight of a revelation behind it.

  “I am pregnant.”

  I let the words hang there in front of me, imagining that they are physical, imagining that I could reach out and wipe their truth away with my sleeve. And then I realize that I can. There are ways, aren’t there, for a woman to—No. The rejection comes fast, and strong, and I know at once that it will not budge. This child is mine. For better or worse, this child is mine. Nobody ever said a rodent had any right to a child, but I am going to have one, and they will be mine. Which means I have to get out of here, make some cash, make a life for myself.

  I feel myself sink into rodent mode again, my eyes beginning to scan here and there, mentally searching the house for valuables. I scan the entire resident; it’s like there’s a 3D model of the house in my mind and the expensive, easily-carried things flash gold. There, in Macy’s bedroom. I haven’t been in there many times, but the times I have been, I would have needed to be blind to ignore the giant case of jewelry, messily thrown together, a pearl necklace drooping from the lid like a stalactite of ice. Just waiting for me to come along and snap it away.

  Okay, I have my plan. I throw the tests into the trash and make my way quietly through the house. My heart is not beating fast anymore, which I find strange. Minutes ago, I was bordering on a panic attack. Now, I am calm. Like a professional thief, I reflect. No—like a professional rodent. I creep through the house, listening for Macy, but she is faraway, on the first floor. I go to the second floor and open her bedroom door, into the fanciest bedroom I have ever seen. I remember when Mom and Master would go to his bedroom and he would open the door and I would get a glimpse of it: absolute luxury. Macy’s is the same. Four-poster bed, expensive gold-framed paintings on the wall, en-suite marble bathroom, plush animal rugs, and cases and cases of hats and gloves and jewelry.

  I go to the jewelry box, stepping skillfully over floorboards to prevent creaking, almost as though my mind has been subconsciously casing the joint since day one.

  The box is ajar, the lid resting against the pearl necklace. I open it, look down at the jewels, the diamonds, the stones, the pearls, and then I glance around. The box itself looks heavy, but there is a plastic bag in the small bin in the corner. I take it, shake some foundation powder from it, and return to the box. Then I begin stuffing in jewelry, everything I think will sell well. I pack the bag until the plastic is almost at tearing point, and then leave the room as quickly and quie
tly as I can.

  I shut my mind to guilt, shut my mind to what I am doing, shut my mind to how wrong this is. A thought will start like: Macy has been good to you—and I will stamp on it. I can’t think like that.

  I creep through the house to the front door. I’ll leave my clothes behind. There’s nothing of value up there, just rags, rags for a rodent; I will buy new rags. I walk down the driveway in wide paces, heading for the gate, past the autumnal leaves, thinking about that first night of rodentry when I snatched the keys from the guard’s sleeping hands. I keep my head low, as though that will make me any less visible from the house. Then I am at the gate, at the road. It’s time to make my way toward the city, sell this stuff, use the cash to get far away, put a deposit down on an apartment. Get a job; steal some more. Anything for me and the child to survive.