The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard

Author:Hannah Pittard [Pittard, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-31T22:00:00+00:00

13

Of course Nora got pregnant again. Of course the only two times she’d ever had sex she ended up pregnant. Because if sex wasn’t for pleasure, then it had to be for a cause. And babies must be her cause, like it or not. This, at least, is what she told herself.

The second pregnancy was easier than the first. She knew what to expect. She wasn’t alone. The Mexican, who’d been with her during much of the first pregnancy, was with her still. And this was theirs. This strange thing growing inside Nora belonged not only to her, but also to the Mexican. It brought them closer. It brought all of them closer, in the way we hoped one day our own families would be brought closer. Nora to the Mexican, but also Nora to the girls, her daughters. The sisters.

Her face fattened. She stared at it endlessly in mirrors, and in windows strong enough to hold reflections. She blew her cheeks out at the girls. “I look like a chipmunk,” she would say. “I’m hideous.” The girls would giggle, blow their own cheeks out in imitation.

“You will have a little boy,” said the Mexican. “I can see it in your face.”

“You can see fat in my face,” she said. She blew her cheeks out for him too.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “More beautiful than before.” He held her face in his hands, something she loved, something that made her feel tiny and slight. “You have color now. You are a woman.”

She winced at the word.

“You are my woman,” he said.

“Let me be your girl,” she said. “I don’t want to be a woman.”

“Crazy chica. Crazy American chica. You can be anything you want as long as you are mine.”

“Tell me about the baby,” she said. “Say it in Spanish. Tell me about him.”

The Mexican could talk for hours about the baby. He could talk like this whether Nora was in the room or not. He liked the request—the chance to make noise, to blather, without risk of being understood. Because Nora still couldn’t understand the language. Not after two years even. Perhaps at first she had tried, but ultimately she’d given up. Abandoned the language, but not the Mexican.

The girls, who would throw themselves on their backs with laughter when the Mexican spoke Spanish, understood better than their mother. “Sí,” he said. “Una criatura. A little baby boy. Come,” he said to Nora. “I will cook us a large dinner. Cow tongue and conch. You will love it. No, no chocolate. We do not want a dark-skinned baby. Milk for you. Milk will turn the baby whiter than you. I promise you this. But no dark foods. I insist. Eat my cow tongue and conch and he will grow fat inside you.”

The baby did grow fat inside her, and the color stayed in her cheeks. She continued to feel happy, look healthy. Evenings now she drove, with the girls in the backseat, to pick up the Mexican when he was off work.

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