Callie
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, Gertrude 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 Gertrude 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.”
Gertrude walks into the bathroom, looking down at me with kind eyes. “Oh, Callie,” 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 Gertrude 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!” Gertrude 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 Damien is standing behind me, staring with jet-black eyes into my face. I shake my head and the image dissipates. Gertrude 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, Gertrude 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. Damien 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, Callie Pierce, 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 Gertrude.
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 Gertrude’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 Gertrude, 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. Gertrude’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 quietly 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: Gertrude 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.
But then I stop, and think, really think. What am I doing? What, exactly, am I doing? Who am I? Who is Callie Pierce? If someone were to ask Gertrude, who is Callie Pierce, what would she say? Before today, she would say I am an attentive, nice, kind girl. She would say I am a good housekeeper. She would say I was the only good housekeeper she’d ever had. And after today? She will call me a leech, a thief, something despicable.
Walk, walk, get out of here, walk.
But . . . I take a deep breath, the thought hitting me by surprise. But—
“I don’t want to be a rodent anymore,” I mutter, breath coming fast. “I don’t want to be less than a person.”
For the first time in a long time, I try to analyze exactly what I just did. I found out I was pregnant; I immediately began to steal. But why? Because I need to provide for my child, the reasoning goes. But does that really make sense? Doesn’t it make more sense to try and be a good person if I am having a child, to try and set a good example, to try and make something of myself, something legal, something good?
No, I will not be a rodent anymore.
I turn away from the road, back toward, the house, and make my way back down the driveway, toward the old woman and my confession.