Callie
“I am pregnant, and I was going to steal these.” I drop the bag of jewelry on the table in front of Gertrude, and then stand with my hands interlocked, head bowed, waiting. “I’m sorry,” I add, but I can’t look up or meet her gaze. With her blue eyes and silver hair, she looks fierce, a beautiful witch in a fairy story ready to cast some harrowing spell on the misguided housekeeper.
“Wait a second,” Gertrude says slowly, trying to process the information, I can tell. She clears her throat, and I cannot help but judge the throaty growl as the first coughs of thunder before lightning strikes. “So the tests were positive? Let’s get that straight, first, I think. The tests were positive, Callie?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
“I thought I told you about calling me ma’am.”
“I think it is appropriate after today, ma’am.”
“Hmm. Both tests were positive, then.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you are pregnant.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Right, and what are these?”
I glance up. She gestures at the plastic bag.
I tell her that I crept into her room and intended to steal the jewelry.
“You went into my bedroom without my permission and stole my jewelry,” Gertrude says. She speaks as though struggling to believe that I would ever do something like this, which is like being stabbed in the gut. She doesn’t see me as a rodent; she doesn’t see me as a waste of breath. She sees me as a person, a real person, and I have disappointed her.
“Yes, ma’am,” I whisper.
Gertrude’s eyes flare for a moment, the blue becoming icy. Her cheeks tremble, wrinkled skin shaking. She clenches her hand into a fist. I wait for the explosion, already wondering if returning was a mistake if she is going to kick me out anyway. But no, I can’t see it as a mistake. I am going to be a mother; I will be a better person. A better person for my child, for Damien’s child . . . for Damien’s child! I want to grip my heart at that, to stop it from beating so frantically. There is a piece of Damien inside of me, a slice of the President of the Death Heads, a chip of my lover, a piece of the man I ran away from. Deep in my belly, there is Damien. I swallow.
Gertrude’s explosion never comes. She settles into her chair, and nods at the chair beside her, one of many around the long oak table. “Sit.”
I do as she says.
“Look at me, Callie.”
I do as she says.
Her features are softer, her eyes less judgmental. It is the most humane expression I have ever seen on her face. “Listen to me, girl,” she says. “I know you’re young. I know you’re scared. I know this is your first child. And I . . . But before I get into anything else, I need to say something first, to make something clear. You are never to steal from me again. It is good that you came back and came clean, yes, good and proper, but you are never to even think about stealing from me again. If I am to extend any sort of olive branch to you, I need to know that I am safe from your thievery.”
“I won’t,” I say. “I won’t. I promise. I never will.”
She watches me for a long time, perhaps trying to gauge the truth of my words. Finally, she nods.
“I believe you. Please, do not reveal my mistake to me in some spectacular, awful fashion. I do not want to wake up one day to find all the shingles removed from the roof and rainwater sluicing down into the drawing room, dear.”
She smiles, a small smile, but better than nothing.
“Right, with that out of the way, I want to make a proposal. I like you, Callie. I like you an inordinate amount. Perhaps it is because I can see the iron in you. Yes, I have a good eye for people and I am sure there is iron in you. Or perhaps I am going mad and attaching myself to someone equally mad. Either way, I like you, and I want to propose this: I will pay for the medical bills, the newborn’s room, the birthing costs, the clothes, and any other costs which may arise.”
She folds her hands placidly, as though she has not just offered to make my life infinitely easier, and watches me with an equally placid expression. It takes me off guard at first. I am not used to placidness. If a person’s life is a ship, my ship has sailed dangerously through choppy waters since the day I was born, first with a mother paranoid and used and eventually murdered by a sick old man, and then a life spent scuttling from place to place. This old woman, patiently watching me and waiting, is difficult to comprehend. But, I don’t have the luxury of this anymore: of hesitation, of second-guessing.
I have a child to think of.
“Yes, ma’am. I would very much like that. I don’t know how I can thank you—”
She holds her hand up, cutting me short.
“No gratitude required, dear, and please, for the love of God, call me Gertrude!”
It is difficult for me to accept at first, but this meeting will return to me again and again over the next few months. Gertrude is incredible. She keeps her word, and the day after I almost stole thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry from her, she accompanies me to the doctor, paying for the scans, paying for everything, and as autumn deepens and then dissipates and gusts of wind blow through naked branches in the garden and I make Gertrude wear thick layers of fur every time we leave the house, she continues to keep her word.
We go to baby clothes stores and pick out neutral-colored items, blues the same color as Gertrude’s eyes, blue overalls and blue bibs and blue mittens, and each time I hold one of the tiny items in my hand, I struggle to believe that one day soon this life inside of me will be a person with tiny hands which fit into the gloves. My mind returns to Damien in these moments, my baby’s father, the only man I have ever felt anything for. Damien with thorns climbing up his arms, with his jet-black eyes, eyes that would tell me he’d never let anything happen to me or his child. But Damien and I could never have been close, could we? There was too much there, too much baggage, too many problems.
“But things are different now. I am carrying his child.”
I mutter this into the darkness, lying on my back in the used-to-be guestroom, now my bedroom. After the one-month mark, Gertrude insisted that I move into the main house. The baby’s room, still under construction, is next door. So far we have bought a mobile, a night light, and a crib that we have yet to unpack and assemble. When they asked her at the store if Gertrude needed a man to unpack it for her, she curled her lip and said with ice in her tone: “I don’t need a man for anything, dear.” Afterward she admitted she would’ve liked help, but she wouldn’t admit to the acne-speckled teenager that she needed a man.
I want to contact Damien. More than that, I want Damien to ride into my life and hold me in his arms and whisper that he will always protect me and the child. These are childish fantasies, I know. Damien never wanted me to begin with, not really. He wanted a chef, a fuck toy. He wanted somebody he could use. And yet, those long conversations, learning each other, sliding beneath the others’ skin. Wasn’t there something there? Wasn’t there some kind of connection? I am sure there was. I am sure, had we been different people without all this weight on our shoulders, something might’ve happened. Had we been normal, I might be cradling my baby’s father tonight, instead of the cold bedsheets.
I wake early and make breakfast for me and Gertrude. As I place it down and sit beside her, she says: “I will be hiring a replacement housekeeper soon, dear. Oh, don’t look so panicked. You will still have a place here, and after the baby is born and you’ve weaned him, you’ll be back to your regular duties, you can count on it.”
We eat in the drawing room, next to the icy windows, a light snow falling and blanketing the garden white.
We sit in silence, but I feel Gertrude’s gaze on me, and it’s like I can hear that she wants to talk by the way she places her cutlery aside carefully, the way she opens and closes her mouth, these tiny noises which tell me she’s working up to something.
Finally, she says: “I haven’t asked you yet, dear, because, frankly, it is an awfully awkward thing to bring up in conversation. And, of course, it is your business, not mine. Times have changed since I was a young woman. Times have changed greatly, so I will withhold judgment. But, I must at least make an attempt.” She folds her hands and rests her chin on her folded hands. “Who is the father, Callie?”
I swallow, my throat tightening, and for the first time in months I feel the old rodent-Callie returning. I scan for an exit, think about just running out of the room. Damien—Damien. My Damien, the man who saved me from that hellish burning room, the man who saved me from falling into a world of pain and abuse, the man I came closer to than any man before, and the man who I ultimately ran from. Damien is the father, and I cannot even say his name aloud. Somehow, that would dirty the memory of whatever we had.
“I . . .”
I reach for my glass of water, hand shaking, but before I can get to it, Gertrude lays her hand upon mine.
“Forget I said anything, Callie,” she says. “The child is yours; that is all that matters. Forget I said anything, okay?”
I swallow, nod, and Gertrude and I hold hands for a while. Her skin is wrinkled, but there is a strength to her which I hope to have when I am her age, a strength which I hope I can have with my child.
“Thank you,” I say after a while, and then pick up my glass of water.