The Mothers Read Online Free Page A

take another. Was it easier if you already had a child, like politely declining seconds because you were already full?
    Now the others were gone and she had pulled out her phone to call Luke a third time when the dreadlocked nurse dragged over a metal chair. She was carrying a paper plate of crackers and an apple juice box.
    â€œCramps’ll be bad for a while,” she said. “Just put some heat on ’em, they’ll go away. You got a heat pad at home?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œJust heat you up a towel. Works just as fine.”
    Nadia had hoped she might get a different nurse. She’d watched the others swish through the room to dote on their girls, offering smiles, squeezing hands. But the dreadlocked nurse just shook the plate at her.
    â€œI’m not hungry,” Nadia said.
    â€œYou need to eat. Can’t let you go until you do.”
    Nadia sighed, taking a cracker. Where was Luke? She was tired of this nurse, with her wrinkled skin and steady eyes. She wanted to be in her own bed, wrapped in her comforter, her head on Luke’s chest. He would make her soup and play movies on his laptop until she fell asleep. He would kiss her and tell her that she had been brave. The nurse uncrossed, then recrossed her legs.
    â€œHeard from your friend yet?” she asked.
    â€œNot yet, but he’s coming,” Nadia said.
    â€œYou got someone else to call?”
    â€œI don’t need someone else, he’s coming.”
    â€œHe’s not coming, baby,” the nurse said. “Do you have someone else to call?”
    Nadia glanced up, startled by the nurse’s confidence that Luke would not show, but even more jolted by her use of the word
baby.
A cotton-soft
baby
that seemed to surprise the nurse herself, like it had tripped off her tongue. Just like how after the surgery, in her delirium, Nadia had looked into the nurse’s blurred face and said “Mommy?” with such sweetness, the nurse had almost answeredyes.

TWO
    I f Nadia Turner had asked, we would’ve warned her to stay away from him.
    You know what they say about pastors’ kids. In Sunday School, they’re running around the sanctuary, hollering, smearing crayons on the pews; in middle school, a pastor’s son chases girls, flipping up their dresses, while his sister smears on bright lipstick that makes her look like a harlot; by high school, the son is smoking reefer in the church parking lot and the daughter is being felt up in a bathroom stall by the deacon’s son, who is quietly unrolling the panty hose her mother insisted she wear because ladies don’t show their bare legs in church.
    Luke Sheppard, bold and brash with wispy curls, football-built shoulders, and that squinty-eyed smile. Oh, any of us could’ve told her to stay away from him. She wouldn’t have listened, of course. What did the church mothers know anyway? Not how Luke heldher hand while they slept or played with her hair when they cuddled or how after she’d told him about the pregnancy test, he cradled her bare feet in his lap. A man who laced his fingers through yours all night and held your feet when you were sad had to love you, at least a little bit. Besides, what did a bunch of old ladies know?
    We would’ve told her that all together, we got centuries on her. If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself. In all that living, we have known men. Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.
    â€”
    T EN YEARS BEFORE Nadia Turner’s appointment, we’d already made our first visit to the abortion clinic downtown. Oh, not the way you’re thinking. By the time that clinic was built, we