Immaculate, page 22
And I would care for this creation, protect and love this baby, for the rest of my life, regardless of whether or not I ever came any closer to understanding the heart of it all: why?
Why, why, why?
One syllable, three letters, yet it still had more power over me than any other word I’d ever known. I’d always been the type of person who needed answers, which is probably why I’d been such a naturally good student. Teachers asked questions, and I’d study until I could answer them. But then came this question, the biggest question of my life, and I would probably never have an explanation, any real sort of resolution. My own sort of, kind of, innate and intuitive answers would have to be good enough. Somebody or something was clearly trying to teach me a lesson.
There was no perfect answer. Just like there was no perfect way to live.
I had tried, after all, for almost eighteen years. And now, with more ups and downs and unexpected loops than in the rest of my life combined, I somehow, oddly, felt more alive than ever.
The phone rang again from the counter and I held my breath, counting the rings as I waited for the answering machine to pop to life. Eight, nine, ten. Gracie’s sunny, giggly voice chirped from the speakers and made me feel even more alone. I needed the real Gracie. Hiyah! You’ve reached the Dietrich house! We’re not around to talk right now, so pretty please leave us a message. Bye!
“This is Elliot Ste—err—Elliot S from Ohio.” He spoke in a hurried, breathy whisper, his words smeared through the speakers from holding the phone too close to his anxious lips. “I’m calling for Mina. I wanted to say that it’s not too late to be forgiven. Not quite yet, not without one last warning. Come clean with the Lord and let Him back into your life. Open your heart to God, and let Him wash away this blackness from your soul. Acknowledge your sins to your family, to yourself, and to your country. You’re on a very dark and dangerous path, Mina Dietrich. And if you don’t repent soon, if you don’t admit to your Devil’s lies, then you deserve to be punished. I know where you live. We all do. And we’ll find you, Mina. If you don’t stop on your own, then we’ll find a way to stop you.” He finished with a flourish, breathing into the phone raggedly for a moment before the machine finally beeped and fell back into silence.
Within seconds the phone wailed at me again, and I pushed myself up to stand, arms reaching toward the shiny silver base mounted on the wall. I grasped at it with both hands, tearing it from the wall with a loud snapping of plastic brackets, and slammed it down against the floor. It slid against the tiles and I chased it, my feet, my legs, my entire body burning with the need to see it smashed into as many pieces as possible. I jumped on top of it, stomped again, right foot, left foot, kicked it against the bricks that lined our pantry and watched a spray of plastic chips fly into the air with an ecstatic sense of satisfaction. I lunged again, sending the machine rocketing toward the kitchen table. I was so focused that I didn’t hear myself screaming, didn’t hear the front door click open or the sound of my family’s footsteps pounding down the front hallway.
“What the hell, Mina?” my dad shouted, running at me and wrapping his arms around my shoulders and my chest, lifting me up so that my feet dangled above the ground. “What are you doing? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He spun me around and I saw my mom and Gracie, slack-jawed and cowering by the door, Gracie’s face half hidden as she pressed against my mom’s puffy winter jacket.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes meeting Gracie’s in apology. I swallowed my terror, willed Elliot S’s cold, brittle words from my head. I didn’t want to add even more fuel to her fears. I didn’t want her to know how right she probably was to be afraid. “I didn’t mean to get so . . . so violent. But people are calling me, and I just couldn’t hear one more ring right now. I just couldn’t.” Dad’s stiff hold softened. My feet hit the ground, but he kept his arms around me. I breathed in the smell of him, the scent that I realized just now how much I’d missed—cool evergreen pine and spicy clove that somehow clung to his sweaters and T-shirts for days after he’d worn them. I inhaled again, savoring the closeness. I felt protected. Shielded from everything that lay beyond our front door.
“Who?” he demanded. “Who’s been calling you?”
“Strangers.” The word felt frigid, grim when I heard it on my lips. “Our number was listed on the website, apparently.”
At that, I heard a distant, muffled ringing—the phones in my dad’s office, my parents’ bedroom. I hadn’t even thought about the other extentions, I’d been so caught up in my fury. But I wasn’t inaccessable, not even close. It would take much more than annihilating a single phone to actually cut myself off from the rest of the world.
“Damn it,” my dad snapped, his arms dropping to his sides. I shivered, suddenly cold without the comforting warmth of his hold. “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”
“What do we do now?” my mom asked, her face as pale as the stark white fur lining her hood.
“I’m calling the phone company and finding a way to block or change our number. And then I’m calling the police, because this is harassment and I refuse to let these ignorant sons of bitches invade our family home.” My dad ducked his head and started for the hallway, boots stomping across the tiles. But then he turned back to face me, an afterthought, his eyes burning into mine so fiercely, I had to fight not to look away.
“Let me say this. I may still not know what to believe here, Mina, and I’m well aware that I haven’t been one of your biggest supporters. But I would never—never—do to anyone what these people are doing to you right now. I would never force my religious opinions on a complete stranger. I would never disrespect another family’s right to privacy. Because from where I’m standing, these people are committing much graver sins of their own, casting judgment on you like they have the authority. Acting like they have the right to make God’s own decisions. I won’t stand for it, Mina. I won’t.” With that he started back down the hall, his footsteps dying out with the slam of his office door.
“Can I go on the news for you, Meen?” Gracie asked, pulling me over to sit with her at the kitchen table. “Maybe they’ll believe you if I tell them all what a good sister you are. I’ll tell them that your eyebrows always get all funny and squiggly when you lie to me about something, and that’s how I know you’re not lying about this.”
I laughed, though I stopped myself after I saw the look of hurt on Gracie’s stoic face. “That’s very sweet of you, Gracie, but they’ll probably just think I brainwashed or blackmailed you. Honestly, I’m not sure there’s anything that any of us could say to change their minds.”
“You could tell them about Iris,” my mom said, her voice wavering and paper thin, like I could poke right through it if I so much as lifted my finger. “You didn’t say anything about her at all in the KBC interview. The way you told it to the reporter, you more or less woke up one day with all the standard pregnancy signs. Poof. Not pregnant one day, pregnant the next. Maybe people need to hear that there was something—some event, no matter how vague and inexplicable—that was the catalyst for all this. Iris was your Gabriel, Mina. That conversation was your own kind of Annunciation, as insane and sacrilegious as that sounds. And I think that’s what people want to hear. That’s what people need to hear.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, trying my best to keep the words flat and even. “You think people are more likely to believe me if I say that an odd old lady came into the local pizza shop and told me I’d be having a baby?”
“I’m not saying that everyone will believe you, Mina.” She sighed. “I’m not even saying that most people will believe you. But I think that there are people out there, people who want to find something to believe in. Anything, some sign that there’s more to life than we have right here in our mundane and predictable day-to-day existence. Maybe if you say it, tell them all about Iris, maybe, just maybe, a few people will stop and think. Some small piece of them, buried somewhere beneath all the cynicism we’re trained to carry around from the time we’re supposed to know better, will hear what you’re saying. Will open up to you, to the idea that there may not be a black-and-white explanation.”
“And if they think I’m just crazy?”
“Then they think you’re crazy. They’re already hell-bent against you, Mina. The way I see it, a few desperately hopeful people switching over to your court is better than nothing. We can use whoever we can get on our side.” Her voice was getting stronger, the argument in her mind fully clicking into place as she put it into words out loud. “And there are decent people out there, too, people who still may not believe a word you’re saying but will believe in your personal right to say it without getting attacked by the media and the country’s conservative zealots. You need to face the camera and pour it all out, Mina, let America see that you’re not holding anything back anymore. Let them know what this is really doing to your everyday life.”
“So you think I should have cameras follow me around all day? Some sort of warped teen pregnancy documentary?”
“I wasn’t thinking of it quite like that, no. I meant that you could verbally and metaphorically walk them through your day.” She paused, her thumb drawing tiny circles along her palm as she considered. “But maybe what you’re suggesting is a much better idea. Maybe if people see the real you, your life, you’ll be more humanized. Less of a publicity object and more of a normal teenage girl going through a very abnormal experience.”
“Nice idea in theory, Mom. But seriously, think about how the media tears people apart, scatters their shreds across the tabloids. I can’t trust a reporter to do me any favors. I was just a prop to KBC. They all have their own motives and their own angles, and the bigger the scandal, the better for them because that’s what their viewers want, right? They’d turn my life into a total joke. Any dignity I have left—and that’s assuming I have any left at all—goes straight out the window.”
“Maybe we don’t have the typical reporter film you then.”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Jesse.”
“Jesse?”
“Yes, Jesse. You told me that he helps out with a film crew, right? And he had that camera glued to his hand on your birthday. Why not have him record some of the day to day? You at school, you at home, pull some other interviews together, and then we could talk about submitting it somewhere. If it feels right, that is, after we’ve all looked it over. At the very least it’ll give you practice talking on camera. You can trust him to show the real Mina. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”
“I don’t know.” Sweat was already prickling along the back of my neck just at the thought of it. I wasn’t sure what made me most nervous: the idea of Jesse observing my life so closely, observing me so closely, or the idea of sending the final project out to the public. Things had been different since my birthday—cooler and more polite. We were still friends, of course. He drove me to school and sat with me and Hannah at lunch. Jesse had promised me—had promised Iris—his support, and he wasn’t the type to break his word. But after that kiss . . .
“I have to think about it,” I said, not meeting her eyes.
“Of course. But I think having Jesse film you couldn’t hurt, even if we don’t end up sending it out or posting it anywhere. It might be good to have this period of your life recorded. It’s a special time, Mina. Strange and terrible at times, yes . . . but definitely still special.”
chapter fifteen
Jesse didn’t waste any time leaping full speed ahead into my mother’s grand plan.
I spent the next week and a half living on the opposite side of Jesse’s camera, trying my best to pretend that he wasn’t there and that there wasn’t a tiny machine recording every movement, every expression, every word. I was used to seeing the camera in his hand—it was more unusual to see him without his second set of eyes—but I wasn’t used to the lens being focused so exclusively on me.
Our classmates weren’t fazed by Jesse filming me, probably because he was either A, invisible to them, or B, already the weird kid who always had a camera in front of his face. Whichever reason, the camera definitely didn’t curtail any of their typical behaviors. If anything, the pre-Christmas hype had made some of them even more determined to harass me. Kyle and his crew fell to their knees and hailed me whenever we crossed paths in the hallway, and I was getting more notes jammed in my locker, more balls of paper wadded up and thrown at me during class or in the cafeteria. I’d stopped reading the messages altogether after catching Jesse recording over my shoulder, making a point of throwing them away unopened. I had always suspected that some of my classmates thought I was a bit of an outsider, maybe, a grade snob who didn’t dare to step outside of her little social circle. But I’d never realized how outside I’d really been. How detached I was from all but a measly little handful of companions. It’s funny, really, the kind of pseudo-safety a few qualified close connections can give you. Nate, Izzy, Hannah. They’d been my guardians, and I’d never once stopped to think about who I’d be without them. But now I knew. Now I had no delusions.
There were, thankfully, some people who cruised right past me in the hallway, too—as if I was anyone, or maybe even as if I was no one at all. Kids who’d either gotten sick of the hype or had never really cared in the first place. They cared about Christmas, exams, college applications, their own best friend and relationship dramas. Their own lives.
Sadly, though, those indifferent classmates were still in the minority.
Jesse met me at my house each weekday morning, but instead of just waiting outside for me to hop into his truck, he’d come in first, take random footage of me getting ready for the day, reading over the latest Virgin Mina web posts, talking with my mom and Gracie at the breakfast table about nothing and everything—what kind of pizza we’d have for dinner that night, or how my mom had woken up one day to find BURN IN HELL written in bright red spray-painted capital letters on our porch.
We’d had it painted over that same day—the same day that we also, not so incidentally, ordered the installation of a new state-of-the-art home security and surveillance system—but I still saw the words every time I stepped up to our front door. They couldn’t be painted over in my memory. I couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger who had prowled across our lawn the night before, wondering who and why—and what he or she might do next. Maybe this had just been a warning, like Elliot S’s cryptic call. A preview for something much bigger than a few nasty words. I hadn’t watched the footage, but I already knew how petrified my face would look on playback. I was completely vulnerable—my entire family was vulnerable. We were never safe, not even in our own home. But other than a few slips on mornings like that one, I kept a straight face. I pretended to be brave.
Jesse shadowed me over the weekend, too, when he wasn’t working at Frankie’s or schlepping around for his uncle. Me wrapping presents on my mom’s bed, pretending not to cry as It’s a Wonderful Life played in the background. Me watching birthing videos in our living room, my substitute for actual group instruction because I refused to go to any public classes, no matter how enthusiastic my mom and Hannah had both been about filling in for the “daddy” role. Jesse never offered, but I think we both more than understood that his role in all this was already suspicious enough. And after that birthday kiss, I had a feeling that playing mommy and daddy together, even for a ninety-minute class, would topple our fragile balance.
I had a hard time, though, believing that this was the kind of real-life drama strangers would want to watch—that there was something compelling to be gleaned from my morning bowl of cinnamon and brown sugar oatmeal. But I didn’t want to challenge Jesse’s vision for the project. And as much as I refused to admit it, out loud and just barely to myself, I didn’t want to say anything that would make Jesse stop. I didn’t want to say anything that would mean us spending less time together. Because despite what I’d said—and how I knew things had to be—it was hard to imagine starting and ending my day without him.
• • •
“Are you coming to church with us, Jesse?” Gracie asked, looking around behind her to make sure my mom was nowhere around. Satisfied that there was no imminent risk, she reached into the tin of freshly baked cutout sugar cookies we’d be giving to our pastor’s family later that night, swallowing a sparkly blue snowman in two massive bites.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude on your Christmas Eve family time,” he said, glancing up from his camera, where he’d been replaying some of the day’s footage for Gracie to see.
“Does your family go to church, too?” Gracie asked, licking a few stray sugar crystals from her thumb.
“Yeah, but not until much later. Midnight mass. It’s a tradition in my family.”
“Weren’t you ever worried that Santa would come while you were still at church?”
Jesse put the camera down on the kitchen table and looked over at me, fielding the question in my direction. Gracie was just on the outer cusp of no longer believing—or maybe she had stopped believing but wasn’t ready to admit to it, not yet, just in case that would mean fewer presents under the tree.
“Santa knows to come late enough,” I said, ducking my head below the table as I pretended to tighten my bootlace. I didn’t want Gracie, the human lie detector, to spot my giveaway “squiggly” eyebrows, as she’d put it. “He knows when everyone is tucked in their beds and fast asleep. All part of the Christmas magic.”
