“The point is—I had a point before the poisoning—oh.” I paused. “It’s... I don’t know that I’d want to lie to the kid and tell them that my grandmother is their mother or whatever. If we keep the baby, I want the baby to know they’re mine. So we’d have to work something out if that’s the way we go. Which I’m not sure of yet? But I’ll think about it.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Mormor insisted. “If you want to keep the baby, I say keep the baby. We’ll keep the baby.”

“That’s Sara’s decision, Ma, and you need to back off.” It was weird to hear my mom use Mormor’s own tones against her, yet that’s exactly what was playing out in Mormor’s kitchen. Ice queen was being challenged by mini ice queen, woe be to those closest who would suffer their frozen wrath.

Which were me and Devi. We both wanted to hide.

Surprisingly, Mormor didn’t retort. Instead, she startled when the toaster popped up two pieces of white bread, snagging them and smearing them with butter. The kettle whistled beside her and she efficiently whisked it away to pour a cup of tea. Both toast and tea were presented to me, the sugar bowl nudged over so I could “pollute perfectly good tea.”

Mormor liked her tea with honey and only honey and anything else was inferior and wrong.

“You need to eat,” she said matter-of-factly. “For you and the baby.”

I frowned down at the buttered toast and tea.

“I might puke.” I reached for the toast and nibbled on the crust despite the unpleasant gurgling in my belly.

Mormor stepped into the pantry to rummage around. She reappeared a minute later with a red pail that she slid next to me on the table.

“And this is why God invented buckets.”

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Two days later, I was at the OB/GYN, awaiting the arrival of a woman named Dr. Cardiff who was supposed to give me my first prenatal exam. I perched on the exam table, no pants, no panties, with a paper blanket over my lap. I eyeballed the counter, hardcore frowning at the implements of doom laid out beside the sink on a big blue pad. I could appreciate why the doctor’s office did it; it saved time when it came to the actual exam, not having to run around and get all your supplies together, but seeing that shiny silver speculum next to a bunch of other doodads I couldn’t name but that’d probably soon be inside of me? Not fun.

I hated the speculum. I hated it with the fury of a thousand starving raccoons.