She was still thinking about Ronnie as she was adding dish soap to the water in the sink when she felt the smallest of twinges deep inside. She paused for a moment, waiting for it to pass, and was reaching for the first plate when the twinge returned, stronger this time, hotter, shooting into her back.

“Something’s not right,” she said to herself.

“What’s that, hon?” asked her mother.

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I, uh...I have to go to the bathroom. Could you watch the water for me? Make sure the suds don’t run over the edge.”

“I been doing dishes since I was four, hon. I think it might be okay to leave me unsupervised for a minute or two.”

Lucy smiled at her, then left to do her business.

By the time she got to the bathroom, the twinge and heat had passed and she felt just fine—well, she needed to remove her bladder and slam it up against the wall a few times, but what else was new? She peed ten to fifteen times a day now, something her doctor and other pregnant women assured her was par for the course in the wondrous journey toward Motherhood. If she could lay claim to no other epiphany resulting from this, she could firmly state that, in the past few months, she’d learned the truth about the so-called “radiance” of an expectant mother. It had nothing to do with her carrying the miracle of life in her womb; oh no, that was a romantic myth best saved for the daytime soaps and cheap tearjerker novels. The truth was, if a pregnant woman appeared to “glow,” if she took on a “luminous” quality, it was because she had just peed, or needed to pee and just discovered there was a bathroom nearby.

Lucy laughed a small laugh as she unbuckled her belt and unzipped her jeans and slid the works down past her calves as she simultaneously glided down onto the toilet seat. This was another thing they never told you about—how a pregnant woman learns to turn the act of sitting down on the toilet into a beautifully choreographed ballet.

A breath, a sigh, a contended hum in the back of her throat, and the sweet, waterfall sound of radiance filled the cramped bathroom.

For a few seconds, it was bliss.

Then an invisible hand rammed itself deep inside of her and dragged rusty steel hooks down the throbbing walls of her uterus.

For the rest of her life, she would remember the next sixty seconds in all of their terrible detail: first, the pain, wrenching and merciless; then the sound she made, somewhere between a shriek and a scream; next, the floor rushing up to meet her as the invisible hand wetly tore itself free and shoved her off the toilet seat; and then she was curled up on the floor, knees pressed against her stomach, feeling the blood seep from between her legs as she shuddered, then shook, her hands clasped tightly together and mashed against her vagina. She lay convulsing for what seemed hours before she heard the sound of the bathroom door being opened and then there was Mom, her warm, soapy hands cupping Lucy’s face, tears streaking her cheeks, muttering, “Oh hon, my little girl” over and over as she gently helped her to sit up, and then embraced her, rocking her back and forth, stroking her sweat-soaked hair and whispering, “All right, it’s all right now, shhh, there, there, it’s over, it’s passed, it’s all right, I’m here, I’m right here, hon, you don’t need to—”