I looked at Mrs. Ballard, who nodded for me to follow Lizzie. Something was wrong, and for a moment I thought I might be sick. I took a deep breath and it passed, then I followed Lizzie up the stairs to her room.

We sat on her bed. She looked at her hands, uncomfortable in her lap. It was me who reached out and took them in mine. She had bad news, I thought. She was ill, or maybe all my talk of choices had caused her to seek a better position. Before she said a word, my eyes had welled.

“Do you know how far gone you are?” Lizzie said.

I stared at her, trying to match the words to something I might understand.

She tried again. “How long have you been…” she looked at my stomach and then met my eyes, “…expecting?”

I understood her then. I pulled my hands from hers and stood up.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lizzie,” I said. “It’s not possible.”

“Oh, Essymay, you silly duffer.” She stood to take my hands again. “You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. “How can you?”

“Ma was always in the family way. It was all I knew before I came here. The sickness of it should be over soon,” she said.

I looked at her like she was mad. “I can’t have a baby, Lizzie.”

Expect. Expectant. Expecting.

It means to wait. For an invitation, a person, an event. But never for a baby. Not a single quotation in D and E mentioned a baby. Lizzie calculated that I’d been “expecting” for ten weeks, but I’d been oblivious.

The next day, I stayed in bed instead of joining Da for breakfast. A headache, I told him, and he agreed that I looked pale. As soon as he left for the Scriptorium, I went to his room and stood in front of Lily’s mirror.

I was a little pale, yes, but in my nightdress I could see no change. I loosened the ribbon around my neck and let the nightdress fall to the floor. I remembered Bill tracing his finger from my head to my toes. Naming every part of me. My gaze retraced his path; gooseflesh rose as it had each time we’d been together. I stopped at my belly, at the hint of roundness that could easily be a big meal or wind or the heaviness before my monthly bleed. But it was none of those things, and the body I had so recently learned to read was suddenly incomprehensible.

I pulled the nightdress back up and tied the ribbon tight. I returned to bed and pulled the covers up to my neck. I lay there for hours, barely moving, not wanting to feel what might be going on inside me.

I was waiting, but not for a baby. I was waiting for a solution.