It was only then that I turned on a light.

I stood in front of the mirror, pulled up my sweater, my undershirt.

This heaviness, discomfort, I had never felt this way before, as if my breasts needed support. I would have to start wearing a bra. No, I couldn’t, nobody wore a bra unless they had to, only old ladies and housewives.

I looked the same as always, everything was the same as always, but nonetheless something was different. While I stood there in the cold glare of the bathroom light, with my sweater pulled up under my arms, I felt the other symptoms too, those I knew would come, which I had already been afflicted with for a few days, without really paying attention to them: fatigue, my mouth watering, the stirrings of nausea.

I stood in front of the mirror, with the sweater, an apple-green wool sweater, pulled up under my arms. I held it up, my arms were two pointy angles in the mirror, like wings. Suddenly I knew that I was pregnant and there was such a lightness in me, my arms were wings, I could fly, but I didn’t know if I dared.

We met at my place that evening—I asked him to come. I wanted to be here, in my impersonal bedsit, not in his apartment.

He noticed that I was quiet, and I told him almost immediately.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

He was so thrilled that at first he couldn’t speak. Then he asked if I was sure.

“Sure?” I said. “How do you define sure?”

He laughed. He had to stand up. He jumped up and down on the floor in front of me, then he hauled me up from the bed I was sitting on, hugged me so tightly that my feet were lifted off the floor, and he started to carry me, but then he stopped himself.

“Sorry, I didn’t think about the one inside there.”

“If there is someone in there.”

“If? But don’t you know?”

“Yes, I think so. My period has always arrived like clockwork.”

“There’s someone in there.”

Then he placed his hand on my abdomen.

“Just a lump of cells,” I said.

“No. A child. Our child. Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”

“I’m not thinking much of anything yet.”

“Signe!”

He laughed again, a loud, strange, and very happy laughter. Then he leaned forward, kissed me, and pulled me toward the bed.

Afterward we lay side by side in silence. He stroked my forehead and cheeks.

“Signe. I think you should give her a call.”

I turned toward him. “Who?”

“You know who.”

“Now?”

“Daughters need their mothers. Especially when they become mothers themselves.”

“I’m not thinking about how I’m about to become a mother yet.”

“But you are.”

“It’s too early to think that.”

“Call her.”