I did recognize, without it ever being articulated, that if I didn’t succeed in carrying the child, everything would disappear. Like Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and women throughout history, my value had all to do with my body, whether I could carry a baby to term. I knew very well that if I lost the pregnancy, I would lose my new apartment, my new neighborhood, my new family. I would lose all of it if I lost the baby. I was paying for all of it with my womb.

Amelia and Fritz were supporting me with low rent, nutritious meals, and health care. I turned down several jobs in order to prioritize my sleep and my health. My income was going to drop and that was perfectly OK. The baby was going to come first.

In weeks four and five, I didn’t have any signs or symptoms of the pregnancy. It was a terrifying sensation, as if the baby were a figment of my imagination. But in the sixth week, morning sickness kicked in. My days began and ended with retching. The extreme nausea gave me confidence—tangible evidence of the life inside me.

Amelia was excited, bordering on frantic, busying herself with activities to channel her energy. One Sunday evening in late August, she and I were talking in her kitchen. “I want you to eat as many meals here as you’d like to,” she said. “I plan to buy fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and steak, organic yogurt and milk, all the things you really need when you’re pregnant.” During the lowest points of Amelia’s despair, I’d noticed that the Straub refrigerator was often empty. Now, however, Amelia considered the unborn baby’s health an acknowledged priority.

She poured us each a glass of seltzer. “It’s odd that Ian hasn’t returned my calls,” she said. “Do you know if anything’s wrong?”

“Well…” I paused and counted to three.

“What?” She sat down at the counter next to me.

I sipped my seltzer, enjoying the carbonation in my throat, which temporarily relieved my nausea. “He’s mentioned a desire for growth … something like that.”

She looked at me like we couldn’t be talking about the same person. “He’s not happy in his job?”

I shrugged. “I don’t want to put words in his mouth.”

In early September I was seven weeks pregnant and Amelia was soaring. She texted to ask me to babysit and to come upstairs before Natalie arrived home from school, so we could talk. She had returned to the glamorous woman I’d met months earlier. Today she answered the door wearing black pants, a low-cut red silk blouse with no bra, and a very large clunky amethyst necklace. I envied her effortless Katharine Hepburn figure.