“Have you been to a doctor?” I asked. I was fourteen. I thought I knew everything important, and honestly, her body grossed me out, the way it was blossoming, the shape of her hands and feet as she changed.

“No,” she said. I watched her twirl a long lock of hair around her fingers. “He can never know,” she said to me.

“Who?”

“Your dad.”

“How would he know?” I said. “I can’t even remember what he looks like. It’s not like I go see him on the weekend,” I snipped.

She pressed her lips together. I thought she was trying. She had seemed less high most days. But I didn’t know what she did while I was at school.

“I’m sorry it’s your burden,” she said then.

“Yeah, me too,” I answered.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

I didn’t have to tell anyone. Everyone in this town already knew who we were. That my dad was in prison for trying to kill us. Sometimes I told people he was dead, that he’d died in prison years ago instead of living on, cared for with meals and books to read and card games while we had to figure everything out on our own.

My mother rubbed her belly in a circle, and the light caught her tattoo, and I thought she looked like some kind of medieval witch sitting there in a long hippie skirt.

“Are you going to keep it?” I asked.

“Her,” she said. “And yes.”

“How do you know if you haven’t been to a doctor?” I asked.

“Don’t question things you’ll never understand,” she said.

I never knew what kind of agony she went through in deciding to keep her, because she never told me. We accepted each other as who we were and didn’t ask questions. She assumed I wasn’t interested in women having babies or why or how, and she was right.

I was already taller than her. She put her hands on my arms and gripped her fingernails into my skin while she squeezed her eyes shut with pain. We had lived all this time like adults, even when I was little, like equals. We didn’t have shit. She was terrified of Park getting out of prison. Every week, she counted out cash for me so I could pay the bills in town, riding my bike to the grocery store service counter. And whatever was left was for food.

“I need you to help me right now,” she said through her teeth. She stopped breathing for a moment, holding her breath, gripping my arms. And then it seemed like a wave passed and she started again. “Help me,” she said.

She had me get towels and water. She had me place a cold cloth on her head.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked, stupid, but I didn’t know. It seemed like we needed a doctor. Or maybe a wise woman, but my mother was the wise woman. I guessed if anyone could do it on her own, my mother could.