Waiting

"Meredy!" My mother is home from work, calling from the kitchen. Her voice is sharp, imperious. I have been waiting for this moment, waiting for more than four months. Still, I haven't expected this voice, and it stops me cold. I telephoned her when I got home from school, midmorning, wishing I had let the school nurse call her. When my mother asked why I wasn't at school, I said, "I'll tell you when you get home tonight." I spent the day trying to imagine this conversation, but I could not draw up my mother's concerned face, could not feel her arms around me. Now, I stand silent, watching myself in the mirror over my bureau. Everything in the house feels muffled, distant, as if suddenly none of it has anything to do with me anymore—not the hum of the furnace below my feet, not my diary under my slips in the second drawer, not the skittering shadows of winter branches shimmering on my wall—each piece receding into a past that belonged to the girl I have been up until this moment.

I am Meredith Hall, I think, looking back at the girl in my mirror. I am Meredy, a junior at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, New Hampshire. I will graduate, class of '67, and go to Smith College. I am a sixteen-year-old-girl who gets all As and is secretary of student council. The ocean flows in and out, in and out in perfect rhythm, every day and every night, across my beach, a mile beyond Mrs. Palmer's and Crazy Billie's and Uncle Leo's (who is not really my uncle but who has always called me My Little Sweetheart), beyond their bunched together and friendly little houses with peeling paint. This has been my bedroom since I was born. I sleep under this soft worn bedspread. I ironed the white lace cloth on my bureau, whose drawers stick, and inside are my clothes. I come home after school and put apple blossoms in a vase or make brownies to surprise and please my mother. I am Meredy, with a brother named David, a sister named Sandy, and a mother who loves me.

I look back at myself in the mirror, my hands holding the edge of my bureau softly. Some things are right. My shiny blond hair and crisp white blouse. My girl's skin. But the awful fear, the aloneness, the waiting for four and a half months for this moment and whatever will follow, have settled into my eyes, my face. School and pleasing my mother and the soft shelter of my room are gone, I know, forever.

"Meredy!" The call is a summons. I suddenly feel too tired to imagine what is going to come next. My mother's voice announces that whatever I have hoped that would be is not going to happen. The hush in the house is slow and deep, a warning I hear but cannot react to as I face her.

"You're pregnant, aren't you?" The words are hard, fierce. I cannot find my mother; she is gone, a million miles away, back in a place where there were no terrible surprises, where good girls didn't draw shame on good mothers. I am surprised that she has taken so long to come to this realization, surprised that after my round belly and morning sickness and fear and retreat have slipped past her all these months, all it has taken is a small break in the routine, me coming home early from school, for her to pay attention finally to her daughter's despair.

"Yes." I struggle to react, to fight this new current, the unexpected coldness, the judgment, before it is too late. But my voice is tiny in the hollow room. Her cigarette smoke floats in the still air. I want cover. I want someone to hold me.

"How far along are you?"

"Almost five months."

"David!" my mother calls, looking at me steadily. "David!"

My brother, home for winter break from college in Montreal where he is...