Mother's Intuition

         I couldn’t believe it.  Brandy, my best girlfriend since our early school years, was the very last person in the world I would have thought to become pregnant with an unknown man’s child.  After all, she was a self-proclaimed night-walking recluse who cared nothing for the sick society in which I, and the rest of the world, resided.  Hers were not the problems of unplanned pregnancies, nor did she have need for petty nuances like contraception, for that matter.  Yet there she stood before me in full maternal glory, her belly ripe as an autumn melon.

         Though her body was beautiful in pregnancy, her face was wrought with worry and I knew her heart was wrenching in shame.  My heart pleaded with her to unload the torrent of emotions she tried desperately to contain.  But she turned her face from me, long blond hair swirling around her like a golden cloak and she began to run.  Concern drove me after her, though she repeatedly twisted just beyond my sight.

Just a bad dream, I thought as I ran.  But it couldn’t be, for I was fully awake.

         Through dark hallways and wet, black streets she ran.  I tumbled after and was unable to understand what sense could lead me after what I couldn't see.  Finally, my chest heaving and my legs shaking from beneath me, I crumpled and begged her to return and explain her unwillingness to open to me.  I became indignant in my confusion, even angry that she would refuse to confide in me.  She finally wavered toward me, her eyes cast upon her feet as though they were too weighty to raise to mine.  Brandy approached me with the caution of a doe guarding her fawn but eventually met my green eyes with her blues.  She never needed to speak, for our bond over the many years had become very nearly spiritual in nature and we understood each other without the most basic forms of communication.

         She sat facing me and began to speak slowly.  In trouble, she said she was, and delved into her despite for the phrase due to it’s civil societal cloak which hid underlying raw emotions and situations which were reality.  Eventually, I knew she would steer herself back to the unavoidable conversation, and she did. 

              Embarrassed by her state, she had told no one.  Worse, fear over the unknown had caused her own self-denial:

"A blind woman can’t also be a single mom!" she proclaimed.

                Inwardly, I am enraged that this strong, independent heroine has succumbed to my sick society of ‘can’t-dos’.  My mind races between comforting words and drill-sergeant coaching.  I instinctively opt for the former and say "Ah, girl, you know love is blind."  I was rewarded with the faintest whisper of a smile which prompted several more cliches.  After a while I remembered Voltaire's admonishment of a witty saying and simply shut my mouth and hugged my friend.  She knows that I can't always say the right thing, and I know I don't really need to.

         We embraced for a long moment and I pondered this sudden, peculiar situation.  Still at odds with coming to reality, I realized that she was comforting me as well.  I hold her at arm's length and study her somber expression as if this will cement the facts in my brain.  Suddenly, her face twists in agony and her entire body begins to writhe in pain.  My heart drops as, in the distance, I can hear the screaming of the sirens…

         I slap the digital clock on my night-stand which glares back at me with unwavering intensity: 6:00… 6:00… 6:00…  I roll over back onto my pillows and, immediately realizing it as a mistake, continue the roll until my bare feet hit the cold tile floor.  I sit up and rub my eye-sockets, involuntarily groaning.  I am immediately seized by the violent revolt in my stomach, threatening to upheave every organ in my body out through my mouth.  After racing to the bathroom with my hand clamping my mouth shut, I hug the porcelain god and regurgitate last night’s pizza.  It looks like I will be taking a third sick day this week.