The Hope We Look Towards

Imogen had only bought the test this morning, but she had been waiting for the results for weeks, counted by heartbeats she couldn’t hear and on fingers she couldn’t move. It had taken everything to get to here; to her ancient table in her new second study, to the debt that weighed invisibly on every payslip that had consumed her time for her whole life, from midnight studying and building stress to endless resumes and interviews, just hoping she had the right word somewhere that would let her break in. She had succeeded, though sometimes success felt more like the weight of the world pressing hard across her chest, and now she sat before her computer, senseless and mute. The silence gnawed at her, a quiet ringing in her ears and a nausea sitting higher than her stomach, lower than her throat, clogging the arteries around her heart. She lifted her shirt, pressed a hand to her stomach, fingers curving around a thousand things she can’t see; intestines and bones and aches and consciousness and, somewhere between all the things that make up Imogen, a baby. Maybe. The test still had two minutes left — it’s ticking, but slowly; Imogen’s never known a clock to move so slowly. She wanted to watch every second of it, unable to tear her eyes from the single pink line bleeding across the little box, watching for the second line she knew, somehow, was coming — except she couldn’t bear to watch it either. Instead her head would shift, her eyes straining then following like a dog tugged against a leash, to the window beside her desk. Better to be a dog, no bleeding lines fraying already thin nerves, no pacing husband in the other room, his voice echoing like a ringleader into a tinny microphone. Jake would be here if he could, if he knew, though Imogen suspected he knew. But if he even suspected what it was he knew was another mystery entirely. If they were dogs — if this was a pup instead of the possibility of a child — they would be outside, and Imogen would pee on a tree instead of a stick, and life would go on unbothered by what might be — what was surely — growing within her and across that tiny test box.  

It was a nice day outside, for dogs more than humans who were stuck at work. Sunny despite the winter wind still clinging to the trees, warmer than it had any right to be, and brighter than a weekday could stand. Imogen sat at her desk, eyes drifting back to the test, the timer ticking silently down, one hand on her stomach and the other pretending to know one letter from the next on her keyboard. It wasn’t even her desk — or it was as much as any whisked away heirloom could be. She’d fallen in love with it as a child, hidden away in some corner of her grandmother’s house, dust collecting around photo frames that were twice Imogen’s age. She could still feel their impression, smoothed away beneath her fingers, phantoms she’d never quite cleansed. Her computer sat heavy on it, but it had worn heavier things in its long life. Her father had used it before her, a dozen tiny models of fighter planes built across it. He’d used a mat, too afraid to leave traces of glue or that his solder would slip and stain wood older than he was. Imogen had taken it last year, when her parents had downsized their house. She’d cleaned it up, smoothed and rebuffed the wood, the only sign of its age the curling shapes of its trimming and the dents that were more than wood deep. Her timer ticked down, taking an eternity to turn a two into a one, a fifty to a forty. Imogen looked at her stomach. It looked as it had all year, rounder than she’d like, hairier than she’d ever admitted to — thanks Dad, for all you’ve given me — and fuller, she knew, ready to grow faster and further than she’d ever grown before. All she needed was that second pink line. 

A child — they’d talked about it, knew there was always a chance between the nightly pills she sometimes missed and the condoms he never checked, but a chance was not a real child. A little person, too small to speak or walk or even lift its little head. Imogen had always wanted one but she had never really thought — never believed — that it would truly come to bear. A child! A little girl — it might not be more than a few cells but she could all but see it now — a little girl, if kept, with Imogen’s curls, and Jake’s dimples, and more hair than anyone knew what to do with (especially Imogen, especially this little girl). She could grow, if they had the space, into her father’s dark eyes in her grandmother’s face, into bright laughter and quick dashes and bad teeth that would need braces and a brain that would need schooling and long legs that would need clothes.

Her head turned, her eyes resisting then following, to the bright window, the golden sun burning into pavement, the insectless winter that made the thought of summer more cruel. Someone was mowing, the stench of fresh grass turning Imogen’s round — rounder? already? — stomach; the winding of leaves in the growing wind drifting past like a hurricane; the whistle of metal chimes mixing with the chug of traffic on the road below. An old woman walked past, grey and gold in turn, her hair short in the way only the elderly or teenagers wore, hands clenched on a walker she struggled to keep steady on uneven pavement, head bowed with the weight of her life pressed against her neck. Was this a world Imogen could raise a child in? Beyond the money — and that was a lot to push beyond — and the headaches and restless nights and the work that flashed from a dying screen, could Imogen really raise a child while she felt like one herself? While responsibilities pressed heavily on her, threatening to crush her into the divots of her father’s planes and her grandmother’s photo frames and whatever weight sat on the desk before that. Could she lay her love for a child down between one’s regrets and another’s future. Her fingers worked her stomach, gently stroking across stretch-stained skin, the bare warmth warmed by the bared sun. She pressed harder, searching for something — a sign, a lump, the child that must be in there 

       and her fingers tightened, protective and chastising against the kick, her head bent low to touch the cold edge of her sewing machine. A girl, she’d bet a week of Will’s damned cigarettes on it from the way it thrashed within her, impatient and confined in a way no boy could understand. Get used to it, darling, Peggy wanted to whisper, you’ll be trapped your whole life if you’re not lucky. If you fall in with the wrong boy too soon, or if Will gambles all his money away on the horses, or you turn your nose up at school, like so many girls hadn’t fought to let you stay when others wanted to make you brides at thirteen. Things have been changing now — so fast they slip right through Peggy’s pin-pricked hands, but also so slowly that every step took decades just to land. They say girls can own property, but Peggy hasn’t met a girl who owns enough yet to buy any, and they’ve let them into the uni’s, which seems to take more and more of their precious little money anyway and doesn’t lead to much more than upturned noses and refusals of entry. Peggy could never have gone, she had barely managed through school, seeing no point in trying back then, and her father refusing the very idea — Women! He had snapped; Women in education! What next? In our own workforce, taking jobs from the men meant to support them? But this child kicking in Peggy’s womb, if it were a girl then she could go. She could walk with her head high, maybe one day chase the men from the pubs instead of sending in a son or a brother to fetch out another too deep in his drinks. Perhaps, with a proper education like university, she could work something that didn’t have her bent over a needle and thread, back aching and stomach sore and head spinning from squinting so long at a fairy’s sized stitch. She could stand in the square and toss her curls free and turn her nose up at men who wanted nothing more than a cook and cleaner and bedwarmer. 

The ache faded as Peggy breathed, her flattened hand itching as if the child were pressing back against her stomach, its tiny hand ready to grasp the world that waited for it. The world that was changing and not changing and was just waiting for more women to march, to shout, to refuse to be kept in and under the thumbs of fathers and cousins and husbands. She raised her head and bent back over the fabric. Swashes of fine cream silk hiding plain linen out of sight, and delicate lace swelling around the throat, tied tight with pearl buttons from neck to knickers. It wasn’t much, but it was something Peggy could do now, in this slowly changing world, out of sight of Will and his gambling hands, always reaching into her always thinning purse. She could hide this well enough; he’d never think to look for coins beneath the buttons and threads in her desk’s drawers. The whole thing shook under the thunder of her machine — a luxury, but one she had secured the same way she would secure her daughter's future, bit by bit and out of sight — its edges digging into solid wood, every day a little deeper. It would take hundreds of dresses and thousands of hems, but as the child kicked inside her again, Peggy knew it would be worth all the bloodied and blistered fingers. 

Over the thunder and the whirring fabric quickly zipping through Peggy’s fingers, Will stomped about, cursing loudly between the bottle and the boys as they gathered around the radio, and Peggy had to stop again to steady her hands. One must focus on the good, she reminded herself, eyes shut and picturing this beautiful one-day daughter — the universities and the jobs and world just waiting for a young girl to seize — because if one didn’t, then the men crept in with their curses and their fighting. Trouble on the continents, tensions between one man and another that slowly bleed from country to country. There’s talk of fighting soon, and Will and his like are all the more eager to don the costumes and guns like little toy soldiers. Peggy knew well what fighting could bring. She saw it in the dark faces that stared, gaunt and hungry but not beaten — never beaten — from between wired fences as children searched for parents that were more likely dead than not. She saw it in the drunkards lurking outside the pubs, too broke or else too broken to be let inside, red stained fingers clinging to whatever skirt brushed too close, begging with no sense of pride or dignity or sense. She knew it from the fist of her childhood, delivered quick and merciless to whoever got in its way, and the turned eyes of friends — of family — and their empty words of solace. Peggy knew drowning on air that her brothers could breathe freely in. At least Will wasn’t that kind of man, and this child — this daughter pressing up from beneath her fingertips — would never know that fist or those turned eyes. She would never know the darkness that had run so thick in Peggy’s life, that she had cut, piece by piece, out of herself until they had nothing left to cling to. She would only have the good, hidden in her sewing desk’s drawers, gathered up until they could become a change. Until it was just Peggy and this child, kicking so fiercely Peggy doubled over, her hand tightening on the edge of her desk for support 

then letting go slowly, white and aching as the timer went off, and Imogen couldn’t bear to turn her head to face the test. Her shaking fingers silenced her phone, her eyes pinned to the tree and the wind and the sunbaked street, her other hand flattened over her stomach. She was sure, with a sudden painful clarity, that the line wouldn’t be there, and the picture of that laughing child swept up into her arms would vanish in an instant. It wouldn’t matter, really, it wasn’t like they had been trying. The house was a mess, and they’d lose one of their studies, and their savings could be better. Imogen didn’t exercise enough to teach a daughter how to, had never quite gotten the hang of meal prep and scheduled chores, had barely settled into her career. She still flinched at catcalls in the street, still hesitated before speaking up when an order was wrong, still leant on Jake when the nerves grew too much and all she wanted was to curl up and cry. To bring a child into that – what a thought! What a dream! It should be a relief, really, to have the test be bare. But she’d done so much as well, had brought herself so far through studies and work and Jake.

The door crept open, Jake’s head just past the threshold, as if he were too scared to enter, to ask about the alarm or her pale face or the test sitting by her feet. But concerned, his whole being warmed by the golden sunlight. Any child would be beautiful if it took after him. 

Without thinking, Imogen looked down. Two pink stripes looked back up towards her.