“Here we are, home sweet home,” Red said as she fished her keys from her green lizard purse. The house looked similar to its neighbors except for its voluptuous landscaping and freshly painted green door. It sure didn’t look like a home for hookers and bandits. It was a place for Thanksgiving dinners and tire swings, where ice cream trucks stopped in the summer, a place that twinkled with Christmas lights in December. It was a place where you could raise a child.
“Sure is nice to have company,” Red said. “It’s been years now, hasn’t it? You were such a scrawny little thing last I saw you.” She pinched a little roll on Kit’s belly. “But you’re all filled out now, aren’t you?” Kit blushed. She had never even needed a bra, but now her breasts were heavy and tender.
“Well, tickled as I am to see you, it worries me a little. I mean, my lord, what’s with the mysterious late-night visit?” She struggled to open the door, jimmying the lock.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Kit said. She chewed on her thumb, wishing the door would open already. “I need advice, I guess.”
“You come to the right place then,” Red told her. She pumped the key in the keyhole and turned it forcefully to the left while lifting up on the handle. The door finally gave way.
“I swear, I have to do something different to it every day. It’s old and cranky—just like me. Ha!”
Kit relaxed at once inside the home. Donna Summer on the radio, roses in the air, everything lit in warm marigold, it was a real home. A signed ZZ Top poster hung above the fireplace; on every flat surface squatted a fluffy houseplant. On the coffee table, an unfinished puzzle, a sleeping tangle of Labrador puppies. She thought she could spend the rest of her life in a place like this. By comparison, the rotating string of motels were all different shades of shitty.
Red flopped onto the couch, unzipped her boots down the back, and rubbed her arches. “Something to drink?”
“Sure, I can get it, though,” Kit said. “You look comfy.”
“You are sweet. Kitchen’s through the dining room.” Red flopped back and lit a cigarette.
Kit found her way to the fridge, which was quilted with children’s drawings addressed to Aunt Winnie and Christmas cards affixed with magnets and tape from what looked like Red’s sisters’ families. She grabbed a couple of cans and brought them back to the living room.
Red had taken off her bra and was sprawled on the couch. She reached out to take the soda.
Kit began to squirm under the weight of why she was here. She cracked open her drink, took a long, bracing gulp, and sat down.
“I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant,” she said. She let the news hang, not even sure she wanted a reaction.
Red sat up. “Wow.” She sandwiched her face between her palms. “Wow, again. So, what do you need to hear right now, ‘Congrats’ or ‘I’m so sorry’?”
“That’s the thing, I don’t know how I feel about it. I know I’m supposed to be freaked out, and maybe I am a little, but . . .” She needed to do something with her hands, something to focus on. She knelt on the floor in front of the coffee table and began moving the puzzle pieces. “Did it ever happen to you?” Kit asked.
Red started to feather Kit’s hair with her fingers, running them from her hairline to the nape of her neck. At first Kit felt ants under her skin, her scalp aflame. Not wanting to offend Red, she held still. In time, she settled and she could almost remember the way she felt wedged into the V of Miss Rhonda’s legs as she ran the brush in long, soothing strokes through her hair.
“I’ve been pregnant before, if that’s what you mean,” Red said.
“Oh,” Kit said, suddenly sad.
“I was young, like you, and it would have meant giving up my career, moving home. I didn’t see how it could work. Looking back, I was just scared.”
“What was the . . . procedure like?”
Red looked off into the middle distance. She scrunched her face to the side, and two dimples Kit had never noticed appeared in her cheek. “Kinda lonesome,” she finally said. “Painful. But you convince yourself of things that make it better. Just like getting a tooth pulled, some piece of your body that’s not working for you. It’s what you’ve gotta do to take care of yourself.”
“Do you regret it?” Kit asked.
Red looked down and folded her hands in her lap. “Sweetheart, I got no time for regrets. They’ll swallow you like a catfish in one big gulp if you wander near.” She clutched Kit’s shoulders and turned her. “Now, who’s the father?”
Kit looked at her lap. She picked at a frayed cuff.
“Is it Manny?”
Kit met her eyes, an angry blush.
“Oh, honey. That’s what I was afraid of.” The dimples again. “Look, I know you’re not his niece, okay? Don’t worry about that. But you’re gonna have to have a plan if you want to keep this baby. You can’t raise it with him.”
“I can’t?” Kit felt stupid. Why was it so obvious? He had taken care of her when she was little, why not a child of his own?
Red reached out and touched Kit’s bruised cheek. “No, honey, you can’t.”
“Now that it’s here, it doesn’t feel like a choice,” Kit said. “It’s happening.”
“Honey, it is a choice. I want you to think real sober about it. The question you need to ask yourself is not whether you want a child but whether you want to be a mother.”
Kit couldn’t utter that she did not even know what it meant to be a mother, or even what it meant to have one.
“Having a child is one thing. They’re cute, they kinda love you no matter what. But it’s not just feeding them and making sure they don’t fall in a creek. You have to be ready to do the work. You have to be there for them, for their little spirits, you know?”
Kit wanted something concrete. She felt lost.
“For example, your kid falls off a swing and starts crying. What do you do?”
Kit thought about it. Tell him to stop crying before someone sees? Make him get back on the swing? Ignore him? “I don’t know,” she said, and felt she might cry herself.
“Well, I don’t know either, but I think you’d probably go give them a hug and hang with them until they felt better. Let ’em know you’re there.”
The pieces of the puzzle blurred together as Kit’s eyes filled with tears. She forced a piece into a hole where it didn’t fit. She yanked her head away from Red and swiped her arm across the table, scattering the pieces on the floor.
“Honey,” Red said and reached for Kit.
Kit got up and stood in front of the window. She knew she didn’t deserve this baby, but she couldn’t just get rid of it, pretend it never existed. She couldn’t leave Manny either. Who was to say he didn’t want to be a father?
Red stayed quiet and gave her time.
“I’m telling him,” Kit said. “Once I see how he reacts, I’ll know what to do.”
Red lit a cigarette and sucked so hard she nearly swallowed it. “I’m not one to tell another woman what to do,” she said through a smoky exhale. “But, baby, you best have a plan before you walk through his door.” She got up and stood next to Kit by the window, took her by the shoulders and touched her forehead to Kit’s. “You know where to find me now. If you need anything at all—money, a place to stay, what have you—you call, okay?”