Izzy was impatient. The baby was almost a week past its due date with no signs of revealing himself to the world. Back at the doctor’s for yet another checkup, she listened as Dr. Kirwin, unflappable and inappropriate, kept telling her that there was nothing to worry about. “You just have a nice womb, little lady,” he said, patting her stomach. “He isn’t ready to come out.” He told her that there were no complications and to simply relax, stay comfortable, and everything would be fine. She gritted her teeth, as if there was any way that she could get comfortable in her current state. She was dizzy, constipated, couldn’t stop urinating, had constant heartburn, her breasts were killing her, her legs cramped, her feet ached, her back ached. She was a self-contained disaster, as if her body was making itself as inhospitable as possible to force the baby out of her, but it wasn’t working. Aside from the terrifying jolt of Braxton-Hicks contractions from time to time, the baby showed no signs of leaving. “Let’s say this,” Dr. Kirwin told her. “You don’t go into labor by this weekend, we’ll induce. How about that?” Izzy simply nodded, had no time left for Dr. Kirwin and his jocular dismissal of her body.
Izzy, by this point, had quit her job at the Whole Hog, could no longer manage the work, and so she spent most of her time in her tiny bedroom, listening to her iPod or checking her e-mail. She had already packed up and shipped most of her clothing and personal effects, which Dr. Kwon assured her were set up and waiting for her at the complex. When she felt stir-crazy, she took walks, shuffling through the neighborhood while old women watched her suspiciously from their front porches, as if they thought that Izzy was scoping out their houses so she could come back later and give birth on their sofas. By the time she made it back to her own house, she was dizzy, short of breath, still so fucking pregnant.
Ever since she had elected to join The Infinite Family Project, Dr. Grind had included her in a Listserv with the other expectant parents. There were nine other couples, so apparently she was going to be the only single parent, the only person on her own. She would also be the youngest person involved in the project, and so the other women who had signed on were already talking to her like she was their little sister. Even though the project had yet to begin, Izzy could already see the benefits of finally having someone to talk to about the bizarre process of having a baby. Five months into her pregnancy, she had signed up for some classes at the community center, but had been embarrassed to be the only one who had come alone. Even the high school girls had managed to drag their boyfriends, one of whom refused to stop playing a game on his cell phone for the entire class, and so Izzy never went back, preferred the solitude of the Internet, which she convinced herself was just as good.
Now, however, she realized how nice it could be to have friends, or pen pals at the very least. Her favorite woman was Carmen, who was twenty-five years old and from Memphis. “I was so careful not to get pregnant, all through high school,” she told Izzy in one e-mail. “Then I got cocky and let my guard down, just the littlest bit, and now here we are.” She wanted to be a nurse, was currently working as a cashier at, funny enough, an Acklen Super Store. “I’ve worked there five years, don’t even get health insurance,” she wrote, “and now the lady who runs the whole joint wants to make sure I get taken care of. It’s weird.” It was weird, Izzy admitted; all of it was weird, and it felt good, on the Listserv, in private e-mails, even on the video chats they had set up, to hear the other men and women admit as much. They were now, for better or for worse, all in it together.
Except, goddamn it, Izzy was still pregnant. Over the past month and a half, every other woman had given birth by now, was spirited away to the complex, and, though she tried not to worry about it too much, the e-mails had come to an almost immediate halt. Carmen had finally e-mailed her a few days earlier and attached a photo of all the parents and their babies. “We pass the kids around like hot potatoes,” Carmen said, “so they get used to us. Hurry up and have that baby and get over here!” Even though she’d been promised that she was now a part of something larger than herself, that she and her child would be surrounded by other people who would help her, she felt like she was already missing out. “Come on,” she would say to the baby. “Come on now.”