The blue tin of jasmine tea sat right beside the salt shaker on the Formica counter, just where it had stayed for twelve years since my grandmother passed it down. I picked it up on a Tuesday morning in late May, turning the metal lid in my palm while the cicadas outside kept up their dry, rasping drone against the screen door.
Arthur was still out at the boat docks down by Bayou Terrebonne, checking the generator lines before the afternoon tide rolled in. My belly was heavy, pressing hard against the cotton of my housedress whenever I bent to wipe the linoleum. I kept thinking about the paper lanterns. They were still hanging out on my back porch, limp and damp from the morning mist, smelling faintly of cheap glue and wet tissue paper.
Four days before, the yellow paper lanterns had swung back and forth over Patrice’s patio while forty people ate chicken salad out of paper bowls and told her how glowing she looked. Patrice had on that cream-colored smock dress with the square neckline, the one that made her collarbones stand out like bird bones. She kept one hand splayed across her stomach, right where her belly curved out in that round, perfect arch that people spend hours admiring in magazines.
I had been sitting in the folding lawn chair next to the ice chest, rubbing my own ankles because they had started swelling up like sweet potatoes by noon, when Arthur suddenly dropped his paper plate onto the grass. He didn’t bend down to pick it up. He just leaned over the arm of my chair, his hand heavy and hot on my bare shoulder, and said those seven words that still make my ears ring.
We had to go right now.
I remember staring up at him through the heat haze, annoyed because I hadn’t finished my slice of lemon pound cake and Patrice was just getting ready to open the gifts wrapped in pink cellophane. His face looked gray, the way it did when the diesel motor on the shrimp boat seized up out in the marsh and he had to work the hand pump for three hours in the sweltering sun.
He didn’t explain anything until we got past the parish line, the gravel popping under the tires of our old Ford pickup like dry bones. In the cab, the air smelled of stale peppermint and hot vinyl, and Arthur kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on the blacktop.
I don’t think she’s pregnant, he said.
I laughed, a short, sharp sound that rattled off the glove box. I told him he was crazy, that we had compared morning sickness notes since February, that she had her third ultrasound printout tucked behind her refrigerator magnet right beside mine. Arthur didn’t argue with me. He just reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his phone, and slid it across the dash into my lap. He had taken a quick photo of Patrice earlier while she was laughing and tossing her head back by the lemonade dispenser. He told me to zoom in on the bottom left corner, right behind her shoulder where the wooden trellis met the side of her mother’s tool shed.
The trellis wasn’t wood. It was white-painted wrought iron with a distinct scroll pattern shaped like a weeping willow branch.
That was the exact scrollwork on the iron plant stand I kept in my spare bedroom, the one with the broken leg propped up by a wedge of cedar shingle.
The house had been empty all that Friday while Arthur was at the docks and I was at the parish clinic getting my three-hour glucose draw. Patrice had dropped by two days before to drop off some canned peach preserves, and I had left her alone in the front room for perhaps four minutes while I went to answer the back door for the propane delivery man. I had never thought twice about it. We had known each other since Sister Mary’s catechism class behind St. Jude’s, back when we shared peanut butter crackers and whispered about the older boys who worked the shrimp processing lines. She knew every key hidden under every clay pot on the porch.
That night, the house felt different, like the air inside had gone thin and stale. I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop open, scrolling through four months of group chat photos while Arthur walked the perimeter with his heavy flashlight, checking the window latches twice. Every picture Patrice had sent since January was right there on the screen. There was the shot of her holding a positive test strip against the background of her bathroom tile, except if you looked at the grout lines in the upper right, you could see the faint pink smudge of the mildew spot that lived right above my own shower caddy. There was the picture of her cradling her bump in front of the full-length mirror, wearing a gray jersey top I hadn’t seen since I packed away my winter clothes in March, except my jersey had a tiny ink stain from a leaking ballpoint pen right near the hem, and so did hers.
It wasn’t just imitation. It was a copy, stitch for stitch and symptom for symptom, right down to the iron supplement prescription I had grumbled about during our Tuesday phone calls.
The phone rang at 10:14 PM, the bright light cutting across the dark oilcloth on the table. It was Patrice, her voice sounding small and tired, asking if I had managed to save any of the lemon pound cake for her because she had been too nauseated to eat anything at her own shower. I sat there in the quiet kitchen, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the heavy breathing of Arthur standing just behind my chair in the dark. I didn’t mention the plant stand. I didn’t tell her about the ink stain or the tea tin. I just told her I was tired and the cake had gone dry in the heat.
You’re missing out on the best part, she said, her voice dropping into that sweet, breathy register she used whenever she wanted someone to feel sorry for her. We’re almost at the finish line now. Just think, both of our little ones sharing a birthday month. It’s like we planned it.
I hung up without saying goodbye.
The next three days were a blur of cold coffee and quiet panic. I drove to the parish library twice just to use their desktop computer, checking the local birth announcements and clinic rosters under names I knew, finding nothing because Patrice hadn’t used her married name at the county health department in six months. When I called the OB-GYN clinic on Main Street under the pretext of rescheduling my July checkup, the receptionist, old Mrs. Gable, hesitated for three seconds before telling me Dr. Henderson wasn’t taking new patients and hadn’t added anyone from Patrice’s street to the roster since the autumn before.
She ain’t on the books, honey, Mrs. Gable said over the crackling line, her voice dropping lower. Not here, and not down at the regional hospital either. I checked when she asked about childbirth classes last month. There’s no file.
By Friday afternoon, the weight of it had settled into my chest like wet lead. I didn’t call Arthur; I didn’t wait for him to come home from the boats. I drove my old station wagon straight down the shell road to Patrice’s small rental house behind the lumberyard. The front yard was overgrown with wild indigo and knee-high Johnson grass, the screen door hanging crooked on a single rusted hinge. The house was quiet, too quiet, but I could see the silhouette of a shoulder moving past the front window.
I didn’t knock. I just turned the brass doorknob, and to my cold, sick satisfaction, it gave way with a familiar click. She hadn’t even bothered to change the locks she had copied from my spare set back when we helped each other paint the kitchen three summers ago.
The front room smelled of stale baby powder and damp cotton, a cloying, chemical scent that hung thick in the stagnant air. Patrice was standing by the cane-bottom rocker in the center of the room, her back to me, wearing that same cream smock dress from the shower. She had her hands tucked inside the front panel, her fingers working frantically at something near her waistline before she spun around with a small, sharp gasp that sounded like a trapped bird.
The dress sagged. The round, perfect curve of her belly didn’t shift with her weight; it remained fixed and rigid, sliding down her thighs with a dull, hollow thud as she stumbled backward against the sideboard. It was a molded silicone apparatus, complete with adjustable canvas straps and a Velcro waistband that smelled faintly of old sweat and talcum.
You shouldn’t be here, she whispered, her hands clawing frantically at the loose fabric of her smock, trying to hitch the silicone shell back up against her ribs. You’re ruining everything. We were supposed to go to the hospital together. I had the bags packed and everything.
I didn’t yell. I didn’t run across the room to shake her. I just stood there in the doorway, looking at the way her hair was unwashed and greasy at the temples, the way her eyes looked wild and hollow behind her wire-rimmed glasses. She looked smaller than she had at the baby shower, less like a monster and more like something broken that had been left out in the rain too long.
How long, Patrice? I asked, my voice sounding flat and distant, like it belonged to someone else standing out on the porch. How long have you been wearing that thing around my house?
She stopped fumbling with the straps then. She let her arms drop to her sides, the silicone lump resting awkwardly against her slippers like a discarded piece of laundry. Her face didn’t crumble into tears. Instead, it tightened into something ugly and hard, the skin around her mouth going white.
You think you’re the only one who gets to have a family, she hissed, her voice rising into a sharp, shrill screech that set my teeth on edge. You get the house by the bayou. You get Arthur with his steady boat work. You even got to have your baby in the good room while I sit here in this damp little box waiting for someone to look at me. I lived every appointment with you. I felt every kick you talked about. It was mine too.
She took a step toward me, her hand reaching out as if she wanted to grab my wrist, to pull me into the madness with her and make me share the weight of it.
I took two steps back, right onto the welcome mat by the threshold, and looked at her one last time. I didn’t offer her forgiveness. I didn’t tell her I was sorry for her lonely life. I just looked at the way she stood there in the dim, yellow light of her empty living room, hugging her hollow plastic belly to her chest like a child holding a stolen toy.
You lost the right to my name the minute you walked into my guest room, I said.
I turned around, letting the screen door slam shut behind me with a dry, wooden bang that echoed across the overgrown yard. I didn’t look back as I walked to the wagon. I didn’t look back when I heard her voice calling my name from the dark window, high and thin like a whistle through the marsh grass.
When I got home, the sun was just dipping below the cypress line on the horizon, turning the bayou the color of bruised plums. Arthur was sitting on the top step of the back porch, smoking a Lucky Strike and watching the blue herons settle into the reeds along the bank. He stood up when the station wagon engine cut out, walking over to take my elbow the way he always did when my legs got stiff from driving. He didn’t ask me what I found. He didn’t need to ask because he saw the way my hands were steady for the first time in a week, and he saw the small, yellowed envelope of spare house keys I had laid right on top of the dashboard.
We walked inside the kitchen together, the screen door clicking shut behind us. I reached over to the heavy brass deadbolt on the side door, pushing the iron slide home until it seated itself with a deep, solid thunk that sounded like a vault door closing on the rest of the world. Then I set the heavy tin of jasmine tea back down in its exact spot beside the salt shaker, reached out, and pressed my hand flat against my own warm, moving belly while Arthur put his big, calloused palm right over mine.
