When all three of the neighbor girls became pregnant at the same time, my mother gave me a stern look and said, “There’s something in the water, Mabel.” I only guessed from her tone and from what my teacher called “context clues” what she meant. Because it seemed that everyone was pregnant. And when I say everyone, I’m talking grandmothers, too. Even a man at church. Up and down the block, across the city, and from one state to another. My mother called it an epidemic, and when she caught wind of it occurring to girls as young as me, she shook her head and took to scouring the internet, saying, “No no no no no no, this can’t be happening again.” And soon she had ordered what she called allergy pills. “As a precaution,” she said. “You can’t be getting pregnant, Mabel, not at your age, and it’s no longer happening the usual way, like we talked about.” She went on about it being some sort of new biological response to an allergen or maybe a genetic mutation, both of which sounded vaguely sci-fi to me, and then told me to take one of the tiny white pills each day before school and an extra one if I was going to be especially close to a boy. When I made a face, she said, “Don’t look at me like that. I’m going to take them, too.”
The only thing my mother had ever said about my father was that he didn’t exist. I’d been skeptical before, conjuring up fanciful scenarios about who he was and what his relationship with my mother was like, but now with all of these unexplained pregnancies, I no longer knew what to believe. Especially given how on edge my mother was. Biting her nails, pacing the living room. Day after day, I’d get home from school, and before I’d even taken my coat off, she’d rattle off the latest pregnancies and update me on the research she’d found online. One afternoon, especially distraught, she bellowed, “They thought it was a fluke last time, Mabel! A fluke! And they discontinued the research!”
She told me we were switching to an all-organic vegetarian diet and said not to eat processed foods and to avoid city water, adding, “I’ve been reading about it. You might have the gene, Mabel, but maybe if we eat right, exercise, and—” She took a deep breath, and her crazed eyes lit up like static electricity. “Are you taking those allergy pills, Mabel?”
I nodded vigorously to reassure her, but the truth was that they made my breath stink and, worse, I never saw any of the other kids taking them, so I’d pushed them to the bottom of my backpack after a few days, vowing to just stay away from boys.
Which seemed to work fine until I met Jay. He’d transferred up from a lower grade. Smart. And had a dimple when he smiled. Cute.
I’d gaze at Jay during class and wonder vaguely about those allergy pills at the bottom of my bag, so one day I raised my hand and asked our teacher if you could get pregnant from allergies. The whole class laughed. Except Jay. Sensitive. Our teacher hesitated, but then said, “For mild allergies, you might get a headache or some intestinal discomfort.” She put her hand over her belly, rubbed, and went back to talking about fractions.
That same day, after gym class, I strategically placed myself next to Jay in line at the water fountain, so close I could see a bead of sweat on his neck. I didn’t get a headache, and there was no stomach discomfort. So, I got closer, tapped his shoulder. When he turned around, I said, “Hi.”
Jay and I didn’t do much more than smile at first. But then we started talking, sat close to each other at lunch. We traded food, and he didn’t even cringe at my sprout and soybean salad, as I sank my teeth into his bacon cheeseburger. We held hands, and nothing unfavorable happened. By that point, I figured I was safe, so I just threw the allergy pills away. After a couple of weeks, Jay kissed me on my cheek. Love.
And even though it never went further than that, it wasn’t long before I was pregnant.
“It’s not your fault, Mabel,” my mother said, revealing that she, too, was pregnant, and that the pills didn’t work after all. We both sat on the couch, somber, and she handed me a bottle of water with a “Safe!” sticker on it, and took small sips out of her own. “The government says to only drink bottled water,” she said. “Don’t they know it’s too late?”
I rested my head against her shoulder. “So now what?” I asked.
My mother just shrugged, scratched absently at the “Safe!” sticker on her bottle.
“Safe,” she scoffed, pulling the sticker off. “That’s what they said last time.”