Thumped

  “You don’t think you are?”

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore,” he says with a hapless shrug. “But I’m working on it.”

  I nod in understanding.

  “I’ve had a lot time to think about it, and I’m starting to believe that all that talk about me sowing the seeds of the Word was just a clever and convenient way to combine the two driving impulses in my life.” He pauses, looks up to the Heavens. “God and sex.”

  My cheeks flush hotter than Hell itself.

  Jondoe had been raised in an evangelical household that was about as religious as you can get in Otherside, though nowhere near as strict as my own. If he had grown up in a Church settlement, he would’ve been married by fourteen. Instead, that’s the same age Jondoe convinced his parents that he was a uniquely gifted messenger of God, one who did his best missionary work in the missionary position, siring the next generation of true believers.

  Like my twins.

  “I want to change, Harmony, but it’s hard. You’re the only one who will tell me when I’m being a jackhole.”

  “My sister tells you.”

  “That’s true,” Jondoe admits. “But Melody doesn’t like me either way, with or without the swagger.”

  “She likes you.”

  He rolls his eyes. “She tolerates me because of you,” he says. “She’s a great sister in that way. Speaking of Melody, I should have told her you were in labor. I guess I wanted to prove to you that I could provide all the support you need. That was a mistake. We should let her know we’re on the way to the birthcenter, right?”

  I’ve been praying on this all morning.

  “If I tell Melody, she’ll show up at the birthcenter with a swarm of media.”

  Jondoe thinks on this. “We could tell her to come in disguise. . . .”

  “You know how bad she is with hair and makeup.” I shake my head. “It’s too risky.”

  “And what about your ma?” he asks. “Won’t she want to know her daughter is delivering?”

  I consider his question for a moment before answering, wanting to be both truthful yet fair to the woman who saved my life when she chose to adopt me almost seventeen years ago. As the sicklier, scrawnier twin, I might have foundered in an orphanage had it not been for the Church’s openheartedness about taking in the neediest babies, the ones that no one else wanted.

  The ones that—even now—no one wants.

  “Harmony,” Jondoe is saying now, trying to get my attention. “How can we get in touch with your ma?”

  “Ma has many more pressing concerns,” I decide.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ma has helped raise forty-eight children, only eight of which she birthed herself,” I say. “She has always loved me as she has loved us all. Equally, but economically.”

  I often used to wonder what it would be like to be an only child, the sole focus of my parents’ love and affection. Would I have more easily believed Ma when she called me “a gift from God” if I hadn’t heard her say the same exact thing in the same exact way to dozens of housesisters and brothers? Then I met Melody and saw how her parents have treated their only daughter more like a precious commodity than a precious blessing.

  God sure does like to do things on His own time, doesn’t He? For all the many times I longed to be left alone as a child, it was only after I returned from Otherside with an appreciation for my parents and our sprawling housefamily that He finally granted that particular prayer.

  And if it weren’t for Jondoe, I would be totally alone right now.

  “Okay, Harmony, if that’s the way you want it,” he says in resignation. “But you are aware that we won’t be able to hide behind our hair forever. Eventually people are going to figure out who we are.” He strokes the wooly fake beard that successfully shields almost half of his face. “I mean, if one person gets a good look at my perfectly symmetrical abs, we’re done for.” He must think I’m about to chastise him again for his pridefulness because he quickly adds, “I’m joking. To lighten the mood.”

  I’ll take him at his word.

  “I know that,” I say, “but . . . ohhhhhh . . .”

  And the rest of that thought is lost to another round of contractions.

  Of course I can’t hide behind my new anonymity forever. Just long enough to figure out what I’m going to do about these babies.

  When is God going lay that answer on my heart? I frequently recall what Ma taught me about “unanswered” prayers, and how they are God’s way of telling me I’m not ready for His answer yet. The most prayerful way to behave in these situations is to be patient. To wait. But I’ve been patient for almost nine months! How much longer can I possibly wait, when these twins are already on their way?

  The air taxi is descending now, targeting a landing pad in front of the Emergency Birthcenter, when Jondoe turns to me with a solemn expression on his face.

  “What?” I ask, protectively clutching my belly as the air taxi touches down.

  “I’ve messaged Ram,” he says.

  “How? Why?”

  “How? The same way I always messaged you. By hacking the system. Zen taught me how to do it. And why? He’s your husband. He should be here.”

  “But you’re the one who questioned whether he was really my husband!” I sputter.

  “I’m trying to do the right thing!” he exclaims. “To prove to you that I can be good!”

  Where’s this conscience coming from all of a sudden? But there’s no time to talk about this now. An army of white-clad healthcarers is racing toward the air taxi. In seconds, I’m enveloped by a blur of white scrubs, white lights. There was once a time not too long ago when I might have mistaken them for angels readying me for the Rapture. I know lots of things now that I didn’t know then. What will I know in the future that I don’t know today?

  “What’s the status?” asks one of the healthcarers, a woman with a trustworthy voice.

  “I’m thirty-five weeks pregnant with twins and my water broke about fifteen minutes ago, and my contractions . . . ohhhhh . . .”

  No words.

  “I think they’re coming every three minutes or so,” Jondoe says.

  I close my eyes and recoil in a private pain he will never experience or understand.

  “Who’s your doctor?”

  I feel multiple hands help me out of the air taxi and lift me onto a rolling bed.

  “We don’t have one around here,” Jondoe replies quickly. “We were . . . on vacation. She’s five weeks early.”

  None of the healthcarers respond as if this is at all suspicious. I suppose this would only sound suspicious to someone who knows it isn’t the truth. When I open my eyes I see that Jondoe is smiling with quivery lips. It’s actually better that he’s nervous because his megawatt grin would immediately give him away as the world-famous Reproductive Professional he is.

  Or was.

  “Preterm delivery is not uncommon with twins,” the woman says, following alongside the bed as it rolls toward the entrance of the birthcenter.

  “That’s exactly what I told her!” Jondoe says.

  With every bump and wobble I feel like the babies could just burst right out of me like a seedpod in springtime. I wish it were that easy. The Bible warns us about suffering pains in childbirth as punishment for Eve’s Fall. And I’ve heard my housesisters’ screams carry through open windows and across the settlement. I know what I’m in for. Melody tells me that most girls who deliver in Otherside are completely unconscious, but I want to be awake through it all. Eve isn’t the only one whose sins need to be atoned for. It only seems just that I feel the pain of delivering these babies as intensely as I felt the pleasure in making them. The Bible promises I’ll forget my anguish as soon as the babies are laid in my arms. But what if I don’t want to forget?

  “What’s your name, honey?”

  My name? I hadn’t thought of a name! I don’t even need to look to Jondoe for help.

  “I’m Gabriel,” Jo
ndoe answers, “and this is . . . Mary.”

  Under these circumstances, is this a praiseworthy tribute to the Mother of God? Or pure blasphemy? I don’t know what to think of Jondoe’s intentions anymore. If I ever did. And why should I when he seems as conflicted and confuddled by his actions as I am?

  “Well, I’m Grace, the birthnurse assigned to your case. . . .”

  “Did you hear that, H—Mary?” Jondoe marvels. “Her name is Grace! It’s a sign from God!”

  Remarkably, Grace isn’t flustered by Jondoe’s thumpiness, even if I am.

  I know he grew up that way, but it’s not the side of him I’m used to seeing.

  “You’re in good hands here at Keystone Emergency Birthcenter,” Grace says warmly as I’m wheeled through the doors and into the brightly lit hall of the birthcenter. She presses both hands onto my belly and gives me a reassuring look. “Now let’s get you ready to bring two new little people into the world!”

  With no disrespect to Grace, who is clearly a very professional healthcarer, I have my doubts that she’ll be able to prepare me any better than God has.

  Which is to say, not at all.

  melody

  I’M SITTING IN THE BLEACHERS, WATCHING LONGINGLY AS ALL the boys and unbumped girls in my Personal Health and Fitness class play Muggle Quidditch. I don’t even like the game very much, I think it’s silly, but I so miss physical activity that I’d be thrilled if I could run around the gymnasium with a broom between my legs, chasing after the human snitch wearing a gold pinny. I miss being able to move. Preseason training for soccer has already started and I’m just about dying to get on the field with my team. If Harmony pushes out the twins on time, I’ll be able to rejoin the team before our first scrimmage. I can’t wait.

  That’s an ironic phrase: “I can’t wait.” I can wait. I am waiting. All I do these days is wait.

  “What did you get for number one?” asks Dea, who is also sitting it out. Her hair falls over her left shoulder, just like mine.

  I glance down at the for seriously wanked True or False quiz our teacher distributed to all of us sidelined preggers to pass the time while the rest of the class is at play.

  1. Nine out of 10 girls who have NOT pregged by 18 regret their obsolescence.

  “Really?” I say. “You need to ask? You have a fifty-percent chance of getting it right if you guess.”

  “Not all of us were blessed with your brainy DNA.”

  I flip over the paper and hold it up for her to see.

  “And all the answers are on the back.”

  Answer: TRUE! Girls who have NOT helped in our nation’s fight against sub-replacement population suffer from depression, cellulite, and bad hair days.

  Dea checks this out for herself.

  “Oh!” she says, slapping her hand to her forehead. “Duh!”

  Duh is an understatement.

  The National Association for Procreation provided almost all of the funding for our school’s Personal Health & Fitness curriculum—we have them to thank for those sweet new Quidditch brooms—so it’s not obvious why NAP messaging is being disguised as a straightforward True or False test.

  2. Fifty percent of girls pregg on the first try.

  Answer: FALSE! Seventy-five percent of girls need to try multiple times before being bumped. Get an early start so you aren’t a sad girl with a dimpled butt and split ends.

  3. A dose of Tocin makes pregging painless—and possibly pleasurable—even with a less-than-perfect partner.

  Answer: TRUE! So what are you waiting for?

  I don’t even bother turning in my test.

  Instead I put it in my pocket to give to Zen later in the day, half hoping that this will help the Mission and will somehow make up for the awkwardness of last night and this morning. I’m so distracted by thoughts of our last two conversations that I don’t even notice Ventura until I hear the clomping of her boots on the bleachers. She’s coming right at me, boobs first. Without being told, Dea moves to the far side of the bleachers to get out of her way.

  “We rilly need to talk.” Ventura’s mouth is tight. Not even a hint of a smirk.

  “Do we?” I ask. “Rilly?”

  She narrows her eyes but stands her ground.

  “About what?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

  “Not what,” she says. “Whom.”

  I know it’s grammatically correct, but gah. Whom? Who talks like that?

  “Zen,” she adds, as if her “whom” needed further clarification.

  I rest my hands on my bump and try to do a better job of exuding coolness than Zen did at my locker this morning.

  “What about him?”

  She sits herself down right next to me, near enough that I can’t help but inhale her scent, which is a totally calculated move on her part. Ventura always smells delicious because she douses herself in Get Him, the pheromone cologne scented with the essence of lavender and pumpkin pie. It’s only supposed to have a seductive effect on guys, but I find myself fighting positive feelings for her whenever she’s this close to me. I make an exaggerated show of sliding over on the bench to put some distance between us. She’s not being subtle; why should I?

  “I know what you two are up to,” Ventura says matter-of-factly.

  My back-of-the-neck hairs prickle. She’s bluffing, I tell myself. She knows nothing. Zen hasn’t told her anything.

  Has he?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Then suddenly, without any warning, Ventura presses both of her hands to my belly. I’m so shocked by the gesture that I don’t even have the presence of mind to pull away. She’s feeling for movement, and she’ll get it, because the B$B is designed to respond to touch. Sure enough, when fake body parts rub up against her hands from the inside, she pulls them away. She looks down at her palms, then up at me.

  And then, with absolute certainty, she says, “Those are not Jondoe’s twins.”

  harmony

  I’VE BEEN WHEELED INTO A SMALL, STERILE-LOOKING ROOM. I’m connected to more complicated-looking medical equipment than I’ve ever seen before. The room resonates with beeps, boops, and pings, all generated from the two lives inside me.

  Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump . . .

  I’m hypnotized by the sound of their synchronized heartbeats. To think that Melody and I were once so intimately joined.

  Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump . . .

  I’m thinking about my birthmother again, wondering what it was like for her to deliver us. Did she already know she was going to leave us at the hospital? During our last brief and forbidden MiVu conversation I had asked Melody if she ever thought about the conditions that might have led to our birthmother’s decision. And Melody—who has made it a policy not to subject herself to such ruminations—had surprised me by answering.

  “With the names she gave us, she had to love music,” Melody said with an uncharacteristically faraway look in her eyes. “And I bet she was around our age, not much older, like a sophomore or junior in high school. And her dream was to go away to college to study music. Maybe even an exceptional college, like Julliard. I like to think that she was one of those singer-songwriters who used to actually sing with her real voice and played guitar, not guitarbot, and way better than I ever will. I bet she was more like you in that way, and it’s sweet that you’re actually living up to your name, and then some.”

  I should have modestly insisted that I wasn’t nearly as musical as Melody made me out to be, but I was too taken with the idea that I had somehow inherited talents from my birthmother that Melody had not.

  “And she wrote heartbreaking songs about being misunderstood by wanky parents, brainless friends, and boys she loved who didn’t love her back.”

  I was afraid to move so much as a single muscle. I wanted her to keep talking about our birthparents in a way that made them feel realer than the conjurings of my own heart and soul.

  “Anyway, she knew she’d never be able to go away to col
lege with two babies to take care of. So she did what she did.” Melody had paused, closed her eyes for a moment, then continued. “The irony is, if Surrogetting was legal back then, she could have used us to help pay for school.”

  Melody failed to mention that we were both born with illegal toxins in our system. Our birthmother was probably not a driven, college-bound musical prodigy, and Melody knew it. She was spinning this perfect portrait of our birthmother not to preserve her own idealized image of the woman who delivered us, but mine. What harm would it do if she burnished our birthmother’s image with fantastic figments of her own imaginings?

  Like Melody, I too had always imagined that my birthmother was not much older than we are now. But I never believed that our birthmother was perfect. She had to have a troubled mind. Only someone so young and afraid would be driven to do what she did, to carry us for nine months only to leave us with strangers. And yet if she was so young, wouldn’t she have had loved ones to turn to for help? The note attached to our blanket said, “Forgive me, Melody and Harmony.” Not “us” but “me.” That single word has haunted me for years. Why was she just “me”? Why was she alone? Where was her family?

  Where is my family now?

  Oh my grace. I’ve made another terrible mistake. Jondoe is right. Melody, of all people, should be here. She’s the only true family I have. I want to tell Jondoe to contact her, but he’s being asked questions by an intake nurse.

  “You’re the birthfather?”

  “Yes!” Jondoe beams with pride.

  Oh my! That famously radiant smile is going to get us into trouble! It’s having an immediate affect on the intake nurse, who actually blushes and clutches a rubber-gloved hand to her chest. She’s in swoon, but fortunately for us, she hasn’t figured out why. With a sobering jerk of her head, she’s back to business.

  “And what are your plans for these babies after they are delivered?”