by Ann Regentin
(10/03/07)

I never understood the Virgin Mary. I was pro-choice as soon as I was old enough to understand what choice was. I wasn't an incubator, dammit. I was a person whose rights superseded those of a clump of cells. I hit three home runs for the high school softball team that year, plus the honor roll. I would never allow myself to be derailed by a stray sperm.

"I'll be damned," Josh said as I emerged from the shower sometime around the middle of my fourth month.

"What?" I asked.

"It's true."

"What's true?"

"Pregnant women glow."

"Give me a break!" I looked like shit. I was already bloated, everywhere, and while I was too big for my jeans, I wasn't filling out my maternity clothes yet. I felt like a lump.

"I'm serious."

"I don't see it," I said, glancing ruefully at the mirror.

"I don't think women can," he mused. "I think you're blind to it. I've never heard a woman describe it, anyway, not in herself or in another woman, but I'll be damned if it isn't true."

I would have thought he was exaggerating if I hadn't seen the look in his eyes. Even in the mirror, it took my breath away.

"Come here," he said.

That wasn't an order I disobeyed on a Sunday morning. I went to the bed, where he was reclining in his underwear. He took my hand, guiding me, and I sat straddling him, my cunt pressed against the fly of his boxers. Josh untied my robe and lifted it off my shoulders, then hefted my breasts in his hands, teasing the nipples to life with his thumbs. They were darker than I was used to. My breasts were fuller, too.

"This is making you so sexy," he said, his voice low in his chest.

"You are so nuts," I said as I leaned forward onto him while I still could, while my belly wasn't much of an impediment. It still intruded, though. Underneath the mush was a hard, growing knot.

"I know," he said, his lips moving against mine, and then neither of us said anything at all.

Like the Virgin Mary's, mine was an unplanned pregnancy. Unlike the Virgin Mary, my hymen was history. It's not that we were being irresponsible; it was that we were ill-informed. It was only after I became a statistic that I read the news reports about how the new generation of birth control pills, with their lower doses of hormones, were less effective than the older, more hazardous version.

So when I saw the line on the stick, my heart dropped down to keep the baby company for a few minutes, leaving my brain without an adequate blood supply. I saw stars. I honestly thought I was going to pass out. Also like the Virgin Mary, I was unprepared and unwed. I had a horrible feeling that Josh was going to act like Joseph before he received his own Divine visitation, doing the modern equivalent of dropping the girl off at her father's house and washing his hands of the whole thing.

I underestimated Josh, not for the first time or the last. It's one of the things I love about him. He consistently rises above my expectations, although to be fair to my expectations, he turned white as a sheet. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said. I'd tested four times by then. Either I was pregnant, or I had a serious hormonal problem.

"Holy fuck." He ran his hand through his hair and started pacing. "How the hell did that happen?"

"I don't know!" I said, defensive and frightened. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"I didn't think you had," he said, stopping to give me a tight smile. "You wouldn't have timed it like this."

No, I wouldn't have, nor did I need to trap him. We were buzzing along quite nicely in a relatively matrimonial direction, marking time until we finished our degrees. Neither of us wanted a grad school wedding, much less a grad school baby. "What do we do?" I asked, knowing as I did that my mind was already made up. I might have been politically pro-choice, but where that particular baby was concerned, I was surprisingly and adamantly pro-life. The only thing that made the thought of being a mother bearable was the fact that the thought of an abortion was worse.

"Don't be an idiot," Josh began, and the blood left my head for the second time that day. I was dead sure he would insist on termination, but instead he said, "I'm not going to punish the kid for the sins of the pharmaceutical industry. It would be one thing if you were a quick lay and I was working at Wal-Mart, but that's hardly the case here. Unless you want an abortion." He looked at me, his face deliberately blank.

I shook my head, biting back tears. I knew I should get an abortion, that abortion was legal specifically for women like me, but I couldn't and I was already beginning to hate myself for it.

"I can't finish my degree in nine months," I said, sick with a mixture of relief and dread. Life as I knew it was over.

"Neither can I," he said, "but I can come close if I take classes over the summer, and one degree is all we need to start with. You can always go back later and finish yours."

"What about our loans?" I asked.

"We'll figure it out," he said. "Trust me."

And I knew I could. I didn't know what he'd do or how well it would work, but I knew I could trust him to do his best, not flake out and leave me holding the bag.

"I'm not ready for this," I said, my coward's tears spilling over my cheeks.

Then he came over and held me, let the shoulder of his T-shirt absorb my terror. "I don't think anyone ever is," he said.

That night, he went out and got drunk. I couldn't join him, but my best friends came over and we talked strategy over decaf tea and cookies. I could breastfeed, which was cheaper than formula. We could buy clothes at thrift shops, since babies grew out of them so fast anyway. They would baby-sit while I was in class. They were even looking forward to it, a chance to play with a baby without having one themselves. We were still discussing the pros and cons of cloth vs. disposables when Josh came in, sloshed, with a cut-price engagement ring he'd picked up God knew where. Not for the first time that day, I burst into tears.

Like the Virgin Mary, I had a small, rushed wedding before beginning the long, hard trek to Bethlehem. Actually, it was more along the lines of a trek to the doctor's office, my advisor's office, married student housing and financial aid. Everyone was very helpful, but the systems themselves were unsympathetic, as if they were set up to discourage women like me from having babies. Even married housing had a wait list longer than the human gestation period. It was looking more and more like there was no room at the inn, if there even was an inn for couples like us. Every night, Josh and I talked into the wee hours trying desperately to rearrange our lives, and every morning, I threw up.

So when Josh started going off about me glowing, I was feeling everything but. I was also not about to argue too much. I'd had enough prenatal classes by then to know that in about five months our sex life would come to a screeching halt, and with worries about birth control completely out the window, we were screwing like bunnies.

Josh's body showed no trace of impending fatherhood. He was on the lean side, not so much fit as thin, but his arms were still stronger than mine, and he was a lot warmer. He smelled like musk, but we'd done this the night before and I'd had first crack at the shower. He's a bit of a slug in the morning.

He ran his hands up and down my back under my robe as he kissed me, and his cock pushed up against my cunt through his thin cotton boxers. I wriggled on it, trying to see if I could work it out of the unsnapped fly without using my hands. Josh groaned his appreciation and did some wriggling of his own. Pregnancy seemed to make me wet faster, and although our efforts were fruitless in one sense, we soaked his underwear trying.

Josh's mouth went from my mouth to my jaw, and I stretched upward for him, wanting to feel his kiss on my neck without losing contact with his cock. He leaned his head up, then took my breast in his hand, lifting the nipple to his mouth, sucking, sending pinpricks of desire all the way down to my clit.

He glowed in his own way when I was aroused and he was responsible. Everything about him seemed hotter and harder, as if his entire body became an erection. Small flaws were erased and small pleasures enhanced until even the scrape of his morning beard became erotic. His skin was sticky with sweat, last night's and the morning's, sour and salty under my tongue.

I don't know how long it was before he leaned up to wriggle out of his shorts. Josh frequently made me lose track of time. I raised myself on my knees and let him kick off his offending clothing before I sat back down on him exactly where I had been before. The pressure of his cock against my clit had brought me dangerously near the edge already and I rocked there, shivering a little, before I reached down to guide him inside.

Now I wanted to come, and I ground my body into his, working my hips in circles while he lay perfectly still, waiting for me. It wasn't going to take very long, either. Unlike the Virgin Mary, who was said to have eschewed sex her entire life, pregnancy made me ravenous and gave me a short fuse. One would think that having a baby inside me would be enough, but my desire for its father had increased a thousand-fold. I was fearless in bed, a bottomless well of lust: With his cock buried and my clit rubbing against his pubic bone, it was easy.

It began as it always did, with that breathless, quivering moment of truth, and then it hit. My cunt clutched rhythmically at Josh's cock and my mind lit up as if I'd been struck by lightning, illuminating every dark, foolish corner in a white-hot flash.

Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ, in all the years I'd been having sex, I never put it together. I took those stupid, useless pills every month like clockwork because my brain knew it, but I never made the connection. Now I understood. I finally understood the Magnificat. I used to think it was a lot of mealy-mouthed crap, but now I got it.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;

he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.

He'd made me bearer of another generation through the simplest, most instinctive, loving act possible. It was an extraordinary thing that something so affectionate, passionate and intimate could result in another human being. It was pure sleight-of-hand, since we weren't even thinking about babies at the time, only that we had that combination of like and lust that makes for perfect sex. That such sex, with such a man, could result in an entirely new person was the kind of cosmic hat trick I had no business complaining about.

He has mercy on those who fear him,

from generation to generation.

and lifting up the lowly.

He had indeed knocked me off my high horse and lifted me up at the same time, showed me how little I really knew. I was weak where I thought I was strong, foolish where I thought I was wise. I knew nothing, nothing whatsoever, and I never had. Things weren't as simple and straightforward as I'd thought, and neither was I.

He has filled the hungry with good things

and sent the rich away empty.

to Abraham and his children for ever.

That promise had nothing to do with making things easy. Mary would live to see her cherished son executed in one of the cruelest ways ever devised. I could only hope that I would have better, that my child would somehow rise above the chaos and uncertainty of its beginnings and live to a ripe, contented old age. No, I got to make the promises here. I'd do the best I could for this baby and trust to luck for the rest. I wasn't always in control, and that wasn't a bad thing.

And then it was over. The Magnificat takes half a minute to recite. I looked down at Josh, who was looking up at me with wide, loving eyes as his fingers dug into my hips, his cock driving deep. It wasn't over yet, which startled me, but I rode it out with him, watched him as he worked for and reached his own climax.

I lay down on him afterward, my head on his shoulder as he stroked my hair, utterly astonished at what had just happened. I was still myself, but I was okay with this now. I could accept it. I no longer felt angry or even guilty. I no longer thought I had a reason to.

"What are you thinking?" Josh asked.

Usually I babbled after sex. "Are you really, truly okay with this?" I asked. "Not just saying so to make me feel better?"

He kissed my hair. "I don't know why you keep blaming yourself. You should be blaming me."

"Anyway, it's not so bad," he went on. "It will be lean at first, but my parents weren't exactly ready when Jeffrey was born, and things worked out okay. Think of the stories we'll have to bore our grandkids with at Christmas." He gave me a squeeze. "I wish you'd lighten up. What's done is done."

That was how he dealt with everything, while I was a worrier. I thought about the smiling face of Andrea Solario's Madonna with Green Cushion as she coaxed her baby to nurse. "I'm happy about it, actually," I said, hit with a sudden shuddering aftershock. "I guess that's why I've felt so guilty. I'm happy."

He sighed. "Finally! Can you shut up about it now, so we can get on with our lives?"

"Yes," I said as a few stray tears dribbled onto his skin, getting lost in the sheen of his sweat. "I'll shut up now."

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