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| Photo Credit: Tombachler |
“Oh, Carl, your friend is here! Hello, my dear. You can call me Mrs. K. It’s Anna, right?” A woman, clearly Carl’s mother, stood on the front porch of a farmhouse on the outskirts of town. She did not look anything like Carl with her blond hair and wide smile. She guided me into the room, making sure not to touch the flower-vined tattoo that trailed to my elbow. The room smelled like warm, freshly baked bread and beef stew.
Carl
appeared in the stairwell dressed in a buttoned-up shirt and businessman pants.
“Where’s
your tie, Carl?” Mrs. K said, waving him back up the stairs.
Sheepish,
Carl turned and bounded up the stairs, all ten steps, in one leap. The
impressive athletic feat was strange enough, but Carl and Mrs. K halted. Even
their breathing had stopped. Mrs. K shifted her eyes at me and laughed without
needing to. “Sometimes he forgets his tie.”
“Is Mr. K
here tonight?” I said, wanting to change the subject.
“Not
tonight. He was commissioned to help a cow give birth. He probably won’t be
back until late.” Mrs. K motioned me to my seat. She brought over a pot of steaming
stew—as I had suspected—and a loaf of bread already sat on the table. Carl
arrived wearing a blue tie and stood next to me as his mother served us food.
His arms twitched at his sides. Carl sat down when his mother sat down.
“Let’s
pray,” Mrs. K said, reaching for my hand, and I choked on the food already in my mouth.
After the prayer, Carl folded the
napkin over his legs and, after the first bite, he thanked his mother for the
savory meal.
#
“You must
look like your father,” I said as Carl and I sat in his barn. The stars were
brighter this far from town.
“I don’t
look like him at all,” Carl said quietly. I waited for him to elaborate, but he
did not.
“So, you
were adopted?”
Carl smiled.
He had dimples, something I had never noticed before. A voice inside of me
said, I wish he weren’t such a nice boy.
After that, I amended. I wish he weren’t
such a good-looking boy. “More like, I adopted them.”
“Did they
have any children before or after they adopted you?”
Carl
shrugged. “I’m their only child. They tried to have children, but some people,
you know, just can’t, even when they want to.”
A horrible
feeling filled my gut. “You must think I’m a bad person, then.”
Carl blinked
and craned his neck. “Why would I ever think that?”
He had to
know the rumor about me. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what everyone
says!” The soft fuzzy feelings were draining quickly as I remembered who I sat
next to. Was he so out of touch with people, he had no idea?
“Of course,
I know what everyone says about you. I know what everyone says about me. I know
what they say about Rachel and about Amy and the other Amy. I know what they
all say. Even Travis in our class says things I wish he wouldn’t say.” A rare
crease over Carl’s eyebrow appeared. He was irritated. I tilted my head, surprised. I was not aware of any rumors
circulating about Rachel and the Amys. He did not seem like the type of person
to indulge in whispers in the hall. “What do you know about Rachel and the
Amys?”
Carl looked
at me as if I had asked him to rob a bank.
“Okay!” I
lifted my hands. “Never mind.”
Carl smiled
again, and the fuzzy tingles came back. I waited for him to kiss me, staring in
his eyes, staring at his lips. Instead, he said, “I know the rumors aren’t true
about you.”
I gasped. No
one knew the truth about those rumors. Only my closest of close friends knew.
“How did you know…that?”
“I have exceptional hearing. I
overheard you talking about it with one of your friends.”
“What do you think you know?”
“I know you
let everyone believe false rumors because you think it makes a political statement.”
Heat filled my face. Carl was probably a
conservative, so the fact he knew the truth about my fake rumor made me
nervous. He probably disagreed with me, especially when his mother had agreed
to carry him, give birth to him, and then give him up for adoption.
“Anna
speechless? There’s a first for everything.” He leaned back, saying nothing
else.
Of course,
he would not argue with me. He probably had no opinions at all. He was a
passivist, a nice boy. It irritated me, so I said something. “Doesn’t it bother
you at all that I'm pro-choice? Aren’t you going to say anything?” Passion rose up in my throat. Carl shrugged. I hated his shrug. I hated his
scrunched, baffled eyebrows. “Don’t you care that I pretended to have an
abortion?”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I would if I felt like I
needed to. You should
have an opinion about this, don’t you think? Your birth mother was obviously pro-life. Or are you too scared to have one?
Are you too nice to have one?”
Carl sat up
on his elbows. I thought he was going to argue back, but instead he pointed to
the murky, dark sky. “It’s tornado season. Make sure you check the weather tonight, just in case.”
Annoyed that he was trying to change the subject, I pushed his arm. It
felt like a metal locker. “Of all people, you could do the
most, you know. You’re strong. Obviously.”
“My momma
told me never to raise my hand to another person.”
I stood on
my feet and crossed my arms. “I like your momma, but did she really tell you to
do nothing? If a man was chasing me
with a knife right now, what would you do? What would you do, Carl? Nothing?
Because your momma doesn’t like fighting? Well, now I’m dead. Thank you, Carl.”
My sarcasm
pinched a nerve, and he jumped to his feet. “No, Anna. I believe in life more than death. There are many ways to save a life, but if my birth mother had been you,
I’d be dead.”
The sincerity
and forceful manner of his words moved me, and I grabbed his palm and shook it.
“I can respect that argument, Carl. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”
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