Parthenogenesis

The first kick comes at 4:44 in the morning. 

It’s soft. Hardly more than a nudge. It doesn’t even hurt, but I still jolt upright in bed, my skin damp and clammy with sweat, my chest tight and my head aching. There’s crust stuck in the corners of my eyes. An iron tang sits heavy in my mouth. Moonlight falls in strange, tree-dappled shapes over my living quarters through the window. 

I put a hand to my belly. I don’t really know why. Instinct, maybe, or something like it. I splay my fingers against the skin under my shirt and suck in a trembling breath. And I don’t know where it comes from, but this idea twists itself around my thoughts and lodges somewhere in my brain matter, unmovable and frighteningly certain: there is something inside of me that wants to get out. The second kick is quieter than the first; I picture a small, gnarled hand pressing up against the inner confines of my body like it’s trying to say hello, and I choke down the bile clawing up my throat. 

Mama would tell me it’s another one of my symptoms. An imagined itch that I can’t scratch, like the golden fish that used to wriggle in place on my bedroom ceiling or the voices that would call my name from some distant place outside during my biology classes. If I were home, Mama would lay me down on the bed, and she would slip a melatonin gummy past my lips and tell me to try to close my eyes. 

I know better, though. 

Before I started seeing things, Papa would tell me that I had a mind for medicine with how nauseatingly well I understood the human body. My body. And Dr. Reed’s had me on these homeopathic antipsychotics since I got here, so I know. I know. The thing kicking at my insides is more than a product of thought. It’s real. It’s mine.

My stomach churns. I stumble towards the bathroom and sink to my knees before the toilet.

×

Morning service starts at 7:30. We’re herded towards Ichthys’s on-site church and sat down in plush garden chairs arranged around the clear glass pulpit, the air heavy and incense-spiced. Sunlight streams through the open windows and spears through my skull. There’s a woman next to me whose name I don’t remember; I can almost swear that her eyes flick towards my abdomen for a split second, but when I look down at myself, there is no telltale swell to give me away, so I ignore the sick thing sweeping through me and try to focus on Father Aaron at the head of the room. 

He’s saying something about Genesis, I think. Most of the sermon goes over my head, sleep too heavy in my bones, sweat beading on my skin again already. A sharp kick from within cleaves into my stomach hard enough to make my eyes water. I curl my fingers over the arm of my chair, my knuckles white, and I watch Father Aaron’s lips move, even if the words are all buzzing and muffled through the pain. 

Towards the end of the hour, Father Aaron brings this guy up to the pulpit. I recognize him vaguely—we painted together during one of the group activities when I first arrived here, though that’s about the extent of our relationship. His name’s Drew, I’m pretty sure. He’s wide-eyed and shifting from foot to foot before our group, running a nervous hand through his shock of red hair. 

Father Aaron rests a hand on Drew’s shoulder. “Your request,” he says softly, more command than question. 

“Um.” Drew swallows hard. The woman beside me nods her head as if to encourage him. “I’ve been having—thoughts. Impure thoughts. I want—I want them gone. Please.” 

“Of course.” Father Aaron’s grip tightens, and he bows his head, mouthing something under his breath with furrowed brows. 

Drew gasps, sharp and sudden. The room collectively holds its breath—he’s starting to shake, head-to-toe convulsions like there’s something inside of him too. His mouth is twisted. I wonder if it hurts, or if it’s part of being touched by God. A sound like a groan comes out of him, low and soft, and then he slumps, the anxiety in his face overwritten by clear, serene relief. He lets out a breath and closes his eyes. 

And he’s healed. Just like that. A prayer and a priest, and he’s done. 

After my attempt, while Papa paced back and forth on the phone telling my school officials that no, I would not be back for spring semester, Mama sat with me at the foot of my hospital bed, brochures and pamphlets from every big-name wellness retreat spread before her, glossy little promised lands boasting postcard-perfect mountains and lakes. She’d brushed her fingers over Ichthys’s non-negotiable Christianity and decided to take it as a sign that I was due for a miracle. For healing overseen by God’s doctors. For something that would absolve me of my broken parts. 

She has a point, I think. She spent a semester’s worth of tuition money to get me the right kind of help.

I just wish I felt like it was working. 

We always eat breakfast after service, our meals pre-prepared and washed down with this cleansing juice that leaves a strange, bitter aftertaste on my tongue. I follow our group into the dining hall, all of us single-file, but one step inside is enough for me to be overpowered by the heavy aroma of cooked meat. My stomach turns over at the thought of putting anything in my mouth, so I head down the hallway towards the clinic instead, my footsteps soft and echoing against dark wooden floors. 

I find Dr. Reed poring over a folder in his office. Mine, probably—each resident here gets their own doctor, and I am no exception. He glances up when I nudge open the frosted glass door, and a smile blooms over his features. His eyes are shining and green behind the glare of his glasses. 

“Mary,” he says. “Is breakfast done already?”

I do not tell him that my name is Micah, actually, they and them please. If I did, he’d write down in my file somewhere that I think I’m some half-thing between a boy and a girl, and then Mama and Papa would know, and then I’d have to face their disbelief at my admission that Jesus came to me in a dream and told me that I could remake myself if I wanted to, my own re-baptism and self-communion. Dr. Reed would turn my stay into a month of convincing me back into girlhood that never belonged to me in the first place. 

“I need a pregnancy test,” I blurt out, unthinking. “Please,” I tack on at the end, belated, just so it doesn’t come off like a demand. 

Dr. Reed’s brows furrow. He takes off his glasses. “Mary, if you’ve become intimate with someone here—”

“No,” I interrupt, immediate. Disgust coils in my gut at the implication. “I’m—I don’t do that. I haven’t done that.”

“Then what do you want a pregnancy test for?” 

“There’s—There’s something kicking. I can feel it.” I rest a hand against my stomach. A lump forms in my throat. “Just—please. I need to know.”

I know how I look to him. Raving and frightened and trying to convince myself that my delusion is real. There’s no reason for him to treat this any differently than when I came to him sobbing about the ants in my food on my first night here, or the time I tried to pump liquid soap down my throat and clean the dirt I thought was stuck there. But I know my head’s clear. I know I’m right. I just need him to believe me, and the only way he’ll do that is with proof. 

He sighs, almost as if he’s disappointed. I stare at my slippers so I don’t have to meet his gaze. “Maybe we need to change your meds,” he murmurs, “but you can take a test if it’ll convince you.” 

He hands me a stick, thin and white. I clutch it in my fist like salvation and tuck myself away in the tiny bathroom adjacent to his office. The mirror reflects my movements back at me: me with my wild dark eyes and unkempt curls, hovering over the toilet and trembling from head to toe. The pallor to my skin and the bags beneath my eyes suggest sickness and madness in equal measure. 

The test comes back positive. 

When I return to the office, Dr. Reed asks for the second time if I’ve had anyone in my bed before, and I tell him no again, tugging feverishly at the hem of my baggy t-shirt. His brows raise with disbelief, so I take a second pregnancy test. A third. A fourth. All positive. All tangible proof that I am sane. On the fifth trip back from the bathroom, I am greeted by him and Father Aaron both, the two of them staring at me like I am a strange, foreign thing that they have never seen the likes of before. 

“Mary,” Father Aaron says, his eyes bright and fervent. “We think you may be blessed.”

×

Instead of therapy at 1:15, I am led to a dark room next to the spa with dim blue lights lining the ceiling and white noise crackling against the silence. The technician in the room doesn’t look me in the eyes, just leads me over to this egg-shaped pod. Dr. Reed watches from his place by the door, a tablet in his hand. 

“Sensory deprivation is one of the ways we help our patients to concentrate inwards,” he says. Wordless, the technician hands me a bodysuit of some sort, gray and stamped across the front with Ichthys’s arcing logo. “We thought it could be helpful to focus on building a connection between you and the baby.”

Calling it a baby feels wrong, somehow. When I think about the thing inside me, I picture a leech suckling at my insides, engorged on my blood and ever-hungry for more of me. But I don’t know how to explain that without sounding ungrateful for the thing that he and Father Aaron have described as a rare gift from God, so I keep my mouth shut and change into the bodysuit, my clothes discarded on the floor.

The pod opens. Water sparkles inside, lit teal by lights along the bottom. The technician wraps a blindfold about my head and clamps something over my ears, guiding me down into the water and arranging me so I’m flat on my back and spread eagle. Warmth laps against my face and arms, buzzing, the line between my skin and the water blurring as the seconds tick by. I try to picture what’s going on outside—they’ve closed the pod over my head, I think, but are they watching me? Is Dr. Reed telling the technician about my miracle child? Are they whispering about the second coming of Christ that Father Aaron thinks I am spearheading? 

I don’t know. I don’t know. 

Somewhere, far-off and scarcely audible, a baby is crying. I think I shudder at the sound, but if I do, I don’t feel it, my body too weightless to accommodate movement. Here, I am nothing at all, a mimicry of a person, a collection of thoughts tied together with weak, frayed strings. The baby is more real than I am, and it’s strange how comforting the idea tastes when I mull it over. 

The crying sharpens into a squeal. A cloying, too-sweet smell sticks sharp up my nose, and I think I’m crying too, because my throat hurts and my eyes are burning. And the baby can’t sleep, God, can someone get the baby, please can someone just—

I thrash. I rip off the blindfold and the earmuffs and let them sink under the water’s surface, and I stand shaking in the dark for a long, torturous moment before the pod opens again to reveal Dr. Reed looking down at me with something like pity in his gaze. I clamber out into the world again without invitation. 

“I heard it,” I rasp, blindly accepting a towel from the technician. “The—baby. Is that bad?” 

Dr. Reed smiles like I am a small, stupid child. “No,” he says softly. “Your baby is trying to call for its mother. That’s all.” 

I don’t feel like a mother so much as nothing at all, but I nod anyway, tight and jerky, and I tug on my clothes as quickly as I can so I don’t have to think about the bodysuit sticking like wet paper to my skin. Outside of the treatment room, Ichthys’s halls are bright enough that my eyes sting in the sudden light. My stomach seizes with another kick, and I wince; beside me, Dr. Reed writes something down on his tablet. 

“I’m going to get some rest for a bit,” I say. 

“Lay down,” Dr. Reed agrees. He rummages in his lab coat for a clear pill bottle, small with grain-sized capsules rattling in it. I can’t tell what it is without a label. “Take one of these if you’re getting any pain.” 

I take it and leave him standing there, my head down the entire way back to my quarters because the idea of making eye contact with someone else here makes my skin itch. I do not want to see anyone’s curiosity, answer anyone’s questions, or take anyone’s advice—none of it. They don’t care. They just want to gawk. I don’t exhale properly until my door is shut behind me and I am alone once more.

The room is far more perfect than I left it, the bed made crisp, my Ichthys-issued pajamas folded atop the bed. The cameras tasked with watching over me during my stay blink from the ceiling corners. On the bed, there’s a little plush stork carrying a bag in its beak with a cross necklace clasped about its neck. A note scrawled on a memo pad sits beside it: Congratulations! 

I stuff the toy into the trash can and crumple the note in my hand. 

Part of me wants to go down to the clinic and beg to have my phone so I can call Mama and ask her what to do, but at the same time, I know it wouldn’t help. She’d tell me that everything happens for a reason, that it would be a sin not to want a gift from God. And maybe—maybe I should want it. I’m trying to want it, but all I can think about is how I’m supposed to get rid of it. 

The cameras are still blinking. I open my closet door anyway, eyeing the wardrobe Ichthys has issued me, shirts and pants that are all the same shade of off-white, my gaze drifting up towards the wire hangers they hang from. 

People used to do it like this, right? When they wanted to get rid of their parasites, they’d use wire. I can’t remember how they did it exactly, but I have an idea, which has to be enough without a phone to consult. I take one set of clothes off the hanger and angle myself so the cameras can’t properly make out what I’m doing as I untwist the wire, prying at it with my fingers until it’s close enough to straight. In my head, the plan forms itself, clear and simple: I can lay down in the shower so no one knows to try and stop me, and then I can make something up about miscarriage, and it’ll be fine. I’ll find somewhere outside to stash the wire. The thing in my hands is a promise that my body can be mine again—something in my chest comes loose just looking at it. 

The baby starts to cry again. Louder than it was before, like it’s next to me, like we’re in the same room. It lets out this wet, gurgling wail that sounds like a plea, and my stomach cramps. Don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please, Micah—

I drop the hanger and slam the closet doors shut, and I curl up on my bed, the baby still screaming as I clamp my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut.

×

I go down for dinner at 5:30. Several pairs of eyes swivel towards me as I creep into the dining hall and find a spot towards the corner, a bowl of some kind of stew steaming before me. Lamb, I think, based on the meat and vegetables floating in the broth. A hunk of bread sits beside the bowl, warm and inviting and slathered in butter. 

Drew says grace today. I bow my head and stare at my lap, mouthing an “amen” before I lift my spoon to my lips.

I don’t feel much like eating, but I haven’t had anything all day, which probably isn’t helping my stomachache. And Dr. Reed is watching from across the room, so I don’t get a choice. The stew is thick and savory, meat tender between my teeth, and it’s—good. It’s fine. Some of the pain in my belly eases. 

A kick. The baby shrieks. I sink my teeth into my lower lip so I don’t flinch. 

A laugh bursts from one of the other residents. At me, I think. At my expense. That’s all they want to do. Laugh. Look. They’re all waiting for me to lose my mind, and I can feel it, heavy and prickling in the air like electricity. I force myself to swallow my bite of lamb and keep my eyes on the stew, a protective arm wrapped around my stomach. 

The stew shifts with the next bite. It swirls. Reddens into a dark color like blood. I blink hard and concentrate on chewing, but it doesn’t stop, swaths of stew bulging until it begins to take on a shape. And I can make out eyes now, twisted legs and burnt feet and a contorted little mouth, and it’s the baby, it’s the baby, it’s in my mouth and I can’t—

I throw up. Right into the bowl, bile searing my throat. The hall goes pin-drop silent.

“Excuse me,” I say, and I scramble out of my seat in a mad dash for my quarters. 

The stork toy has been replaced on my bed when I tumble through my door, the bed straightened, the closet doors hanging open. Which means someone probably found my wire, which means they’ve probably got people stalking down the hall towards my quarters right now. The cameras blink down at me like an accusation. I reach for one of the room’s chairs and drag it so it’s sitting under the door handle, and then I run for the closet—I can make another wire. I can still get it out. I have time. 

All of my hangers have been replaced with plastic ones. 

“No,” I croak. I glance around the room. There has to be something else I can use. Anything that can get it out of me. I stumble towards the bathroom and flick on all of the lights, tugging open all of the drawers, and there is nothing, there is nothing, and the baby is howling in my ears again and clutching at me with tiny hands and there is blood on my tongue and I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe and I am ripping off my clothes and curling fetal on the floor and clawing at my stomach, and it hurts but I need to do more to get it out so I’ll kill us both if I have to—

Something thuds. They’re here. I rake my nails deeper into my flesh, tears streaming down my cheeks. My face is cold against the tile. 

The door splinters and breaks and cries out, and then someone is lifting me, Dr. Reed’s eyes soft and sad where they bore into mine. Gloved hands catch both of my wrists so I can’t cause any more damage.

“Get it out of me,” I sob, cracking and broken, over and over. “Get it out of me.”

A sharp pain blooms in my upper arm. The world goes dark.

×

When I come to, I’m fully clothed and tucked into a bed that does not belong to me. This room is smaller than my living quarters, windowless with bare white walls and a single table beside the bed. There are straps around my wrists keeping me pinned down, the ceiling void of the cameras that should be blinking down at me. Dr. Reed sits scribbling something into a notebook beside me—when I shift, he looks up, his smile small and close-lipped.

“Mary,” he says. “We decided that it would be best for you to complete the rest of your stay here.”

I do not cry. I do not protest. I do not tell him that my name is Micah. I just look at him, and I blink, slow and dull.

“The door is locked from the outside,” he continues. “Just for your own safety. If you need anything, you can press this call button.” He sets a remote down next to my hand. “Okay?”

I continue to look at him. 

“We’ll all be praying for your recovery,” he says, and he slips out the door. It shuts behind him with the sharp, unmistakable click of a lock.

I sit there for a very long time. Shaking and silent and docile, my hands balled into fists, my teeth grinding against each other. The baby whimpers. The welts down my stomach sting and throb in time with my heartbeat. When I look down at my upturned hand, I catch sight of the blood crusted in my palm lines, and I swallow hard, because I’m pretty sure it means that I am going to die here, tied down behind a locked door while the thing inside of me claws its way out and bloodies the sheets.

I do not want to die here. I do not want to die. I’m not made for martyrdom. And—maybe there’s no way out for me. Maybe there is. I just know that I can’t die without knowing I tried anyway.  

So I look down at the straps around my wrists, and I yank.