Jessica Keener

This novel excerpt (not here in its entirety) received a 2000 Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual artist finalist grant in fiction.


At my new school, Margaret Lucci's last name followed mine. She sat on my right in homeroom, the room I went to first thing every morning for attendance.

"I lost the baby in the bathroom," Margaret said, three weeks into the first term.

"You what?" I whispered.

"I lost it in the girls' room. I had a miscarriage."

We shared the same desk, a long table divided in the middle by two shelves. I kept my notebook and paper in the bottom shelf. Margaret put her papers in the top shelf.

"Are you sure?" I leaned down to the floor
pretending to look for something in my shelf. I wanted to believe her but I couldn't see any bulges anywhere. She wore a straight, tight black skirt and white blouse so sheer her black bra floated against the cotton. Her breats bobbed with every movement of her arms. I rummaged around in my shelf and pulled out a sheaf of lined paper. I had never known anyone, personally, who had been pregnant except for Mother with my youngest brother, Elliot, and my memory of her at that time seven years ago was that of a woman wearing clothes draped like curtains.

Margaret nodded. "I'm sure. Six weeks and four days. Come with me to the girls' room when the bell rings."

I nodded and looked straight ahead at Mr. Giles who was also my English teacher.

"Kunitz?" he called softly. He didn't look as if he had heard what I just heard.

"Here." I raised my hand quickly.

Mr. Giles sat at his desk in front of the blackboard and penciled off my name in his attendance book. His hands trembled. The eraser head on his pencil wobbled noticeably. His eyes, always kind, skittered past my face and onto Margaret Lucci's.

"Lucci?"

Margaret nodded.

I turned to her again. She had straight black hair, cut to her jawbone. Tiny hairs darkened the back of her neck. Her bangs fell into her eyelashes.

"I had terrible cramps," she whispered to me after Giles called the next name.

"Monihan?" he called. He had an ailing person's voice, an uncertain tone.

"Don't you think you should go home and rest?" I whispered, trying not to move my lips. I worred about her and at the same time I felt honored and exhilerated by her confession. She had picked me, and no one else, as far as I knew.

"No," she whispered back. "I can't let my mother suspect anything."

"My mother wouldn't have a clue," I said.

"You're lucky," she said.

Mulcahey, Norwood, Patterson, Robertson, Schwartz?"

Mr. Giles called down his list. Even his head shook a little. His whole body vibrated like a tuning fork, as if a ghost of himself moved beneath his skin at a different tempo. His right hand trembled more than his left.

The bell rang and I followed Margaret down a flight of foot-sculpted cement stairs, into the girls' room next to the gymnasium. The tiny, octagonal black and white floor tiles, many of which had cracked or been crushed, resembled an old dance studio.

"No one ever comes down here," she said, going to one of the many sinks lined up against the wall. She plopped her black purse into the drain. "You can see why. It's a dump. See if anyone's in the stalls. You never know."

I bent over and didn't see any feet resting on the floor. "No one," I said.

"I had really bad cramps in this very room yesterday morning," she continued. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a black eye pencil. "I couldn't walk." She drew a thin, black line on the inside rim of her eyes, pressing her hips against the porcelain sink and leaning forward until her nose almost touched the mirror. "Do you have your period?" she ask. She widened her eyes and inspected every eyelash.

I nodded.

"I've had mine since I was nine."

I didn't tell her that my first one came just this past summer. I went up to the sink next to hers and turned the hot water on but nothing came out.

"None of them work," she said.

She smoothed lipstick, white as confectioner's sugar over her lips. I licked my lips and realigned my cabled knit sweater so that it hung squarely across the waistband of my green, pleated skirt. For all my colors--green socks and skirt--I looked conspicuously plain in the mirror. Margaret wore nude-colored pantyhose that made her calf muscles gleam. She had long, slim legs. Her black shoes, though scuffed and dull, fit snugly. Her shoes had small heels and this made her leg muscles curve. She had pared herself down to an essential something that I hadn't found yet.

I looked away from the mirror and counted eight sinks. Every one of them had a crack, either in the drain or near the water taps.

"This place is useless," she said, talking to me in the mirror. "Do you smoke?" She gestured toward her bag. "You can help yourself."

The bell rang again and I knew I had to go to class.

"I better go," I said. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yes. I'll see you later, at lunch."

She smiled and I left her dabbing a mascara stick across her bottom lashes.