(this is long so consider yourself warned...)

I didn’t need to take the test. That’s what I kept telling myself; but I was sitting there with my fingers crinkling the cellophane sealed box. I was just overreacting, I was sure. But there I was, first thing in the morning, just like it said in the directions.
The day before I had edged my way into the pharmacy, wandering from aisle to aisle, perusing the magazines, browsing the cold remedies, pondering candies and cosmetics. I casually turned the corner and stood for a minute staring at the shelves of tests, each proclaiming to be the easiest, quickest or most reliable. I grabbed one that seemed as good as any of the others and headed to the counter, stopping along the way to pick up some mints and vitamins to disguise my purchase. A gum-snapping teenage boy, having just been reprimanded for too many personal phone calls, grudgingly rang up my purchases without pausing to ponder the meaning of them. I snatched the bag from him and dashed out of the store. When I got to the car I tucked the test into my pocketbook for safe-keeping, opened the mints, and headed home to our small apartment. It was only one room on the second floor of his parents’ house. A couch, a desk, a TV and a small rug we had bought playing at being grown-up. At night we pulled the couch out into a bed and slept just above the snoring of his parents.
All night I stared at the blue and white striped box. I had each cellophane wrapped panel memorized. I knew that in a mere five minutes I could find out the truth with 99% accuracy. I also knew that those five minutes were still hours away.

As soon as I had the house to myself and his parents had left for the day, I locked the bathroom door and sat there, staring off at the paint peeling from the harvest gold tiles on the wall, the worn plush, tank cover and matching throw rug. I ran my fingers back and forth over the wrapper. Hesitantly, I opened the wrapper and took out the test and the instructions that had curled into a small scroll inside the box. Unrolling the directions, I read them and then I read them once more. Five minutes. That is how long it would be until I would know, one stripe for negative, two stripes for positive. It would be “clear and accurate.” So I followed the instructions and then I sat. And I stared. Within seconds two stripes appeared. I was sure that meant nothing. The test said five minutes. In five minutes the accurate reading would show in the little box and one of those stripes would disappear. Five minutes. I counted the tiles on the walls, flipped through the pages of an old reader’s digest, read the labels of cold cream and Aquanet and tried to avoid looking at the container that was filled nightly with yellowing dentures. Five minutes. Without wanting to look down, I picked up the stick and held my breath. Squeezing it so tightly the sure-grip ridges were embedded into my fingers, I turned it over. Two stripes, there were still two stripes. This wasn’t possible.

Assuming that I had fallen into the small percentage of inaccurate results, I raced back to the pharmacy. This time I didn’t bother to wander the aisles or disguise my purpose. I strode over to the aisle and chose the box with two tests. I would be sure. Two out of three would be accurate.

I didn’t wait ‘til morning or even until the house was empty. I stuffed the test in my pocket and walked downstairs into the bathroom. I could hear his mother in the kitchen bitching about something, the TV in the living room where his father was trying to drown out the complaining. I could smell stuffed cabbage simmering on the stove, the smoke from her dangling cigarette and I was wishing it all away. I followed the instructions that I was already so familiar with and again, without waiting the prescribed five minutes, there were two stripes. I shook the test like a thermometer trying to bring it back down to one stripe, but it wouldn’t budge.

I wrapped up the tests, cellophane and instructions, any evidence of my experiment, stuffed them in my pocket and headed upstairs to our tiny apartment. I waited for him to get home. I hadn’t mentioned the test. I was sure there was no reason. I didn’t know if I could bring myself to tell him what those two stripes meant. When he walked in I just handed him the test. I just showed him the two stripes.
I waited for the discussion. I already knew where we both stood on the issue. It was a woman’s right. Of course, I would never do that. That was the argument. Liberal and self-congratulatory, we prided ourselves on how open minded we were, knowing we would never be tested, that it would never apply directly to us. So I waited. But there was no discussion.
“I guess we need to make an appointment,” he mumbled.
I just stood there. Where was the obligatory offer of marriage that I would condescendingly turn down? Where was the sympathy that I would be too strong to need? I curled up on the pull-out sofa that night and cried. I knew we were doing the right thing, but I cried.

In the morning I opened the Yellow Pages and found an ad for Pregnancy Counseling. They would administer a pregnancy test and help you with your choices. So I made an appointment for that afternoon. The rigid concrete box of a building was a faded sunshine yellow. It was hidden in a parking lot behind the carwash. The waiting room was filled with red-eyed, tear streaked 16-years-olds accompanied by disappointed mothers or embarrassed boyfriends. There were posters of chubby, healthy babies covering the chipping paint on the walls. I was suspicious when they administered the very same pregnancy test I had bought in the two-pack the night before. I was more suspicious when they handed me a few pamphlets to read while I waited, “Why God Wants You to Keep Your Child” and “God Loves Those Who Care For His Children.” I wanted to scream. I wanted to kick and yell and run. I sat through their sermon. I listened to them preach that “girls like me” would only be back within a year. And I left.

I made the phone call that night. It wasn’t so difficult. I needed a place that was far away. No one could know. And it had to be somewhere where I could be asleep, where I could close my eyes and the whole thing would be over.

The woman on the phone was very professional as if this happened every day. “How far along are you?” I didn’t answer. “How many weeks pregnant are you?” There it was. Pregnant. I hadn’t used that word yet. Pregnant meant babies and showers and families. The woman tried again. “Hon, when was your last period?” This I could answer. “Six weeks ago.” There was a pause while she calculated dates on the other end of the line. “Then you are only four weeks pregnant, dear. You can’t come in for an appointment yet. We need to schedule you for between 8 and 11 weeks.”

We told everyone that we were going away for a romantic weekend at the shore, some time alone walking the quiet off-season beaches. We were staying at a Bed and Breakfast in Cape May and would be back in a few days. We left while they knowingly grinned and nodded believing themselves in on a big secret. They wondered if I would call to tell them, if we would set a date, what the ring would look like. They laughed that it had taken so long for him to get up the nerve to ask.

Another waiting room filled this time with resigned silence broken only by an occasional sniffle or whimper. This time there were motivational, self-help posters cushioning the walls. They called us in in groups of four. We changed into our robes and sat in a small paneled room scuffling our slippered feet back and forth, waiting. The girl in the corner, who had arrived with a scowling mother as her responsible driver, was hugging a small stuffed bunny and whimpering. The woman across from me, her robe worn, the shoulders covered in formula stains, her eyes old, heavy and distant, was flipping through the pages of a parenting magazine, twisting and spooling her hair around her dry cracked fingers. And the lady beside me was checking and rechecking her just manicured nails for chips and scuffs and buffing them on the hem of her freshly pressed designer robe. She was agitated, inconvenienced, and still annoyed that cell phones weren’t permitted in the waiting rooms.

They called us in, one by one. “Just lie down.” It was cold in there. “The needle will only hurt a bit…start counting backwards from 100.” I could see a poster of a gingerbread man hung with yellowing scotch tape to the tiles of the water-stained drop ceiling. “99…98…” The gingerbread man’s head was missing. “97…96…” Yellow writing underneath, “95…94…” Gingerbread men are better than real men, “93…92…” because you can bite their heads off when you are angry. “91…”

The sun glared through the windshield, and I kept my eyes shut in the warm brightness. I feigned sleep and avoided conversation. The man and woman that ran the Bed and Breakfast were transplants from somewhere on New England coast. Cheery and cardigan clad, they rambled on, describing each room, its decorative restoration and emotional history. They handed us our welcome bag of tourist brochures and schedules. We climbed the stairs to our room and closed ourselves in.
The room was blooming with pink and mauve cabbage roses. The sofa, the drapes, the duvet cover, were all overgrown with them. Even the carpet was tangled with vines and roses. I needed to step outside. Each room had its own small balcony with two matched wooden rockers facing towards the ocean. It was chilly and the salted wind cut through my sweater as I stared out at the surf on the deserted winter beach. I cocooned myself in one of the rose-splotched blankets and rocked and stared, listening to the surf, my hands warmed by a cup of lemon zinger tea .
Six years later I was back on the same balcony. Family and friends had conspired to send us away for our honeymoon. With a newborn baby at home we had been planning to forego a romantic celebration, but a few people remembered that we had once spent a long secluded weekend down at Cape May. They wanted to surprise us. They wanted us to remember what it was like back then, before we were parents. They found the name of the Bed and Breakfast and presented us with a small getaway as a wedding gift, the same room, the same flower choked furnishings, the same wooden rockers pointed at the shore.