argot tossed it in the trash. No need to look at it again. Her sneakers hit the pavement with a thrill of rubber to cement. She pounded the sidewalk in rhythm to the music beating through her earbuds. Raw energy, the programmed pulse throbbing to her heartbeat, the distortion blending into the highrises growing above her. December 24th in Greenwich Village was viciously cold, burning her throat and her chest with every inhalation, sweat accumulating on her skin and going cold a split second later.

The phone buzzed and she pulled up the text, trying to read it as her arms zigzagged with her legs. A couple days ago she would have been thrilled that he texted her first.

She paused under the holly-wreathed statue at Washington Square Park, dancing up and down on her toes as she typed.

We need to talk. Are you around this morning?

Taking off again down the sidewalk, she looked at her feet and then up at the gray wintry sky. Empty glass windows and neon signs glared down at her. 

Her stomach clenched, her hands fisted.

Don’t think about how you feel. Think about the finish line.

The pale sun shone on the rustic brownstone townhouses as she turned onto 10th Avenue. Leftover piles of dirty snow hid in the corners of stairwells. She jogged up the cement steps, turned the key and opened the heavy wooden door of the college’s writing house.

Her notebook lay forgotten in the desk drawer. She picked it up and thumbed the pages, reading her doctoral thesis notes on Dickens’ heroines. The more she studied them, the more she was baffled. So obedient, so silent, yet so magnetic, their characters an impressionistic canvas of bold allusions.

Only two weeks of Christmas break left and so little progress had been made on it. She sighed as she sat down at the desk.

he room was eerily quiet in the emptiness. There were scuffs on the walls, rips in the leather of the armchairs, scratches on the floor. Things her students covered with their presence. So much echoing, the shrill laughter of the girls and the mellow speech of the boys, the constant sizzle of new ideas that had been thought a million times before.

They had discussed her thesis in their last class. One girl was especially vocal. 

“I think it’s obvious that Dickens is blinded by the prejudice of his times. The Victorian era suppressed women. They didn’t want them to speak,” said her student.

The class murmured approval. 

Margot countered. “But Dickens is the champion of the oppressed. If anything the thought processes and personalities of his female characters are more developed than his male characters. Women are instrumental to him.”

The girl shrugged. “He’s a man like any other.”

“Now that’s prejudiced,” a male student retorted.

Margot had redirected the subject.

Her phone buzzed. The name Mama at the top of the text.

Are you coming tonight?

Yes.

Margot hadn’t seen her mother in a long time. Too busy. Really she couldn’t stand feeling like a traitor.

As she locked the door of the classroom, Margot thought how far she’d come. Stylish sneakers, department store exercise clothes, the easy comfort of not worrying about her bank account. She started the short walk home down the row of brownstones. 

If she ever met her father again he would see. He would know how wrong he’d been about her.

Her stomach rankled inside of her at the memory of the shouting. Of her own scream as she hit the wall. Good for nothing bitch. Her mother’s hand clenched so tightly over her rosary that the metal cross drew blood.

If he knew, it wouldn’t matter what she’d accomplished. He would still say he was right.

There were black spots of old gum on the sidewalk. She noticed the glint of the sunlight on the glass and the evergreen wreaths on the doors. 

Focus on anything but him.

She inhaled the exhaust fumes of the passing traffic.

Her mother had left him for her sake. Quietly, without fuss. But she never gave him his divorce.

Margot bypassed the elevator and ran up the three flights of stairs to her apartment.

Everything was cutting edge. Stainless steel, glass, the random succulent and splashes of orange in the modernist art on the white walls. Clean, cold, sensual.

She remembered her father walking through the door of their beach house, silhouetted against a blue sky and palm trees, sweat rings on his full-thread polo. He threw his golf bag on the floor, the balls and clubs clanging together. Ice shot down her spine. Mother had thrown away the pills.

Willing the memories gone she got into the shower. Hot water poured over her head, muffling her ears, washing the sweat away. She wrapped herself up, enjoying the thick softness of the towel as she blew-dry her hair. Once dry she curled it with a hot iron, watching the copper balayage shine. Then she ratted the roots and pulled out the curls to make it look a little wild. She scrubbed her skin and moisturized it, pinched her eyelashes into curls, winced as she plucked her eyebrows. She drew new eyes and new lips on her own, put feather earrings in the holes in her ears, pulled on tight jeans and a stiff leather jacket.

Sexy. She tied a headscarf in her black-to-copper hair. Original. Her brown eyes stared back at her.

Then her gaze drifted down to the bathroom trash. It looked back at her. She took the trash out. The stench of the dumpster was nauseating. A homeless person lay on the ground a few feet away, drugged out under a coat. The smell of sweet smoke hung in the air. A man enslaved to himself.

***

The smell of coffee and leather greeted her as she walked in. She sat down at a table.

Her phone buzzed. Running late. Typical. Her feet burned in her tight, pointed boots.

She pulled out her notebook and started to read through her notes.

Florence Dombey - abusive father

Amy Dorrit - abusive father

Madeline Bray - abusive father

All of Dickens’ characters fight oppression. His heroes’ strengths are external (Nicholas Nickleby whipping the schoolmaster) | his heroines’ are internal (Madeline Bray choosing to serve at the sickbed of her abusive father).

Victorian femininity, yes. But they were magnetic even now in the postmodern era. They conquered with quietness. Just like mother. Left him and her life as a rich socialite to work as a hotel maid so her daughter could live free of abuse. 

Margot had fought to meet every milestone on the battleground of academia, at first as a duty to her mother’s sacrifice, and then to sculpt her burgeoning talent and feed her desire for success. 

Yet here she was––tired, unhappy.

Nick walked in. A few years ago, she would have been ecstatic to go out with a guy like him. He was effortless in his dressy clothes. His beard was trimmed, his hair gelled. The gym was his hobby. Yet when the lights went down, and she lay vulnerable in his arms, she could sense it—the inability to lose himself.

He kissed her easily. “Hey Margot. I’m going to get a drink. Want anything?”

“Coffee would be nice. Thanks.”

“Sure thing. Be right back.”

She waited, wondering how to word it.

“Have you got anything going on tonight?” Nick asked as he sat across from her.

“Midnight Mass with my mom. A tradition of ours.”

“Want to go out for drinks after?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m up for it right now. It’ll be late.”

The subject hovered before her. Why did he have no curiosity about what she had to say? He was afraid.

“Besides, aren’t you taking the ferry over? I thought you were spending Christmas Day with your family.”

“Technically.” He groaned. “I can’t stand my family. I’d much rather come spend the day with you and your mom. Where does she live?”

“Oh, we’d be too boring for you. And I haven’t seen my mom in ages.”

Margot had found out very soon at university that letting people know her mom had an accent and worked as a hotel maid didn’t get you in with the right people. It had been the beginning of her alternate universe. The silence.

“If your mom’s anything like mine, you can’t wait for it to be over,” said Nick.

“Let’s hope she’s not saying the same thing about seeing you,” said Margot.

A barista brought the French press with two slender glass mugs. Nick poured the steaming black coffee out and handed it to her. She gripped it, took a scalding sip.

“How’s your thesis coming along?” asked Nick.

“I’m stumped. Writer’s block.”

“Want any help?”

She laughed. “I tried to get my students to help but they drummed up a bunch of regurgitated drivel about Victorian suppression. Totally missed the point. It’s not about that at all. It’s about how Dickens makes his heroines so powerful through quietness.”

“Hmm. Interesting. I see what you mean.”

“Have you read any Dickens?”

He grinned. “Sure. In high school they had us read him.”

“Right. Anyway, to get to the point...the reason I asked you to come.” Margot looked around her to make sure no one was listening and leaned in. She whispered. “We’re pregnant.”

“What?” His eyes startled open. He put his cup down, untasted.

“I had a positive test this morning.”

He shifted in his seat. “That’s not possible.”

“I took tests yesterday too. All positive.” 

“But I thought you were...you know, taking stuff?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think I missed a day, but you know how it is.”

He was silent for a second. “Do you know it’s mine?”

That took the wind out of her. “How can you even say that?”

Nick shrugged again. Seemed to be his favorite move.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know how this could happen.”

“Cause and effect, you know.”

They sat in silence. She fumed at him.

“I mean, what do you want me to say? Do you need me to help pay for it?”

“What?”

“Does your insurance cover it? Do you need me to help out with the deductible or something?”

She leaned back, staring at him. “Are you saying you want to get rid of it?”

He was taken aback. “Well, yeah. I mean, what about your career? Your doctorate—everything? Aren’t you writing a book too?”

She shrugged.

“I never really thought of you as the mother type.” He smiled. “Too sexy.”

The mother type. She ignored the compliment.

“Well, maybe not. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do.” Her eyes burned. She took another gulp of coffee and stood up. “Anyway, I gotta go.”

“That’s fine, I understand.” He got up and hugged her.

She pulled away from him and walked out the door.

ack in her living room she sat on her white couch and looked out the window at the other windows. She let her head fall back on the cushions. How good it felt to do nothing. It seemed ironic that the thing that could change her life the most required so little action. She could do nothing, and yet her body would build another body, birthe another body. That body would be as individual as she was herself. A child that might also one day have other children, a person that might write their own books one day.

It would take violence to undo.

Nick was right. She had built everything from the ground up—met the right people, dressed the right way, talked the right way, wrote the right types of papers. She’d learned how to redirect conversations from her family effortlessly. Made her apartment into a party hub. It worked. Big scholarships, one of the chief editors of the school paper, later on a well-paying job, and people interested in her opinions.

What for? Her father ignored her existence. 

Maybe that was why she gravitated towards Nick—the easy insecurity, the explicit signs of wealth. The idea of never seeing him again seemed so peaceful.

But how was she any better than him?

Her mother was the only one who truly loved her. She had always been there, even when Margot had discovered her mother’s religious ideals and social status would inhibit her career.

A big truck zoomed under Margot’s window, something clattering in its boxcar. The sound brought back the rattle of the train. Her mother had picked her up from school one day in a taxi, two suitcases in the back seat. She was ten years old. Her mother had tried to make it exciting—riding on a train that went all the way up the country and ended in Grand Central Station. What courage it must have taken to leave behind wealth and status and comfort so that her daughter could grow up free of abuse. 

Faithful. Sacrificial.

Would she tell her mother?

Her phone rang.

She got up from the couch and started pacing.

“Hey Mama.”

“How are you, Margaret Mary?”

“Good!” she said. “How are you?”

“I’ve been cooking all day. About to put my feet up.”

“That’s good. Don’t tire yourself out. Can’t wait to see you tonight.”

“Yes. It’s been a long time. You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Oh, I’m just tired. Are we meeting at St. Malachy’s?”

“Yes. But I’m working a half shift and won’t be able to get there early.”

“I can grab the seats. I’m sorry you have to work that awful job on Christmas Eve.”

“Oh, something to offer up. And it’s double pay so I won’t complain.”

“Well, good.”

“I have to pull this pie out of the oven, but I’ll see you tonight.”

She put the phone down on the glass coffee table and looked around at her immaculate couch, gray walls, green succulents. Too clean.

If she didn’t tell her mother it would be the final betrayal.

What would it be like to nurse a little baby on this sofa?

***

argot walked down the Manhattan sidewalk. The city cacophony around her melted into a sleepy distortion. The neon lights blocked out the stars. The cathedral towered over West 49th Street, its spires cutting the dark sky and a golden glow coming through its Gothic windows. The great doors opened. A heavenly blue marked with stars graced the arched ceiling, reminiscent of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s cloak. A haunting Gregorian chant floated down from the choir loft, a grand organ pierced the stillness with a dissonant melody.

A fullness held the atmosphere, an all-pervasive presence, even though only a few people dotted the pews. She sat down, feeling the heaviness.

Christ’s eyes looked at her from the altar. He pointed to his Sacred Heart, encircled with the Crown of Thorns, blazing in flame. Such suffering.

She saw the Virgin ascending into the sky in her glorious Assumption. She saw her at the foot of the Cross, grieving. Kneeling beside the manger, adoring, holding the child Jesus as she presented him in the Temple.

“I am the handmaiden of the Lord.” That is what Mary had said when she had been told she would bear a child.

The woman who sacrificed herself for the child who would sacrifice himself for the world. The woman who would stamp the snake through her obedience.

Her thesis whirled through her mind and Margot knew the answer to her conundrum. The Dickens heroines were magnetic through the power of submission. It was not Victorian suppression. It was Mary.

She pictured herself as a heroine in a book. What would that heroine do? Would she be like Mary? Submit to the life inside of her? 

The green light flickered above the dark wood of the confessional. All she had to do was speak and her guilt would be washed away.

She turned away and saw St. Joseph carrying the infant Jesus. The Child looked at her, raising his arms in a blessing. Even the Christ Child and his Mother needed a protector, a father, a husband. Tears came into her eyes. 

“Hello,” her mother’s voice spoke. She looked up.

Flowing black hair encompassed in her Spanish mantilla, great eyes the color of honey, a smile that sparked joy. 

Her mother bowed to the Presence. Her dark skirt swooshed softly.

“You’re glowing,” she said, sitting down beside Margot. 

Margot smiled. “Hey Mama.”

Her mother gazed at her. “Are you pregnant?”

Margot started. “How did you know?”

“I can sense it.”

Tears welled in her eyes. 

Her mother turned her attention to the tabernacle, sinking down on the kneeler and closing her eyes. The choir sang Silent Night above them. 

“Oh Mama,” Margot said, letting her head fall onto her mother’s back. “How can I be a mother?”

“Sweetheart, you already are a mother.”

“It’s going to change everything.”

Her mother sat up from her kneeling position, wiped away the mascara under her daughter’s eyes.

“I was terrified when I found out I was pregnant with you. Even then I felt what your father was becoming.”

“But how did you bear it?”

“I prayed. And you helped me. Birthing you brought me back to her,” her eyes drifted to the painting of the Assumption and then rested again on her weeping daughter. She wrapped her arms around her. “You are the light of my eyes. A soul I have suffered for.”

Margot hid her face, let her fear wash over her. 

“There are so many things I want to do.”

“Who are you? How can you be so arrogant as to let your ambition outweigh this human soul?” Her mother’s voice rang with such a steel edge Margot was afraid others would hear. “The God of the Universe has willed this child.”

So this was the crux. Could she humble herself? Sacrifice herself for the heart that beat beneath her own? Did she have the strength to submit? 

She sat up, too ashamed to look in her mother’s face.

“But I am not like you.”

“You are just like me. And I will help you.” She smiled. “I’m a marvelous babysitter. You better go. Not much time left before the mass begins.”

Margot’s feet lifted her up. Mary watched from her glorious ascent into heaven. 

Behold the handmaiden of the Lord. Be it done to me according to thy word. 

The green light on the wooden box turned red.

“Forgive me, father...”