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then

20.

My doctor ran the probe over my gently rounded stomach. “I’m a little concerned about the size, for twenty-one weeks.” She frowned at the ultrasound picture. “You need to take in more calories.”

I was stricken. After all this time relaxing and gestating, I only wanted to hear good news. “But the baby is OK?”

“You can feel movement?”

I nodded.

“How’s the nausea? Any better?”

“I feel like I’m about to throw up some of the time, but I never actually do.” She had a corkboard plastered with baby pictures: girl babies with tulle rose headbands, boy babies with robot onesies. Pregnancy felt like one long battle against nausea and exhaustion. It was almost a jolt to remember I had a baby like these inside me: Stella’s brother or sister.

The doctor frowned. “Morning sickness usually fades away in the second trimester. Have you found anything to help with it?” She glanced at my chart. “You tried promethazine in the first trimester. That didn’t work?”

I shook my head. “I only feel better when I eat this one kind of flatbread.”

“Pregnant women often get very specific cravings.” She smiled to herself. “For me, it was freshly squeezed orange juice. No other kind. Had to be completely fresh.” She studied the sharp bones of my hips. “What else are you eating?”

“This bread is the only thing that makes me feel better. Then I sleep for hours.”

“A lot of people have trouble with bread nowadays.”

A muscle jumped under my eye: it was happening more, recently. I placed my cold fingertips on my cheek. “I’ve never had trouble before.”

“Pregnancy can change your body. What else are you eating?”

“Not much,” I said.

The doctor tutted. “No wonder you’re so sluggish. You need to choose from all four food groups. When you eat this flatbread, your body metabolizes the sugar in it very fast; then you crash. That’s what makes you so sleepy.” She handed me a leaflet about eating well in pregnancy. “I recommend you take a break from gluten for a few days. If you’re allergic to it, gluten can make depression and anxiety worse.”

I sat up, clutching the paper sheet that covered my bottom half. “I’m not depressed. I’m happy. I’m finally having another child. I already have a wonderful daughter. I actually couldn’t be happier…” I stopped, realizing that I was babbling.

I had to stop eating the bread.

I’d always scoffed at those who gave up gluten, reasoning that most people who claimed an allergy really wanted a shortcut to losing weight. But now that the doctor pointed it out, it was obvious that if I ate a lot of bread—really, nothing but bread—and also slept a lot, there was probably a connection.

When I got home, I went into the kitchen and found the last bit of oily bread in the house, leftover from the previous day. I was hungry, and I could almost taste its delicious, salty greasiness. But I gritted my teeth, stuffed it into a compostable bag, and put the bag in the green bin outside. Then I went to the fridge, determined to devise a lunch that included all four food groups.

But nothing in the fridge appealed. Meanwhile, the bread was still perfectly edible, sealed in its bag. It was wrong to waste food, and one last piece could hardly do any harm. I went back outside and opened the bin, and a bone caught my eye. I thought of how Stella ate meat right off the bone now, eyes alight with gusto, and my stomach twisted. Maybe Pete was right and there was nothing to worry about, but if there was something wrong, I had to stay alert. I tore the bag open and used a broom handle to poke the bread beneath banana peels and old porridge.

Back in the kitchen, I choked down a broccoli floret and then ate chickpeas from the can. Having food in my stomach, food that Irina hadn’t prepared, made me feel a little bit stronger. We didn’t need her as much as I’d thought. Without the bread, the nausea was back, but my thoughts seemed to come faster.

···

When Irina and Stella got home from school, they were excited. Irina held a garment bag. “Irina has a present for me!” Stella announced. “She said I had to wait until we got home to open it.”

“Another present?” I was uneasy. As well as the afghan, Irina had given us a tablecloth covered with pomegranates, and several animal figurines. The house was even beginning to smell like her: sensible soap, stewed tea, that heavy spice I couldn’t name.

Irina laid the bag flat along the length of the sofa. “Little Wolf, you want to open?”

As Stella tugged at the zipper, I had a sudden vision of it opening to reveal Blanka’s face, her round cheeks and thick brows. But then Stella was hauling out a mass of shiny white fabric. A high-necked dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves. A white brocade waistcoat edged with gold braid. A white fez with a veil attached. Every part of the dress seemed to have some kind of decoration: silver embroidery, gold braid, flounces. There was even a pair of lace gloves.

I stared. “A wedding dress?”

“Belong to my mother, then to me. Now I give to Stella.” Irina’s eyes were bright.

“Oh no,” I said. I couldn’t imagine Stella wearing this dress, which for a start, looked as tight and scratchy as possible, but also had a lace collar that came up to the chin, and even the sleeves came to the wrists. In this dress, the only skin visible would be the face. It was like a straitjacket. A bride who wore this wouldn’t be able to move. “I mean, thank you so much, but I don’t think—”

“Will I get married one day?” Stella asked. I stared at her. Once she would have announced that she was never, ever getting married, especially not in this yucky dress, but now she touched the cheap synthetic fabric in a dreamy way—fabric that if you washed it would send toxic microfibers into the sea. “I will have a wedding?”

“Yes, my darling.” Irina beamed, like of course every eight-year-old girl dreams of her wedding day.

“Actually, you might never get married,” I said. “Not everyone does these days. And of course, there’s lots of other things ahead of you in life. So maybe—”

Irina interrupted: “My mother wore; then I did. Now you keep in Stella’s room. One day Stella wears.”

In “Charlotte Says,” I’d written that there is no polite way to refuse a gift, but I couldn’t bear to accept this one. “We don’t actually have that much storage space,” I said. The house was big, but after we gutted the place and knocked down interior walls, we did not have many closets and cupboards. This dress would take up half Stella’s closet, just like Irina’s black stewpot took up space on the kitchen counter and her afghan ruined my spare esthetic.

“I am last of my family,” Irina said. “Now I want to give to Stella.”

I turned to Stella: “Honey, go to your room. Go and read—or crochet.” She went, like one of those biddable children on TV shows that leave when adults want to talk, even though everyone knows that children never do that in real life. They know when adults are about to talk about something interesting, and they want to stay. Who was this new, malleable child? What happened to freak-out mode? I tamped down my fear and focused on the issue at hand.

I couldn’t merely say, “No, thank you,” because Irina wasn’t offering me a second helping of mashed potatoes. She was offering me a precious gift, a piece of herself. Besides, we’d taken so much from her. I should have insisted on paying her. Now what we owed her was unspecified and so could never be enough.

But if I took the dress, it would bind us to her forever.

“I’m sorry, I can’t accept this gift,” I said, and Irina shrank into herself. Suddenly, she looked weary and small.

“My grandmother made this dress. Now nobody will wear. I give to charity. Dresses for Angels.” She gave me a sidelong look. “They make into gowns for dead babies.”

I stared at her. Was there really such a charity? She was going too far. The way she hunched into herself and looked pathetic. It reminded me of a seagull we’d seen once, when at the beach for a picnic. Stella often told us not to feed wild things, and she shooed the other seagulls away, but one hovered on the edge of the group, a scruffy grey gull, when all the rest were white. She limped, and her head was unnaturally close to her body: something was wrong with her neck. Maybe she was malformed or had been injured. She’d die if we didn’t feed her. But when we had nothing left to give her, she underwent a transformation. Her head rose as her neck extended. She walked with dainty confidence. Even her feathers looked glossier. She spread her wings and took off. She’d been fine all along, the whole thing an act.

“The outfit will have to go to Dresses for Angels,” I said firmly.

“I leave here,” Irina said, and I couldn’t breathe. I felt like if I didn’t draw a line, she would bring more and more stuff, until she was living with us and we were stuck with her forever.

I patted the sofa to get her to sit down next to me. “Look, Irina, I’m feeling better. I really don’t feel comfortable prevailing on you.”

“Prevail? What is this?”

“You don’t need to come every day. You could just visit. That would be more relaxing for you. Maybe once a week.”

Irina stroked the dress as if it were made of the finest silk instead of cheap rayon. “I want to come every day.”

Charlotte Says: If you want to refuse someone’s company, frame it as a positive, rather than a negative. Don’t say, “I don’t want to have a drink with you.” Say, “I’ve scheduled that night for me time.”

“I need time with Stella before the baby comes,” I said.

“I pick her up two days,” Irina said firmly. “You pick her up three days.”

“OK,” I said. A gradual transition would be easier for Stella. “There’s another thing. It was really kind of you, but I don’t need to eat the bread now. I’m feeling better.” Or I soon would.

“Fine,” Irina said. She took her time putting on her raincoat, seemingly confused by the buttons she’d tackled many times, judging by how old it looked. I hoped that rejecting her bread gift wasn’t some kind of mortal insult.

···

That evening, Pete heated up a veggie tagine from our favorite shop, with couscous to go with it. Vowing to eat a nutritious meal, I spooned it up, trying not to wince: surely the sauce wasn’t supposed to be this sour. “It’s great to see you eating,” Pete said as I worked up the energy to swallow. I realized he was brimming with news.

“What is it?”

“Home Depot are in. They’re gonna sign. I can finally pay everyone at the company what they deserve.”

“That’s fantastic, baby! Does this mean you can relax a little?”

Pete adjusted his glasses. “I wanted to talk to you about that. I didn’t really think things through. This deal means we have to ramp up production fast. The time when I can work less is still a while away. I’m just so glad we’ve got Irina to help.”

“Actually, I decided I need more time with Stella,” I told him, swallowing a mouthful of couscous. “I’ve told Irina I’m going to do the school pickup three days a week.”

Pete put his fork down. “But Stella’s been doing so well. She loves Irina.”

“Not as much as her own mother, surely.” I put down my spoon, defeated. The couscous looked like tiny eggs, the kind Pete picked off his kale in the spring.