Immaculate

“This is Elliot Ste—err—Elliot S from Ohio.” He spoke in a hurried, breathy whisper, his words smeared through the speakers from holding the phone too close to his anxious lips. “I’m calling for Mina. I wanted to say that it’s not too late to be forgiven. Not quite yet, not without one last warning. Come clean with the Lord and let Him back into your life. Open your heart to God, and let Him wash away this blackness from your soul. Acknowledge your sins to your family, to yourself, and to your country. You’re on a very dark and dangerous path, Mina Dietrich. And if you don’t repent soon, if you don’t admit to your Devil’s lies, then you deserve to be punished. I know where you live. We all do. And we’ll find you, Mina. If you don’t stop on your own, then we’ll find a way to stop you.” He finished with a flourish, breathing into the phone raggedly for a moment before the machine finally beeped and fell back into silence.

Within seconds the phone wailed at me again, and I pushed myself up to stand, arms reaching toward the shiny silver base mounted on the wall. I grasped at it with both hands, tearing it from the wall with a loud snapping of plastic brackets, and slammed it down against the floor. It slid against the tiles and I chased it, my feet, my legs, my entire body burning with the need to see it smashed into as many pieces as possible. I jumped on top of it, stomped again, right foot, left foot, kicked it against the bricks that lined our pantry and watched a spray of plastic chips fly into the air with an ecstatic sense of satisfaction. I lunged again, sending the machine rocketing toward the kitchen table. I was so focused that I didn’t hear myself screaming, didn’t hear the front door click open or the sound of my family’s footsteps pounding down the front hallway.

“What the hell, Mina?” my dad shouted, ru

He spun me around and I saw my mom and Gracie, slack-jawed and cowering by the door, Gracie’s face half hidden as she pressed against my mom’s puffy winter jacket.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes meeting Gracie’s in apology. I swallowed my terror, willed Elliot S’s cold, brittle words from my head. I didn’t want to add even more fuel to her fears. I didn’t want her to know how right she probably was to be afraid. “I didn’t mean to get so . . . so violent. But people are calling me, and I just couldn’t hear one more ring right now. I just couldn’t.” Dad’s stiff hold softened. My feet hit the ground, but he kept his arms around me. I breathed in the smell of him, the scent that I realized just now how much I’d missed—cool evergreen pine and spicy clove that somehow clung to his sweaters and T-shirts for days after he’d worn them. I inhaled again, savoring the closeness. I felt protected. Shielded from everything that lay beyond our front door.

“Who?” he demanded. “Who’s been calling you?”

“Strangers.” The word felt frigid, grim when I heard it on my lips. “Our number was listed on the website, apparently.”

At that, I heard a distant, muffled ringing—the phones in my dad’s office, my parents’ bedroom. I hadn’t even thought about the other extentions, I’d been so caught up in my fury. But I wasn’t inaccessable, not even close. It would take much more than a

“Damn it,” my dad snapped, his arms dropping to his sides. I shivered, suddenly cold without the comforting warmth of his hold. “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”

“What do we do now?” my mom asked, her face as pale as the stark white fur lining her hood.

“I’m calling the phone company and finding a way to block or change our number. And then I’m calling the police, because this is harassment and I refuse to let these ignorant sons of bitches invade our family home.” My dad ducked his head and started for the hallway, boots stomping across the tiles. But then he turned back to face me, an afterthought, his eyes burning into mine so fiercely, I had to fight not to look away.

“Let me say this. I may still not know what to believe here, Mina, and I’m well aware that I haven’t been one of your biggest supporters. But I would never—never—do to anyone what these people are doing to you right now. I would never force my religious opinions on a complete stranger. I would never disrespect another family’s right to privacy. Because from where I’m standing, these people are committing much graver sins of their own, casting judgment on you like they have the authority. Acting like they have the right to make God’s own decisions. I won’t stand for it, Mina. I won’t.” With that he started back down the hall, his footsteps dying out with the slam of his office door.

“Can I go on the news for you, Meen?” Gracie asked, pulling me over to sit with her at the kitchen table. “Maybe they’ll believe you if I tell them all what a good sister you are. I’ll tell them that your eyebrows always get all fu

I laughed, though I stopped myself after I saw the look of hurt on Gracie’s stoic face. “That’s very sweet of you, Gracie, but they’ll probably just think I brainwashed or blackmailed you. Honestly, I’m not sure there’s anything that any of us could say to change their minds.”

“You could tell them about Iris,” my mom said, her voice wavering and paper thin, like I could poke right through it if I so much as lifted my finger. “You didn’t say anything about her at all in the KBC interview. The way you told it to the reporter, you more or less woke up one day with all the standard pregnancy signs. Poof. Not pregnant one day, pregnant the next. Maybe people need to hear that there was something—some event, no matter how vague and inexplicable—that was the catalyst for all this. Iris was your Gabriel, Mina. That conversation was your own kind of A

“Let me get this straight,” I said, trying my best to keep the words flat and even. “You think people are more likely to believe me if I say that an odd old lady came into the local pizza shop and told me I’d be having a baby?”

“I’m not saying that everyone will believe you, Mina.” She sighed. “I’m not even saying that most people will believe you. But I think that there are people out there, people who want to find something to believe in. Anything, some sign that there’s more to life than we have right here in our mundane and predictable day-to-day existence. Maybe if you say it, tell them all about Iris, maybe, just maybe, a few people will stop and think. Some small piece of them, buried somewhere beneath all the cynicism we’re trained to carry around from the time we’re supposed to know better, will hear what you’re saying. Will open up to you, to the idea that there may not be a black-and-white explanation.”

“And if they think I’m just crazy?”

“Then they think you’re crazy. They’re already hell-bent against you, Mina. The way I see it, a few desperately hopeful people switching over to your court is better than nothing. We can use whoever we can get on our side.” Her voice was getting stronger, the argument in her mind fully clicking into place as she put it into words out loud. “And there are decent people out there, too, people who still may not believe a word you’re saying but will believe in your personal right to say it without getting attacked by the media and the country’s conservative zealots. You need to face the camera and pour it all out, Mina, let America see that you’re not holding anything back anymore. Let them know what this is really doing to your everyday life.”