by Anuja Ghimire
Agnes left the prayer hall before the pianist returned to her seat and the happy people who stood up to applaud the middle-aged woman noticed. She needed to wash the baby’s face from her eyes. Sharon had carried him like a prize. He wiggled his feet near the sparkling water, looked at Agnes, and smiled. And Sharon had smiled.
A swollen belly entered through the bathroom door before the woman carrying it. She could have been Sharon’s church friend or family so Agnes dabbed her fuchsia lip color, reapplied the eyeliner.
“Beautiful ceremony,” the woman yelled from the stall. “If my girl didn’t press on my bladder so much, I wouldn’t have missed a second.”
“Uh huh,” Agnes whispered and turned on the hand dryer. The air blew her silk blouse and made ripples on her belly. Only Agnes could see the scabs from the injections through the blue fabric.
“They say there’s something in the water,” said the woman. She talked over the hot storm. “Practically every woman in the church is pregnant. Sharon’s friend from work, right? Rita, her sister-in-law.”
“Nice to meet you,” Agnes lied. Her hand held the emptiness of her body instead of extending to the stranger’s pink hands.
“I can just tell when a woman has a bun in the oven,” Rita squealed. “Congratulations. I won’t share your secret.”
Agnes flushed and sobbed in a stall to erase Rita’s squeeze on her shoulder. The yellow hat she knitted for baby Ira softened under her chin. She stood by the hand dryer again. The hat released her tears. Agnes practiced smiling and walked to the reception hall.
Anuja Ghimire is from Kathmandu, Nepal. A Pushcart and two times Best of the Net nominee, her most recent work found home in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Brown Orient, The Good Men Project, and EcoTheo Review, among others. Her chapbook Kathmandu is forthcoming from The Unsolicited Press in 2020. She lives near Dallas, Texas with her husband and two children. Follow her on Twitter @GhimireAnuja.