“No, no, Fernanda wouldn’t do something like that.”
Fernanda let out a dry, horrible laugh.
“Oh, Mom… you believed everything else.”
At that moment, two patrol cars arrived. At first, the police thought they were there for a domestic disturbance. My mom pointed at Alejandro. My dad pointed at Fernanda. My siblings pointed at the fake pregnancy belly. Everyone was talking over each other.
I was the one who lifted the fabric of the dress.
With trembling hands, I showed them the crushed foam, the broken straps, and the Velcro where our whole family had placed their hopes.
The senior officer looked at Alejandro.
“Explain.”
Alejandro unlocked his cell phone.
“Your phone synced with an old tablet we have in the apartment. I saw messages. There was a nurse helping her. Tomorrow at 6:40, they were going to take a baby from a private clinic.”
Fernanda shouted:
“You had no right to read my things!”
“Your things?” I said. “Were you going to steal a baby?”
She turned to me, her eyes filled with tears, but without a drop of remorse.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be humiliated by your own body.”
Alejandro lowered his voice.
“She was never pregnant because she can’t get pregnant.”
Everything started to fall into place.
The doctor’s appointments no one could accompany her to. The blurry ultrasounds. The times she said the baby only moved at night. The way she pulled her hand away when someone tried to touch her belly roughly.
And the money.
Thirty thousand dollars, between my parents, my aunts and uncles, and me. Supposed emergencies, injections, tests, hospital deposits.
It wasn’t to save a baby.
It was to buy a crime.
The police officer read a message aloud:
“Tomorrow. 6:40 a.m. Mother sedated. Father downstairs. You come in wearing a pink sweater. I’ll hand it to you through the laundry room. Balance: fifteen thousand.”
My mother made a sound I’d never heard her make before.
It wasn’t a scream.
It was the sound of a mother realizing she had fed a monster at her own dinner table.
The police opened Fernanda’s white bag. Inside were hospital shoe covers.
ADVERTISEMENT
