Anonymous Pregnant Woman

I liked being an anonymous pregnant woman in public. However much I suffered from loneliness and fear in my own world, when I stepped out into the street, I was just a pregnant woman like any other you might find in a magazine. Being pregnant made me feel invincible, powerful; like a protected species.

There was a game I liked to play when I went on walks. Head up, I looked neither left nor right. With complete steadiness and total disregard for the traffic around me, I would step off the curb and onto the street without looking, confident that nobody would hit me.

Even if a car happened to collide with my body and kill it, so what? I would have died in honor and been doubly missed, like a valiant warrior fallen in battle and destined for an afterlife in Valhall. Because of pregnancy, my death would have been more meaningful than that of any other pedestrian. My life would have had more value somehow.

Headlines would read, “Expectant young mother fallen, life cut short” or something of that nature and people would say in passing, “How sad? Isn’t that sad? She had so much to look forward to.” It’s true. People take it real hard when a pregnant woman dies. Any pregnant woman.

So I would step off the curb and, staring straight ahead, listen to the delicious sounds of squealing tires and apologies shouted out in panic. No one ever even so much as honked at me. It felt good.

I could have been any pregnant woman out of a magazine, with a flush on my cheek and new clothes blossoming out over my stomach. All I had to be was a body, a passageway from the past to the future. Could have been anyone, or no one, even.