Chapter Text
*****
There were a number of ways Joe could have taken the news; Sarah had gone over each and every probable outcome in her head. But no getting around it, the timing was awful. She knew that. Didn't make his silence any less disheartening, though, truth be told.
It took her a while to even admit the entire thing to herself. But when one month without a flow became two, and more food came out of her than stayed in most mornings… and afternoons… and evenings, well ignoring an issue wasn’t much use to anybody.
And so she waited for a reaction, any reaction, while she watched her husband pace the floor from her place in her chair, spit polished military issued boots echoing all the louder in the oppressive silence as they connected with their battered wooden floor. She wished he’d stop doing it, his infernal pacing. Their apartment was tiny, so pacing within it actually looked more like twirling every few steps. The foolish man was going to make himself dizzy if he didn’t stop. Heck, he was making her dizzy, though, to be fair that might be the lack of a decent meal staying where it ought to long enough to digest.
“But I leave next week, Sarah, the battle horns of the 107 th are calling,” Joe announced, pausing temporarily to run a hand through his hair - Joe’s particular tell of abject nervousness that he denied he had. She let him live with that delusion -that he could hide his feelings from her. It made life easier.
Sarah felt her spirits sink just a little further at the reminder.
It took her a considerable amount of patience to hold back from saying “Well, you don’t say? Were you leaving me for war? I was unaware. I thought that uniform you’re now wearing, that I myself cleaned and pressed, was just the latest style. Thank you for sharing this new found knowledge with me, soldier boy.”
Joe didn’t marry her because she was one of those passive dames who demurred to their husband's every wish. She’d let that be known from the get-go.
And Sarah’s name wasn't Mary and she wasn't a virgin, thus it took two to make a baby so Joe’d better own up or so help her...
Her expression must given her away because Joe took one look at her face and chuckled under his breath. Whether that chuckle was a result of genuine amusement on his part, or the laugh of nerves that didn’t know what else to do with themselves, she couldn’t say.
“Bad timing,” he followed with, and this time Sarah didn’t even bother to school a blank expression.
“Well, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Joe, I don’t know why you’d think that, what with you going off to war, serving a country that hates us for not being born here, and for talking with an accent, and for being poor, and being Catholic, and for breathing air and existing to begin with and me stuck here with only the New York rats and this little guy growing in my belly for company. I mean, other than all that the timing is just swell. Couldn't have timed it better, since we’re choosin’ and all.”
A beat, and then a grin spread over Joe’s face like a ray of sunshine, his hazel eyes danced. “You really think it’s a boy?” he asked excitedly, and Sarah couldn’t help it. She had to laugh, dire straits or not. Leave it to Joe to fixate on that out of everything she’d just said.
Men. If she was bringing a boy into this world she would damn sure make it that he possessed that lick of common sense that eluded the bulk of his gender.
“Can’t much say, Joe. The babe is communicating primarily through this coded message of nausea, nausea and more nausea that I haven’t really been able to garner much useful information from yet, but I’ll be sure to ask it once we’ve moved past our initial communication difficulties.”
At that Joe did laugh, and Sarah felt her spirits start to rise, just a little. If Joe could laugh, they’d be okay. A surprise pregnancy wasn’t the worse they’d faced. They’d moved across the ocean, with nothing but gumption to their name, searching for a better life. If they could do that and survive, well, a kid would be a piece of cake.
Even a baby born of wartime.
“It’s a boy, I just know it,” he announced, chest puffed out like a peacock.
Sarah just shook her head, amused despite herself.
“Now you’re just tempting fate,” she told him, watching as he deflated a little, only to perk back up again seconds later.
“Doesn’t much matter either way, I suppose, I’m not about to be picky as long as the kid’s healthy,” he said with a shrug, and Sarah was reminded, again, why she’d followed this man across the Atlantic. “What matters is that months from now there is going to be a little person running around with your spitfire and my dashing good looks.”
Sarah bit her lip to keep from laughing out-right. “Or my dashing good looks and your penchant for finding trouble,” she couldn’t help but offer.
Joe’s grin grew wider, proud where he oughtn’t be.
He could be cute, occasionally, her Joe.
“Aw, now, Sarah,” he announced with a drawl, “trouble builds character.”
This time she didn’t bother holding the laughter in. “In that case, then, this babe will have ‘character’ in spades.”
As she said it her hand went involuntarily to her belly, still flat with no telltale signs of being there, for all the commotion this baby had already raised.
For whatever reason Joe knowing made the whole thing more real - she had a person growing inside her. A tiny being she would be able to hold in her arms in a few months’ time and sing to, kiss his little head, and smell his baby scent and raise as she saw fit, good and proper and strong. He’d be polite, her child, and smart. (Maybe she was tempting fate a little, too). And probably stubborn considering she and Joe were the parents, but that, out of everything, was what kept them alive. Well, stubbornness with a little dash of hope thrown in for good measure. Sure she and Joe came from nothing, but she’d make sure her baby had everything he needed. Boy or girl, he or she wouldn’t lack for love.
Joe watched her hand while it danced across her stomach, face gone soft. “You going to be all right with me gone?” he asked softly.
“You know me, Joe, I’m always all right. The devil himself couldn’t keep me down, I always stand up,” she responded tiredly, trying to conjure an image in her mind of what her child would look like. Hopefully, she thought, affectionately, the babe would inherit her nose. The Rogers’ may be a good looking clan, but they did possess some serious honkers among them.
She also hoped he or she didn't inherit her cousin Merle’s unfortunate ears.
“Aye, that you do,” he said through a smile and came to kneel in front of her, placing his hand tentatively over hers.
For a moment they stayed like that, everything quiet and still, and allowed themselves to bask in their good fortune like people might if they were more settled and didn’t have monetary concerns and war hanging over their head, before Joe, energetic as always – damn man had perpetual ants in his pants - broke the serenity…
“Let’s name the babe,” he said, with all the eagerness of a puppy.
And that, well, that Sarah was prepared for. She’d named her potential offspring before she was old enough to put it together that a boy had to be part of the equation to make one, just in case she might change her mind and decide to have one someday. At age ten, when she’d first named her future imaginary children, the prospect of birth hadn’t exactly been appealing. As a small child she had seen a horse born once and had been firmly in the camp of no thank you, I’ll pass, though looking up the meaning of names had been nice.
And if she was being honest, she still wasn't fully on board with the whole birthing thing, but, well, nothing to be done about that. Maybe the midwife would be merciful and knock her out before the whole labor.... experience commenced.
“Steven,” she announced – crown, honor, that which surrounds and encompasses – if she had a boy, then he was a Steven, for he would encompass her heart with love. “Or Evelyn,” she finished – something that is wished for. She and Joe might not have picked the best of time to bring a child into this world, but no child of hers would ever feel unwanted. Planned or unplanned they were wished for.
“I think those will do just fine. I had an uncle named Steven, he was a swell guy. Always liked that name because of it,” Joe agreed as he laid his head upon her lap, growing silent once more.
“Well, kid,” he said, a whisper on his breath, “here’s to great things.”
*****
When the letter came, months later, Sarah sank to her knees in the middle of their small, dingy apartment, clutching the paper tight within her fist, numb.
And like that she stayed, hours passing, feeling nothing, the sun sinking below the horizon and darkness infiltrating her home like the foreboding presence of death itself, coming to claim her like it had taken Joe.
A widow. She was a widow. The war had claimed Joe in its rabid claws, leaving her alone. Was she being challenged? Was that it? Just how much more was she expected to give? She’d immigrated to a different country, her whole life uprooted, she’d lost her husband, she had a babe on the way… a babe she’d be raising on her own... Oh God, what if she did a horrible job of it? What if she messed up? What if the child grew to hate her for it?
Sarah thought, through her daze, that she might be a little sick, what with her stomach threatening to crawl up her throat and all. She hadn't felt this way since the early months of her pregnancy and it was a struggle just to take in deep breaths, hands flat against the floor as she lay positioned on all fours, that horrible letter now crumbled up beside her.
And Joe, silly, dashing, spirited Joe, once filled with so much optimism, believing in the American Dream right up until the day he died, fighting for his adopted country with all the gung-ho of the newly converted. Way too young and vibrant to meet such a tragic end. Mustard gas. Her Joe? Why?
No, she couldn't dwell on it. The blankness was better. Welcomed. Best not to think at all…
A kick, then another, from inside her finally shook her out of her daze – demanding to be fed despite Sarah’s hours long refusal to conceive of a world where Joe wasn’t in it, refusal to embrace reality in any form, which included a world where sustenance was a necessity, just a little while longer.
It took another kick, this one to her bladder, to jolt her into remembering that alone was something she most definitely was not.
The timing had been terrible, she and Joe had both known it, but now that ‘timing’ was all the family she had left. She sat up, a little, wrapped her arms tight around her belly, willing the child within her to know she was still there and she would do everything in her power to protect him or her.
Her babe was right with his insistent little kicks – the midwife had proclaimed days ago that Sarah carried a son, and Sarah thought it must be true because only a man-child would be this ornery (a woman’s bladder ought to be sacred) - she couldn’t really afford the luxury of grief. Not now. Joe’s pension would last for a little bit, perhaps a year, maybe two, if she made it stretch, but after that she would need a job beyond the occasional child care she provided for her neighbors, some more steady means of support. A daunting problem, in and of itself, but there wasn’t a task that couldn’t be done as long as one’s will was set to it. But first she needed to welcome her baby into the world, happy and whole and to do that she must eat.
It was time to stand up.
“Well,” she said, moments later, rising slowly, muscles protesting while her big pregnant belly gave her all the grace of a waddling duck - on spirits no less - tears finally wetting her eyelashes as they had threatened to do all day, despite the numbness that had kept them at bay, “I guess it’s just you and me against the world, Steven, just you and me. Not the life I wanted for you, but it’ll have to do. I will make it work.”