Chapter Text
Agatha Harkness shifted uncomfortably in the passenger’s seat of the old Honda and ran her hands over the curve of her belly. Her skin felt like a rubber band, stretched to the max, her hips ached, and her bladder was about to burst. She was twenty years old, thirty-three weeks pregnant, and superstitious about the number three.
When she was just three months old, her biological father, a long-distance trucker, called Agatha’s mother from a truckstop in Oklahoma. He said he met another woman and wouldn’t be coming home. Agatha had only met him twice at the time, and she had been far too young to remember it.
As a child, she and her mother lived in a little house near Salem, Massachusetts, that Evanora inherited from her grandmother, but on Agatha’s third birthday, a faulty wire started a fire and burned the whole place down. Evanora had let the insurance lapse, so they had to move. They moved out of the city, into a tiny trailer that had holes in the floor and reeked of tobacco smoke.
And then, when Agatha was in third grade, her mother ran off with an evangelical preacher, leaving Agatha with a neighbor who sometimes forgot that Agatha existed. Evanora had said she would come back for Agatha, once she got settled, but of course that never happened.
By the time she reached adulthood, Agatha knew there was something unlucky about threes, so she tried to avoid them. But sometimes threes snuck up on her.
When Agatha was sixteen, she dropped out of school and started waiting tables in a local diner. Three months into that job, the cook’s wife got it into her head that Agatha was fucking her husband— she wasn’t, even if the sleezy bastard flirted with her all the time. The wife came to the diner and attacked Agatha with a butcher knife in front of all the customers. She sliced Agatha’s arm open, and it took thirty-three stitches to put her back together. And after all that, Agatha was the one who got fired.
She hadn’t realized she was pregnant until March when she was already three months along. Then Ralph had the idea that they should leave town and make a fresh start in Nashville before the baby was born, but he hadn’t been able to fix his car up enough to handle the trip until Agatha was thirty-three weeks along. Sometimes, threes were just unavoidable.
Agatha squirmed in her seat, the rough fabric rubbing uncomfortably against the backs of her thighs. They were somewhere in western North Carolina or East Tennessee, Agatha wasn’t sure which. It was mid-July, over ninety-degrees and so humid that Agatha felt like they were driving through Satan’s asscrack. The lack of air conditioning wasn’t helping matters. They had rolled down all of the car’s windows, but that just meant the hot air hit Agatha square in the face at sixty miles per hour. On top of all that, Agatha felt like her stomach was producing heat itself, like instead of a baby her womb was host to its own tiny sun, roasting her from the inside out.
In the driver’s seat, Ralph didn’t seem nearly as bothered by the heat. He drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other out the window, and with every passing vehicle Agatha imagined his arm being hit, torn off in a spray of blood like those b-rated horror movies he liked so much. He had grown his sandy brown hair long into a mullet, and he needed a shave. Agatha hated when he let his facial hair grow out, hated the way it felt against her skin when he kissed her, but she knew Ralph wanted to grow it out. He said it made him look rogueish. Agatha disagreed. She thought it made him look like a teenage boy just pretending to be a man, even if he was twenty-five years old.
Ralph wasn’t a bad guy. He didn’t beat her. He didn’t do any hard drugs. He didn’t even smoke, not marijuana or regular cigarettes, because he had asthma. He drank a little too much sometimes, but he wasn’t a mean drunk. His biggest fault was that he couldn’t hold down a job, but that was because he had dreams that were bigger than the little Massachusetts town where Agatha met him. Ralph wanted to be a famous country music singer.
That was how Agatha met him. He came into Logan’s, the bar where she worked, and played for open mic night. Agatha had struck up a conversation with him about performing and one thing led to another. That was how it was supposed to go, Agatha thought. Meet a man, talk a bit, drink a bit, maybe go on a few dates. It wasn’t the first time Agatha had followed the script, but it was the first time a condom broke, and next thing she knew Agatha was peeing on a little plastic stick in the Dollar Tree bathroom.
Agatha wasn’t particularly thrilled to be spending the rest of her life with Ralph Bohner. She definitely wasn’t in love with him. But then again, she had never really been in love with any of the boys she dated. After a certain point, she just figured she was broken. She was just a person who didn’t feel things like that. So maybe it was for the best that Ralph got her pregnant. If that hadn’t happened, she probably would’ve spent her life alone.
She knew Ralph didn’t love her, either. Sure, when they first started going out, he treated her nice, opened doors for her, called her beautiful, paid for her meals. But the longer they were together, the more all that faded. Agatha had been thinking about breaking things off when she found out she was pregnant. Now they were both making the best of the situation, and they both knew it.
“You got ants in your pants or something?” Ralph asked, glancing at her.
Agatha bit her lip before answering. “I have to pee.”
“Fuck, Ags,” Ralph exclaimed, hitting the steering wheel. “We just stopped at a rest stop an hour ago.”
“It was two hours ago,” Agatha corrected. “And it’s not my fault the baby is sitting on top of my bladder. You think I like having to pee all the damn time?”
“Alright, alright,” Ralph huffed. “I’ll find you a gas station. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
Agatha crossed her arms over the top of her bulging belly and silently prayed to whatever deity might be listening that they didn’t hit any traffic. Not that there was much traffic on the curvy state highway they were on. They would’ve been in Nashville already if Ralph had taken the main interstate, but he had insisted on taking the scenic route. He said it was a more authentic way to travel the country, but Agatha thought it was more likely that Ralph chose this route because his piece of shit Honda wouldn’t go above sixty miles per hour, even with all the repairs she had paid for.
Agatha had to admit, the scenery was beautiful, but trying to get Ralph to stop and enjoy it was damn near impossible. Ralph did things on his own schedule; when he wanted something, it had to be fast, but he had no patience for anyone else. But Agatha had convinced him to stop a few times, so she could take pictures with the Polaroid she had bought before they left. Agatha wanted to document their trip, so she could show the baby someday. Ralph thought it was stupid, but he indulged her every once in a while.
She had all the photos tucked into an album in her backpack, and Agatha tried to get her mind off her bladder by pulling it out and looking through it for probably the fiftieth time. That just made her want to throw up, especially when Ralph took the curves a little too fast. She didn’t dare tell him to slow down, though, because that would delay getting to a bathroom. After a while she closed her eyes and tried reciting the alphabet in her head, trying to come up with a boy and a girl name for each letter— A- Alex, Ada. B- Brodie, Bailey. C- Calvin, Cora.
Agatha didn’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl, but she had a feeling it was a boy. Part of her hoped it was a boy. Ralph would definitely prefer a boy. Agatha sighed. A boy would definitely be easier.
“Ooo, there he goes,” Agatha said, eyes snapping open as she felt movement beneath her hands. She rubbed her hands over the swell of her belly. “Did you have a good nap, little one?”
The baby hadn’t been moving as much lately, probably running out of room in there. And over the last few days in the car, the heat was probably getting to him just as much as it was to her. But suddenly he moved, a flurry of motion beneath her skin. He was strong, so much so that sometimes his movements hurt, stretching beneath her skin. Agatha was torn between fascination and disgust whenever she felt the movements inside her, feeling affection for her child but also a feeling of alienness at her body playing host to a stranger.
“What is it?” Ralph asked, glancing sideways at her.
“The baby’s moving,” Agatha told him. “You wanna feel?”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard her, gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands.
“Here, give me your hand,” Agatha ordered, tugging at his right hand, but he wouldn’t budge.
“I don’t need to feel it,” Ralph huffed, pushing her hand away with his elbow.
Agatha shrugged, trying to pretend that his refusal didn’t sting. “Suit yourself.”
“It’s just… weird that it’s inside you,” Ralph said finally, glancing at her again.
“It’s weird to me, too,” Agatha told him.
“Every time I feel it move under your skin, I feel like it’s gonna bust out of you like when the alien burst out of that guy in the movie.”
Agatha felt vomit threatening to bubble up in her throat. “Wow, Ralph. Thank you so much for that mental image. That makes me feel so much better about being pregnant and giving birth.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me that you gotta give birth.” Ralph visibly shuddered. Agatha just rolled her eyes. You’d think he was the one who had to push a kid out of his vagina. Not that she was eager to think about it, either, but damn.
“Oh, look, a Walmart!” Agatha exclaimed, sitting up straighter and pointing to the blue sign in the distance.
“So?”
“So I can use their bathroom!” Agatha reminded him. Now that she had mentioned it again, her bladder was making itself known, and she worried she might pee her pants before they even made it into the parking lot.
Ralph swerved across two lanes, cutting off a shiny station wagon, then plowed through the parking lot, ignoring the directional arrows, until he parked half in a handicapped parking space and half in the space beside it.
“You want me to get us anything?” Agatha asked, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Some snacks? A drink?”
“Here,” Ralph said, digging in his pocket. He handed over two ten dollar bills. “Don’t spend it all.”
Agatha fought the urge to roll her eyes. The money had been hers originally, after all, but she had given almost all of her savings to Ralph so he could pay for repairs on the car and secure an apartment in Nashville.
“Thanks, hon, I’ll be right back,” she said, stretching over the console to kiss his cheek before forcing herself out of the car.
As soon as she was through the doors, Agatha was hit with a welcome wave of cold air and the smell of hot dogs cooking. She hurried past the snack bar, past the Welcome to Westview Walmart sign, her eyes scanning for the sign for the restrooms, but she didn’t see one. She hurried past the grocery aisles, past a photographer set up in the middle of the clothing section, and through the electronics before finally spotting the sign beside the layaway desk at the back of the store.
The bathroom had three stalls, and the first two were occupied. Agatha clenched as hard as she could as she made her way to the handicapped stall at the back, closing the door behind her and latching it before hurrying to the toilet. She didn’t bother with a seat cover, just yanked her nylon shorts down to her knees and sat. She moaned in relief as she peed, as the pressure in her pelvis finally subsided, if only temporarily.
Afterward, as she washed her hands, she stared at her reflection. She hardly recognized herself anymore. Her pale skin was red from the heat and sun exposure, and a smattering of freckles were starting to make themselves known on the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. There were dark circles under her blue eyes, and her long brown hair was a bird’s nest from blowing in the breeze from the open car windows. She had gained weight with the pregnancy, and it showed in her face, in the roundness of her cheeks. Her boobs were bigger, but so was her ass, and her thighs, and her feet and ankles were so swollen that she could only wear flip flops, so her back ached constantly.
She felt a tiny nudge against her hand, and she looked down at her belly.
“This is all your fault, you know,” she groused. Another nudge, and then her stomach growled. “Alright, I’ll get us some food.”
She grabbed a bag of cheese puffs, a Coke for Ralph, a Sprite for herself, and a pack of scrunchies from a rack near the checkout lane. She spotted a copy of American Baby Magazine and started skimming an article on keeping fit while pregnant as the customer in front of her wrote out a check. At the rate this was going, Agatha would have to swing by the restroom again before she left. Finally she made it to the front of the queue and the cashier started ringing up her items. She grabbed a Milky Way bar from the shelf to add at the last second.
“Your total is six dollars and sixty-seven cents,” the cashier said, and Agatha handed over one of the tens Ralph had given her. She put the magazine back and turned to the cashier to get her change. “That’s three dollars and thirty-three cents.”
Agatha felt her blood run cold. “What?”
“Your change, miss, it’s—”
Agatha dropped the money, and the coins clanged sharply against the metal register. She ran to the parking lot as fast as she could, but it still felt like it was happening in slow motion. She knew Ralph was gone before she even reached the sliding doors, and yet somehow seeing the empty parking space still crushed something inside of her. In the middle of the empty space was a hunk of black plastic, and Agatha staggered toward it. She picked up her Polaroid and turned it over in her hands. The plastic was broken on one corner, but other than that it looked okay. Agatha looked around, the pounding of her heart echoing in her ears.
Ralph was gone, and she was alone.
“Miss?”
Agatha turned around to see a tall Black woman, her features sharp but her dark eyes soft as she looked at Agatha. She was wearing a blue vest and a nametag: Jen.
“You left your things at the register,” she said, holding out a bag. Agatha took it wordlessly. “And your change.”
Three dollars and thirty-three cents. Agatha was tempted to knock it out of the woman’s hand, but she would need every penny she could get. Plus, hitting a Walmart employee seemed like a good way to get herself arrested, and that was the last thing she needed. Sure, jail would provide shelter and three square meals, but it would also mean losing her baby.
“Miss?”
Agatha realized that the woman, Jen, was still holding her money. She reached out and took it with shaky hands.
“Thank you.”
Jen nodded. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Agatha looked around the parking lot. “No, um… No. My boyfriend must’ve gone up the road to get some gas. He’ll be back in a little while to pick me up.”
“Okay,” Jen said, still eyeing her like one would a feral cat. “Well, if you need anything, just let an associate know.”
“Thank you,” Agatha replied, but her voice was hollow. Jen walked away, leaving her alone.
She was alone. Ralph was gone, and she was alone.
Beneath her hand there was a tiny nudge from the inside. Agatha looked down and rubbed at the spot where she had felt the movement. She wasn’t alone, not really, and maybe that made this even worse. She had thought, even for all his shortcomings, that Ralph might be different. But she was wrong. Ralph had left, just like her father had left when she was an infant, only he hadn’t even stuck around to meet his kid. But there was one thing Agatha knew: she would not leave this baby the way her mother left her.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered, rubbing her hand over her bump. “Mama’s here. It’s gonna be okay.”