A Short Story by O.G. Rose
Joe was a trashman while Mary was exceptional. All the men wanted her, knowing nothing about her. Joe was different. He serviced her father’s house, and over the years, Joe and Mary talked. Like all people who seemed perfect, Mary was flawed. She dreamed.
“Kings will come.” Mary laughed when they talked about their wedding. “Kings will come!”
People told Joe he was the luckiest man in the world, that he didn’t deserve her.
“No one deserves anyone,” he said.
Joe loved Mary: she forced him to learn how to be patient and kind. Unlike the other men in her life, Joe was poor, and Mary liked him. Mary often thought you couldn’t love who you liked. Men surrounded Mary who called her “Queen,” and she loved them back. She couldn’t push them away. She always told Joe, crying, about what she let the men do, about how she had allowed herself to feel loved because she couldn’t help but want others to feel loved.
“I had a dream about being pregnant,” Mary told Joe. The wedding was planned to be a private ceremony. She was rich, even by Manhattan standards, but hated money. It made men love her, men to whom Mary couldn’t help but be kind. This made the men feel special. Joe was the only man Mary could mistreat.
“Did you take a pregnancy test?” Joe asked. Mary’s father knew about the relationship and worried about his daughter who couldn’t shake her head.
“It was like I was born pregnant.”
“Mary, just be honest.”
Joe loved Mary; he would believe her.
“I am.”
“Are you?”
“I dreamed that the dream came true.”
Joe grew up on a farm in Tennessee and spent afternoons with old men around tractors. The men taught him that you fight for who you love, that passion was what you suffered for, day by day. “In your dream,” Joe asked, “was it my child?”
“Do you choose your dreams?”
Joe moved to New York after college: it felt like he should. Mary didn’t work; she was creative and told not to waste her time on art. Joe placed his hand on her stomach. “Whose child is this?”
“Joe.”
“What child…?”
The water in Mary’s eye gathered below her iris but did not fall. “I waited my whole life to start a family.”
Joe was Mary’s friend.
Another day, amongst men who promised to always love her, Mary said, “I’m pregnant.”
Joe stood with her; her father was seated. “It’s mine.” Joe tried to do what was right. Joe didn’t believe in sex before marriage, for marriage was sex. He and Mary were not one flesh. She was not tested.
“I’m pregnant,” Mary said again.
“It’s mine.”
Her father stood from his table and walked out of the room. Joe and Mary waited for him to return. After many days, they moved across the city into a small room with little light.
In a basement under an apartment Joe swore to clean, Joe said to Mary, “Eat.” It was unclear if she was fat or with child. They were unmarried. Mary wanted to celebrate. Good preachers would marry fat girls, but Mary struggled to keep down the food.
“I’m pregnant,” Mary said with vomit on her lips. In darkness, to the side, Joe nodded.
“You had a dream.”
“Did you?”
“I did.”
“Kings will come,” Mary said, the raped girl who suppressed a memory that would be unloving of Joe to make her relive — or so Joe could believe and know it was a belief he chose. He offered her more cake — “You must” — and she never shook her head. He never saw her gain weight without food.
After many months, a day came when they were not alone. Hustlers arrived by night, those who knew and used the basement. They outnumbered Joe and might have known about Mary’s family. They said they could fight off the bad pimps. They said they would not be animals.
Joe sweated; a baby in blood cried behind him. A baby who criminals could kidnap. Mary’s father wouldn’t pay a ransom for a child who ruined their family. A nightmare. The dream would end.
“Take,” Mary heaved. Joe took the child into his arms. He believed that if he so loved Mary, he would not make her relive her rape. He too could dream. But he wanted to ask. Tempted against ignorance. Unless he asked imprecisely and could believe she didn’t understand. “Queen, did you know?”
The world could be new.
“Kings.” Mary wept. “I dreamed it.”
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