The Pregnancy Test.

The air is chilly
And rain falls
Slick and spattering on the muddy backyard and the black-sooted pavement in the front
The neighbors are celebrating with multi-colored Christmas lights and swigs of red wine and eggnog roasting on an open fire.

I run through the drizzle to the store and choose a small box from the shelf and take my place in the line-up.
No Santa today, and the kids are disappointed.
I calculate in my head what her birthday will be, if she is born: July.

July.  Like me.

And I silently name her Lily.  Or Jasper, if he is a He.

The woman in front of me has a small child sucking a pacifier and she smiles through parted lips and I smile back at her blue eyes and her mother eyes my purchase and then spies my ring and smiles like we have some Spectacular Secret.

The woman behind me has a test too.  Hers is pale blue to my pink one and I think she is hoping for a little boy.

It is smashed between whole grain dinner rolls and orange tic-tacs and other things we slide into our pockets.

My mind carries me to another store and another time when I was huddled in a small stall with the current boy and he was nervous and I peed openly on the thick strip and we counted down the two minutes and cried happy tears when everything was negative.  I still worried for days that the test was faulty.

I still worry as the time ticks by on the edge of the sink and I think about two minutes and all the things wrapped up in that 120 seconds I am sharing with countless other women: the one in front of me who smiled.  The one behind, hiding her box behind the bread rolls.