In the Woods When First We Met

116. Needlepoint

Monday night, Anne knelt by her bed and prayed to God that she wasn't having a baby.

But after she got into bed, she lay awake, thinking about how futile that prayer had been: It's too late to pray for that, now, she realized with dismay. I should have prayed right after it happened...only I hadn't thought of it then.

She lay her hands on her stomach. But by now it's been six weeks. If there is a baby, it's already here. And it's probably getting bigger every day.

Then she had a strange thought. If there's a baby inside you, can it hear you? I thought that inside my own head, I had my own world...But Marilla said God lives inside our hearts and can hear us talking to Him even when we don't say the words out loud. Well a baby lives inside you, too...I wonder if it can hear me?

The thought made her upset. Then she said, inside her head, Baby, if you are here, and if you can hear me, I'm sorry I said I don't want you. I'm sure it made you feel bad, but to tell you the truth, I really do have a very good reason not to want you, and that the reason is...

She shook her head in the dark. Well, the reason doesn't have anything to do with you, so you mustn't let it make you feel bad. Anyway, I'll do my best to find somewhere nice for you to go. I'm sure you're a perfectly lovely baby and somebody is going to be exceedingly joyful to have you...it's just that that person isn't me.

Anne took a deep breath, trying to feel brave. But since we're going to have to be together for a while, let's try to make it work out, all right? I'll try to think nicer things about you, and you try not to grow too fast so I have more time before anyone knows you're here. Deal?

She rolled over and tried to go to sleep, but she couldn't.

After laying in bed for what felt like hours, she sat up. She couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if she was having a baby. What would Marilla and Matthew say?

The more she thought about the possibility of having a baby, and the more she thought about having to tell Matthew and Marilla she was having a baby, the more sick to her stomach she felt.

She finally decided to get some crackers to settle her stomach. She went carefully down the stairs and into the kitchen. She opened a sleeve of crackers as quietly as she could, and took them into the parlor.

After she ate a few, she lay down on the sofa and shut her eyes, trying to stave off the nausea.

Once she felt it dissipating, she rolled over and hugged one of the sofa pillows to her.

After thinking a moment, she pushed the pillow under her nightgown and wrapped her arms around it, cradling the pillow on her stomach. This is what it would be like, she told herself.

She wondered if it weighed a lot, and if it threw off your sense of balance. I may be tiny, she thought. But I'm strong. ...Or at least I thought I was.

Anne took the pillow out from under her nightgown. This is not conducive to avoiding nausea, she scolded herself. Put that down and forget about it.

But she didn't. She put the pillow close to her face and stared at it. She couldn't really see it very well in the dark, but she knew this was one of Marilla's needlepoint pillows, with a picture of a house with a tree in front and a heart stitched around it. She felt the bumpy outlines of stitches with her fingertip, tracing the outline of the little house and chimney. Marilla had even stitched a puff of smoke coming out of the chimney. How do you have a home someday, she thought, and a family and a wedding, when you've already got a baby from before? She had never had any fantasy in having children- Mrs. Hammond's brood put that idea right out of her head- but she did want to be a bride. Wearing a lovely gown of white, with flowers in her hair, and a long train that cascaded behind her as she walked down the aisle...the part about having a husband didn't really enter her mind much, but oh, to be a bride. She pushed the pillow away from her, thinking for sure now that the whole thing was quite impossible, because she couldn't see that any man would marry a woman who'd had a baby out of wedlock with another man.

Anne sighed. Marilla must have worked on needlepoint for hours and hours through her life, to have so many pillows with needlepoint on them, Anne thought. They were pretty, but... Anne was working on a needlepoint, too, at Marilla's insistence. There wasn't much creativity in needlepoint, she thought. It had been fun to choose a design and pick out the colors she wanted to use, but after that it was all just needle in and needle out, over and over and over, until at last you were done. The creative part was only at the beginning, after that it was drudgery. But Marilla told her she had to finish it. She said she didn't want Anne to think that you could just stop working on something because it wasn't fun anymore. So finish it she would, no matter how long it took and how dull it was.

You have to do a lot of sewing, she realized, when you're having a baby. And knitting, too. There's blankets and a layette and rompers and bonnets and.... She shut her eyes, trying to stop this. The thought of a wedding gown only moments before now made her think of christening gowns. Anne loved christening gowns, and she wondered if she had had one herself when she was a baby, and thought she most likely had not. But she wished she had, because even if she couldn't remember it, she was sure she would have felt beautiful, even as a newborn, in the long white gown babies wore for christenings. Well, having a baby might make it so that no man will want to marry me, but I suppose holding baby when it's wearing a christening gown might be almost as good as wearing a wedding gown. A christening gown would drape over my arms, and it would be long enough to reach the floor, sort of like the train on a wedding gown, and it would have white eyelet ruffles... Anne loved eyelet. She even loved the way it sounded, eyelet.

But then her dream came tumbling down. I don't know if churches christen babies who've been born out of wedlock. She felt the urge to know this right away, and wished she could ask someone, but knew that even if the reverend was standing before her at this very minute, she wouldn't be able to ask a question like that. I don't think they do, because...they'd call it a bast- she stopped herself quickly from saying the terrible word, even just in her mind. And then she shook her head to herself, thinking sadly, even if there was a christening, who would want to come?

She rolled over and faced the other wall. I never really thought I'd get to be a bride. But it was nice to dream of it. Now I can't even dream of that, because even if someone married me, people would whisper to themselves that I've got a lot of nerve walking down the aisle wearing white.

I hate you, Billy.

The words were not thought in anger, but in deep sorrow. You took my...you took my everything. ...Even my dream of a white dress.

Heavenly Father, she thought, I know we aren't supposed to hate anyone...even if they've done us harm. And I feel I've been very good about forgiving people, thus far. So would you mind very much if I hated someone just this once?