�There�s something wrong with her.�
�She�s just a very perceptive child.�
�No kindergartener�s that perceptive.�
�Just because she knows you�re��
�Shh, not all of them sleep during nap time.�
�P-R-E-G-N-A-N-T doesn�t mean there�s something wrong with her.�
�I think it�s strange she knows when I only found out myself this morning and I haven�t even told my husband yet.�
Mrs. Preston was right. It was strange that when she picked me up after I�d fallen off the monkey bars and scraped my knees I told her I�d miss her. And when she asked me if my family was moving, I told her she was going away to be with her baby. She must�ve thought Mrs. Armstead, the principal, would compel my mother to keep me home. But Mrs. Armstead had known Mom since they were in kindergarten and wasn�t crazy about �Pesky Preston.� Besides, it had only been a couple of days since the Armsteads invited us over for dinner and I�d blurted, �You have a girl and a boy inside,� to Mrs. Armstead as she cleaned chocolate ice cream from my chin. She�d known she was pregnant, but it wasn�t until her next pre-natal that the sonogram showed she was carrying fraternal twins.
Over the years, I�ve tried to figure out why I could touch pregnant women and know about their babies. I used to overhear pieces of conversation about my father. At PTA meetings, at church, at the mall�people whispered about my father, the police officer who was killed during a convenience store robbery when he�d gone to pick up potato chips and vanilla yogurt for Mom while she was in her third trimester. Everyone said he had an uncanny way of guessing people�s birthdays. Some said he told Mom that he had a vision he�d be killed before I was born. Mom never said anything about him. By the time I was old enough to ask questions, she�d died of lung cancer.
As I got older, I learned not to tell women I knew they were pregnant just because I knew. Mom didn�t like it when neighborhood women who hoped they were pregnant or were pregnant and wanted to know more about their babies came by to see �the little psychic girl.� And the older I got the more I knew about the babies. I knew their eye color and hair color, even their IQs. Sometimes I knew if they had congenital defects. On rare occasions, I knew what their job would be or how they would die. At the beginning of my junior year in high school, while Mrs. Gold spotted me on the uneven bars, I knew she hadn�t told any of her PE students she was pregnant. I also knew her son would be born with a two-chambered heart and die before his second birthday. By the end of the semester, Mrs. Gold went on maternity leave, and a month before my graduation she went on bereavement leave.
Since Stephen Gold�s death, I�ve avoided females who aren�t pre-adolescent or post-menopausal. I�ve worked on construction crews, in nursing homes, as a night security guard. Even though I shop for groceries after midnight at the 24-hour Safeway, last year I reached for the same avocado as a girl who couldn�t have been more than fourteen years old. I knew she was pregnant with a daughter who�d quit her job as a social worker after winning the lottery. And this morning, on the way to visit Mom�s grave, I bumped into a middle-aged woman whose son will become famous for being a serial killer.
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