8 months pregnant and shaking, I was mocked and denied a seat by laughing college boys while the bus driver ignored me. Moments later, a ninety-pound German Shepherd boarded—and unlike everyone else, it refused to look away.
CHAPTER ONE – THE KIND OF HEAT THAT MAKES YOU SMALL
Late summer in the city has a way of pressing down on you until you feel flattened, not just physically but emotionally, as though the air itself has decided you don’t deserve to breathe easily today, and for someone who is eight months pregnant, carrying a life that constantly shifts and presses and reminds you that your own body is no longer entirely yours, that pressure becomes something intimate and exhausting and relentless.
By the time I reached the bus stop on Jefferson Avenue, sweat had soaked through the thin cotton of my shirt, my lower back burned with that familiar nerve pain that radiated down my legs, and my feet felt swollen enough that each step sent a dull warning up my spine, reminding me that I had already pushed myself too far, again, because survival rarely waits for comfort.My name is Lena Carter, and at the time, I was thirty-two years old, eight months pregnant, working double shifts at a neighborhood café because the father of my child had decided that “unexpected responsibility” was a valid reason to disappear, and because rent, like pregnancy, does not pause just because you’re overwhelmed.
The bus was late, of course, because it always was, and when it finally arrived, coughing and groaning as if offended by the idea of continuing to function, I felt that familiar mix of relief and dread, knowing that getting on would be only the first challenge.
