Elisa stood in Peggy’s classroom doorway, all nerves. Her fingers gripped and sorted her punk-ponytail end, twisting and knotting the loose strands, her hair dyed that popular unnatural blue-black tint. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, like a sprinter preparing for a race, ready to tear down the hall if given clearance to go.

“Miss Antinori?” Elisa asked meekly. “You wanted to see me?”

“Hey there, Elisa.” Peggy continued filing her paperwork, not wanting to appear the disciplinarian just yet. “Come in and have a seat.”

There was always a lot to do at the beginning of a school year. St. Anne’s Academy in New Archibald, Pennsylvania, had started this term even earlier than usual, in late August. The previous school year had stretched into the early summer months, a result of snow-make-up days from that winter’s fierce, unrelenting storms. Gun-shy administrators, not wanting to repeat last year’s late graduation, had unanimously approved the pre-Labor Day start. Because of her abbreviated summer, Peggy still didn’t feel quite ready to return to school, and wondered if her students felt the same.

The classroom was hot and sticky, a petri dish of late summer air, the students’ lingering perfumes, and the glue-and-ink smells of new school supplies—textbooks, notebooks, freshly sharpened pencils. The school’s air conditioning system was meager at best, and it wheezed through the vents like a slight breeze off warm ocean waters, not doing much to abate the mugginess.

Elisa was one of Peggy’s tenth graders at the all-girls Catholic high school, in the second year of the school’s two-year health and fitness education requirement. While St. Anne’s had a strict uniform policy, there were few restrictions on makeup and jewelry, and the girls certainly took advantage of this leeway. Today, Elisa had rimmed her eyes with kohl, and they were wide with curiosity, wondering why she had been called in. “So, what’s going on?”

In the past, Peggy had learned that if she waited a bit, her students might speak first, answer their own questions. She didn’t reply right away, but finished erasing the board and returned to her desk. Elisa still looked at her quizzically.

“Has there been anything going on lately, Elisa? Anything you want to tell me?”

Elisa shook her head. “No, why?”

“Well, you’ve been consistently late every day for the past week, and it’s so early in the school year,” Peggy began. “And you got a D on this first quiz.”

Elisa shrugged. “I’ve been tired.” She stared back at Peggy, almost daring her to continue.

Peggy nodded, and waited to see if Elisa would say anything more. She didn’t. “When you were a freshman, your tests and papers were among the best in the class,” Peggy continued, “so I was surprised to see that D. You’re not starting from scratch here—you know what I expect from you, from everyone. And today you fell asleep in class, which is not only insulting to me, but distracting to the other students. Just how tired are you?” She stopped for a breath, for effect. Being strict was the hardest part of her job, her most awkward fit. Elisa didn’t say anything. “I was just wondering if there’s anything going on, anything you’d like to tell me.”

Elisa didn’t make eye contact, just twirled her ponytail even more rapidly. Peggy waited a beat, and got no reply.

“So it’s nothing? I shouldn’t be concerned? Because if you’re late any day next week, don’t turn in your homework on time, or get below a B on a test, I’m obligated by the school to send home a progress report and possibly schedule a parent-teacher conference.”

“No, no. No need for that.” Elisa coughed, then cleared her throat. She looked down at her feet, and when she spoke, it was low, almost a mumble. “I’m not … I think I might be … I might be pregnant, Miss Antinori.”

“Well.” Peggy stalled, trying not to look that surprised. “Now at least we’re communicating.”

***

That night, Peggy waited until the evening sun dipped below the trees. Once the dark had cooled the muggy summer air, she laced up her sneakers and headed outside.

Her favorite time to run was at night. The air, fresh and soft, felt like a security blanket to take along for the trip. She relished the sounds of a night run, varying by seasons: a bullfrog and crickets in summer, crunching leaves and an owl hoot in autumn, stillness and quiet in winter. She seemed to cover more ground at night, too – the darker setting obscuring the distance, the moon and lamplight casting a romantic glow. While she usually stayed on the well-lit paths, every so often she couldn’t resist a jaunt off the well-heeled terrain.

She never told anyone she did these solo night runs, sure that well-meaning friends and family would discourage her from going off by herself, a woman at night, a vulnerable speeding target. Peggy didn’t want to be scared, so, perhaps foolishly, she convinced herself she wasn’t. She acknowledged the danger but forged ahead anyway. What would she miss along this solitary path, she thought, if she always avoided it?

Peggy always wore a flashing light on the front of her T-shirt, to alert night drivers she was coming. On these less-worn paths, it was a lighthouse beacon, propelling her forward through new territories. What’s ahead, what’s ahead, she thought, not even realizing how far from home she had gone.

After meandering awhile, she decided to run to school. Once there, she stopped to catch her breath and get a good stretch on the rear lawn. The building looked small at night, less imposing, its details and heft obscured by evening shadows. St. Anne’s, the neighboring church, dwarfed all neighboring buildings, its steeple and cross visible from most points downtown. Up close, they looked even more massive. Peggy reached tall for a full trunk stretch, extending her fingers toward the steeple, then rounded back toward the earth to touch her toes. Her hamstrings acquiesced, fully warm now, her muscles soft and pliable like taffy. Not wanting to go home just yet, she jogged toward the entrance, a set of imposing double doors. She felt in her pocket for her key ring, opened one door, and went in to the school.

The hall was quiet and cool, and her footsteps echoed along the empty corridor as she headed toward her classroom. Peggy walked past the deserted cafeteria, its cash register and soda machines casting colored shadows across the shiny linoleum floor.

She unlocked her classroom door and entered, but didn’t turn on the light. Peggy chose a desk at the back of the room and looked ahead, to where she usually stood before the class.

Looking down at her stomach, just the slightest curve under her T-shirt, she thought of Elisa. Would she choose to have the baby? Peggy wondered. Two of her students had dropped out late last year, both choosing motherhood. Would Elisa be the same?

She took in her surroundings from this perspective, assessing her choices to decorate the room with health and fitness posters, the requisite crucifix over the blackboard, photos of the women’s Olympic soccer and basketball teams, the food pyramid spread, and dental hygiene placards. How out of touch, she thought. She envisioned the girls who sat in each of these seats, wondering how much she was getting through to them, or if she had even taught them anything at all.

The clock at the front of the classroom glowed lightly, its hands the sharp right angle of 9:00. The second hand moved in a smooth, fluid circle, making a faint hum as it continued its rotation. Peggy quietly got up and locked the classroom door behind her. Once outside, she ran home in the dark.

***

Elisa had started coming to her classroom after school. Peggy didn’t question it, just started staying later than she normally would, expecting Elisa just a little after the last bell of the day. They didn’t talk much about the inevitable, mainly just sat together in silence, with Peggy grading papers and Elisa reading, drawing, or working on an assignment. Late one afternoon, after most of the students and faculty had left for the day, Elisa moved up to the front row of desks and sat right across from Peggy.

“So I went to the free clinic downtown after school yesterday. They said I’m almost three months along,” Elisa began.

Peggy smiled ruefully. “Have you told your parents yet? Or the father?”

She shook her head. “The dad isn’t going to believe it. We had heard that if you smoke pot before doing it that you won’t get pregnant. Supposed to lower the guy’s sperm count. Guess that isn’t true.”

Peggy coughed, again trying to hide her surprise. She had heard kids still thought this, but it was the first time she came face-to-face with it. She made a mental note to bring up such ill-founded legends 

in class, try to disprove them with the current crop of students. “So you had no idea that this could have happened.”

“Well, I guess we knew there was a chance of it, but maybe we thought it was really small.” Elisa shrugged her shoulders. “We thought we were being careful.”

Peggy was an awkward, almost accidental teacher. She had fallen into the profession, realizing her health and fitness major could lead her toward either physical therapy or education. Not wanting to work in a hospital or even a remotely similar setting, she chose teaching. And I’ll get summers off, she had thought, naive. For extra income, however, she had spent the past two summers coaching at several sports camps, plus teaching some nutrition classes at adult education centers and church workshops.

And during the year, her career didn’t feel like the best fit, either. With the exception of Elisa, the kids often felt like strangers to her. Just that afternoon, taking out some lesson plans on the dangers of smoking, she had tried to get a good discussion going, but most of the kids seemed uncommunicative, listless. Peggy wondered if she should have taught elementary school, where a good run around the building would count as a physical fitness lesson, where an upset kid could often be calmed by a story or a quiet talking-to. One of her friends taught first grade, and while she was exhausted from chasing after kids all day, her issues seemed less severe than what Peggy saw daily at the high school level.

Additionally, she couldn’t always relate to what the kids were going through. She had been pretty meek during her own high school years, avoiding boys for the most part, making friends with everyone, but not growing particularly close to anyone. She was voted “Nicest” in her class for senior superlatives, her plain, smiling visage cemented in the yearbook for posterity. She wondered if her students looked at her in a similar way, if that “nice” label was still affixed.

Elisa, in particular, seemed to look to Peggy for help. She wasn’t sure if it was something she had said in the past, an extension of assistance, or perhaps it was just because she was the health teacher – Elisa might see her as a walking textbook, a natural choice of advisor for dealing with a teenage pregnancy. Whatever the reason, Peggy chose not to question it. She started anticipating Elisa’s after-school visits, and would use them to extend whatever lesson she had taught that given day, expanding it to include context for the growing baby. She started clipping out sale ads from the newspaper for baby items, brought in nutrition pamphlets for Elisa to read, recommended assistance programs for teenage mothers. Often Elisa sat and listened, nodding silently, taking whatever was offered for the day.

A few days later, Elisa sat down, her face calmer than usual. “I told the dad.” She smiled shyly. “He seemed pretty upset, but he didn’t flip out as much as I thought he would. I mean, I don’t know how involved he’s going to be.”

“What do you think you’ll do?” Peggy pictured the principal, some fellow teachers, standing over her shoulder. As a Catholic school teacher, she knew what she was supposed to say. “Do you see yourself marrying this boy?”

Elisa looked out the window. The field hockey team was warming up for the afternoon practice, stretching in sync, a mass of extended arms and hands tugging for the sky. Peggy noticed Elisa wasn’t wearing as much makeup as she usually did—her eyes were less severe, and her dark hair hung loose around her shoulders. Elisa shrugged. “I don’t know.” She still watched the girls, her eyes following a group of them, sprinting from one end of the field to the other. “I had wanted to go out for the soccer team this year,” she said wistfully.

***

After work, to collect her thoughts, Peggy sometimes would go and sit in the church adjacent to school, and she headed there after her talk with Elisa. Unlike so many others, she always liked going to church. She liked the straightness of the pews, the weekly ritual, the congregation chanting in prayer together. She liked the inclusivity of the churchgoers praying at once, saying words they had all memorized together, the affirmations of each other and declarations of faith and peace. Peggy always would inhale deeply when the priest walked forth with the incense, and would take in that smell that seemed to exist in every Catholic church but nowhere else – a mix of woodsy smoke, cloves, and that unnameable third scent that was always part of its headiness, but one that she could never detect. The aromas, the prayers, the rituals – all comforted her.

The church was very modest: taupe walls and altar, mahogany pews and pillars, a great crucifix at the apex depicting Christ just before he died. The cross used to frighten Peggy as a child, Jesus’s face twisted in agony, a deep cut at his torso, the blood painted in great crimson swathes down his hands, wrists, ankles, and feet. She still looked at him the least, choosing instead to focus on the church’s stained glass windows depicting the lives of the saints, or the bas-relief installations showing the Stations of the Cross. When she was young, Peggy had thought the church’s stained glass windows were the most elegant, beautiful pieces of art she had ever seen, and would drift away during Mass to gaze lazily at the light filtering in through their multi-colored panes. She hadn’t yet learned that cathedrals existed, that larger churches could be found just a few towns over, and that her own church’s stained glass windows were in fact quite small.

Peggy chose a pew in the center, and settled in for awhile. She had read once that pews were added late in Catholic church history, that people used to come and stand for the service. Many congregations felt that the additions of pews chopped up the space in the great cathedrals; they filled up cavernous halls that were more powerful uncluttered, with their open expanses. She squinted a bit, tried to imagine the church without pews, what the space would look like, if it would seem empty and blank or spacious and inviting.

Peggy found herself slumping in the pew, and straightened her shoulders.

Elisa had been the tenth girl to become pregnant since Peggy started at St. Anne’s, but this was the earliest announcement in any given school year that she could remember. She thought ahead—if Elisa was three months along, she would deliver in March, and would have to miss the bulk of the spring semester. If she kept the baby, that is. She tried to picture Elisa as a mother, with an infant, and it broke her heart. So much potential, such unformed intelligence—how quickly Elisa would go from innocence to worldliness, with such hard years ahead of her.

When the churches were open spaces, Peggy had learned, the weekly collection wasn’t just money. People brought whatever was needed, both for the church and the community. She imagined the congregation coming in with bread, clothes, tea, meats. The socials after Mass must have been rollicking parties, filled with good food and drink, a time for everyone to relax.

In those days, Elisa’s pregnancy, at her age, would be the norm. She wouldn't be shunned; her condition would be welcomed as the natural order of things. She would most likely be married already. The dangers were of a different time and place: Would she live through her pregnancy and labor? Would her baby live a good long life?

Every Sunday Peggy went to Mass, and every day Peggy went in to class, but she started to feel she wasn’t bringing what was needed.

She mentally scrolled through the other students in her classes, faces just like Elisa’s. Would there be other girls in the same situation this year?

There will be others, Peggy thought. The knowledge was immediate. She could already picture their faces, a long line of upcoming young girls with swollen bellies, the paradox of creating new potential-filled lives, brimming with possibility, while interrupting and limiting their own. Each a child-with-child. Peggy saw new faces and new babies for each year she would teach. Her imaginary throngs filled the pews, clustered beyond into the aisles and open spaces, making a phantom congregation around her.

It was foreseeable. But not irrevocable.