Nina: A short story by Natalie Marsh

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Marrah laid next to Nina in the strip of grass between their houses, fingers interlaced behind her head. It was the summer after senior year of high school, still mid-June, and the days were elastic in those months before college, shortening and then lengthening and then shortening again. The two of them had spent that morning in a Walgreens bathroom stall, and Nina was pregnant after all, verified by four tests, since the two-packs were on sale. All afternoon, silence padded the space between them; Marrah squinted at the sun and tried to guess what Nina was thinking.

Of course, Nina said, there was the issue of starting at the University of Iowa in the fall. But also—and now she spoke in her most brutally sarcastic voice—her parents would kill her. At this she flung her hands up above her face and clapped out each syllable. Nina’s parents were Catholic, like most of the families in this part of town, except for Marrah’s. Nina had stopped going to church two years prior, and her parents had thrown up their hands, saying there was nothing to be done. But there were still rules, Nina would imitate her mother saying. There were still principles.

Nina rolled herself towards Marrah on the grass. She picked at the grass between them as she spoke, one blade at a time, always pinching the base so that the stalk came out whole, smooth and white at the very bottom. 

“And mostly,” she said, “I just feel like there’s this foreign thing inside me now, just growing and growing.” Then, screwing up her face, she added, “I need it out.” She said this in the airy, theatrical voice she sometimes used to imitate people she didn’t like. Marrah just kept looking up at the sky.

“Oh, come on,” Nina said. “Don’t get all serious on me. Please.”

“Sorry,” Marrah said, “I just feel like I would be more worried if I were you.”

Nina breathed a laugh through her nose. She got up off the ground, as if to go inside, but then she stood there stretching, twisting her torso from side to side. 

When Marrah was ten, Nina’s family moved into the house next door. Nina had been nine at the time, and Marrah remembered feeling a quiet superiority when her mother told her this. But Nina had been tall for her age—a whole head taller than Marrah—and she spoke quickly and easily, the words simply forming when she needed them. Marrah had to think a whole sentence out before she could say it aloud, and even then the words sometimes sounded strange, thick on her tongue. Still, something vibrated between the two of them right from the start. 

Something in Nina had always put Marrah at ease, even at that first meeting in the yard. She couldn’t place it exactly, not then and not in the years that followed, but she wondered if it had to do with Nina’s impulsivity, the way she would latch onto an idea and bring Marrah effortlessly into it. Like that time Nina found half a can of purple paint in the basement and told Marrah they were redoing her room. Marrah assumed it was all planned out, that Nina’s parents had requested it; Nina had been so confident, and Marrah never made something permanent without permission. So she got to work, and the two of them had covered everything in a dripping layer of purple before Nina’s mother finally came upstairs and sighed, telling Marrah it was time to go home.

Marrah was still stretched out on the yellowish grass, looking up at Nina bending this way and that. 

“What does it feel like?” she finally asked. 

“What does what feel like?” Nina said.

“Being pregnant?”

“Oh,” Nina said, laughing again. It made Marrah vaguely angry, the way she kept laughing like that. “I don’t know,” she said. “My boobs hurt. I’m bloated a lot. I mean, maybe I can’t feel it but I do feel something.”

“Do you know—”

“What I’m gonna do?” 

Marrah nodded halfheartedly.  “Great question, I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Nina said. 

Marrah’s ears tingled, the red spreading through them. These moments always sucked the breath out of her. It had only happened once or twice before, when suddenly she felt she didn’t know Nina, this person who she should know better than anyone else. Were these moments becoming more frequent? Was this how it went, as friends grew up? She stared past Nina, who looked straight at her now.

“Sorry,” Marrah said, “stupid question.” But Nina was no longer listening; she stared vacantly out at the street. The sweat blossomed through the back of Marrah’s T-shirt, and she propped herself up on her elbows, then rolled over and began to stand. She thought she might move closer to Nina, put a hand on her shoulder, say something reassuring. But she could tell from the way Nina kept looking out at the street, from the way she kept her head very still, that the conversation was over. 

Marrah helped her mother and Jodie with dinner. She pried open cans of baked beans and dumped them into a saucepan, laid spongy hamburger buns neatly on four plates, tossed iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. She wished she wasn’t so afraid of pain, then she would burn herself on the saucepan or slice her thumb—just slightly—while chopping the lettuce. Something to create a pause, an opening. Maybe she would even blurt, Nina’s pregnant! and her mother and Jodie would stop, laying down knives and mixing spoons and looking straight at Marrah, really looking at her. But Marrah did none of this, just kept stirring the beans, staring into their bubbles.

After they all sat down, their mother stood to turn up the radio, just as she did every night. Jodie pushed the food around on her plate, scraping ranch dressing off the lettuce with the side of her fork. 

“I don’t get why you serve yourself all that if you’re not going to eat it,” Marrah said, dragging her bun through the steaming beans to sop them up. 

“I don’t like dressing,” Jodie said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. 

“Aunt Leah has some new cats,” their father said. Their mother reached one hand up towards the counter to turn the radio back down, shoveling lettuce into her mouth with the other hand. Ranch oozed out and gathered in the corners of her lips. 

“A friend gave them to her for the barn,” he continued. “She says there’s too many though.” 

“Ah,” their mother said, nodding. “Doesn’t want them running around making babies.” A square of lettuce pasted itself to one of her front teeth. 

Marrah got up for another hamburger bun, wishing her mother wouldn’t continue to use phrases like “making babies” around her and Jodie, who was already sixteen.

“Anyway,” their father went on. “She asked if we want one. I told her no.”

“Why?” Marrah interrupted. It surprised her, the sound of her own voice. 

“I thought you girls didn’t like cats?” her mother said. 

Again, Marrah wished her mother would stop using phrases like “you girls.”

“I could take care of it,” Marrah said. 

“You’re leaving in three months,” Jodie said. “And I do not want to take care of any cat.” She was still scraping ranch off the translucent slivers of lettuce. 

“I’ll bring it with me,” Marrah said. 

“Since when do we like cats?” her mother asked again. 

“Please? Maybe it would help with the transition, I don’t know.” Marrah felt something blooming in her center, a longing she hadn’t known was there. It had started off as a sort of game, the pleading for the cat. But now she needed this cat. She thought she might cry if she couldn’t have it. 

“I would drive to pick it up,” she said. “Nina could come with me,” she added, knowing her parents wouldn’t want her to drive three hours alone through the countryside. 

“You’re sure the university will allow it?” her father asked, and Marrah nodded forcefully, saying something about emotional support animals that sounded true. 

“Well,” her mother said, wiping crusted ranch from the creases of her lips. “I suppose we can always give it back to Aunt Leah if it doesn’t work out.” Jodie glared from her plate of lettuce shreds. 

They left the next morning, with directions scrawled on half a sheet of notebook paper for when they lost service, out where the roads started to wind and dip through the hills surrounding Aunt Leah’s farm. Nina’s stepdad had lent them his old beater car for the drive, Marrah was told. She did not ask what “lent” meant in this situation. All she knew was that Nina’s stepdad, a long-faced, stiff man, kept a shotgun on his dresser. She had seen it once when, staying the night at Nina’s, she searched for the bathroom in confused half-sleep and walked right into the bedroom. She had backed out quickly, but not before the gun’s sleek body caught her eye, reflecting moonlight among the scattered items on the dresser’s surface—matchbooks, a wristwatch, a palm-sized statue of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.  

“Do I get a cat, too?” Nina asked, turning down the radio, which had begun to blare static. 

“Sure,” Marrah said. “They could be friends.”

“Make plans?” Nina asked, raising just one eyebrow at Marrah, turning to look at her in the passenger seat for half a second.

“What?”

“I thought you said, ‘They could make plans—’”

“No, no, they could be friends.”

“I could’ve sworn you said ‘make plans.’”

Marrah looked out the window—at the wide sky, at the oily feathers of a rooster pecking around in someone’s front yard. The two of them had been mishearing each other lately, talking over and past one another, coming up with whole sentences that were never there in the first place.

After that, Nina felt sick and pulled over. In the steep ditch beside the road, Marrah gathered Nina’s curly hair in a bouquet at the base of her neck, rubbed the middle of her back, told her everything would be alright in a low, even voice. Twice, Nina stood to get back in the car, thinking she had vomited up all she could, and then it began again. They stopped twice more before finally pulling into Aunt Leah’s gravel driveway, brown dust kicking up behind them. 

“I don’t know,” Nina said. “That’s never happened before.”

The sight of vomit made Marrah lightheaded ever since Nina’s mother remarried three years ago. Nina’s older cousin had been bartending at the wedding, and so Nina must have had four or five rum and cokes before Marrah put it all together—which is when she found Nina on the bathroom floor, vomit caked in her hair, oozing down the front of her dress. I’m sorry, Nina mumbled over and over while Marrah helped her into the shower and scrubbed her dress clean, and then brought her glass after glass of milk, which she had read, somewhere on the internet, was the thing to do in these situations. The next morning, Nina just laughed that soaring laugh of hers. Marrah tried to laugh too, she really did; she wanted to take shots of stolen vodka in someone’s bedroom and feel her chest growing tingly and warm; she wanted to whisper and laugh about it the next day. But she couldn’t laugh, she just couldn’t. She still winced at the image of Nina on the bathroom floor, branded into her memory even now, three years later. 

Nina had barely shut off the car’s rattling engine before Aunt Leah flung open the screened porch door and came striding out, her rubber boots popping against her bare knees with each step. She wore stained cargo shorts and a wide-brimmed hat, and her face was creased and weathered, the sun or the wind having burned her cheeks. 

“Girls!” she said, “how good it is to see you!”

Before Marrah had sidled herself out of the passenger seat, Aunt Leah and Nina were embracing, Aunt Leah murmuring about how grown-up Nina looked, about how it had been too long, about what a lovely woman she must be turning into. Aunt Leah was always overdoing it, as Marrah’s mother would say. 

“And you,” Aunt Leah said, turning to Marrah now. “What a wonder getting those braces off has done!” Marrah just smiled and hugged her aunt. She could hear Nina breath out a laugh over her shoulder, the kind of sound you could only identify as a laugh if you knew the person. 

Aunt Leah led the two of them around to the back of the house, where the entry to the barn stood. Wiping her hands on her work shirt, she made her obligatory apology for her appearance; she had been weeding and spraying all morning, she told them. As they crossed the yard and neared the barn’s massive sliding door, a small orange and white cat slinked out from behind a thinning shrub. Nina’s face opened, her eyes following the cat’s narrow body across the yard. All at once, the cat leapt straight upward, and they all stopped to watch. There had been a bird. Marrah heard the purring of wings as the bird pivoted and fluttered frantically, a near miss. The cat kept strutting across the yard just as quickly, as if nothing had happened. 

“I won’t let you take that one,” Aunt Leah laughed. “That one is my primary mouse-catcher.”

“Awww,” Nina whined, “I like that one.”

“Oh?” Aunt Leah said, raising her eyebrows at Marrah, then at Nina, then back again. “You’re taking one too, then?”

“Can I?” Nina said, smiling like a child.

“Well,” Aunt Leah said, “I don’t see why not.”

Once they had laid eyes on each of the cats—some dancing along beams in the airy barn, others down in the sandy paddock, swatting at insects—Aunt Leah led the two of them to the patio furniture out front.

“Why don’t I get you two some lemonade?” she said, already halfway inside, the screen door swinging shut behind her. Marrah turned to Nina, who sat with her feet pulled in, perched like a gargoyle on the rusting metal chair. 

“So,” she said. “Which one are you bringing home?”

“Oh,” Nina laughed, “I don’t actually want one.” 

“You don’t?” Marrah said, and she tried to keep her voice from wavering, because suddenly the blade of sun across her shoulders was too hot; the afternoon heat was too heavy, and everything was slipping, slipping, and Marrah was back in seventh grade, next to Nina on the swing set. I don’t actually like him, Nina was saying, I just think it’s funny to see his reaction. And Marrah was kicking at the dirt below her feet, and squeezing the thick chain ropes on either side, her fists going white, and wondering what it would be like to kiss a boy for a joke, to let him touch you anywhere he wanted because it was just so funny, to see his reaction. 

“What?” Nina said, frowning. “There’s more for you to choose from now.”

And Marrah thought about how she had felt at the dinner table the night before, how she had needed this cat, how she couldn’t understand pleading for something so precious, something so delicate and perfectly formed, and then saying no, I don’t actually want one. And then she was looking at Nina, thinking about the seed growing inside of her, and she wondered if Nina thought that was funny, too. Getting invited to a football party and wearing a skimpy dress, dancing around, saying, whoever wants me can have me—that was funny, right? It was just so funny, to see their reactions, wasn’t it?

“Marrah—” Nina said as Aunt Leah came down the porch steps, still in those enormous boots, a pitcher of lemonade in one hand and paper cups in the other. Nina turned and smiled, all innocence. But Aunt Leah could be perceptive, too, and glancing at Marrah, said, “I’ll be in the barn. Holler if you need me.”

But it was too late; the moment was gone. Nina just sipped her lemonade, looking out at the trellises of snap peas, the thin vines snaking upward. 

“I guess, yeah,” Marrah said.

“What?” 

“That there’s more for me to choose from.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Nina took another sip of lemonade, long and slow. “You know,” she said.

Marrah leaned forward in her chair, the backs of her thighs peeling away from the metal where it left crisscrossed imprints. Nina fidgeted with her paper cup, pinching and folding its rim with the tips of her fingers. The sun came through the willow canopy above them in wavering patches. 

“You know,” Nina started again, “it wasn’t how I thought it would be.”

Marrah nodded, motioning for Nina to keep talking. 

“Like, I thought it would be ecstasy or something, right? This gathering up of all the separate parts of myself into this perfect moment, you know?”

“Yeah,” Marrah said. “Right.”

“But it wasn’t like that at all,” Nina said. “It was just painful.”

“You mean—”

“Yes, Marrah, yes, that’s what I mean, okay? I regret it, okay?”

And then Nina was crying, and instead of biting her lip and staring, Marrah was standing up; she was going to Nina, bringing an arm around Nina’s shoulders until her crying slowed, and she took a breath and looked up. 

“Hey,” Marrah said, “hey. It’s going to be alright. We’re going to get this figured out.” And she didn’t know what she meant when she said that, not really, because she just kept thinking about that seed growing inside of Nina, and it all felt so far out of her reach.

Nina stopped crying just as quickly as she had started, just as she always had. Marrah thought about the day Nina’s parents divorced, the way Nina had come running down her porch steps and into Marrah’s front yard, sobbing all at once, running to Marrah to nestle against her chest, and in the next moment her face going calm, her cheeks dry. And Marrah thinking, what was that? 

“Can we pick a cat?” Nina said, with that same childish pleading as before. 

“Sure,” Marrah said, rubbing Nina’s shoulder as she stood. 

Marrah poured the rest of her lemonade in the grass and set the pitcher and cups on the front steps as the two of them made their way around back again, this time more slowly. The orange and white cat still prowled at the base of its shrub, seeing rustlings invisible to everyone else. The other cats paid no attention to them as they reentered the barn, except for a small speckled gray one who watched them from the opposite windowsill. Marrah remembered Jodie saying you’re leaving in three months, and felt a flutter of hesitation in her stomach, heard an inching voice in the back of her mind saying, don’t. But the cat on the windowsill was still watching them, and Nina began to walk toward it. And then there was this rising feeling in Marrah’s chest, this weaving of something between the three of them, her, Nina and the cat. She thought about the fall, how she and Nina would go off to this new, unknown place which had lived in their minds for so long, and how the future would just keep growing and growing, unspooling quickly out of reach, beyond their control. And then, that was every moment, wasn’t it? The future unfolding in these tiny, unexpected spurts, in a way no one was ever prepared for? Nina was just arms-length from the cat now, and its perfect triangle of a nose twitched with curiosity. Marrah looked at Nina, the sun through the window dancing across her cheekbone, her collarbone. Nina reached her hands out toward the cat.

“This one?” she said. 

“That one,” Marrah said, and Nina took its soft body in her arms. 

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Natalie Marsh lives in Chicago, and loves to write stories about growing up, the limits of the body, and the nature of the mind. Natalie won the ACM Nick Adams Short Story contest in 2021. 

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20 October 2023