How to Care for a Human Girl

In this exquisitely told and psychologically astute debut novel, two estranged sisters a decade apart in age unexpectedly find themselves pregnant at the same time but take vastly different paths, upending their lives in unpredictable ways-for fans of Kristen Arnett, Otessa Moshfegh, and Raven Leilani.

From "a writer at the top of her game" (The New York Times) comes a bighearted and sharply funny debut novel about two estranged sisters and the crossroads they face after becoming unexpectedly pregnant at the same time.

Two years after the death of their mother, Jada and Maddy Battle both navigate unplanned pregnancies. Jada, a thirty-one-year-old psychology PhD student living in Pittsburgh, quietly obtains an abortion without telling her husband, but the secret causes turmoil in her already shaky marriage. Back home in rural Pennsylvania, nineteen-year-old Maddy, who spends her time caring for birds at a wildlife rehabilitation center, is paid off by the man who got her pregnant to get an abortion. But an unsettling visit to a crisis pregnancy center adds to her doubts about whether to go through with it.

Although Maddy still hasn't forgiven Jada for a terrible betrayal, she goes to her for support, only to discover the cracks in the façade of her sister's seemingly perfect life. As their past resentments boil over, the sisters must navigate the consequences of their choices and determine how best to care for themselves and each other.

With luminous prose and laser-sharp psychological insight, How to Care for a Human Girl is a compassionate and unforgettable examination of the complexities of choice, the special intimacy of sisterhood, and the bizarre ways our heated political moment manifests in daily life.

Autorentext

Ashley Wurzbacher

Klappentext

From “a writer at the top of her game” (The New York Times) comes a bighearted and sharply funny debut novel about two estranged sisters and the crossroads they face after becoming unexpectedly pregnant at the same time.

Two years after the death of their mother, Jada and Maddy Battle both navigate unplanned pregnancies. Jada, a thirty-one-year-old psychology PhD student living in Pittsburgh, quietly obtains an abortion without telling her husband, but the secret causes turmoil in her already shaky marriage. Back home in rural Pennsylvania, nineteen-year-old Maddy, who spends her time caring for birds at a wildlife rehabilitation center, is paid off by the man who got her pregnant to get an abortion. But an unsettling visit to a crisis pregnancy center adds to her doubts about whether to go through with it.

Although Maddy still hasn’t forgiven Jada for a terrible betrayal, she goes to her for support, only to discover the cracks in the façade of her sister’s seemingly perfect life. As their past resentments boil over, the sisters must navigate the consequences of their choices and determine how best to care for themselves and each other.

With luminous prose and laser-sharp psychological insight, How to Care for a Human Girl is a compassionate and unforgettable examination of the complexities of choice, the special intimacy of sisterhood, and the bizarre ways our heated political moment manifests in daily life.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1: Jada 1 JADA March 2018
Make an observation that defines a problem.

Every experiment begins here, in the first step of the scientific method: a witnessing, the bud of a question opening. When Jada woke one morning at the gray genesis of dawn, she felt the problem in her gut before she registered it in her mind, the body always knowing what the brain, in dreams, forgets.

For a moment, when she opened her eyes, the world was blank, innocent in its emptiness. Then context settled on the day like a layer of dust, and things came into focus in all their flaw and detail, and she made her observations, remembered where and when and who she was. Where: Pittsburgh, her bedroom, her husband beside her. When: eighteen months since her mother's death. Who: a woman, grief-drenched and unexpectedly pregnant.

Next to her, Blake dozed, mouth hanging open. Here was the problem, bigger even than the pregnancy itself: although she knew he'd celebrate the news, she couldn't bring herself to share it.

The sun rose, and the hushed world grew dense and strained as though packed into a space too small. She felt a weight on her chest like ghost hands pressing down. One of her own hands went to her abdomen, the other to her heart. So sweet, she thought, and good-the steadfast organ pumping devotedly away. Jada pictured her heart like a plump strawberry ripe in the crate of her chest, and she felt for that diligent fruit the kind of grateful affection she had tried and so far failed to feel for the cluster of cells that had attached itself to her uterine wall.

She had always assumed she would be a mother, had been primed for it ever since her sister, Maddy, was born just before their mother's breast cancer diagnosis. Jada had become a surrogate parent at twelve, caring for Maddy while her mother underwent surgery and chemo, lost her breasts and her hair, her balance and control of her hands. Two bald girls in the house then, one in a bed and one in a crib, both crying inconsolably: mother and child. Before Maddy's birth-their mother was forty and not trying-their parents had referred to her as a miracle. But although Jada loved Maddy, she was plagued by an unfair but unshakable vision of her as a kind of inadvertent bringer of death. Her beginning had been the beginning of the end.

Besides, Jada no longer believed in miracles. She believed in data, in the scientific method. She was earning her doctorate in social psychology, researching the mechanics of choice and decision-making in intimate relationships. Whether it was because of this training or her time raising Maddy or some innate flaw in her character that she could not view her own pregnancy as miraculous, Jada could not be sure.

She'd known for three days, and yesterday, she had almost told Blake. At least, she had considered it. Or at least, she had felt a surge of disproportionate, overwhelming tenderness toward him when he opted to use a stepladder rather than the arm of the couch when reaching up to screw a light bulb into a wall sconce. Tears had welled in her eyes. But she'd said nothing then, and she said nothing now, a pressure in her throat, a pounding in her head.

In the silence and the stillness her hands found each other, as they had often since her mother's death-a childish habit, holding her own hand. She crossed them at the wrists and interlocked her fingers, and somehow it worked, even now; she felt calm, held. She should hold her husband's hand. She should reach for him. Instead she drew into herself, rubbing her finger with her thumb, insisting, It's going to be okay.

Then came the sudden, blaring hysteria of the neighbor's car alarm. Jada