But then, back to dumbfounded: Can the principles of reproduction be this unapologetically simple?In a hormonal haze of shock and anxiety, I wander out of Walmart feeling bizarrely compelled to confirm this discovery with a medical professional immediately. Surely a Walmart test could be wrong. I spot a free pregnancy counseling clinic right across the street. Is it located adjacent to Walmart for exactly this purpose? I register the Christian connotation of the term “pregnancy counseling clinic” only when I reach a sign adorned by an angelic, soft-focus fetus.I gulp. Here I am, pro-choice to the core (regular donor to Planned Parenthood, organizer of my university’s delegation to the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, foaming-at-the-mouth liberal who hightailed it out of the deep Midwest to join the ranks of the urban left at the earliest possible opportunity), about to avail myself of the kind of Christian-right clinic that intimidates vulnerable preggos out of abortions. In other words, about to walk into exactly what I’ve been protesting for years. Can I do this?A bilious anxiety rises in my throat again. The only thing I want, so viscerally in this moment, is not to be alone. The clinic is free, I reassure myself, blind with emotional need, and they’ll be nice, since I’m not looking for an abortion. (At least, I don't think I am. Am I?) This is all happening so fast. Desperation acquaints a woman with strange bedfellows. Sometimes that’s where babies come from.Driven onward by that anxious loneliness — and some extremely Midwestern instinct, like not wanting to be impolite — I knock on the door and am met by a smiling, extremely perky, late-middle-aged woman.“Can you tell me if I’m really pregnant?” I ask breathlessly.“I sure can,” she says.“I mean, I already took a test at Walmart, and it was positive,” I ramble on. “But I guess I just wanted to confirm.”“You bet, honey,” the nice lady says. “Come on in.”She takes me into a pleasant room and gives me a test almost identical to the one I’ve just taken at Walmart. Obedient in my farce, I pee again, presenting the stick: PREGNANT.“Congratulations!” she says, hugging me, beaming. “Were you trying?”“Um,” I say, unsure how to answer this question honestly. “I guess it’s more like God’s sent my husband and me a happy surprise.” These are carefully chosen words, meant to convey that I’m already married and saved and not currently in need of recommendations from her on either issue.“Doesn’t He just do that?” the lady replies evenly, beaming again. “You can keep this,” she hands the test back, wrapped in a Kleenex, and tells me a story of a woman she knows who stuck her positive test in her husband’s French fries. You know, to surprise him. I laugh, but that’s disgusting.