We Rip the World Apart

Evelyn Toronto

Evelyn

Toronto

1997

The living room, to the master bedroom, to the living room again. Evelyn paced. Only two pills. She put a hand to her head. Paced. She was thirty-seven years old. Too old to be a new mother. Antony only had two more years of high school left. People would laugh. People would balk. Evelyn sank to the floor, her back against the wall. She felt her abdomen, knowing and not knowing. Wanting to believe it was all those foods from last night. Not food poisoning, but an array of spices and herbs her body simply wasn’t used to.

She and Kingsley had made it. They were here, now, where they’d wanted to be so many years before. Where, now that they were no longer renting and Kingsley’s job was relatively secure, Evelyn felt she might pull out the dream she’d held secretly for years—a degree of her own. Social work. A chance to dive deeper into the work that had taken her to Jamaica in the first place: her urge to help make the world a better place aligning with her desire to get as far away from her father as seemed humanly possible.

And now this. A baby. Which would mean Evelyn would have to leave work—not for her own education, but to change diapers and wipe a runny nose, to be kept awake, night after night, by a crying infant and her doubled fears—afraid for the safety of not just one child, but two. Two children for whom life would be harder than she’d ever anticipated when she’d married a Jamaican man in a country where their unusual pairing hadn’t been an issue, hadn’t even been that unusual.

Here, she was all too aware of the fragility of her child’s safety. Simply existing, here, held risk.

Zebra.

Risk not only from one side, but both.

Risk. It was why she’d started taking the pills. She’d gone to her doctor just days after she’d heard the first hint of the war on drugs, the war that people made clear was going to be a war on men like Kingsley, like her son. She’d lived her entire childhood fearful for her own safety, watching her mother cower in the corner, cover her bruises with too much makeup. Three years after her mother’s death, when her fears for herself had been realized, Evelyn—bruised and battered—had collected her bags, walked out of the house, made it her mission to get as far from that fear as possible. And she had…only to end up back in a place where her child would grow up in fear, too.

She was sick of it.

A part of her itched to pack her bags again. Leave. Start a new life. But she couldn’t leave what was already a part of her. A baby: after all these years of lying to her husband, hiding the pills, making him believe that rushed, terrifying hour of laboring Antony, which ended in so much blood, had broken something inside of her. After turning away from his questions that maybe she or he, or both of them, should see a doctor. After telling him if it was meant to happen, it would.

Evelyn’s breath came quick. The lie could continue—if she wanted. It was legal now. Safe. She wouldn’t even have to risk her life, go to some back alley on some dirty table, where she was likely to bleed out.

Evelyn stared, the patterned paper on the wall pulsing and twirling before her eyes. In the hall, she turned, sank, back pressed against the wood paneling. The front door opened and Kingsley’s footsteps sounded through the living room, the kitchen, back toward the hall.

“Evelyn?” Worry tightened his throat, dread hers.

She wanted to pretend it wasn’t true. Maybe, even, make it so. She wanted to live a life that wasn’t only about her family, but her, too. A career, not a job. She wanted less fear, not more. But as she looked at her husband after so many years of lying, she couldn’t lie anymore.

“Evelyn?”

She stared, her breath frozen.

“Eve—”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

Kingsley whooped. He ran to Evelyn, pulled her to standing, then wrapped his arms around her and lifted her. She yelped as her foot banged into the wall. “Oh, I’m sorry, sorry. Darling, are you all right?”

Evelyn nodded, thankful for the pain. The way it presented a reason to wince, rather than burst with joy.

“This is incredible. Pregnant.” His eyes lit with the type of energy she remembered. He took her hand, drew her to the living room, thrust the hammer aside, and pulled her down beside him. “I thought it was impossible. I thought—” He paused, his brow crinkling in concern. “You said think . You’re not sure?”

“Pretty sure.” Evelyn’s chest constricted. Why had she spewed it out like that? Why hadn’t she made certain first?

“Well, we can find out, can’t we? You don’t even need a doctor’s appointment anymore. The pharmacy. I think—” Kingsley turned from Evelyn, tapped his hand on his knee. This was why she’d blurted the words. So Kingsley would know the same moment she did. So there’d be no possibility of keeping it from him, continuing the lie with an act he would never forgive. “Yes”—he nodded more to himself than her—“without a prescription or anything. People just go to the pharmacy, pick up some test, and know in minutes.”

Evelyn exhaled. “That’s right.”

“A baby.” The skin around Kingsley’s eyes crinkled. Moisture made them glisten.

Guilt pulsed and throbbed.

“After all these years.”

For the lie.

Kingsley wrapped Evelyn in his arms. He pulled back, then kissed her long and hard. He hugged her again. “Let’s go.” He stood and put out his hand.

She looked at it, fear like a noose around her neck. “Now?”

“Of course now.”

Evelyn met his gaze. She was so old. The world was so awful. And she wasn’t sure she would have had even one biracial baby, let alone two, if she had known she’d be raising them here.

Kingsley took her hand, pulled her up, and laughed.