Kareela
After leaving the BLM headquarters, the file on Antony a weight in my bag, I tiptoe into the apartment. My eyes moist and stinging, I thank the darkness as I crawl into bed. Thomas rolls over, drapes an arm around me, and pulls me close. I shape my body into his, wanting and not wanting to tell him of the folder and everything in it. Wanting and not wanting to stay in his arms forever. This man, this wonderful, kind, beautiful man who has no idea of the fear I feel, the anger, the pain. Who never could. Not in the specific way Rania and Jasmine do, that Antony did.
My body wants to shake, to let the sobs take over. I take deep, slow breaths and force my mind to focus on tomorrow, the best order to address each task. I breathe, and plan—what I should and shouldn’t say to each client—plan and breathe, until sleep creeps upon me.
When I wake, alone in the bed, I determine to put the words in the file behind me, pretend they don’t matter.
Yet all through the day, as I speak with client after client, meet with my adviser, who emphasizes how pleased she is with me, I see those words, my mind never stopping, continually yearning to piece them together, to have even the smallest aspect of them make sense. I see, too, my parents in a way I’d never considered—that I’m afraid to, because of the uncomfortable itch it brings that although all these years I’ve thought they failed me, maybe, in a way, I’ve failed them, too.
As I pull my body up the stairs to our apartment in the early evening, the words in that folder, the questions and revelations they prompted, are still there, swirling, merging, threatening to exit my mind and form a chain around me, restricting my movement, my ability to live.
Inside, the scent of onions and garlic and beef takes me to Gran. Yuh brotha, she says, he loved his food, and aye dat boy could eat. Just like yuh daddy. It hard to fill dem up.
There are things I remembered, but memories are uncertain, like the fragments of a dream in the moments after waking. So I asked Gran to tell me about him. She only knew him well as a baby. She remembered his cheeks. Chubby and round, with one dimple. His laugh. High pitched and squeaky. The way he toddled on that one visit back island. Five years passed before she saw him again. Then another. Her memories of him end before mine begin.
“Babe?”
In the kitchen, Thomas smiles, his pleasure at seeing me radiating, and it reminds me of the first time I saw that smile, over a year and a half ago. How when he looked at me, talked to me, it was as if he was focused on me and only me. Not some Black girl. Not as a way to carve one more fetishized notch on his bedpost. But me. He pulls me in with one arm, kisses me long, bringing back yesterday’s intimacies.
“How was your day?”
I hoist myself up on the counter, legs dangling like a child’s, remembering how I did this same thing on our first official date—surprised at my immediate comfort in his apartment. “All right. My supervisor’s pretty pleased with my work.”
“We’re both killing it!” He grins, then turns to the stove, jostling the food around, prompting fresh pops and sizzles, and the memory continues. How he grinned as he looked at me, propped up there on his counter, told me just because he’d offered to cook for me, that didn’t mean I got to sit there looking pretty and do no work.
He lowers the heat, turns back, smiling, and motions for me to join in, like he did that night. He’d given me the job of kneading the dough for the pasta, hoping, I imagined, that I wouldn’t quite know how to do it and he’d have to sidle up behind me, place his warm hands over mine, and whisper directions, his breath on the back of my neck. It’d been the best foreplay I’d ever had—emphasized by the fact that he extended it not just through the preparation of that meal but for weeks, drawing it out before that first explosive night between the covers. With each subsequent date, he let me fall deeper into his laughs, his smiles, the way he made me feel more wanted, more seen, than any guy I’d ever dated—never mentioning the bigness of my hair or shade of my skin, or asking what my background was or whether I usually dated white guys or Black. I felt so secure; it prompted me to do whatever I could to keep that feeling. Keep his interest alive.
“I called my doctor’s office today,” he says, jolting me back to the present. “They agreed to take you on. They have an appointment next Tuesday, at four, which I can make. If you can get off work about a half hour early?”
My body stiffens as all those tender memories from the early months of our relationship drain away. He speaks as if we’ve discussed this—beyond me saying I’m not ready—as if yesterday changed everything. “I don’t want to see a doctor.”
He sighs. “I know, okay. And maybe I shouldn’t have called without talking to you, but you don’t want to talk about it, and Ree, this is the responsible thing to do.”
I stare at him, trying to figure out the last time I felt secure—though I know it’s me that’s changed, me that’s looking at myself differently, not him.
“I don’t mean having the baby,” he continues. “I know you haven’t made your decision yet. I get that. But that means your decision may be yes, and if it is, well, then you want to make sure that you’re healthy. The baby’s healthy.”
I shift from thinking about our relationship to what’s growing inside of me. He’s right, but I wish he wasn’t…because this baby, right now, may be the safest it will ever be, and I don’t want to know if it isn’t.
“Like you said before, maybe we’re going through all this, and it’s nothing, not even a baby, just a conglomeration of cells. Wouldn’t it make more sense to know?”
No, I say, but only in my mind, as I tense at the thought of this being not a conglomeration of cells, but a potential person I have to decide whether to keep or not.
“Even if you—” The tone of his voice tightens my chest. “I mean, it’s your choice, obviously, and I don’t want this to happen, but…well…”
“Spit it out!” I snap, surprised at the forcefulness of my tone.
He flinches. Clears his throat.
“Sorry.” I place a hand to my forehead, battling to expel the fear, the uncertainty that revealed itself in anger, out of my voice. “What is it?”
“I’ve been thinking.” He leans against the counter. “And honestly, it feels like all I’m thinking about lately. And I know this seems crazy. And I know it would be asking a lot. So much, but…”
He trails off, and my voice is softer this time, but still tight. “But what?”
“I’ve been thinking about my dad,” he continues. “And what it felt like when he abandoned us. Me. I know this is totally different. I get that. But I don’t want to abandon this child. I don’t want to be a person, like him, who decides life would be easier without their kid, so just… I know it’s not the same—”
“Of course it’s not the same. What are you even saying?”
“I…” He rubs his hand through his hair, uselessly, as the blond strands settle over his eye again. “Well…if you don’t want the baby, and if you’re willing to…well…I was thinking that I still want it. To keep it. Even without you.”
I hear his words, but they don’t quite make sense.
“I mean, I want you and this baby. I want to be a family. But if you decide, as it is your choice, that you don’t want this baby, and again, I know it’d be asking a lot, but would you let me have it? Raise it. On my own. Totally on my own, if you wanted. Or you could have some role. A small role. A big role. Whatever you want.”
I step back, almost feeling the earth shake as another invisible fissure widens between us.
“I’m in, is what I’m saying. All in. Whether it means having this baby with you or without you.” He takes a step toward me. “As I said, I know it would be asking a lot.”
“A hell of a lot.”
He flinches. “Yes.” He rubs a hand along his opposite forearm. “And I don’t want that, as a first choice. I want us. But I also want this child. And I recognize it’s your choice. It’s your body.” He hesitates. “But it’s my child, too. And as I said, already I’ve started to fall in love. So I want to know if it’s there, real, and growing as it should. If being a father, a good father, is even a possibility.”
I turn from him, step out of the kitchen, the beat of my heart firm against my chest, and place a hand on my abdomen, imagining the life that is and isn’t there, is and isn’t real. If I go to the doctor, hear a heartbeat, I fear this thing inside me will stop being a potential person, but become an actual one. And I’m not ready for the reality. I can think about ending the life of a concept, but to end the life of a being with a beating heart, made up of my blood, my father’s, the blood that flowed through Antony…
To end the life of a child I’ve always wanted, but don’t want yet.
I turn back, wondering if what he’s asking, though it seems so unreasonable, isn’t. Except he’s gone. Silence filling the space: no more sizzle. No more pop.
He sits on the kitchen floor, back against the counter, elbows on his knees, hands folded as if in prayer or supplication, gaze straight ahead.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
His head nods slightly, turns toward me. “Why don’t you want it? And me, do you—?”
“I want you,” I say, because what else am I supposed to? None of this is his fault.
His lips lift the tiniest bit, on one side only. “Are you sure? You’ve been so—”
“This isn’t about you.” I speak before he can finish, knowing, at least in part, my words are a lie. “We’re young; the—”
“The world is shitty.” He pushes himself to stand. “We don’t have our careers solidified.”
I press my lips, look to the window, my thoughts again on Antony—how senseless it all was. On my father, who, when it comes down to it, died from those same bullets. How Thomas’s words are truer than he could ever realize.
“But we have each other.” He steps closer, the pain in his voice a rushing wave upon me. “And we can figure out the rest.”
I swallow through a lump so large it hurts. Despite this shit world, he has a point, at least about the ultrasound. It makes more sense to know. And, perhaps, I owe him that much. “I’ll see the doctor.”
He nods. “Thank you.” We stand there, one breath, two. So close, but horribly distanced. He gestures to the stove. “You hungry?”
“Yeah.” I’m not. But food is how we connect, so I give him this.