We Rip the World Apart

Kareela

On the weekend, Jasmine drags me to a house party in Preston. Though if I’m truthful, dragged is not the right word. I’m happy to go, to be distracted, to lose myself in a dark room with pounding music to drown out my thoughts. To hide. There’s no hiding at home, where Thomas’s eyes are never silent—asking, pleading, wondering—while every other part of him pretends he’s patiently awaiting the doctor’s appointment, to see if this thing in me really is a thing at all.

It isn’t a dark room we enter. It’s many. And lit. As we step through the front door and into the heat, I’m not merely Jasmine’s tagalong. I’m greeted and hugged and waved at as we weave through halls and corridors, then linger outdoors, where two men sit around a bonfire—one with tight white curls, the other with salt and pepper dreads—pounding away on djembes with the vigor of men less than half their age.

Children of five dance as heatedly and skillfully as the women of sixty. I watch, mesmerized, the rhythm so good, so sweet I feel swept away before Jasmine grabs my arm and pulls me back inside. People know my name. Several call me sister. And with all that’s gone down the past weeks, with these hormones that still overtake me at the most annoying times, tears burst to my eyes. This feels like family. Like home. The one I’d dreamed of, yearned for.

I belong.

In a large open-concept living room, with all the furniture pushed to the walls, the bass pounds. Jasmine, my hand still in hers, spins me. Laughs. Our bodies intertwine, then part, then meet again, a dance that goes back generations.

And for a brief moment, I wonder—had Antony found this, too? Is this what drew him in? This incredible sense of oneness and ancestry I’ve never felt elsewhere? Is this why he stood—so impassioned to protect it—when everyone else dropped to the ground?

The DJ mixes the beats seamlessly, hip-hop, reggae, old-school funk, then eases in, so smooth, to a song I’ve never heard but that prompts a roar of excitement from the crowd. The bodies on the makeshift dance floor rearrange themselves and I’m shuffled among them as people lean forward, back, one foot out, and then the other.

“You don’t know it?” Jasmine shouts in my ear as I stand, tempted for only a moment to hurry off the floor, watch from the sidelines.

“No,” I yell.

“Follow me.” She stands close, shouts directions in my ear. I stumble, almost trip, my moves disjointed, a beat behind, until they’re not. That other dance party drifts into my memory—Antony, Mom, Dad, and me. Grooving. Joyous—that moment melding with this as we slide forward, twist back, spin, jump, hands in the air for a collective whoop before we go through the motions again. It’s an orgy of joy, of belonging, of letting go of my insecurities and fear. It’s as if for the first time since that afternoon in my family’s kitchen, there’s no worry, no uncertainty. I simply am.

The beat shifts again and it’s over all too soon, but I’m glowing. I’m on fire and am tugged off the floor as the bodies rearrange themselves for a slow reggae beat.

“Look at you!” Jasmine leans against a wall in the den, the music muffled enough that she doesn’t quite have to shout. “Moving and grooving!” She winks, pulls me further, until we land in the dining room, the table spread with chips and dip, chicken wings, an assortment of cakes and squares, a plethora of liquor bottles, and a keg on the floor beside it.

“Better than a club, huh?” She laughs again, picks up a bite-sized square, and pops it in her mouth. She closes her eyes, her face an expression of ecstasy. “Oh, these are Mama C’s. Yes. I was so hoping these were Mama C’s.”

“Mama—?”

“Sasha’s granny.” Her eyes open. “I’m not a fan of how she makes grandbabies, but her Coconut Toto is pretty much heaven on yo’ tongue. Try it.” She grabs a piece, and before I’ve had a chance to take it from her, it’s inches from my mouth and I open wide just in time. “Heaven?” She grins and I can’t quite smile, my mouth full of wonder, so I nod. Heaven. “What are you drinking?” she asks. “There’s quite the array tonight.”

I chew and cover my mouth with my hand. “Rum and—” I stop. A quick chill shooting through me. “Just Coke, actually.”

“Rum and Coke? Let’s see.” Jasmine searches through the bottles.

“No.” I finish chewing, then swallow, put a hand on her arm. “And don’t worry.” I spy a Coke bottle and grab it. “I’ll get it myself.”

“Mm-hmm.” She steps back, sizing me up, a hand on her hip. “Well, we know you’re not driving.”

I ignore her, grab a cup, and pour.

Her hand lands on my shoulder, prompting a twitch. “Obviously, your business is your business. But if this is business we should be celebrating, I’d love to celebrate. And if it’s not, if you’re uncertain, or scared, or upset, or whatever, and you want someone to talk to, if you don’t already have someone, well, I can be that person.”

I rub a hand along my hip, wipe off the condensation from the Coke bottle, bide my time. At last I turn to her. “You’re gleaning this from the fact that I don’t feel like drinking?”

She laughs. “Gleaning! Girl, the words you use. And no, I’m gleaning it from the fact that the stomach bug you had a couple weeks ago lasted way too long. And your breasts: those knockers are huuuge .”

Although I haven’t had a bout of nausea in almost a week, my stomach twists.

“So you are, huh?” Her expression sobers. “You know what you’re going to do?”

I shake my head.

“And this with all that info about your brother? Damn.” She crosses the space between us, wraps her arms around me, and with that brief mention of Antony, of the file, of the impending reality of this baby, all the joy from tonight seeps out of me. “You wanna talk about it?”

I shrug. “It’s a party. Not exactly—”

“Don’t worry about that.” She grasps my upper arm, her eyebrows scrunched to almost meet in the middle. “But first, libations.” She winks. “How do you like that one, wordsmith?”

I let out a little laugh.

“Okay. Coke for you.” She takes a cup, the bottles, then pours. “Rum and Coke for me.”

A few minutes later, we’re in the basement rec room—on one of two long couches. Here, the music is low enough for conversation, but loud enough that if we speak softly, the few guys playing pool on the other side of the room won’t hear us.

“How long have you known?” Jasmine asks.

I bite my lip, rub one hand over the other. “Officially, a little over a month. Unofficially, a bit longer.”

“So you’re…?”

“About ten weeks. Maybe eleven.”

“Girl, shoot! And you’re not sure if you’re going to keep it?”

“Well…”

“You don’t have a lot of time.”

“I do. Until twenty weeks at least.”

“Na-uh.” Jasmine twists her lips. “Not here. Fifteen weeks six days in Nova Scotia, and you’ve probably already missed the pill option, if you’re right about your dates.”

“What?” The news hits like a slap. I turn my gaze to the carpet: bright orange shag. “How do you know this? Why don’t I?”

“Clients. Friends. I’m guessing you never had a reason to know.” She pauses. “You’re not drinking.”

I look to Jasmine. “Well, in case, you know?”

“Yeah.” Jasmine’s cheeks puff before she blows out a long breath. “That makes sense. Though I think if you really didn’t want it, you would have made up your mind by now, and you would drink without worrying about it…”

“Not necessarily.”

“No, not—”

“Thomas wants it.”

Jasmine raises a brow. “It’s not really his choice, though.”

“He wants it even if I don’t. He says he’ll take care of it, that if I don’t want to, I don’t have to have anything to do with the child. Or I can have some role, whatever I want.”

“Damn. Really?” Jasmine leans back. “Maybe I need to be giving this white boy a bit more credit…but also, that’s a truckload of pressure.”

A flare of defensiveness rises within me. “He’s a good guy. A great guy. I’m lucky to be with him.”

Jasmine’s smile softens. She places a hand on my knee. “I’m sorry. I’m sure he’s great. It’s just…you don’t talk about him much. If ever anyone brings him up or asks if he’s coming to stuff, you always, well, it seems like he’s really busy. Like he doesn’t have much time for you, or like you don’t want him around.”

I shake my head, a short laugh erupting. “It’s not that. It’s—I hardly fit. Do you think he would?”

She stares at me, something like pity in her expression, but no confusion. “You fit, Ree.” She shakes her head. “Did you not see yourself out on that floor?”

“No.” I draw out my voice. “I did not see myself.”

She pushes my shoulder. Laughs. “Anyway. You could bring that boy if you wanted to.”

“You remember the staff party?”

“What?”

“The way people looked at us. Their faces shifting when they saw him on my arm, learned he was my boyfriend.”

“So wha—?”

“Yours did too.” I cut her off, take a sip of Coke, focus on the sweet tickle over my tongue.

“Well.” She shrugs. “It was a bit of a shock.”

“Disappointment, more like it. That’s what the look was. Distaste.”

“No. No.” Jasmine looks away. “Well, not really. Not for me. And honestly, it wasn’t that surprising, you all proper and shit. It’s just—and I’m not saying I think this, but maybe others do—it’s just a choice, right? And it’s a choice that will determine so many others.”

I nod, thinking of how, at the time of choosing—before having an entry point into this tight-knit community—it didn’t feel like a choice in the way she’s implying.

“Like there are white people here tonight, but more likely you’ll be pulled into his world, not him into yours.”

I look back to the shag as tiny razor blades seem to pulse behind my eyes, in my throat, pressure building in my chest as she says all the things I’ve been saying to myself for weeks now. Months. Before I even knew about this baby.

“Which isn’t a bad thing,” she continues, “necessarily. I’m not saying that. It’s just…a choice.”

The music thrums, deep, slow. Male laughter erupts across the room.

“Obviously, if you stay with Thomas, have this child with Thomas, your world will shift. But maybe that’s what you want?”

The razors slice as I resist the pain, resist the rising moisture.

Jasmine squeezes my knee. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” she says, but the way she says it, I can tell she’s not sure. Just as I’m not. “I guess the important thing is, do you love him?”

“I don’t know!” I yell, not realizing I have until the male voices stop. I whip my head to look, and theirs whip, too, back to each other.

“All right. Green in the corner pocket,” says one, louder than needed, as he leans over the pool table.

Jasmine squeezes my knee again.

“I love this,” I whisper. “Finally feeling as if I’m starting to belong somewhere. At last.”

Jasmine nods, her eyes softer than usual, like she truly cares for me, loves me. Like Gran’s. “You do belong.” She jostles my knee with the hint of a grin. “And I get how it’ll be scary. Like I bet you had to explain to him why you must use a silk pillowcase.”

I throw my head back and laugh, the tears falling over in a way that feels good. “I didn’t even know I should be using a silk case until you started talking about your new one.”

“Girl, please.” She raises an eyebrow. “No. You serious?”

I nod, laughing harder now, because the emotion needs to get out somehow. “My mom’s white. My dad…well, he didn’t know. My grandma braids and wraps. But our curls are so different, and Gran tried to get me to braid and wrap, too, but I couldn’t sleep like that.”

“Has your life been transformed?”

“It’s a whole new world.”

She shakes her head, her smile broad. “I wonder what else you’ve yet to learn?”

I wonder, too, something within me swelling at how Jasmine has opened my world to so much, taught me things I didn’t even know I didn’t know. I haven’t told her, but since leaving Toronto, she is my first Black friend. In Juniper Cove, it wasn’t even an option, my friends making it clear I was their Black friend—because there were no others to be had. In university, none of the Black people I met—mostly Africans and Caribbeans who kept to their own—became more than acquaintances. So my few friends were white—people I loved, but who stressed the way their parents would freak if they were to bring a Black boyfriend or girlfriend home, emphasizing that it wasn’t because they were racist or hated Black people, just that the races were inherently different. And how hard would that mixing be for any future children?

Children like me.

“Earth to .”

I lift my head to attention. Jasmine smiles and rubs her hand along my arm with a squeeze. “What do you want to do? Dance? Leave? Look up baby names and see if something in you suddenly snaps one way or the other?”

I take a sip as I try to force away the memories and the tense shame of saying nothing to those friends, of knowing I should have, but also that I couldn’t.

“Dance.” I set the cup on the table, hoping the music will help, needing it to. “Definitely dance.”

She downs her drink, slams it on the coffee table, then stands, grabbing my other hand to pull me up. “All right, my love. We dance!”