Kareela
When I step into the clinic’s waiting room, Thomas stands, hands in his pockets, an expression on his face I can’t read. A small child plays in the corner. A man coughs into his elbow, making everyone tense in this postpandemic world, which isn’t really post at all.
Thomas’s jaw twitches. Our eyes meet, a crevasse between us that seems too wide to cross. Silent, he turns toward the door, holds it for me.
Outside, we step to the side of the building. He turns his face to the sun. “You didn’t feel anything? Seeing our child, hearing the—”
“Of course I did.” My voice is quiet. Tight. Squeezing off all I felt, all I’m feeling still. “But I don’t want to make this decision on feeling. I don’t want to bring this baby into the world simply because it would be hard not to.”
“I don’t get—”
I turn to him, place a hand on his arm, and at last he looks at me. “I’m sorry for what this is putting you through, but I know what it is to have a parent who doesn’t want you. Who wishes she hadn’t had you. Who blames you for the life she’s leading.”
Confusion crosses his face.
“I could have this baby, sure. Take care of it. And resent it, because that’s not what I wanted for my life. Not now, not—”
“Not with me.”
I drop my hand. “We didn’t plan this.”
“But it was the plan, eventually, right? Marriage, a house, kids.”
I shrug, knowing, at last, it’s time I spoke the truth. “Your plan.”
He steps back, and it’s as if I can see the rapidly fraying edges of our relationship, hovering there between us.
“I never actually said it was mine.”
His voice cracks. “You didn’t say it wasn’t.”
He isn’t wrong. I smiled and nodded, just like I had when it came to us moving in only six months after we met—his suggesting it quickly turning into deciding it, because I never said the opposite. Because it felt good to know I had someone—beyond Gran—who loved me, wanted me, thought I was enough. Because I was so silently broken up over Dad’s death, and the idea of someone at home waiting for me, someone to curl up with during the continued isolation of social distancing, held some appeal. I lower my gaze to the ground. Cement blocks, a candy wrapper, at least five cigarette butts. “I should have.”
I look up and his eyes are closed, his arms tensed. Seeing his pain, I want to say, Yes, we’ll have the baby. We’ll be a family. But I can’t. I won’t. Not this time.
“This is my choice,” I say. “I’m the one who’s going to make it.”
“I know it’s your choice.” He wraps his hand around mine. “I get that. But I love this baby. I want this baby, even if you don’t. And I know that’s asking a lot—”
“It is.” My pulse races as I pull my hand away, try to consider what the doctor said—going through the full forty weeks, the aches, the pain, my body so clearly not my own, never to be my own again in the way it was before this happened.
“It’d be a lot for you, too,” I say, still mostly thinking of myself, of holding that baby, or even if I didn’t, to know it exists, that the heart I heard today was beating somewhere, aware I didn’t want it. “A single dad. As a paramedic? The hours you’d be working…they’re not exactly conducive to daycare. To school. Not without someone to help you.”
“I’d figure it out.” He pauses. “I’d go back to accounting if I had to. Just like we would figure it out. Like we could.”
Again, he’s right. Of course we could. Though I’ve been saying it, thinking it at times, we’re not kids. We could do this. “My gran needs me right now.” I could put on a ring, tie myself to this man forever. “And she already exists.”
“This baby exists.”
“I could have another child one day.”
“I spoke too quickly about your gran.” He throws the words out—desperate, like a badly tossed lifeline. “We could take her in. It could be great. Wonderful. We’ll move out of town a bit. Get a bigger place. She could sing to the baby…You said she’s a singer, right? Be that connection to your past you’re always looking for. I know how important that is to you. We could be a family. I agree to your gran; you agree to the baby. That makes sense”—he leans forward, grasps my arms—“doesn’t it?”
“Stop it!” His hands fall from me, as if my flesh has burned him. I stand, shocked at the force of my words, at the realization that pulsed through me as I finally understood what he’s doing, what he’s done, whether he intended it or not, so many times before. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”
“I’m sorry, I—” Thomas hesitates, guilt and regret in his eyes. Hurt. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He lets out a shuddered breath. “I just feel desperate. I want this baby. And I want you, too.”
We stare at each other, the fissure a chasm.
“Are you calling the clinic, then?” He bites his lip, not meeting my eye. “The abortion line? Or whatever it is?”
I nod, still shocked at my outburst. “To make an appointment. Just in case.”
“So you’ve decided.”
“No. I just need a little more time.”
“There’s no time left. You heard the doctor.” He extends an arm toward the clinic, his voice shaking. “If that didn’t make up your mind, seeing your child, our child, alive inside you. Hearing that heart. What would?”
What would? What would? What would?
I think of doing nothing, letting nature take its course, and it terrifies me. I think of showing up for an appointment, lying down, then spreading my legs to have this all over…and it terrifies me. I open my mouth but can’t speak. And then, like a tendril of fog slowly making itself visible, until it’s all I can see, something occurs to me—in choosing the baby, regardless of whether I want it or not, Thomas is not choosing me.
“You want this baby,” I say, as betrayal seeps in, abandonment. “And if I don’t, but I have it for you, you’re choosing it over me. We’re finished, right? Because how can we be together if you’re raising our child but I’m not?”
“That’s not what I want.”
“But it is. That’s what would happen.”
He looks at me in a way he never has before, like I’m the stranger I’ve realized myself to be for months now. “If you wanted it to, yes. But not because I wouldn’t want you, because you don’t want me. Us.” He gestures to my stomach.
“That’s not fair!”
“None of this is.”
We stare at each other until he shakes his head, sadness distorting his features. “You say you don’t know if you want our child, but more and more, it seems tied with not knowing if you want me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“, you don’t have to. I love you. I want you. But I don’t want to be with a woman who doesn’t love me.”
Sweat breaks out along my spine, under my arms. “I didn’t say that!”
“Exactly.” Moisture fills his eyes, his voice tight. “ Love ya. You too .” The way you’d say it to a friend. “But no, you haven’t actually said you love me. Not for months now.” He looks away from me. “Maybe we both need time to think. About us, if nothing else. I can pack a bag, head out for a few days.”
“What?” I step toward him, my hand lifted, but it stops, rather than reaching out.
“I can stay with friends. Or my mom.”
He’s silent. Waiting for me to tell him to stay? Tell him I’ve changed my mind? That I want him and the baby? The words are on my lips—because I know I may never again find someone as kind and thoughtful and solid as this man. But this man, also, has just chosen this child I’m growing over me, over our relationship, and I’m not even sure if I can blame him.
He turns. The sun beats down, cars weave in and out of the strip mall, birds crow, and my baby, presumably, flips and twirls along with my thoughts as I watch him leave.
Thomas reaches the bus stop. I wait, the sweat pouring, as part of me tells me to run after him, and another part is saying maybe this is just what I need. A bus whisks him away, and a question arises: Not for months? I thought I’d said it. I know I said it in the past. Meant it.
But…as I walk toward the bus stop, my mind travels through the moments, like one of those movie montages, and I realize he’s right. Love ya. You too. A hug or kiss. The last time I said it, straight out, was the first night I’d started to question, uncertainty tinging my voice as I waved goodbye, which made me, unconsciously I suppose, hold back from saying it again.
It was after that party with my colleagues. Seeing the look in their eyes at seeing him, the look in his at the way my body had stiffened—the first fissure popping up along a fault line we’d never allowed ourselves to see. We said good night—me staying downtown to dance with the girls, him heading home due to an early morning shift. He’d laughed, though there was no true humor in the sound, as he said I talked differently around my work friends. Moved and stood differently, too.
I’d laughed. Though I saw he was right. That with him, I was one woman, with them another, altering my language, my interests, myself, to be most pleasing to those around me—be it my mother, my father, friends, or the man I claimed to love. That I’d been doing it for years…that, ever since the day I was surrounded, it had become a compulsion.
But with that realization—my colleagues’ looks, Thomas’s words—came the question of whether this woman I created, that he wanted, may not be the one I wanted, too. That maybe the person I wanted to be was someone who’d find it hard to live her life tethered to him.
The bus comes and I step back, wave it on, then sink to the bench, head in my hands as I see the baby, that definitive forehead and nose. Those puckering lips and that whooshing heart. I imagine keeping that child, and Gran, whether bringing her to live with me—especially without Thomas there to help—is more insane than I imagine. It’s too much to think of. All too much. Needing a distraction, I pull out my phone, remembering the text from Jasmine I’d swiped away before the ultrasound. Hey girl, you coming today or what? Carson says it’ll be a fiery one!
Fire. To sit in a crowd. Have their energy become mine. Focus on something, anything, other than this life I’m failing.
The bus that’ll take me two blocks from the BLM headquarters comes around the corner. I stand. As the city passes in a haze, I stare, trying to banish the baby and Thomas from my mind, focusing only on the smiling faces about to greet me, faces who will make me feel—for a few moments, at least—as if I belong.