Extended Epilogue
THREE YEARS LATER
Lana walks like a penguin these days, and I really do try not to laugh. Sometimes I can’t help it though because it’s really cute. But other than cuteness, pregnancy has had its toll on her in a painful way.
With our first baby, it was her blood pressure. With our second, it’s gestational diabetes, her back, and a sore body with a prescription of bed rest until birth. After many conversations with the doctor, we might need a C-section for our second daughter. And it terrifies me more than it does Lana.
I've kept my fears for myself recently so I don’t scare her too much. I speak about them in therapy mostly. Lana knows where my head goes when I remember the C-section. I might have done it to myself when I read about accidents during surgery. I don’t like it at all.
But Lana and I have decided that after our second, we’re done.
And I don’t want to see her go through another painful pregnancy.
She swears she’s okay every time I look at her or ask, but I can see it in her face and the way she walks sometimes—especially if she’s avoiding weight on a particular leg or if she’s wincing a lot without realizing she’s doing it.
She thinks she has a poker face when it comes to pain.
I’ve started showering with her so I can help her reach. I scrub her back, her legs, her feet. And sometimes she sits on the stool in the shower so I can bathe her instead. It hurts to see her that way, always in pain.
“Scream if you need me, okay?” I say through the bathroom door after helping my wife inside to pee.
“Yes, baby!” Lana says back so I walk away, reluctantly.
Walking away from our first floor bathroom, I find my baby.
Aaliyah, our two and a half year old daughter, is leaving handprints on the back sliding doors, staining the glass with yellow paint. She was supposed to be finger painting on the white papers discarded on the floor. I turn my back for one minute, I swear.
“Daddy!”
I sigh and squat down to her height. I pull her onto my lap and kiss her head. “You know, Mommy isn’t going to be too happy about this.”
“We clean it.”
“You want to help me clean it?”
Aaliyah nods, grinning, just before her yellow painted hands smack onto my cheeks. I flinch, surprised, but my daughter just laughs at me, raspy and breathless. “Daddy’s yellow!”
I laugh. “I can make you yellow too.”
I widen my eyes and inch closer slowly to build up the suspense before I blow raspberries into her neck, tickling her with my stubble. A baby laughing is beautiful and contagious. But my baby? A symphony better than what any orchestra can compose.
“Help, help!”
I pull back and her cheeks are covered in paint too. “Now we’re both yellow.”
I release her and she plops herself back down in front of her paints, dipping her hands into blue. She looks up at me with a mischievous gleam in her eyes and I stand. “Oh no! Are you coming to get me?”
Aaliyah stands again, looking like the most perfect angel in denim overalls and her hair in pigtails as she holds out her blue hands. I make a run for it and her little legs keep up as I take her through the house.
“I’m gon’ get you, Daddy!”
I laugh and we end up back where she was working on her paintings and I feign tripping over myself. “Oh no! Daddy’s down! Help!”
Aaliyah giggles and body slams me, her hands on my cheeks leaving blue prints on top of the yellow ones. “I got you!”
A throat clears. “What is this? I go to the bathroom for one minute…”
My eyes widen and Aaliyah’s do too. “Oh no, it’s Mommy,” my daughter whispers.
I put a finger over my lips. “Shh, maybe she can’t see us.”
The mother of my children and my wife chuckles. “Oh I can see both of you.”
Aaliyah gasps. “Hide!”
“I’ve got you.” I wrap my arms around her and keep her tucked in my chest as I turn us onto my side. “I’m gonna protect you.”
Lana laughs and I glance over my shoulder to find my extremely pregnant wife with her arms crossed over her chest, laughing. “Christian, have you seen Aaliyah?”
Our daughter laughs and when I look down at her, I tell her, “Shhhh.” Looking back at Lana, I say, “Nope. Haven’t seen her.”
“Hmm.” Lana waddles over to the stained stained glass of the back doors. “Seems we have a yellow ghost in the house.”
“Do we?” I ask my wife, and she gives me an amused look. “Huh…”
Aaliyah giggles, her blue hands printed all over my white t-shirt, before she shoots up onto her little feet. “It’s me!”
Lana gasps and our daughter runs toward her, holding out her paint covered hands. “Oh my god, it’s the ghost!”
Aaliyah laughs, dimples out, and it’s the cutest, raspy sound with heavy breaths and snorts. The cutest baby laugh. I watch Aaliyah chase her mother who’s moving slowly on her swollen feet, wincing, and I stand.
My white t-shirt is covered in tiny hand prints and I can’t wait to wear it outside and tell people my daughter made it. It’s an Aaliyah Marie Calloway-Gomez original. One of a kind.
Lana comes into the bright and expansive seating room space, cringing but smiling, with Aaliyah on her tail. She shoots me a look. “You’re cleaning the paint.”
I huff a laugh and sit on the L-shaped sofa. “I already planned on it,” I tell her. “Come here, baby.”
“Mommy!” Aaliyah freezes with her hands up, gaping as Lana sits back and I put her legs across my thighs. Our daughter frowns. “What happened? Did you get a boo-boo?”
Lana laughs. “No, sweetheart, Mommy’s feet just really hurt.”
“Bad?”
Lana nods and I start massaging one of her feet. “Yes, baby. Bad.”
Aaliyah frowns and comes toward us. “Daddy?”
“Yes, princess.”
“I have to wash my hands,” she says softly and quietly.
Lana smiles and gives my arm a love tap. “Go.”
I kiss the top of the foot I was massaging and stand, taking Aaliyah in my arms and toward the bathroom.
Lana says it’s a bad habit I have, picking her up and holding her every chance I get.
It’s a lot of coddling and babying, and she needs to walk.
But what about when she’s older and I can’t hold her anymore?
Who else is going to baby her if it isn’t us? The world is cruel and she is perfect.
“Daddy, is Mommy okay?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” I say. I set her down on her light purple step stool—her favorite color at the moment—and wash my hands beside hers. “You know how your baby sister is in Mommy’s belly?”
Aaliyah nods with a toothy grin. She already loves her baby sister so much. When I almost died, I saw a vision of this life, and I’m finally living it. By the end of the year, it’ll be me, Lana, and our two daughters.
“Yeah?” Aaliyah says.
“So Mommy is growing your baby sister and, sometimes, her body gets tired because it’s working so, so, sooo hard to make sure the baby is healthy. And sometimes it makes Mommy’s feet hurt.”
Aaliyah nods, her little brows—already dark and thick like Lana’s—pinch together. My wife and my daughter look so much alike. Two little heartbreakers with heartbreaking dimples.
“Does that make sense?”
She nods again. “Okay.”
We rinse off our hands and dry them, and I carry her in my arms again. “Should we go get Mommy some flowers today?”
Aaliyah smiles. That’s another thing—my daughter smiling. It’s the smile that makes her look like sunshine, and it’s so contagious that even on my worst days, one look at her and everything is better.
Every mistake I’ve ever made, every bad thing I’ve done—none of it matters when I look at Aaliyah and Lana. When I remember that Lana is pregnant with our second child and we have this home.
A home filled with healing and love and laughter.
And even though some days are hard, incredibly hard, I wake up in bed with Lana wrapped around me or my arms wrapped around her, and it’s better.
I get out of bed and wake up my little girl for breakfast, to brush her teeth, to do her hair, and it’s better.
Lana has also taught me a few hairstyles for Aaliyah and I’m pretty good at them now.
Some days, though, I do have to put out the jar.
Those days are the worst of all, I think.
Those days I just want to stay in our bedroom all day and lie alone in silence.
The last time I had a day that bad, Lana allowed me the space to navigate it.
She allowed me to figure out what I needed so I knew what to ask for.
That day, I asked for time with her and Aaliyah in our bed to watch a movie. It was simple, quiet, and one of the most healing moments of my life.
And my daughter smiling is one of the most healing sights.
“Yes,” Aaliyah says. “Pretty yellow ones for Mommy.”
“And purple?” Aaliyah nods eagerly. “Okay, let’s go. It’ll be a surprise, okay?”
She puts her finger over her lips and shushes me. “Let’s go,” she whispers.
I carry her out of the first floor bathroom and back toward Lana. When I walk into the family room, Lana is dead asleep on the chaise of the couch, snoring softly.
“Mommy’s sleeping,” Aaliyah whispers.
I set her down and whisper, “Let's give her a kiss goodbye and go to Miss Violet’s.”
I bend to give Lana a soft kiss on her pouty lips, then Aaliyah climbs up on the sofa to kiss Lana’s forehead.
I smile. The forehead kisses is something Aaliyah picked up from us kissing her forehead every night when we tuck her in.
One night after we tucked her in, she held each of our faces in her tiny hands and kissed our foreheads before we went to our bed.
Aaliyah hops off the couch and runs to the front door, plopping herself down on the floor to pull on her sneakers. “Let’s go, Daddy!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I say, jogging after her.
I put on my shoes, grab the keys, and pick up Aaliyah before we head out the door.