Kareela
As the group from the rally leaves the restaurant, there are hugs and fist bumps, catch ya later s, hands firmly placed on shoulders with a gentle squeeze, and me, standing amidst it all, not sure what to do with myself. Jasmine materializes beside me, and then Carson is in front of me, inviting me to come to a meeting next week. “To learn a bit more about what we do.” He smiles. “Jasmine said you’re an amazing asset to the community, that her adviser says you’re one of the best young social workers the department has, and also”—he grins—“that before last week, you didn’t even know there was a BLM chapter here.”
I shake my head, the compliment nothing compared to the embarrassment that seeps through me—that I didn’t know. That I’m so out of touch. I try to push the feeling away, tell myself I belong, or that I could, but it’s replaced with fear, that the more time they spend with me, get to know me, they’ll see I’m not who they think I am, who Antony was. That I don’t even want to be.
“No pressure.” He drapes an arm around Jasmine’s shoulder. Squeezes. “We’re a laid-back bunch…until we’re not.” His eyes hold a hint of laughter and my stomach flutters, an entirely different sensation from the one I felt earlier.
I nod without commitment. “Maybe.”
He’s called away and Jasmine squeezes my side, then bounces off in the other direction, linking her arms through the arms of two women from Preston I’ve met but can’t recall the names of. “Up Home girls,” says Jasmine, before she flits off.
People disperse in twos and threes and fives. I walk down Quinpool Road, the sea of Black and Brown faces trickling away as an ocean of dread seems to fill its place: Thomas at home—who I told not to come, whose child I’m carrying—waiting for me.
My phone buzzed in the restaurant. One call. Four texts. I didn’t answer any of them. Didn’t even look. Now, as I stand outside our building, the dread builds, starting in my toes and slowly rising upward, like sludge from an overflowing sewer. The guilt rises, too. For not telling him as soon as I suspected, even though it would have meant a long-drawn-out discussion, and probably missing the rally. Though really, there’s no point in telling him at all, not until I’ve made my decision, and it’s my decision to make. I think. Or so I’ve been told. Because it is my body. And I agree with this. Mostly.
Still, the guilt grows, because I’m pretty sure what his opinion will be. Already he talks of marriage, like it’s a foregone conclusion. I cut the conversations short, nod, or smile. Yet he talks. When we’re married…our children…our house .
I pull my phone out, tap the notification window, see his last few messages:
Call me.
In the beginning, all I cared about was that he loved me. Wanted me.
Or text.
Now I’m not so sure.
This isn’t for a friend, is it?
My brow furrows, the sludge surging up as I press my hand to my forehead, try to force the realization away. He knows. The open tabs on my web browser. The fact that Thomas’s computer keeps crashing, and when it does, if he doesn’t have time to wait for a reboot, I’ve told him he can use mine.
Don’t bother doing any of those things. Just come home!
A stream of air makes its way out of me. I swallow, then take the steps to our apartment, walk through the door, hear the smack of feet on aging hardwood before I see Thomas’s grin, eyes bright, like a little boy on Christmas morning.
“You’re pregnant.”
My mouth contours—lips wide and slightly upturned, teeth exposed, yet not a smile.
“Well, are you?”
I shrug. “Probably? Yeah. I mean, I think so?”
The space between us closes and I’m in his arms, spun in a circle, set to the floor, then squeezed again. This is what I hoped for. A man who loved me. Who would be thrilled when he learned this news—the start of our family.
But not yet. Not like this.
He steps away from me, his hands grasping mine as he leads me to the living room, pulls us both down to the couch. “What do you mean, you think so?”
“Well, I mean, I haven’t tested or anything.”
His eyes narrow slightly, his brow getting that little crinkle. “Why not?” Now his lips scrunch, too. “When I saw the articles, I started thinking about it, realized you hadn’t, well, you know…that you must be, well, pretty late!”
I nod.
“So?”
“Around two weeks. Maybe. I’m not sure.”
He squeezes me again. Grins. “What? Were you worried I wouldn’t be thrilled?”
An invisible hand reaches out and clamps my throat. I sputter. “I don’t know. I mean—” I’m worried he isn’t the man I want to do this with. Even more, that I’m not the woman he’d want to do it with, if he really knew me. Which he doesn’t. He can’t. I don’t know me.
“This wasn’t the plan, obviously.” He leans against the couch. “And when I figured it out, I’m not going to lie, my first emotion was terror. But screw plans, right?” He laughs and throws his fist in the air. “I’m going to be a dad!”
I swallow, not sure how to label the mess of emotions roiling around inside of me. “Well, I mean…”
“What?” His head whips to zero his focus in on me.
“I mean, like, these things aren’t always, I don’t know, sure things.”
He shifts closer. “Do you have any of those symptoms the articles were talking about?”
“Well, yeah, but, I mean—” I want to squirm away, take the time to figure this out, weeks, months if need be, without Thomas’s smiling face, Thomas’s expectation. “It’s just, something like twenty-five percent of women end up losing their babies. So I figured, why not wait and see?”
The crinkle in his brow deepens. “That can’t be right.”
“No, it is.”
He shakes his head. “So twenty-five percent of women, that’s counting women in their thirties, forties, even. Women with health problems and conditions.” He reaches for my hand, and the touch, though meant to comfort, seems to expand, wrap around me, a boa bent on constricting. “You’re twenty-four. And healthy. You don’t need to worry about that. Let’s get a test. Find out for sure. Then you can book a doctor’s appointment, make sure everything’s fine.”
I plant my lips together, let the tiniest exhale emerge. “No.”
“Babe, it’s going to be fine. We’re going to be fine. It’ll be an adjustment. It’ll take work, but…” He hesitates. “You seem…” His expression shifts. “You’re scared of more than losing it. You’re scared of having it.”
“Of course I am!”
He nods. “It is scary. This was not part of the plan. Not yet.” He shrugs. “Like I said, I was scared, too. But then I thought…it’s me and you. We’re young. But we love each other. We can do this. We can make this work. We’ll—”
I pull my hand out of his grasp, stand. “I didn’t even want you to know yet. I need time to think. To decide if I want to keep it, so there’s no point in—”
“What?”
“I mean.” My heart pounds. I can’t look at him, the love in his eyes for this false woman he sees in front of him. I turn to the window. “Like you said, we didn’t plan this, and we’re young. And the world is shit, so who wants to bring a child into that anyway, right?” I laugh, kind of, and slump into the desk chair across the room.
“The world is—?” His voice cuts off. And in the silence, I dread his next question. “So you’re thinking of what, exactly?”
Pressure builds in my throat. Thomas is kind, and sweet, and ridiculously good. And everything we’ve said is true, about the world, our ages, how this was not part of the plan. But it’s more than that. I’m not sure I want his baby—what having it would mean, being connected to him, his world, forever. Because unlike I’m implying, I do want a baby—a child who belongs to me, who I belong to. One day. When I’m ready. When I’ve stopped being such a mess and know how to make the world, my life, a lot less shitty. For my child, at least.
“I was so excited I didn’t even think.” He sighs, and I swivel in the chair to face him. “The rally, was it…?” He offers a smile, the compassion of a saint on his face. “I mean, are you okay, or…?”
I bite my lip, thankful for this shift of focus, then shrug through my words. “The rally was okay. I mean, intense and hard and kind of awful, right? That there’s even a need for it.”
He nods.
“But it was also kind of wonderful.” I pause as that sense of connection comes back to me. “All of us there, together, feeling part of something.”
More nodding.
I turn my gaze back to the window, the blue jay I’ve come to know a focal point, living his life, unaware of the way I watch him, yearn for such simplicity. His rich blue plumes bring back the eyes of one of the officers. “A couple of the cops. I don’t know…” The pressure in my throat intensifies as I see those irises again, the hate behind them, the fear that flared in my belly, making me want to run, making me wonder if that’s what Antony had seen, just before…
Moisture builds behind my eyes, knocking me off-balance. I lean on the arm of the chair and pull my gaze from the window, directing it at the rich brown of the aged and gnarled hardwood beneath my feet. “They made me think of Antony, you know? If…”
Thomas crosses the room. “Ree, I can’t imagine.” I keep my gaze on the floor, refusing to see his so similarly tinted eyes. The shittiness of the world is no longer a false distraction as I imagine all the things I generally try not to: filling in the blanks of my brother’s last moments. Because when it comes down to it, I know almost nothing about that day. I simply know it happened—that one afternoon Antony was alive, and the next, he wasn’t, and it had something to do with a rally, with standing before a crowd for what he believed in.
And now people sit in bars and say my brother’s name. A name that scrolls on a website I found, constantly, forever and ever until time ends, or the internet is obliterated or whoever pays for the hosting forgets to update their credit card information.
It is shitty to bring a child into a world capable of that, of trying to erase all these names, which aren’t just names, but people—who had mothers and fathers, friends, little sisters.
If I brought Thomas’s child into this shitty world, it would be a lot less likely to be a target of that kind of hate, could be as light skinned as he is, but how would I explain all those names?
Antony’s.
At my silence, Thomas lifts me from the chair and wraps his arms around me. I sink into him. Into how safe it feels to be in his arms. But this safety—it’s short-lived, maybe not even real.
My teeth clench. My head aches, thinking of my brother and all the pain that came after. In my family. In other families. So many others.
Today is too much. Too everything. I raise my gaze, so I’m looking into Thomas’s eyes, which aren’t so similar to the officer’s after all, because of the hope that lives there, the concern, the yearning for an answer to a question I don’t even want to think about, since it means thinking about so much. About Thomas. And whether I should stay in his life, whether I want him in mine.
“Listen, Ree, we don’t have to figure this out today. Or even talk about it. We have time.”
Weeks. I have until twenty weeks. And then, if I haven’t made a choice, it’ll be made for me.
“Okay?”
A tsunami of exhaustion crashes over me. I raise on tiptoe, kiss him, taking a quick moment to pretend this is all there is—us, with no complications—then pull back. “I have a headache. I’m going to lie down.” I step away before waiting for an answer, head to our bedroom, and close the door. As I settle onto the bed, an undulation in my abdomen greets me. I try to will the sensation away, what it means, but the thoughts crowd in. Who would this child be? What would he or she look like? What label would be placed upon this unsuspecting soul?
Possibly the same one placed on Thomas—who, most of the time, doesn’t even have to think about it. And where would that put me? Separate, from my own child. On the outside, as I’ve been my whole life.
I roll onto my side and wonder if most women would call their mother at a moment like this—ask for her thoughts, her advice, her assurances. Even with my mom, it’s hard to remember a time when I felt I belonged, felt accepted and loved. A time when those tendrils of frustration, of anger, didn’t mix with everything else—with the wanting.
I smooth my hand across my abdomen, letting it settle inches above the place of expansion, wondering, too, what my father’s response would have been: pain rises, because I’ll never know, because if I decide to keep this child, two of the people I love most will never meet it.
The world is shitty—I look to the hand cupping my abdomen—but it’s not this little bean’s fault.
Footsteps sound outside the door, then, less than a minute later, I hear the sound of Thomas walking away. I pull my knees up to my chest, squeeze. In the ways it matters most, I’m still a kid. I don’t know who I am, what I want, where I belong…it doesn’t seem right that some cluster of cells should make that decision for me. I close my eyes, knowing that when I wake, Thomas will have placed a glass of water and an acetaminophen by my side. Knowing that he, at least, loves me, wants me…or at least the me he believes me to be. I rub my belly again, whisper, “Not yet,” to the growing and separating snippets of our mixed DNA. I’m not ready.