Chapter 4 - Eliana
ELIANA
cumin /?kyo?omin/: noun
The apartment smells wrong.
Not bad, exactly. Just not mine. The previous tenant must have cooked with a lot of cumin, because it’s pretty much baked into the walls, along with the chemical tang of whatever nuclear-strength cleaner the landlord used to make the place “move-in ready.” His words, not mine, because I’d probably have called it “cockroach ready” instead.
But it’s ours. At least for now.
I’m sitting on the floor in what Yasmin has designated as “the den,” though it’s really just a corner of the main space with enough room for a futon and a wobbly coffee table. My fingers trace the edge of the cane propped against my knee. I’ve named it Excalibur, which Yasmin found hilarious.
“Okay,” Yasmin calls to me from somewhere near the kitchen area. “I put the mugs on the second shelf, left side. Plates are below them. Silverware’s in the drawer directly under the mugs.”
I nod and commit it all to memory. We’ve been doing this for weeks now as our new life takes on a kind of ugly but somewhat functional shape.
“And I labeled the spice rack with those puffy paint letters,” she continues. “So you can feel which is which. The salt has one dot, pepper has two, garlic powder has three.”
“Thanks.” I mean it, even though gratitude is in short supply these days.
She’s been so patient and so careful. Never once has she made me feel like I’m broken, even though we both know I am.
When I knocked over a glass of water yesterday, she just cleaned it up and moved on.
When I got turned around trying to find the bathroom in the middle of the night, she didn’t laugh or sigh; she just talked me through it in her sleep-rough voice until I found the door handle.
I don’t deserve her.
“The mobility instructor is coming at two,” Yasmin reminds me. “Helen, right?”
“Yeah.” I pick up Excalibur and extend it with a flick of the wrist. The segments lock into place with a series of click-click-clicks that I’ve come to associate with my new reality. “She wants me to practice the route to the corner store.”
“That’s good. You’re making progress, El.”
Progress. Sure. We could call it that. If progress means learning to fumble my way through a world that’s been reduced to sounds and textures and the humiliating tap of a white cane announcing my disability to everyone within earshot, then I’m the S.S. Progress herself, ship-shape and seaworthy.
But adaptation doesn’t mean acceptance. And my body has begun sending signals I can no longer ignore.
Sometimes, this all-consuming exhaustion hits me in waves that have nothing to do with the physical demands of learning to be blind.
It’s different from the bone-deep tiredness that comes from navigating a world without sight or the mental strain of memorizing every step and turn and texture.
This is something else—a heaviness that makes sitting on the couch feel like running an uphill marathon.
My breasts are tender in a way that makes even my cheap sports bra uncomfortable.
I’ve been chalking it up to the stress of becoming a fugitive, to sleeping on shitty motel mattresses for weeks, to anything other than what it might actually mean.
But the tenderness has gotten worse, not better.
Now, even the soft cotton of my t-shirt feels like sandpaper against my skin.
The nausea comes and goes, usually in the mornings.
I’ve been blaming the questionable diner food we’ve been living on.
A diet of greasy eggs and burnt toast and coffee that tastes like it was brewed in a sweaty shoe isn’t exactly chicken soup for the soul, nor for the bone density.
But it happens even when I haven’t eaten.
A nasty, boiling queasiness that makes my mouth water and my knees tremble.
And my period. I’ve missed it.
In the chaos of the past seven weeks, I’d barely noticed.
One month became two, and I told myself it was the stress making me go haywire.
I mean, after all, trauma does things to your body, doesn’t it?
Throws everything off-balance? So of course my cycle would be disrupted—my entire life has been disrupted.
But now, sitting here with Excalibur propped against my knee and Yasmin organizing spices in the kitchen, I can’t ignore the pattern anymore.
Each symptom on its own could be explained away.
Together, they form a truth I’ve been avoiding because acknowledging it would mean confronting everything I’ve been trying to outrun.
I press my hand against my stomach. Nothing feels different there. Not yet. But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s too early for outward signs.
“El? You okay?” Yasmin’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts.
I drop my hand quickly. “Yeah. Fine. Just tired.”
“You’ve been tired a lot lately.”
“Learning to be blind is exhausting,” I say, which isn’t a lie. Just not the whole truth.
She makes a noncommittal sound, and I hear her footsteps approaching. The futon groans like a wildebeest as she sits beside me. “We should probably get you to a doctor soon. For a checkup or whatever. Make sure everything’s okay with your eyes.”
My heart stutters. “I’m fine.”
“El—”
“Yas. Drop it.”
“Alright, alright. No need to snap, sugar plum.”
I soften my tone. “Sorry. I’m just adjusting. Makes me grouchy sometimes.”
“I know.” Her hand pats my knee. “But you don’t have to do it alone, okay? That’s why I’m here.”
The kindness in her voice makes my throat tight. If I tell her about everything that’s going on with me, she’ll insist we figure it out. She’ll want me to take a test so we can know for sure. And then what?
If I’m pregnant, it’s Bastian’s. There’s no question about that. The timeline matches perfectly. It’s been seven weeks since that night on the Olympus rooftop, since we had sex without protection because I was too caught up in the moment to care about consequences.
I’d wanted to feel alive. That was the whole idea: experience everything before the darkness came.
Well, mission accomplished.
Now, I’m blind, on the run, and possibly carrying the child of a man I watched dismember a corpse in an alley. I’m winning this messed-up game of Experiential Bingo.
“Elly?” Yasmin prompts. “You still with me?”
I force myself to reorient toward her voice. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”
I could tell her, if I wanted to. Right now. I could just open my mouth and let the words spill out: Yas, I think I might be pregnant.
But the words won’t come. Because if I say it out loud, it becomes real. If I take a test and it’s positive, then I have to make decisions. Keep it or don’t. Tell Bastian or don’t. Stay hidden or go find him and—
No. I can’t think about that last one. How could I even consider the possibility of reaching out to him, after what I saw?
I stand up from the futon, Excalibur in hand. “I’m going to the drugstore.”
“Now?” Yasmin sounds surprised. “Helen will be here in, like, an hour.”
“I just need a couple things. Won’t take long.”
“Want me to come with?”
“No!” I clear my throat. “I mean, uh, no. I need to practice navigating on my own anyway, right? That’s the whole point.”
She hesitates—I can feel her uncertainty in the quality of her silence—but eventually concedes. “Okay. But take your phone. And be careful at the crosswalk. The traffic here doesn’t stop for shit.”
“I will.”
Fifteen slow, shuffling, stumble-filled minutes later, I’m standing inside the CVS three blocks from our apartment. The lights hum overhead. I can’t see them, but I can hear their electric buzz mixing with the tinny pop music bleeding through the store’s speakers.
I approach the counter, where I can hear someone shuffling papers. “Excuse me,” I say in my most carefully neutral, I’m-not-spiraling voice. “Where are the pregnancy tests?”
“Aisle seven, about halfway down on the right.”
“Thanks.”
Excalibur leads me there. The shelf is right where the clerk said it would be.
My fingers find the boxes easily enough, all those identical rectangular packages lined up like cheery little harbingers of doom.
I’m glad I can’t see the nauseating pink color these companies always choose in an attempt to split the difference between their two main customer groups: those women saying Oh-God-please-no and the others saying Yay, finally!
I grab one at random. The brand doesn’t matter. They’ll all do the same thing: confirm what I already know in my gut.
The walk to the register feels like it’s a mile long. I pay in cash, fumbling with the bills until the clerk takes pity on me and counts out my change into my palm. The transaction is mercifully brief. No small talk or questions, just the sound of a plastic bag and a mumbled “Have a good day.”
I clutch the bag in my fist and walk out into sunshine I can’t see.
I make it back to the apartment without incident, though my nerves are so frayed that every car horn makes me jump about a foot in the air. The pregnancy test burns like contraband in my pocket.
Inside, Yasmin is getting ready for her shift at the diner. She’s been picking up some under-the-table gigs, washing dishes and bussing tables. I hear her moving around, gathering her things.
“I’ll be back late tonight,” she says. “Get what you needed?”
“Yeah. Just some… toiletries.”
“Cool. I’m heading out in a sec. You good until Helen gets here?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“Alright, hon.” She kisses my cheek on her way out. “Call if you need anything.”
The door clicks shut behind her. I count to sixty, then sixty again, making sure she’s really gone. Then I lock myself in the bathroom.
The tile is cold against my bare legs as I sink down onto the floor, my back against the tub. My fingers find the plastic bag and pull out the box.
I fish the test out, but my hands are shaking so badly that I drop it and have to go hunting for it along the grooves in the tile. When I finally find the test again, I sit back against the tub and cradle it in both hands.
It’s funny how tiny the things that change a person’s life can be. A squirmy little retina. The pearl of an oyster. A few grams of plastic certainty wrapped in my fist.
My thumb passes over the smooth surface. Such a small thing. Such a stupid, simple mechanism. Pee on stick, wait three minutes, learn if your world is about to split in two.
But it helps. Having the test here, as-yet-unused but here, gives me something I haven’t had in weeks: a choice I can make on my own terms. Not yet. Not today. But when I’m ready.
If I’m ever ready.
A knock pulls me back to reality. I shove the test back in its box and bury it under the bathroom sink behind the ancient bottle of Drano, then splash cold water on my face.
“Coming!” I call out.
I open the door and immediately recognize Helen by her clean, pleasant perfume. She shakes my hand, firm and businesslike. “We’ll start with the route to the corner,” she says without preamble. “Then the grocery store if you’re up for it.”
I’m not up for anything. But I nod anyway and grip Excalibur like he’s the only thing keeping me tethered to earth.
Outside, the world is all sound and texture. Helen’s voice coaches me through the chaos—curb here, pole there, listen for the traffic pattern. I trip twice. She doesn’t catch me.
“Good,” she says when I right myself. “You’re learning to trust your body.”
I almost laugh. Trust my body? My body that’s gone blind, that’s maybe growing something I can’t see or plan for or control? That’ll be the day. My body hasn’t helped me out once in my whole dang life.
But I keep walking. One foot, then the other. The pavement is rough beneath my shoes, the sun warm on my shoulders.
It’s not hope I’m feeling, exactly. But it’s motion.
Sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.