The Love of Your Life is The Love of Your Life
BY CHERLINE BAZILE
I would get pregnant. It’s because of the woman who walked into Most Exquisite Teas. She had already propped the door open with her hip when a man jogged across the store to hold it for her. He held the door long after she was through, long after she approached the counter to order. He sat down and kept glancing over his shoulder for a sign that the pregnant woman might need his help. The whole shop shifted in her presence. A woman with a toddler gestured at the pregnant woman’s belly, which gleamed in a tight-fitted navy leather skirt. I was too far away to hear what the mother told the expectant mother, but the pregnant woman’s laughter was so full in response that even I, a woman scorned, felt my spirit lift.
The pregnant woman was fabulous. She wore a black turtleneck. She was herself and more than herself. Clarity, she had it. She did not notice how the room buzzed around her. I did. And from the moment the man imprinted his palm on the glass door, I dreamed of having a baby.
Well. I didn’t want a baby exactly. I wanted a pregnant belly. A baby was too permanent. Intergenerational trauma too freely passed down. A pregnant belly signaled allure, potential. Whereas a baby signaled a slow and protracted downfall into an exhausting existence of quickly depleting options, only convenient decades later when approaching death. Even if I wanted an actual baby and an actual belly, even if I had the time to make and grow my own, I didn’t have any viable fathers. My boyfriend broke up with me a few months ago. That’s why I needed the belly.
We were together seven years going on eight. Most of my 20s. Enough time that we should have been married, most reasonable people around me implied or implored. I told them he was an academic. He had to work hard on his Philosophy PhD to secure a tenure-track position. Open roles within the humanities were dwindling. Marriage wasn’t his focus. What he focused on instead: a 23-year-old master’s student at an MLA conference. They went to his hotel room. Nothing happened, he said, and I believed him. Because he had good character. I told no one. To protect his good character, of course. He groveled. For two weeks, he was the best boyfriend he’d been in years. Then he broke up with me.
We’re still young, he had said. Relationships should be exciting! Passionate!
That was why I would never again date an academic. And if ever I got the chance to be President of the United States, I would call for deep education reform. We have a crisis among us! The corporates are selfish, and the academics are, too. There is no refuge.
My friend Carmen told me that the best way to get over a guy is to find a new one. True, ultimately. But I wanted to avoid the disappointments of romance for a while. Being with a man means you lose, over and over again, in all the small ways and the big ones, the obvious ways and the hidden, nefarious ones that you don’t uncover until, years later, deflated and defeated, you watch love flourish about you, and wonder.
Perhaps many a scorned woman had been called to heal through a pregnant bodysuit. So many options online. I wanted a silicone belly, but those with two-day delivery only came in ivory white, nude, and brown shades. Suspiciously, the nude shade was beige, and the brown was also beige. As if pretending you were pregnant was a journey only available to white women. Which kind of made sense. I recalled several pregnant women on the screen, but the only Black one I could remember was Condola from Insecure.
I wanted my pregnancy to feel as real as possible. I wanted my loves to touch my belly. They would feel my warmth, and I would feel my past and future colliding, my life already shattered into a before and after.
I was horizontal for the rest of the day. I watched The Traitors and didn’t get up for dinner or the bathroom. I decided I wouldn’t let anyone touch my fake belly once it arrived.
I worked as a product manager for your favorite search engine. I went into the New York office twice a week, after negotiating down from the required three. I commuted on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so I effectively had a five-day weekend. That’s why I filled my time with tea and perusing Amazon (which I usually avoided because now I could afford to make ethical purchasing decisions). The package arrived in 1.5 days at the Amazon Hub on South Street. I made sure to wear the biggest clothes I had, just in case I ran into anyone. True, I only knew one person in the city and couldn’t remember my neighbors’ faces. I wore my thickest sweater and my biggest winter jacket though it was pre-Daylight Savings. I wrapped a folded scarf around my stomach for good measure.
The package was small enough that I thought I had been tricked. Instead of a pregnant belly, I must have received a laptop sticker of a pregnant belly. Instead of realizing my dreams in convenient, two-day delivery form, they sent me a maternity shirt. Nor could I blame them for messing with my destiny. Their workers didn’t get enough breaks. In the Uber, I kept gripping the package, as if I could will it into the perfect belly. Eventually, I couldn’t take it. We had reached my block, but an animal burst out of me. I ripped the plastic packaging with my teeth. I grew dashing hairs on my face, a sharp tooth, or two. The driver made eye contact but said nothing. In the package, a memory foam belly. Real, just ultra-compressed.
After a few hours with the belly, I called Carmen. I’ve known her since college. I talked to her frequently, albeit mostly via Watch Party messages since our talking consisted of watching shows together. Carmen didn’t like listening, not in a deep way. This was unfortunate because I liked to tell jokes, a stint in improv. A critic in the school paper once said, “Nadège Sylvain has a lasso for the bizarre.” Whenever I couldn’t feel myself, I reached for the most unreal thing I could conjure. To make myself laugh, to knock myself back into the right dimension. My closest friends took me seriously, no matter what ingenious ways I found to elide the full depth of my sorrow. Therefore, I broke the news of my pregnancy to Carmen, a good friend, not a close one. As I predicted, Carmen soon moved on from my predicament to talk of treacherous abortion laws and geriatric pregnancies.
She said, All over the world mothers and their babies are dying because of war. Here, there is no war. Yet, Black women are dying from birth. Make it make sense.
Carmen was not Black, but she had an affinity, so I didn’t roll my eyes or point out that that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear this far into a pregnancy, fake or otherwise. I was about to share statistics on maternal mortality, which I coincidentally had memorized, but then she moved on.
When’s the baby shower? she asked.
There won’t be one, I said.
You have to have a baby shower.
Is that so? I said.
The baby will be here in a couple of months, she said. Just think about it.
It was Sunday. I was stricken by the Sunday Scaries, which I had in solidarity with people who had to go into work on Mondays. Instead of preparing for my week, I watched TV until Netflix asked me if I was still there. I repeated the question to myself. I had the sense that I had exited this plane of reality. I had walked too far. I turned around and tried to backtrack, but at the edge of where I could go was a cliff. Everything I knew already surrendered to the other side.
I turned off the TV and begrudgingly called my mother. She was sleeping before a back-to-back shift. I had woken her up.
I’m having a baby, I said.
Oh Lord, she said. With who?
Myself.
Yes, the father? she asked.
Me, I said.
Mm, I see. The father is that stale bread of yours, eh?
It’s due in three months, maybe two, I said.
Mezanmi! she said. Why didn’t you tell me?
I just found out.
She said her husband dreamed I was in trouble.
I’m not in trouble, I said. I’m happy.
Nadège, don’t play with me, she said. I know your voice.
Despite my mother’s reluctant approval, my weekend melancholia faded. I got what I wanted. Mostly. I put on extra rosy blush, a dash of shimmering highlighter on my nose. I got eyelash extensions to create a doe-like, in-love-with-life vibe. At Most Exquisite Teas, I put my hand on the metal doorknob and some man with a beard was at my side. He radiated softness, but it was my own. The absence of romantic love had freed my spirit to connect. My worries, imagined. My remaining friends would not leave me. My fake almost-baby could not leave me. I lost the embarrassment that had lodged permanent warfare on my face. I was happier than I thought I could be after losing the love of my life.
Let me not downplay it. Sleeping, I felt the pressure of a thousand weighted blankets upon me. I couldn’t remove the belly because pregnant women can’t remove their baby when they get tired. Each time I showered, the foam got soaked, and I became an anchor plunging. My arms ached from drying the belly with my Dyson. The pain in my muscles exacerbated my heartache. I was stricken by my loneliness. In the sunrise hours, before I was fully awake, I pleaded for help, a new alarm. So much of my life had unraveled. So much I had to do on my own. But I was not alone, I reminded myself. I had a baby.
Vomiting spells besieged me every morning. Until I read that vomiting mostly stopped after the first trimester. Since I decided I was approaching month seven, like magic, my body rid itself of its unease. I sent passive aggressive messages on Slack. I napped for an egregious number of hours. I scrolled through the interweb, wondering how it was possible that nothing stopped though my heart had stopped. My former world lay shattered, and still I sifted through memes, poems, and profiles of famous musicians I was now too old to recognize. I was still here. Just empty.
Here’s how I made myself feel better. I imagined the day when one of my Fair Weather Former Lover’s girls would accidentally like an Instagram photo in the wee AM hours, ensuring that I won forever. She would text her friends in a frenzy, horrified, wondering whether to keep or remove the like. She’d search for swift ways to cut me down, but what could she say? She’d come for my bulging belly. To which I would say, This? This gorgeous thing? It’s evidence.
My friend Lana called and offered up her brother to accompany me to maternity appointments. She had heard about my predicament from Carmen. Lana was XoXo-GG rich. We met at a series of parties. At one, we both wore our Doc Marten Jadon Platform Boots. She accidentally walked out with mine, a couple sizes larger. I got her address from a mutual friend and also her number. Instead of calling her to organize a civil exchange like a reasonable human being, I left an index card with her doorman that had my address on it. Plus, a note to bring back my Docs if she wanted to see hers alive, and also, did she want to come over for wine?
Lana’s parents were corporate lawyers, one a partner, while my mom made minimum wage. No matter, fashion a box cutter that could slash class differences. Nothing could erase where you came from, but you could work with it, you could do your best.
I told her I didn’t need anyone to come with me to appointments. She offered up her wife, who was a doctor but not a man.
I laughed and told her, Thank you for loving me. I’m okay.
After my breakup, Lana had come to my apartment to sit with me while I packed. She gave me range to tell her about the breakup as I wanted, glossing over any details that had dragged grooves through my mouth, permanent fixtures in the narrative that was building itself about how I went from a girl who believed in love to a lone creature sifting through objects grazed by the dust of my love. I was blindfolded, it felt, searching for the lessons, any lessons, that would resuscitate me.
At least I was loved, I told her. And I was loved well. I questioned everything, but not that I was loved.
Love is the bare minimum, she had said. The foundation.
Now, on the phone, she asked me if I had talked to him about my pregnancy. I shook my head, though she couldn’t see me.
I said, If I told him that his bloodline was in my womb, he’d have no choice, really. And what if he just didn’t care? It’s possible. He’s in his boundaries era.
You mean his era of weaponizing the language of therapy, she said.
I chuckled but didn’t confirm or deny.
I said, Men don’t marry you to help you save face anymore.
Chivalry is six feet deep, she agreed. I’ll marry you.
And then we’ll destroy them all, I said.
Whole hours were lost to me. I mean that it was 5:30pm and I was signing out and then it was 9:30pm. Sometimes during this lost time, I was half asleep. Sometimes I was lost on Reddit. Often, I was simply gone, not overtaken by my grief but dulled, with the impression that I would never be found again.
I watched a Reel where a woman said that the love of your life should be the love of your life. The first time she heard this quote, she didn’t think it was that deep. She had put the emphasis on the wrong word. She went on to explain what the quote meant but I didn’t want her explanation, so I watched the beginning of the video again and again. I figured that the average person would place emphasis on the phrase love of your life, its essence all over fairy tales and romances. As a child, I probably spent hundreds of hours praying to one day meet the love of my life. The woman in the video, however, had placed the emphasis on the first your life. Personally, I felt compelled to shift the emphasis to the first love. I couldn’t decide what was more significant, love or your life. They seemed at odds.
Carmen spoke to our friend Zain, who insisted on throwing me a baby shower. They three-wayed me to break the news. I paced my living room/dining room/kitchen. I didn’t deserve a baby shower. I had not actually grown a baby or paid exorbitant amounts for one. Most importantly I had lived nearly thirty years of life and accomplished nothing. No one had attached themselves to me. What was there to celebrate?
I conceded, afraid my neutral voice would draw suspicion. And then the conversation shifted.
Zain said, I can’t believe you waited this long to tell us. You lowkey kind of suck. My incoming niece or nephew though? Immaculate, adorable, can do no wrong.
Carmen said, What Zain means to say is that you don’t have to do this alone.
It was true. They would be there wherever life after love took me. But to be there, they had to know what was going on, and that put the onus on me to communicate each ask over a pre-scheduled call, rescheduled twice. And in that time, I had to admit that I was tired, but I loved myself. It would be easier if hated myself. Instead, instead.
We had the baby shower in Lana’s apartment on the Upper West Side. She offered. I finished up a deck for work on the Amtrak. I had both seats to myself since people assumed either a man would claim the empty seat or that my belly merited a plus one. When the train arrived at Moynihan, I was lost. Each person that exited the platform was a discordant drum beat drilling into my ear. A life, another life, a whole person inside them, maybe two. My breath got shallow. No one came to help. Whatever washed over me soon withdrew, and I took the subway to Lana’s.
Lana’s place wasn’t ultra fancy, but every wall had moldings. Every room elaborate floral or jungle wallpaper that matched the light switch panels. Her three-bedroom had built-in bookshelves over arched doorways. Plants dangled from bronze hooks and macramé potholders. Lana had a PhD, but she wasn’t selfish. She gave me a big hug, then took my coat and my backpack. In slow motion, her hand reached for my belly. I swatted it.
She raised her hands, Okay, okay, no belly for me. Would you like some foie gras?
Lana was French, rendering us mortal enemies—or our cross-cultural friendship was the epitome of perfect diplomacy. She led me into the kitchen where Carmen and Zain were whipping around hors d’oeuvres. They followed me as I toured the living room, decorated with lavender balloons, fairy lights, and pictures of me from across the years. I wanted to yank the pictures, but I resisted.
I said, Can’t believe you pulled together a baby shower on such short notice.
It’s cause I’m the best CSF, Carmen said. I have a lot of time.
Excuse me, Zain interjected.
And I had help from an events director or whatever, Carmen mumbled.
What’s a CSF, Lana whispered.
Chronically single friend, we said in unison.
She nodded in, oh I’m the oldest person in this room. But instead of withdrawing, she leaned in. She asked, Is there an acronym for someone who is chronically in a relationship?
Is there an acronym for someone who was in a forever relationship but then was dumped, I asked.
While pregnant, Bernadette interjected. Zain elbowed her. I hadn’t seen her come in.
Bernadette was a college roommate. She waved the balloons away from her, even though they were already out of reach. She preferred to keep herself even, a flatline with no hope of resuscitation. Baby showers, disgustingly outside herself.
Is there an acronym for the gays who are perpetually in two-month relationships, Zain asked.
Crying in Shakira, Carmen said.
Omg, love Rama, Zain said.
Lana sighed, Can we speak in millennial? I deleted my Instagram a few weeks ago. And my Facebook. And my Twitter.
So what do you have, TikTok? Zain asked.
I have Substack and email and phone, Lana said.
That’s the way, Bernadette said.
I perked up. I said, I just read this book, the Tao of Pooh. It’s like Daoism but through the lens of Winnie the Pooh.
I love Pooh, Carmen said.
Is it good? Lana asked.
It’s useful. There’s this part about a song Pooh used to sing. I don’t remember the exact lyrics. It’s something like, You wouldn’t expect a bird to swim—
A lot of birds can swim though, Zain said.
Okay, not like a duck. Just pretend birds can’t swim. You wouldn’t expect a bird to swim or a fish to fly. So why do you expect yourself to be and do what you are not?
I don’t know, I think people are capable of profound things that seem outside of themselves, Lana said.
She pointed to my belly, Like having a baby. It’s incredible. And doesn’t it feel a little impossible that a creature would just grow inside you?
Sure, I said. But like, if someone doesn’t want a baby because they don’t know if they can do it, they’re a fish. They should just focus on swimming.
Carmen said, Anyone who doesn’t want a baby shouldn’t be forced to have one.
That’s right, bring back my girl Roe, Zain said.
And I also feel, Carmen said to me, that some people don’t want to have a baby because it’s scary af.
Well, yeah, a baby is a literal leech, Bernadette said.
We’re all leeches at the end of the day, Zain said. On the bright side, you have nine months to learn how to be a mother.
If you want to be a mother, Bernadette said.
Yeah, Zain said. This conversation only applies to folks who aren’t being forced to further a population crisis by having a child they don’t want to have or can’t afford.
It’s scary, but I think you can do it, Carmen said.
And if you can’t, you can always get rid of it, Bernadette chimed in.
I giggled profusely. Everyone else was silent.
By then, more friends had arrived. The living room grew its own sound, steady static in my ear. My fingers tingled. A few people moved to approach me, and I panicked. I excused myself from the group, telling them I was going to work the room. Instead, I walked toward a bathroom on the far side of the apartment. I sat on the toilet seat and in a private browser devoured videos of Reborn dolls.
I intended to head straight to the balcony once I emerged from my stupor. The sound—the subtle jeer of expectations—chased me, a roar now. I moved swiftly, to avoid a run-in that would make me rearrange my face, but they were looking for me. I heard my name as soon as I stepped into the hallway.
There you are, Carmen said.
I greeted all the folks who had trickled in while I was hiding. I was a sieve. Every conversation was about me. Even ones about Dianne Feinstein and earthquakes.
I don’t know, one of my friends said as I joined their circle. Outside of abuse and cheating, people don’t break up because of issues. They break up because they do bad things and then they don’t want to face it. The other person is a reminder. Better to keep it fun and nice.
We all stood in silence, letting what was said wash over us. And then Bernadette was by my side. She must have seen my face, dead.
Let’s get you a drink, dude, she said.
A non-alcoholic beverage, she added when the group looked at her aghast.
Not trying to kill the mother, she said. Although I hear pregnant women can drink a little.
She was digging a hole, and she loved it. I let her take me to the pantry, which was also a laundry room.
Baby showers are so miserable, my God, she exhaled.
She hopped onto the washer and beckoned to me. I approached, folding my arms over the dryer, my face, cold. She had had a few drinks. Her face was flushed, her body moved in sharp angles that revealed outrage.
So, he just broke up with you, even though you were pregnant? she demanded.
He didn’t know at the time. Neither did I.
You guys were legit an institution.
Almost eight years.
You grew up together, she said.
And her eyes welled, which was unlike her. She knew that inside my heart, there I was, dropped into a pit. Even if I had managed to climb my way up, the pit was in a razed forest. And even if I found shade under the scorching sun or sustenance in the remains, the pit was in a razed forest on an island, and I couldn’t swim.
Yes, I said.
She came closer. It was just us now, she gripped my hand, a lifeline.
So I said, I thought we were going to get married.
You shouldn’t have to work so hard for love, she said.
Yes, I said again, hoping the force of my yes would allow her words to settle. I was afraid of unraveling, so I kept my words slow.
I just don’t know if I’ll find the right person, I said.
What are you talking about? You’re like a 13/10, baby.
I am a solid 12/10, I laughed. But that means there’s a smaller pool of folks to choose from. 1-8s take themselves out of the running.
That’s not true at all. Men have no self-awareness. They think too highly of themselves. No, your issue is that now you have a bun in the oven.
I thought this was supposed to be a hype session, I said.
She shrugged, Not in business for pleasantries. Go try your whites.
You’re wrong for that, I told her.
I can’t believe you’re doing this, she said. Kind of dumb.
And then she reached for my belly. I almost let her touch it. I would’ve let her touch the softest parts of me, the most incomplete, fraught, naked, wild parts of me. But I had decided that no one could touch my belly. So, before her hands reached me, I brushed them aside.
I love you, was all I said.
So rude, she said. I think you should make me a godfather now. It’s only fair.
We played all sorts of games. We awww’d at baby pics and matched them to folks in the room. My baby photo was an easy guess. I was a very serious child. My friends shouted out potential baby names though I didn’t give them a gender. A good half of their guesses were gender neutral like Lennon and Alex. My Haitian friends threw out girl names like Anne, Erna, Jesila, and Dieula. I was told to announce the winner later, if there was one, and they would join me for a spa day.
After a while, my energy left. All that pretending sucked the juice out of me. I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore. I wanted to be no one. Thankfully, I didn’t have to open gifts in front of the crowd. At some point—I failed to grasp the cue—everyone gathered in a circle, and there I was at the center. My friends sat on the ground. I was concerned for their knees, but I was also pleased to be at the center of an adult version of story-time. In college, the birthday parties of each wholesome kid ended with folks in a circle, rattling off qualities they liked about the birthday kid. Back then, to be loved was the greatest gift. It meant that you had won, though it was never clear to me what exactly was the prize. Some of those people in my birthday affection circles were in this very room, beaming at me. I didn’t think I would make it here. I was never suicidal, though in my early 20s I was sometimes depressed. I carried with me a startling awareness of my death. The future was at my heels, nipping. The present, skipping ahead of me, gone each time I thought I had caught up to it. And I could not imagine what life would be like without the grand specter of my death, which forced me down a path that didn’t always feel right but felt necessary. Alienation from my true desires meant that in this room, while I was gobsmacked by the gentle love flowing in my direction, I was also ravaged by my loneliness, which gave me the impression that I was an inch tall, an inch wide, just as I began to speak. I talked about the changes I had experienced in the last few months, I thanked them for loving me and my future baby. I did cry, of course, and never felt so many hands on me.
I thought I would have to be carried away for fatigue. The first wave of friends swooped in to hug me, take selfies, wish me the best, and say derivates of, I am so happy for you, but I have to get home before my cat scratches up my furniture,—my child goes to bed,—my husband lounges useless without me. I mirrored their joy. I pulled out the brimming-with-possibility effect that I had perfected over the last few weeks. I wore it like a mask.
And then a friend I shared with my Former Lover hovered near me. She was the only mutual friend in attendance, even though I was local to the so-called friends that I’d tried hard to connect with over the years. I lost so much time to people who could not give themselves over to me because they didn’t know themselves. Each lost friend was another heartbreak, evidence of my loneliness. Better to lose them, too, I tried to convince myself.
My mutual wished me happiness and then asked me if I was dating.
I’m not dating, I said, shocked at the question. It had only been a few months since my breakup. I had just switched cities and now had baby things taking up my time. Was it normal for people to date so soon after a breakup? Do pregnant people even date? What was the point of dating anyway? I didn’t want to have sex just because I had a body. I unfortunately wanted to have sex with either an ultra-hot person or a person who moved me. One does not just find these people on the street. You do find them on the apps, but only after you’ve distilled them into a pleasant photo that you could make disappear with a swipe of your hand. And if I could get rid of someone that quickly, I wanted nothing to do with them. Let alone date them. Let alone fuck them. But my Former Lover had invited someone to his room while he was in a relationship with me. Lord knows what he was doing now. And then it dawned on me.
I blurted, Is that Sunk Cost of Mine dating?
She was a deer. I was a swift-moving, oncoming truck. I wanted to smash her so badly, but I relented. I grinned like it was a joke, because ultimately it was, and I said, Don’t answer that.
She sighed in relief. I hugged her goodbye. I squeezed her tightly because I felt a new loss expand as she put on her shoes and closed the door with a final sweet smile.
Everyone from my former life, who still rallied around my ex, by choice, by routine, now knew far more about him and his current life than me. I would not know when he started dating, which he likely had already. He’d wait until he was set on his new person to soft launch on social media. I would find out at the same time as folks who didn’t know his middle name. I would not know when he got an email from an editor, when he finally secured a tenure-track job, when he landed on a location to live. These updates I would learn on LinkedIn at the same time as people he had only talked to once. All those years of intimate knowledge accrued, dealt over pillow talk and low-lit dinners no longer mattered. He was a stranger to me now, and he likely preferred it that way.
When the chatter had slowed, when everyone had left except for Carmen, Zain, Lana, and Bernadette, I let out a great sigh.
Zain asked, Did you have a good time? You seemed—
I was—, I said. Everyone was staring at me, and I don’t even know what I look like anymore. Also, it was weird not having him here for something so big.
Zain kissed my cheek. As we cleaned up, I told him that I wasn’t sleeping, and now probably my Former Lover was dating, and almost none of our mutual friends showed up, and at first I relished in the energy that was returned to me when I didn’t have to stress about whether my relationship was a dead thing masquerading as a healthy, loving thing, but the prospect of having to carry on alone was so daunting sometimes it stilled my heart.
We returned the space to a reasonable condition, and Carmen performed a parting dance for us. We followed suit, wiggling our hands in the air. My friends packed my gifts into a suitcase that I borrowed from Lana. Of course, I felt guilty. I felt so many emotions I had no name for. In my Uber, I imagined the night with him at my side. He wouldn’t have been able to keep his hand off my belly, my waist, my shoulder. He would clear the path for me every time I went for a plate of crackers, cheese, and fruit. He would bring me water. In the middle of conversations with our friends, he would search for me and find me instantly, his face the face of the man I chose, the man I had planned to marry. I would trust, intuitively, that my baby would grow in gentle, loving hands. Given the best chance at navigating this world unscathed. Instead, instead. He got bored. He cast me from his life. All those loving hands that touched me tonight, and none of them could reach me.
My Uber driver told me his baby mama was named Nadine. When my name came up on his phone, he almost canceled, fled the train station right then. Nadine was nontraditional, an independent woman. She wouldn’t let him exercise his God-ordained role as head of household. It’s head of not heads of, he insisted. Of course, he couldn’t marry her. That didn’t stop him from having a baby with her. Could I believe that six months in she left him? Yes, they still talked, but not so often. He didn’t trust himself with her. She was the love of his life.
The driver stopped in the bike lane in front of my apartment. I hopped out quickly so that we could clear the lane.
You should let a man get the door for you, the driver chastised me. I thought but did not say, You should move more quickly, then.
He opened the trunk. I was still thinking of Nadine. Did she imagine that this man was her greatest love or her greatest oppressor? Did she regret having her baby, or did she say to her girlfriends that the one good thing her Good-For-Nothing did was to give her a baby?
The driver plopped my suitcase on the road and slammed the trunk. Then he touched my belly.
I had missed it. The whole short ride we discussed desire, but it felt abstract, lodged in the past. Now it was out in the open, vulgar and needy. I hadn’t clocked when he took in my size. I didn’t see him register my condition at all. I missed what words he must have said before his hands reached for me. All I felt was the slightest bit of pressure as the foam caved in unnaturally.
My Lover Emeritus touched just my pinky as he told me he loved me, but we would not continue. Nadine, poor Nadine.
The Uber driver backed away. He didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t tell him to have a good night. In my bathroom I washed my hands in the dark, over and over again.
My Former Lover, Ex Now’s name was the backdrop of my thoughts, sometimes claiming frontal stage before I demanded strict adherence to the neutral, fully-moved-on choreography I had set. To be without him was to encounter my hollowness, to understand that at my fullest I was a flimsy thing, waiting for the everyday humdrum to settle so that I could crumble, my true state. So many things I wanted to tell him. My love for you is so wide. My love for you is now a call with no answer. Your name as ingrained as my breath. Every pause, and I could hear again. How God said let there be light, and there was light. It just was. Your name just was. While I was extinguished. Like that.
My belly still fluttered from the stranger’s hand. Every real cell I owned was worn down. I was 17, on my period, crying because my favorite Chinese restaurant forgot to add duck sauce to my order. I was 23, waking up from a nap to a trail of rose petals that led to the Man of My Dreams. I was 29, next to him on the couch that had accompanied me across three neighborhoods and six apartments as he smiled at me so sadly my heart transformed into a mosaic. Instantly.
I leaked tears, but what I really meant was, What did I do that was so wrong? What did I do to make him hate me?
He had seen me. He knew what I was. And he chose to leave.
The bathroom floor was too cold for a miscarriage. My Pothos needed its brown leaves plucked. I had not taken home enough food from the office, and now my stomach raged and cried out for what I did not have. I had ketchup and almond milk and cereal, so that was what I ate, though not all together. Seated on my kitchen island, I was aware of my throat shrinking, and it reminded me of the opposite of a feeling I used to have in my early twenties. Life moved so fast it had a sound. Now, I couldn’t hear it or remember when it had gone quiet. Or did I bury it? Was it lost to me now, the rush of possibility? And if I had a child, would I pass on the shattering smallness of my life?
I leaned back on the island. Flush with the cool marble, I drizzled ketchup on my thigh. Pitiful, nothing like blood. Then, I drew a ketchup heart on my squished foam belly. The work of a child.
