This is what you write in your journal. The next day when you return from classes the law student throws the notebook in your face. I fucking hate you, she wails. I hope it’s not yours. I hope it is yours and it’s born retarded.
How can you say that? you demand. How can you say something like that?
She walks to the kitchen and starts to pour herself a shot and you find yourself pulling the bottle out of her hand and pouring its contents into the sink. This is ridiculous, you say. More bad TV.
She doesn’t speak to you again for two whole fucking weeks. You spend as much time as you can either at your office or over at Elvis’s house. Whenever you enter a room she snaps shut her laptop. I’m not fucking snooping, you say. But she waits for you to move on before she returns to typing whatever she was typing.
You can’t throw out your baby’s mom, Elvis reminds you. It would fuck that kid up for life. Plus, it’s bad karma. Just wait till the baby comes. She’ll fucking straighten out.
A month passes, two months pass. You’re afraid to tell anybody else, to share the — what? Good news? Arlenny you know would march right in and boot her ass out on the street. Your back is agony and the numbness in your arms is starting to become pretty steady. In the shower, the only place in the apartment you can be alone, you whisper to yourself: Hell, Netley. We’re in Hell.
—
LATER IT WILL all come back to you as a terrible fever dream but at the time it moved so very slowly, felt so very concrete. You take her to her appointments. You help her with the vitamins and shit. You pay for almost everything. She is not speaking to her mother so all she has are two friends who are in the apartment almost as much as you are. They are all part of the Biracial Identity Crisis Support Group and look at you with little warmth. You wait for her to melt, but she keeps her distance. Some days while she is sleeping and you are trying to work you allow yourself the indulgence of wondering what kind of child you will have. Whether it will be a boy or a girl, smart or withdrawn. Like you or like her.
Have you thought up any names? Elvis’s wife asks.
Not yet.
Taína for a girl, she suggests. And Elvis for a boy. She throws a taunting glance at her husband and laughs.
I like my name, Elvis says. I would give it to a boy.
Over my dead body, his wife says. And besides, this oven is closed for business.
At night while you’re trying to sleep you see the glow of her computer through the open door of the bedroom, hear her fingers on the keyboard.
Do you need anything?
I’m fine, thank you.
You come to the door a few times and watch her, wanting to be called in, but she always glares and asks you, What the fuck do you want?
Just checking.
Five month, six month, seventh month. You are in class teaching Intro to Fiction when you get a text from one of her girlfriends saying she has gone into labor, six weeks early. All sorts of terrible fears race around inside of you. You keep trying her cell phone but she doesn’t answer. You call Elvis but he doesn’t answer either, so you drive over to the hospital by yourself.
Are you the father? the woman at the desk asks.
I am, you say diffidently.
You are led around the corridors and finally given some scrubs and told to wash your hands and given instructions where you should stand and warned about the procedure but as soon as you walk into the birthing room the law student shrieks: I don’t want him in here. I don’t want him in here. He’s not the father.
You didn’t think anything could hurt so bad. Her two girlfriends rush at you but you have already exited. You saw her thin ashy legs and the doctor’s back and little else. You’re glad you didn’t see anything more. You would have felt like you’d violated her safety or something. You take off the scrubs; you wait around for a bit and then you realize what you’re doing and finally you drive home.
—
YOU DON’T HEAR from her but from her girlfriend, the same one who texted you about the labor. I’ll come pick up her bags, OK? When she arrives, she glances around the apartment warily. You’re not going to go psycho on me, are you?
No, I’m not. After a pause you demand: Why would you say that? I’ve never hurt a woman in my life. Then you realize how you sound — like a dude who hurts women all the time. Everything goes back into the three suitcases and then you help her wrestle them down to her SUV.
You must be relieved, she says.
You don’t answer.
And that’s the end of it. Later you hear that the Kenyan visited her in the hospital, and when he saw the baby a teary reconciliation occurred, all was forgiven.
That was your mistake, Elvis said. You should have had a baby with that ex of yours. Then she wouldn’t have left you.