Alana wrinkled her nose. “Fish? And what glow?”
“You know. The old wives tale that says if you dream of fish then someone in the family is pregnant. And you’re glowing baby.” Her mother stared at her as if she was waiting for Alana to spill the beans.
Alana shrugged. Is this why she called me over here? “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Have you been throwing up or feeling nauseated lately?” Her mother took her hand and led her to a chair gently, almost in the same way one would lead a woman who was nine months pregnant. It irritated her so she remained on her feet, instead of allowing her mother’s hands to bend her into the seat. “Have you felt any dizziness? Tiredness?”
Alana stared at her mother as if she was frozen in place by her questions.
“You have!” her mother cried excitedly.
“No, I haven’t!” Alana quickly denied.
She couldn’t be pregnant.
Her mother desperately wanted her to be. Since Aaryn came, she had been asking Alana to come to her new church with her so the pastor could pray for an increase in her ‘happiness’. She referred to children as happiness. All her children were always referred to as ‘my happiness’, whenever she talked to people about them.
“Are you sure?” she asked Alana. Now her excitement was ebbing fast. It had just rammed into a rock-hard wall.
“I’m sure.” Alana started leaving the room. She went into the kitchen and placed the tea cup with the remainder of chamomile on the marbled counter top and in a haste, said, “Mom I have to go now.”
She couldn’t be pregnant.
“What? You just came,” her mom whined.
“Well, there is something I need to do.”
“But I haven’t told you what I need you for,” her mom said hurriedly, trying to get her to stay a little longer.
“I will attend to it later.”
“Come on, it’s urgent.”
It couldn’t be more urgent than the need to watch the sun rise in the morning. If it couldn’t be done today, it could still be done tomorrow, or any other day.
“Alex is in his room. He doesn’t want to go to school…”
Alana stood listening to her mother rattle on about how Alex had been playing truant. Alex was her nephew from her oldest sister Grace. She and Alana had never fully seen eye to eye, unlike Alana and Johnson. Grace’s son Alex was headstrong and was always getting into scrapes with his parents. Like all kids with a granny, he usually made this place his abode whenever he fell out with them. Now he was playing truant with her too. Her mother wanted her to talk some sense into him.
Unfortunately, none of her words registered in Alana’s mind. They seemed to enter through one ear and leave through the other. Once she noticed that her mother had finished talking, she told her again, “I’ll attend to it later. Bye mom.” She gave her mom a quick kiss on the cheek and exited her home.
She made it to her vehicle with quick steps murmuring under her breath “No, I can’t be pregnant.”
5
The home pregnancy test showed her the last thing she wanted to see.
With shaky hands she dipped the test strip into her urine sample. Waiting for it to dry was complete torture. When two lines appeared on the strip, her brows furrowed in puzzlement. This couldn’t be possible.
She spent five minutes willing one of the lines to disappear. It didn’t. The two remained there, showing her what was not supposed to be there.
“How?” Alana wondered aloud and dragged herself out of the bathroom. She knew how but was wondering how it was possible. Her steps were slow and ponderous as she walked. When she got back to the bedroom, she threw herself down on the bed and closed her eyes.
Unbidden, the memory of the day Brad left for the trials in Mississippi came back to her. It was the day after her menstrual flow started. The cramps had descended on her with everything they had, gripping her bowels in a vice-like grip and squeezing as hard as they could.
Brad had been reluctant to go. “I could leave tomorrow instead,” he said, worry written all over his handsome face.
It was the sweetest gesture, but although she knew he meant every word, Alana had laughed it off even though laughing was a painful task. “You want to miss your appearance in court today because of cramps?” She laughed in between bursts of pain.
He shook his head with a smile. “Promise me you’ll be fine.”
“I will baby.”
He had come back home yesterday afternoon with an acquittal under his belt… Just in time to attend that wretched dinner party. This was the longest stretch of time they had gone without sex. Over six weeks.
Now she was pregnant.
“No,” Alana corrected her thoughts. The test strip was showing that she was pregnant. She didn’t believe it. Only a blood test at the clinic would convince her now.
Her phone started ringing. When she checked the caller ID she saw that it was Johnson. He was probably calling to find out why she had not come in to work yet. She picked up the call.
“John?”
“Sis, where are you?”
Work was at BB Confectionaries, a family business that was run by all the siblings in the Blake family with Johnson as the CEO and their mother as president. It was a business their father had started in his youth. It had fed them all, clothed them all and sent them all to school. And it had also paid for that house her mother sold.
“I’m at home,” Alana said. “Look, I may have to come in really late today.”
“Why? Is everything okay?”
“Kind of. I have an emergency I need to take care of.”
“Tell me, what’s up?”
Johnson’s voice had gone from soft to hard. Even now, at thirty, he still looked out for her like she was ten or even younger. He was a very protective big brother. But she had Brad now to protect her.
“I’ll tell you when I get in.”
With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Alana knew at that moment that although she would rather not talk about this, she would have to discuss it with him when she got to the office. Among all her siblings, Johnson was the closest to her. Maybe that was because she had been born last, or maybe because all through their childhood, he was the only one who had been able to understand her in a way no one else had. Well, maybe except for Brad.
“I will tell you when I get in,” Alana said again.
“You better,” Johnson growled.
She laughed and cut the call.
Immediately after placing it on the bed, the phone started to ring again. It was her mom.
“Oh God noooo…,” Alana groaned. She glared at the phone screen for a long time before she reached the decision to ignore it. She would leave it here on the bed so later when her mom asked why she didn’t answer her calls, she would be able to truthfully say that she had gone out without her phone.
She got up from the bed and grabbed her car keys. The clinic was her destination.
6
Brad shouldn’t have returned to the house when he did. He hadn’t planned to. But all through the day he had been unable to focus on anything. It seemed that the gas that had kept him going while he was away in Mississippi had given out, now it was just him, trying to work with a mind that was roaming.
Luckily Cliff was out of the building for most of the day, shouting down opposition lawyers, clients and judges and intimidating the clerks in all the courtrooms he walked into. So there was nobody at the office to ask unwanted questions about his demeanor. The partners didn’t care if he had a perpetual scowl on his face or a clownish smile pasted there. As long as he got the job done, they were okay. After all, there was still that offer of partnership they were using effectively to goad him into working himself into an early grave. The other associates didn’t give a damn if their colleague was happy or sad. He was always the Associate of the Year, for goodness sake.
At twelve noon, Brad was sure that if he spent a minute more in his office he would hang hi
mself with his tie. Without a word to anyone, he left the building and went downstairs to the garage where his aqua metallic Mercedes Benz was waiting.
In the six years he had spent at Sandler, Harris and Whistler, the only times he had left the office for reasons that were not work related had been to make love to his wife. Those were the days she would sext him heavily until he got so hard that the work before him lost its meaning. If he was not in court or in a meeting with a client, he would jump in the car and fly down to wherever she was. It was always one of three places. Number one, the most frequently used was the house. Number two, which he loved more than all the others was her office, on her table. The third place was his own office. They had done it once there but had been interrupted by the frantic banging on the door by a panicking client whose husband had just been arrested.
Now as he maneuvered the car through the traffic he wondered if Alana was still in the house. The mere thought of her aroused him and he felt his member begin to strain against his trousers. By the time he pulled up in front of the house he had made the decision that he was going to have her if she was still in.
A moment later that thought died in his mind when he realized that her car wasn’t parked in its usual spot. She was out. Thoughts of last night, the very thing that had driven him out of the office, came back to him again. A heavy miasma that cloaked him and sought to choke him with the gloom it brought.
Wondering what he would gain from spending time here, Brad unlocked the door and went in. After drinking a glass of water in the kitchen he walked upstairs and entered the bedroom. Alana’s phone was on the bed ringing.
“Alana?” He called out.
There was no response to his call. Raising his voice, he tried again: “Alana, baby!”
The silence of the house answered him. Maybe she was in the bathroom, or downstairs, or she just didn’t want to answer him. Or maybe she had gone out without her phone. She did that sometimes.
The phone stopped ringing then. He picked it up and saw that it was locked.
“Now, let’s see if she’s changed it,” he said and keyed in the password: only Brad. The phone chirruped, signaling that he had been granted access. He checked her call list and saw seven missed calls. Three were from her mom, two from her sister, Grace, and one from her dentist and his old college buddy, Fred.
“Gotta catch up with him soon,” he muttered, trying to remember the last time they saw each other. He scrolled to see the last missed call. His heart stopped. It was from Mr. Funny, Greg, the ex who didn’t want to stay away.
Brad scrolled down to last night’s calls and there he was again. A forty-one-minute call. He shook his head and threw the phone on the bed.
Five minutes later while he was at the dresser unknotting his tie, he thought about going through Alana’s text messages. He went back to where her phone lay and unlocked it again.
7
Alana left the clinic in a daze. She drove to the park on the outskirts of the city and sat on one of the benches to think. The pregnancy test had come back positive. Now there was no reason for her to doubt anymore, no matter how crazy it appeared.
A soft breeze brushed back a few strands of her hair as she stared into space, not seeing the pigeons fluttering about in the open field. The noise of the kids chasing each other and that of their harried mother calling after them sounded like they came from a faraway place.
She felt cold inside.
“How is this possible?” she murmured again.
It had been on her lips ever since. At first it was a declaration that what she had seen was not possible. Then, it turned into a prayer that it was not real. Now it was just an expression of her bewilderment.
The last time she had sex was on Brad’s birthday, almost two months ago. She had woken him up with her mouth on his member, urging him to stand. Her tongue had done some little dance, teasing him and getting him engorged. Then she had taken him in. All seven inches of him. It was the first ever time she had managed it and it made her eyes water, but she didn’t mind because she knew he liked it. Besides, the rewards would far outweigh the efforts when he decided to switch on his head game.
The sex that morning had been wild and had lasted longer than most. At the end of it all, they had been too tired to get off the bed and had gone back to sleep. It was a good thing that Aaryn had slept over at her grandma’s place the previous night.
Now as she recalled it, she did not feel that familiar stirring in her loins that always followed when she relived all those toe-curling moments she had enjoyed with Brad. What she felt was a chill creeping up on her from behind trying to obstruct her breathing.
Two days after Brad’s birthday he left for Mississippi while she took drugs for the cramps that came with her period. Now she was pregnant.
It wasn’t his child.
Alana sighed and closed her eyes. If it wasn’t him, then who could it have been? It didn’t make sense. She had a fleeting thought of the night she fell asleep after meeting up at Greg’s hotel, but she quickly shook that thought away. Although she had gotten drunk and couldn’t remember all of the night’s events, she didn’t believe Greg would do such a thing. He would never, she affirmed to herself.
When she got back into her car she drove to the bakery, flying through the streets like a thousand devils were after her. She needed to talk with her brother. He was the only one that would understand her now. He had always done so. What she had to say was crazy and there was no one else to take the crazy things to except him. And Brad. But Brad was unavailable now. Besides, this was not the kind of thing to talk to him about now.
***
Johnson left his office just minutes before she got there. His secretary told her he had gone out for a business meeting with some prospective customers. Sitting down on the secretary’s desk, Alana fished around in her pocket for her phone, then she remembered that she had left it at home.
“Tell him I was here whenever he comes back,” she instructed the secretary.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Never mind; don’t. I will call him.”
As she walked out, she decided not to call him anymore. What was she going to say?
Um… I’m pregnant.
Wow, congratulations!
No-no-no-no…
What?
I don’t know who the father is.
What do you mean?
It isn’t Brad.
Wait… you’ve been sleeping outside?
No. I haven’t. I’ve been faithful to him.
Then what are you talking about?
Alana shook her head. That wouldn’t work. Telling her mother wouldn’t be a better idea either. At first the woman would be ecstatic. Then when she learned about the question mark around the baby’s paternity she would be horrified. The icing on the cake would be Alana’s claims that she hadn’t slept with anybody since Brad travelled out of town.
Are you the Virgin Mary?
That was what her sisters would ask her if she told them.
She had to deal with this on her own. And there was only one way to deal with it. She would have to tell Brad.
Driving home was the hardest thing she had ever done.
She had fleeting thoughts about so many things on her way home. Her mind flitted from one to another, touching them briefly and turning up memories that were so sweet they seemed bitter in her mouth now.
In between those thoughts as she worked the steering wheel, she kept asking herself the same question repeatedly: How did I get pregnant?
It was a question that had no answer. At least she was unable to come up with one. How does one go from having no physical intimacy with any man to getting pregnant? Was pregnancy now an airborne disease that flew around seeking whose stomach to get all bloated up with some mystery child and whose marriage to ruin?
Last night’s fight was not going to help her at all. She should have simply told him why she met with Greg. The hurt that came with his questions had clouded her jud
gment, and her intent on finding out which of his friends was playing sleuth on his behalf made her not think straight.
How was she going to tell him about this when they still had Greg hanging over their head like a dark cloud?
8
Brad was in the living room with Aaryn when she walked in. She stood by the door for a long while looking at them. Her mind screamed, No! But she still opened her mouth. “Baby, please. Can we talk?”
It was then that Aaryn noticed her. She slid out of his hands and ran over to hug her. She bent and threw open her arms, bracing herself for the impact. Aaryn jumped into her arms laughing and she spun her around. The girl was getting heavier by the day.
“How was your day baby girl?” she asked looking lovingly at her daughter.
“It was fine,” Aaryn replied. Her voice was squeaky with excitement. “Mommy is home!”
“You are back,” Brad said. His voice was flat, and his face was blank. It made Alana’s heart sink. She knew that look too well even though he used it only once before. She remembered the cold look he had the day he knocked out Matthew’s teeth back in college because he was harassing her.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Mommy, did you get me cookies?” Aaryn asked her as she picked her daughter up in her arms. The little girl was oblivious to the tension in the room
How could she have forgotten? “Err… baby girl I’m so sorry. Mommy forgot to get some.”
“Baby I just gave you some now,” Brad interrupted in a tone of protest.
“But I want more,” Aaryn insisted. “Please?”
“Okay, we’ll go out and get it okay?” Alana promised her.
“Yes!”
“Daddy and I need to talk now.” She set Aaryn down gently. “Go on and play with your toys. Once we’re finished talking, we’ll go get those cookies.”
Aaryn ran back to her toys which were on the floor. There was a miniature sports car with two human figures inside it. She and Brad had been taking turns making it go around the living room with the remote controller just before her mother appeared on the scene.
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