by Lena Mahmoud
I leaned against the car window, staring ahead at the road, so enraged I couldn’t speak.
“Isra, it’s a good idea. Works for both of us.”
I balled both my hands into fists and hit my thighs. “It works for you because you get all the security, while I’m left staying at home with a load of kids, pulling my hair out! You get to have something else in your life. Your life doesn’t revolve around me and kids, but mine completely will. Sure. Anything to make my husband happy.”
He shook his head. “God, not this again.”
I put my finger in his face for the second time that day. “Yes, this again. ‘Oh, I’m not going to be a patriarch with my daughter, but I don’t want her to have anything to do with boys ’cause she’ll get hurt.’ Like a woman doesn’t get hurt in marriage. What kind of example will I set for her if I just do whatever you want me to do?”
He looked to the side to face me and scoffed. “You do whatever I want? That’s a riot. You fight with me about everything, and I want what’s good for us. What will be good for our kids.”
“‘Us’ is you. I get maternity leave for a couple of months, but I don’t think I should stay out of the workforce for five years, or God knows how long because I’ll just keep popping out kids. That’ll be my whole life!” Already I was sniffling and hiding my face against the window. This is what pregnancy reduced me to: I could no longer hold my tears in until the fight was over and Yusef was out of sight.
“Don’t cry, Isra.” He put a hand on my shoulder. He gave me his usual—this is not the end of the world; it’s not as bad as you imagine it to be—until he stopped the car. I got out as fast as possible so I could rush into the house without having to say another word to him. He made it around to the passenger door before I was even out, though. He reached for my hand, but I pulled away. “Don’t touch me.”
“Why is everything so hard with you?” he asked as he followed me.
I searched for the keys in my purse and kept my back to him. Once I had a free hand, I wiped the tears from my face.
“We’ve got to think of these things before the babies come.”
I had trouble keeping my hand steady enough to unlock the front door.
“I’ll get it.” He reached for my hand again, but I got the key in and turned the lock, pushing his hand away.
He went on talking. I considered locking myself in the bedroom, but I was too hungry. I opened the refrigerator and looked to see if we had anything quick to eat. We didn’t. I didn’t like ready-made snacks and never bought them. Now I regretted it. I reached up into a cabinet and got out a small pot.
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and rested his warm cheek against my hair. “Look, sweetie, just sit, and I’ll get you whatever you need.”
I shrugged him off and slammed the pot down on the stove. “You can’t make me anything!” That was enough to get me crying so pathetically that my tears dripped into the pot. “I don’t even see why we argue about these things—” I made a sound that was like a high-pitched gasp and hiccup combined. “Because you always get your way, no matter what!” A lock of hair fell to the side of my face.
He took me to our bed, and he sat down beside me, thumbing the tears from my face before he set his hand down on my belly. I sniffled for a couple more minutes, and when I composed myself, he said with his calm, serious face, “Why is this upsetting you so much? I just want to let you know that I will take care of you and provide for you and our babies.”
I lay down on my side and brushed the hair from my face. “I don’t see why there’s such a problem with me working. Even Lubna works, and she has two kids.”
“The youngest is in preschool, and before that … Isra, her husband’s a deadbeat who can’t get his shit together. I don’t know what my parents were thinking when they set them up. Believe me, I’d never stick our daughter with a guy like that.”
“So that’s what this is about, your manhood? How it looks to everyone? You can make enough money that your wife can stay at home after she has babies. Yusef, I don’t even have to go out that much for my job! I do most of the writing here.”
He groaned. “I don’t give a shit about what people think. This is what’s best.”
“Fine, I’ll think about it.” Who was going to watch them all day? Even if Imm Yusef would do it, I wouldn’t like it. I knew better than to let anyone else, especially someone who didn’t think highly of me, raise my child.
He smiled. That seemed to be enough for him. He knew he was going to get what he wanted in the end. “You know everything I have is yours. I don’t get it. You don’t spend a lot of money, and you don’t even like your job that much. You say all those community events are boring.”
“I like having something of my own. I didn’t realize it was such a crime.”
“It isn’t.” He pulled my shirt up and kissed my big, warm belly. “You know, Isra, I think you are an intelligent woman, but being a mom isn’t like you’re not using that. It’s not a cop-out.”
I stared at him, my eyes narrowed. “If you treat our daughter like shit, I’ll cut off your balls and force-feed them to you,” I said.
He looked up at me, his lips still on my belly, and laughed his short, nervous laugh. “I’ll have to guard them at all times,” he said. He straightened up and covered my belly. “Well, Isra, you love our daughter more than our son. You. Are. Such. A. Sexist!”
“No, you have to fight more on the girl’s behalf. The world is more against her.”
He nudged my chin up. “I’ll protect both of my girls from anything, and I won’t die or think our daughter is a whore for having hormones.” He took my hand in his. “What do you want me to get you?”
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
“C’mon, Isreenie, I don’t want you to starve. You have to eat for three.”
“Everything we have has to be cooked, Yusef. You can’t cook.”
“I can drive. I can go and pick something up.” He squeezed my hand between both of his. “Let me do this for you.”
When I heard the door unlock, my eyelids were so heavy that I felt like I had been sleeping for hours, but it was only a little past eleven in the morning. My ultrasound appointment was at nine, so we hadn’t even been home for very long.
Yusef was on his phone when he brought the food into our bedroom. “Ithnayn owlad, Mama. Wahid walad, wahid bint.” Two children, Mama. One boy, one girl. He sat down beside me. I heard her squeal and yell on the phone. He laughed. He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and rested his hand at the top of my belly while I took my food out of the bag. I heard him tell his mother about how the technician was taking forever to see me and my bladder was about to burst.
He kissed me again when he got off the phone and pulled out his container.
I did feel more calm and relaxed, but I was uncomfortably hot. The heat was starting to set in; I drank half of my 20-ounce water bottle in one long swallow and lay back down. Yusef turned the fan on for me and kissed me when he was back on the bed. “You have garlic breath.”
“So do you.”
“I like it, though. It’s an aphrodisiac.” He edged his nose into my mouth to sniff my breath, but I bit down gently. He held my face in his hands and laughed when he broke away. “You know what? I got a few hours left before I go to work. I can run you a cool bath if you want.” He was gone before I had time to respond. I was more in the mood to lie down, bathing in my own sweat. Getting up seemed like too much effort. And I knew what he was getting at: he not only wanted me to accept his terrible idea, he also wanted sex. I needed sleep.
I heaved myself off the bed dutifully and waddled to the bathroom in the hall. The tub was almost full, and he was sitting on top of the toilet, watching. He looked up when I came in. “I thought I was gonna have to go in there and carry you off the bed.”
I leaned on the counter, holding my belly, waiting for him to leave.
“You don’t mind if I join you?” he asked, grinning mischievously l
ike he hadn’t seen me naked countless times.
I blushed. “I doubt if I can fit in that tub by myself.”
“I think we both can,” he said, already unbuttoning his shirt. “It’s a lot bigger than the one we had at the apartment. Don’t be embarrassed. I’m your husband and your baby daddy.”
I slowly undressed, my limbs sluggish.
“See, I’m even putting my unprotected balls out there for you,” he said, holding his scrotum with both hands. “But I’m not letting you near any knives.”
I chuckled.
He helped me into the bath, saying he didn’t want to take the chance of me falling. “Being pregnant with twins, too, that’s increased risk for complications. Not much, but you can never be too safe when it comes to children.”
We barely fit into the bath together. His arms and legs, pressed against mine, were a little darker, tanner, and hairier. My legs were almost as long as his and still skinnier; his had always been short and strong, even when he was a thin teenager. His torso was much longer than mine. I made up for it in width. My belly almost touched each side of the tub.
He didn’t try to get laid. I suppose my body in daylight repulsed him. While he wet my hair and face, he told me he was so excited to see our babies. He did relax me, going on in his calm voice, resting the side of my face against his wet, hairy chest. “Your skin is so warm,” he said. “No wonder you’re sweating like this.”
“I can’t wait till winter.”
He sighed. “You never liked the cold before.”
“I was never this huge before, and I have my own internal space heater now.” I put my arms over his, right between my belly and breasts. “What made you want kids, anyway?”
He adjusted himself in the tub, holding on to my waist. “Hmm. Never thought about that. Kids are so sweet and funny. Everything’s not so serious with them.” He sighed. “It must have been when I first became an uncle, Khadija kept on having sons, and I was like a big brother to them—I was always the baby before. When I got older, my other sisters had kids, nieces and nephews, and I just enjoyed being around them.”
I gasped when I felt one of the babies kick. It had been happening intermittently for the past week and a half. Yusef was concerned at the gasp and then disappointed when he found out what it was for. He had missed all the babies’ kicks.
“I was thinking that if they get a tenure-track position at a community college, I won’t always have to teach these night classes, especially when they’re older and in school. I don’t want to be going to work right when the kids get home.” He set his hand on my belly. “I should keep my hand on your belly all day, and then I’ll get to feel one of the kicks. Take you to work with me.”
“It’ll happen, if you’re patient.”
“I know you’ll be a great mother, Isra. Look at how much Hanan loves you, and you’re not even her mother.”
My lip trembled. “I didn’t have a lot of competition, with the parents she had.”
“You’d think they could have done better. They only got two.”
I bit my lip to stop the trembling. “Nobody wants it to be that way. Things happen, and then just …” My eyes were full, and I started sniffling again.
He massaged his fingers into my belly. “Isra, don’t worry so much. It’s not good for you. What we can help, we’ll help. Whatever comes up, we’ll deal, okay? It hurts me to see you like this.”
I knew I was being a little dramatic. Our children didn’t have as much working against them as I did. First, Yusef and I were married, so they were legitimate, non-haraam children. Second, they were basically just Arab. His parents and his sisters would not treat these children like shit. Amu Nasser and Amtu Samia would have nothing to do with them, though. And that would be for the better.
“You worry almost as much as Mama.” When I didn’t say anything and clenched my teeth, he added, “I guess it’s just part of being a mother.” He held me tighter. “Have you been thinking about baby names?”
I hadn’t. “Well, I think your parents will want the boy to be Musa.” Taking Yusef’s father’s name, following tradition.
“Sure, but I was thinking for the girl, we could name her after your mother.”
I skipped a few breaths. I hadn’t thought about it. I was depressing myself over all the bad things that would happen; I hadn’t even thought to name my daughter after my mother. “What about your mother? Wouldn’t she be offended if we didn’t give her her name?”
“Nah, I don’t think so. It would be weird to have twins with my parents’ names, like they’re a married couple or something. What’s your mother’s name anyway?”
“Carol.” I smiled, hearing her strong, warm voice in my mind. “She hated the name. She thought it made her sound like an old woman.” Only she didn’t live to be one.
“It’s not bad. It’s a name my parents can pronounce, or bronounce. I’m glad to see that you’re not ‘so sour’ anymore.” He said the last part with his awful British accent. He had been making references to The Secret Garden ever since he saw it on TV with me, calling me “contrary” and “sour” in that accent.
“Don’t ruin it.”
He teased me about being contrary a little longer. “Maybe we should do one of those water births,” he said. “Then we can record it, and I’ll be sitting in the tub naked with you while you’re holding the baby. Well, I guess we’d each be holding a baby.”
I thought those water births were a load of bull. I saw Sana’s sister after she had her first child, and it looked like she just had a stroke, half her face drooping lower than the other.
“So that’s a no?”
But I didn’t think about giving birth. “I want you,” I said, grabbing hold of his arm, kissing the stubble on his cheek, feeling pathetic the moment the words came out of my mouth. I never would have had to ask him to sleep with me before; then, I thought my body was flabby and less than desirable, but I didn’t know what I had until I lost it. If he said no, I thought, I could cry more and eat a big bar of chocolate when he left.
But he jumped at the opportunity, kissing my heavy breasts and belly, even the stretch marks. “I do always get what I want in the end.”
Just before my baby shower, Yusef received a call from his mother; his father had been taken to the hospital. Sana and her mother were preparing the house, so he told me in our bedroom. I offered to go with him, but he shook his head and squeezed my hands. “I’m sure Baba will be fine,” he said. “And it’s best if you relax.”
I knew what he meant: It’s best if you don’t miscarry. But now wasn’t the best time to snap at him. “I should be there for you.”
He hugged me hard, and we walked out of the bedroom to the kitchen hand in hand. Sana and her mother, still preparing the small buffet, were suddenly silent.
“Thank you for making all the food and everything,” I said. Yusef echoed my sentiment before he left, forcing a smile on his face.
Sana’s mother dismissed her efforts with a wave of her hand. “Sana helped. I tell her all the time she needs to learn these things for her husband and children.”
Sana had invited everyone we knew to my baby shower, and even though we weren’t friends with most of them, she invited a lot of the girls we had first met at Sunday school, along with their mothers. She handed out crossword puzzles and gave out prizes for the winners of her scavenger hunt. I opened gifts. I got a lot of toys, pacifiers, and even one of those things to keep your baby harnessed to you in front. “I got a solid blue,” one of the girls said. “Men usually use those baby carriers.”
After a few hours everyone cleared out except for Sana, who said she would stay with me until Yusef came back.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“Yusef asked me to.”
“I need to call him,” I said. “It’s been, like, what, four hours since he left?” I grabbed the phone from my pocket. I got his voicemail.
“Hospitals have terrible cell reception,” Sana remind
ed me. She went into the living room and turned the TV on.
I sat down next to her and felt tears come to my eyes. I was feeling sorrow for Yusef’s pain, and the memories of seeing my mother with all the life drained from her body wouldn’t stop coming. “I should just go to the hospital and check on him.”
Sana smiled indulgently. “Isra, it’s sweet how much you love him, but he did say he wanted you to stay home. Hospitals are full of drama and stress. You don’t need that in your third trimester with twins.”
“It’s not like I’m on bed rest.”
Sana and I spent another couple of hours together, and she told me about how her parents were getting desperate for her to marry now that she was close to twenty-five. “They even want to take me to Lebanon to find a man. Seriously, Lebanon. Right now. They are willing to endanger their lives and mine to find me a man.” We both laughed when she said that her parents thought she was so pathetic that she had to cross three continents to get a husband. “One of my distant cousins is interested in me. He’s like almost forty. Way past his prime. I’m gonna say I can’t get the time off work. I should just go to med school, then my parents would get off my back about getting married.”
I forced a chuckle and set my hand on my belly.
After Abu Yusef stabilized, Yusef and I became consumed with preparing the house for the babies. We bought clothes, cribs, and bassinets, and put them together in our bedroom.
Yusef took me in his arms while I was putting a purple fitted sheet in one of the cribs. I set the tiny bed pad and giggled when he nuzzled my neck. “I have to get this sheet on,” I said as I turned back to the crib. He rested his face against my hair. “You’re always interrupting my work,” I said with mock exasperation.
“I can’t help it if I can’t get enough of you.” He let go of me. “Our kids should learn Arabic.”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
He hesitated. “I thought you might not like it if you didn’t understand what I was saying to the kids. You might think I was talking shit or something.”