by Brit Bennett
“Did Mom ever think about . . .” She paused, outlining the gold buttons on her purse with her finger. “Not having me?”
“What do you mean?” her father said. He placed a white pill on his tongue and flung his head back.
“You know.” She swirled around the buttons so she wouldn’t have to look at her father when she said the word. “Abortion.”
“Did someone tell you that?”
“No. No. I was just wondering.”
“No,” he said. “Never. She never would’ve done something like that. Did you think . . .” He paused, his eyes softening. “No, honey. We loved you. We always loved you.”
She should’ve felt glad, but she didn’t. She wished her mother had at least thought about it. A fleeting thought when she’d left the doctor and envisioned her own mother’s face. During a hushed phone call with the man she loved. When she’d called a clinic to make her appointment and hung up in tears, when she’d sat in the waiting room, holding her own hand. She could’ve been seconds away from doing it—it didn’t matter. She hated the thought of her mother not wanting her but it would’ve been better to look at her mother’s face in the mirror and know that they were alike.
—
THREE WEEKS AFTER he’d seen Nadia last, Luke squatted over his back steps, striking a match against the railing. Dave’s suggestion. Light a candle, he’d told Luke, the last time he called the helpline. Dave hadn’t said what type of candle. A scented candle like the ones in Luke’s mother’s bathroom, a tiny tea candle placed on restaurant tables, a thick red candle emblazoned with the Virgin Mary you found in the Mexican food aisle. A birthday candle, rainbow-striped and slender. Any type of candle would do, Dave had said, so Luke bought a pack of slender white candles. He sat on the back steps of the house, cupping his hands against the flame. It was supposed to bring closure, Dave had said. Peace. But as soon as he’d lit the candle, Luke only felt stressed. A light evening breeze rustled through the trees, and he hunched behind a shrub, trying to shelter the flame, suddenly responsible for guarding the fragile thing.
Dave was a counselor at the Family Life Center in downtown San Diego. Luke had found their flyer stuck in his windshield outside a bar a few weeks ago. Looking for real options? the yellow flyer asked, above a picture of a pregnant woman holding her head and a man next to her, staring off into the distance. It was the first pregnancy center flyer Luke had ever seen with a picture of a man on it. The others only held sad, alone women. On pregnancy center flyers, men were as absent in the midst of a surprise pregnancy as they were in real life. As absent as he’d been. He called the number, just to see what it was about. He told himself he’d hang up. But the on-duty counselor, Dave, started talking to him about the myth that only women suffer after abortions.
“Men suffer a unique type of loss,” Dave said. “Men struggle after losing their child to abortion because they’ve failed to perform the primary function of a father: protecting his family.”
Luke had never thought of it like that. He and Nadia hadn’t been a family—they were just two scared kids. But what if they had been? What if for a brief moment, they had been family, stitched together by the life they’d created? What did that make them now? Now Luke called the center every other evening. He hung up if anyone other than Dave answered. He’d told Dave about the boy at the baseball game, years ago. Dave didn’t judge him. It was normal, he’d said, for post-abortive fathers to feel grief. Once you had created a life, you would always be a father, no matter what happened to the child.
Luke fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed, careful to keep the candle lit.
“This you, Luke?” Dave asked.
“Yeah.”
“How’re you, buddy?”
“Fine.”
“Just ‘fine’?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Dave cleared his throat. “Thought any more about coming into the center?”
“I can’t,” Luke said.
“It’ll help you, trust me, talking to someone face-to-face—it’s a lot better than over the phone. Sometimes you just need to see someone, know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t bite. Promise.” Dave laughed. “And I got some books I can give you, if you come down. This one—” His voice strained, like he was reaching for something. “Great one, called A Father’s Heart. It’s by this guy named—”
“I gotta go,” Luke said.
“Hold on, pal. Don’t run off. I’ll just hold these for you when you’re ready, okay?”
“Okay.”
“So what’s on your mind?”
“I bought the candles,” Luke said.
“Great!” Dave said. “Light a candle. And close your eyes. Picture your child playing on a field at the feet of Jesus.”
Luke closed his eyes, the candle’s warmth flickering across his face. He tried to envision the scene Dave described, but he only saw Nadia, her smile, her hazel eyes—then he felt the burn. A glob of hot wax dripped onto his hand. He cringed, scraping the wax off against the step. Gravel and dirt clung to his skin. He should’ve put the candle inside something. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Behind him, the back door swung open and his wife leaned against the doorway, frowning.
“What’re you doing?” Aubrey said.
“Nothing.”
“What’s with the candle, then? You’re dripping wax all over the place.”
She toed the white blob on the steps. Luke leaned forward, blowing out the flame. He was only making a bigger mess.
—
“WHEN YOU GONNA settle down, girl?” Mother Betty asked Nadia one morning. “You always flittin’ around, here and there. You think life is for wandering about, lookin’ for what makes you happy? Those just white girl dreams and fantasies. You need to settle down, find a good man. Look at Aubrey Evans! When you gonna do the same?”
Luke no longer came by to visit her father, but she passed him in Upper Room sometimes. He always looked shy of speaking, but he never even mumbled a hello, his eyes tracing the worn carpet. That sliver of space between them when they passed in a narrow hallway felt electric. She told herself she could not think about him. She needed to be good. She began to meet Aubrey on her lunch break, when they sat at a table by the window and shared coffee. She thought about confessing, but every time, the words clung to the roof of her mouth. What good would come of telling the truth? She had ended things with Luke. What good would come of Aubrey knowing all the ways they had betrayed her?
She never went to Aubrey’s house, but once a week, she met Aubrey for dinner at Monique and Kasey’s. Returning to the little white house made her feel like a teenager again—she wanted to stay up late eating ice cream or lounge in the backyard until the light grew dim, her future awaiting her, unblemished and free. She and Aubrey walked to the corner store for snacks or sat in her old bedroom, painting their nails. She always propped Aubrey’s feet into her lap and painted her toenails. It seemed like a small thing she could give.
By Halloween, Nadia had become such a fixture around Upper Room that the pastor had asked her to help chaperone the children’s Halloween party. She said yes. She said yes to nearly everything anyone at Upper Room asked of her. At first, she’d only offered the Mothers rides, but now, while her father continued to heal, she began to loan his truck. She and Second John lifted dozens of folding chairs into the truck bed for the Men’s Fellowship; she drove across town to pick up a new drum kit for the choir; she carried the food baskets from the homeless ministry to the shelter. She had grown up and found God, people thought, but she hadn’t found anything. She was searching for her mother. She hadn’t found her in any of the old places, but maybe she could find her at Upper Room, a place she’d loved, a place she’d visited right before dying. If she could not find her mother in the last place she’d been breathing, she would never find her at all.
The Halloween party did not require much hauling, besides the decorations, but she still agreed to help. Each year, the church handed out candy, the least offensive way to commemorate a holiday whose demonic origins worried them but whose popularity was too great to ignore. Costumes were allowed, but only positive characters. Superheroes but no villains and nobody dead. Bible figures were preferred, but no one knew whether Bible characters skirted the death rule; each year, a smart aleck dressed in a mummy costume and called himself Lazarus. That evening, she barely recognized the children’s church room. The lights were out, but the ceiling was covered in plastic glowing stars. If darkness was required for Halloween events, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be combatted by celestial light. The children crammed into the room and darted down the hallways with plastic sacks filled with candy. Bearded Noahs dragged stuffed animals behind them; Adams juggled half-bitten apples; Moseses carried paper tablets under their arms, and Marys rocked baby dolls.
In the doorway, Nadia perched on a chair with a bucket of candy between her legs. These were the moments when adulthood was formed, not a birthday but the realization that she was now the one pouring a handful of candy into children’s bags, that she was now the one expected to give, not receive. Aubrey and Luke arrived later. When they’d texted, Aubrey hadn’t mentioned that she would bring Luke, but why would she? He was her husband—wasn’t it expected that he would always be with her? He wore a long brown bathrobe and whenever a kid asked who he was, he flexed and said that he was Samson. But his hair was short, so all evening the children beat him up and he had to take it.
“Who are you supposed to be?” Aubrey asked. She carried a pair of scissors. Delilah.
“Nobody,” Nadia said. She hadn’t known what to wear, so when children asked, she said that she was no one, a peasant.
All night, they sat in the children’s church doorway listening to the laughter. She watched the ancient lovers give out sweets under the fake starlight, Samson lounging on the plastic chair, his bum leg stretched out into the hallway because it got stiff and painful if he folded it. He plucked pink Starbursts out of the bucket and gave a handful to Aubrey, because they were her favorite. Later in the night, Aubrey rested her head against his shoulder and the brief contact felt so intimate, Nadia looked away.
The night was brisk and dim, the sliver of moon barely illuminating the sky. When Aubrey went to the bathroom, Nadia stepped inside the children’s church room to refill her bucket. She leaned against the window, listening to the faint yelping of coyotes, when Luke leaned closer to her.
“I’ve been talking to this guy named Dave,” he said.
“Who’s Dave?”
“He doesn’t think it’s good that we never talk about him.” He swallowed. “Our baby.”
A flock of angels skipped by in shimmery white dresses. This was a strange, lopsided universe, all saints but no sinners, angels but no demons. An off-kilter world where girls mothered old women and betrayed their best friends.
“We don’t have to be sad anymore. Dave says he’s in heaven right now.” Luke smiled, reaching for her hand. “And your mom’s holding him.”
Luke gazed out the window, and under the faint moonlight, he looked almost peaceful when he talked about their baby, who, like their love, was miraculous and fleeting. She squeezed Luke’s hand. If this was what he needed, she wanted him to believe it. She wanted him to believe it all.
—
THAT SUNDAY MORNING, Aubrey saw a Marine in the receiving line. She ordinarily didn’t notice faces when she helped greet the congregation, still overwhelmed by the crowds who gathered to shake hands with the first family, a family she now belonged to, and she shuffled mechanically, repeating the same greeting, offering hugs, agreeing to coffee dates she would soon forget. She wouldn’t have noticed the Marine at all if not for his uniform: dress blues, hat tucked under his arm, gold buttons glinting in the light. When he stepped forward, she glanced up into his face and snatched her hand back.
“Oh,” she said.
Russell Miller smiled, the same purposeful smile she’d seen on the beach years ago, the smile of a man who knew sadness and spent great energy warding it away. She knew that smile, because it was a smile she’d long practiced and perfected. She hid behind that smile, but no one saw it in her the way she saw it in Russell. He reached past her to shake Pastor Sheppard’s hand.
“Great message, Reverend,” he said.
She suddenly felt exposed, like the whole church would notice her standing beside Russell and know. Know what? That once upon a time, days before her wedding, she had kissed him in a beach bathroom stall? That after she’d gotten married, when Russell should’ve been banished to her memory, she still wrote him?
“Let’s talk outside,” she said.
Months ago, Russell had e-mailed her and announced that his tour overseas was ending. Coming back to the States soon, wanna grab lunch? She’d hated the fake casualness of it, as if he were an old high school friend in town who just wanted to catch up. Of course she wanted to see him again, but they both knew she couldn’t. She was married. She was loved by one man and it was wrong—greedy, really—to ask for more.
“What’re you doing here?” she said, once they’d stepped behind the church.
Russell shrugged. “You didn’t answer my e-mail, so I figured I’d come by.”
“Maybe I didn’t answer for a reason.”
“Which is?”
“I’m married.”
“Married women can’t eat lunch?”
“Not with strange men.”
“I’m a strange man?”
She sighed. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I been halfway around the world and back and all I want to do is take you to lunch. I don’t mean nothin’ funny by it. You just kept my spirits up while I was gone and I want to thank you. Your husband can even come if he wants.”
She told Russell she would mention his invitation to Luke, but on their silent drive home from church, she stared out the window, imagining Russell beneath her on the bathroom floor, his large hands gripping her waist.
“What’re you thinking about?” Luke said.
“Me?”
He smiled. “Of course you.”
“I don’t know. I’m not thinking anything.”
He eased onto the brakes as he pulled up to a traffic light. Then he pried her hand from her lap, guided it to his mouth, and bit one of her fingers.
“What’re you doing?” she said.
He grinned and bit another one.
“Ouch,” she said, laughing. “Stop, you goof.”
Then Luke kissed her hand and held it between his, and for the rest of the drive, she imagined her life caught between his teeth, her trusting him not to bite.
Two days later, she met Russell at Ruby’s Diner on the pier. Even though he wore a blue gingham shirt with a tie and stood when she approached the booth, she reminded herself that this wasn’t a date. Nothing intimate or romantic about lunch on the pier, where seagulls cawed and swooped overhead. Russell ordered a beer with his fish and chips. She ordered a Coke and a chicken salad, then later, a piece of lemon meringue pie to split, not because she was still hungry, but because she wanted their lunch to last longer. She’d worried at first that she’d feel awkward around him, but she was surprised by how natural she felt, chatting about mundane things, like the church picnic or her sister. Then Russell asked how her fertility appointment had gone.
“Fine,” she said. She had received a message, weeks ago, from Dr. Yavari’s office to confirm her follow-up appointment. She’d deleted the message. What would be the point of going back? Of consulting an expert to help make a baby that Luke didn’t even want? No wonder he’d never cared while she’d obsessed over their inability to conceive. He only cared about the baby he’d lost years ago. He only cared about the baby
he’d made with Nadia.
“You think your husband wants a boy?” Russell asked.
“I don’t know. He never said.” Had their baby been a boy or girl? Did it matter? The baby had probably been whatever Luke wanted.
“People always think men want boys,” Russell said. “Like we couldn’t imagine loving something that isn’t exactly like ourselves.”
“You wouldn’t want a son?”
“Too dangerous,” he said. “Black boys are target practice. At least black girls got a chance.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“What’s not true? Why you think I enlisted? My pops told me, you better learn to shoot before these white men shoot you, and I did. I been all the way to Iraq and I could walk down the street here and get my head blown off. You don’t know what that’s like.”
She scoffed. “I’m scared all the time,” she said. “I never feel safe.”
“Well, you got your husband to protect you.”
“My husband’s the one who hurts me,” she said. “He thinks I don’t know he’s in love with someone else.”
She had never said it out loud before. There was something freeing in admitting that you had been loved less. She might have gone her whole life not knowing, thinking that she was enjoying a feast when she had actually been picking at another’s crumbs. Across the table, Russell slid his hand on top of hers. She stared at his rough skin, then the waiter came by with the bill and she forced herself to pull away.