The Untelling

by Tayari Jones

  “What’s wrong, Miss Aria?” Keisha said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just hot, that’s all. I can’t believe it’s only the last week of May.”

  “I always pick the worst times to get pregnant,” she pouted.

  “I thought this was your first baby.”

  She shook her head. “I told you I got a little boy. He is in Oklahoma with my aunt. His name is Dante? Remember I told you that?”

  I shook my head. “This is the first time I’m hearing this.”

  She made a smacking sound and crossed her arms over her chest. “See, Miss Aria. You ain’t right. You act like you care about us and everything, but then as soon as people finish talking, poof, you forget whatever we told you.”

  I was pretty sure Keisha had never mentioned another child. My memory wasn’t as good as Rochelle’s, but I would have remembered something like that. I mentally scrolled through our previous conversations. It was hard to keep track of all the confidences she shared. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be so intertwined with a student, but Keisha looped me in with the stories of her life and held me fast.

  She must know how affected I am by secrets, confessions. Before the first week of class was over, she helped me carry my belongings to my car. Before I’d even opened the trunk, she told me that the man who had accused her of credit card fraud was the father of her child.

  “Now, that’s a secret, Miss Aria. He doesn’t even know himself.”

  Secrets flattered me, the idea that someone, even Keisha, would trust me with something so private. She told me something new each week, it seemed, until I began to think of myself as her confidante. When I listened, sometimes I pretended that I was the young girl pouring my heart out to a woman that was not old, but older than me. Wise enough to give decent counsel. When I talked to Keisha, I tried to tell her things that I wished someone had told me. Not that I would have followed any sensible advice. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t interested in things that were good for me. But I think that I would be a happier adult if I could look back on my teen years and remember that there was someone there who cared enough to try and give me a few words by which to live.

  “Keisha, you didn’t tell me about Dante. I wouldn’t have forgotten about something like that.”

  “Whatever,” she sniffed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hungry?”

  “Hungry for Taco Bell.”

  “Let’s walk over there,” I said, glad to see her smile.

  “Taco Bell is too far to walk,” she huffed, not rising from the swing.

  “It’s just up the street,” I said. “Not even half a mile. Walking is good exercise.”

  “I’m not trying to lose weight.” She stretched her T-shirt around her, emphasizing the small pouch of a belly. “I’m pregnant.”

  Lawrence walked out onto the porch then, looking relaxed and slightly disheveled in a wrinkled T-shirt and pressed pants. Keisha scooted up off the swing.

  “How are things going, Aria?”

  “Good,” I said. “Gearing up for the GED.”

  “And you, young lady?” he said. “When is the blessed event?”

  Keisha placed a hand on each side of her stomach. “October.”

  She looked at her yellow sneakers; Lawrence looked at me; I stared out at the boarded-up bungalow across the street.

  “Well,” Lawrence said after standing almost a minute in the murky silence of an interrupted conversation. “I’m going back in. If Eric comes by, tell him I’m out back.”

  “Okay.”

  As soon as the front door shut Lawrence in the building, Keisha said, “Eric’s his boyfriend?”

  “His partner,” I corrected. “They’ve been together six years.”

  “They want a baby, don’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  “He asked me about my baby. He asked me if I was going to keep it.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I’m not lying,” she said. “I went in his office to do some paperwork and he started asking me all these questions about the baby. Who is the daddy, did I feel that I would be able to raise it right, and what did I think about adoption and everything like that.”

  I shook my head and shrugged. I knew that Lawrence and Eric were interested in having kids, but I was surprised to know he had been quizzing Keisha. If it was inappropriate for me to take a student to lunch, certainly adopting their babies would be a breach of boundaries as well.

  Rochelle and I had attended Lawrence and Eric’s “commitment ceremony” two years ago. It was supposed to be the same as a wedding, but it didn’t feel like one. It wasn’t just that there were two men standing before the preacher in matching linen suits. There was something about the vibe of the gathering that didn’t feel quite official. Maybe it was because it wasn’t in a church, or maybe it was because there were not enough relatives there. Out of the four parents, only Lawrence’s mother was present. Rochelle says that they are as married as anybody and I suppose that she is right.

  “So what did you say to Lawrence when he asked about your plans?”

  “I told him that I was keeping my baby. My mama’s sister in Oklahoma got Dante. That was different; I was fifteen then. She couldn’t have kids and she promised that she would take good care of him. But I am keeping this baby; I’ll be eighteen by the time it gets born. And if I was looking for someone to adopt, I would give it to a regular family to raise.”

  “You told him that part about the ‘regular family’?”

  “No, I just told him that I was keeping it.”

  Keisha whined until I agreed to drive her to Taco Bell. She slid into the passenger side and ejected the cassette tape before I could even get the car started. She fiddled with the radio, quickly locating her favorite hip-hop station. The car filled with the voice of a young man waxing about bitches and Bentleys. I looked at my worn Anita Baker tape that rested in the cup holder and wondered if I was getting old.

  At the restaurant I handed Keisha a clean twenty-dollar bill, not expecting her to spend the whole thing. It would take some doing to blow twenty dollars when the most costly thing on the menu was $1.19. But she managed, giving me less than a dollar in change when she came back to the car carrying four white bags stuffed with burritos (supreme and regular), tacos (hard and soft), and a couple of tostadas. There was an extra-large Mountain Dew that we would share.

  “I got a lot.” Keisha grinned. “Because I’m eating for two.”

  She got in the car, infusing the vehicle with the smell of greasy meat and imitation cheese. I had reinserted the Anita Baker tape and she didn’t complain. She twirled a blond braid around her finger and looked out the window. “I’ve lived in the same apartment my whole entire life,” she said. “Me and my mama.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  I swerved to avoid potholes and bottle glass in the parking area of her apartment complex. I angled toward a space.

  “Don’t park there. Go around the side so we can keep an eye on your car from the window.” She spoke with her eyes focused on the bags of food. “Not that this car is all of that, but you never know what people want to steal.”

  I followed her up the concrete steps to her second-floor apartment. The door was covered with red foil and bore an oddly shaped wooden sign that said “God Bless Our Home.”

  “My mama made that,” she said. “You know how that vocational stuff is. When I did vo-tech, I learned how to do calligraphy.”

  She opened the front door and we pushed into her living room. “You not allergic to plants, are you?” she asked me, as she asked me every time I came to visit. The tidy apartment was jammed with houseplants. Yellow and white kalanchoes bloomed in clay pots in the windows. Spider plants hanging from ceiling hooks grew and drooped. A robust shoot of ivy climbed up a makeshift trellis, completely obscuring the north wall.

  “I like plants,” I said.

  “Me too, but my mama
is crazy for anything that can grow. She got the ivy from a social worker when I was born. It was just one little leaf sitting in a cheap pot. Now look at it.” She went to the window, swiveled open the blinds. “That’s better.”

  I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she spread the food on a metal mesh table that looked like part of a patio set. “You want a tostada?”

  Sitting on a metal chair felt like I was settling into the foliage. It seemed that we should spread a blanket over the worn carpet and have a picnic. “Just one taco, please.”

  She unwrapped a taco, the orange oil pooling in the crease. My stomach lurched, sending me stumbling in the direction of the bathroom. I emptied my stomach, closed the toilet, and rested my face on the carpet-covered lid.

  “Damn, Miss Aria,” Keisha said from the doorway. “I’m the one that’s pregnant.”

  “Me too,” I said. The words slipped from between my teeth easily, like oiled melon seeds. It was a dumb thing to do. I knew this before I finished my sentence, just like you know that you’ve locked your keys in the car even before the door slams, but there is nothing you can do but watch.

  Keisha lowered herself beside me on the bathroom tile. “For real, Miss Aria? You’re pregnant? I didn’t even know you had a man.” She leaned toward me, one of her synthetic curls grazing my cheek. “You not going to have an abortion, are you? I don’t believe in that.”

  She waited for me to answer her questions, but I closed my eyes beside her, silent and horrified with myself. Keisha went on, still close enough to kiss me. “I guess I don’t really know anything about you. You won’t tell anybody where you live, how old you are, nothing like that. That’s one thing I can’t stand about social workers. Y’all know everybody else’s story, but you don’t let anybody get even a sniff of your business.” Her breath was cool on my sweaty neck.

  I squeezed my eyes tighter, hoping the tears would run back into their ducts. This was another of life’s Greek myth moments. When you’re pregnant, it matters who you tell first. It shows where your heart is, where your priorities are. Dwayne should have been the first person to know. There should have been a moment when this news was only ours. I put my hand in my hair, twirling my twists until they strained at the roots and hurt.

  “How many weeks are you?” Keisha wanted to know. “Six or something like that? Who’s the daddy?

  “Oh, come on,” she said when I didn’t respond. “You can’t tell me that you’re pregnant and then decide it’s not my business. Come on, Miss Aria, you know everything about me.”

  And she was right. I knew more about her than I knew what to do with. Over the course of the term, Keisha had shown me her archives of pain. In March she’d missed a week of class. I’d dialed her phone number and gotten the polite message that the number I’d reached had been disconnected. Lawrence had just shrugged. These things happened. Teaching was contribution enough. No one expected us to roam the street rounding up truants. But I had gone to find her anyway, using a city map that my mother had given me years ago, when I first got my driver’s license.

  The moment my knuckles had touched the foil- covered door, I struggled with the urge to bolt. Who knew if this was Keisha’s real address? It occurred to me that I didn’t know who she lived with and under what circumstances. Spring was still young enough that the evenings were cool. I could hear the noises of televisions wafting from the open windows of the apartments around me. It seemed as if everyone was tuned in to the same station. The artificial cheeriness of a sitcom laugh track came through in bursts and starts. After several seconds had passed, I made up my mind to leave. I’d done my best. Then Keisha had opened the door, bleary-eyed; her braids, gathered in a rubber band, were slack like filthy yellow ribbons. Her skin was grayish, as though she had been dusted all over with flour. Yawning, she rubbed the blanket print crisscrossing her cheek. She paused for a moment, as if processing who I was, and then invited me in, asking if I was allergic to plants.

  “I tried to call,” I explained.

  “It’ll be back on soon,” she said.

  From the living room I could see the sink piled high with dishes that stank of sour milk and rotting food.

  “My mama is in the hospital. Her blood pressure is too high for them to send her home.” She shrugged inside of a baggy T-shirt. She touched the sides of her belly as if to steady it. “Our money is funny. It’s always funny, but Mama hasn’t been to work in three weeks and I haven’t been working either, trying to see about her.”

  “Can I turn on the light?” I asked her.

  “Go ahead.”

  I turned the knob on the base of a plastic lamp, igniting a low-wattage bulb. The light seemed to bounce off the gloom, never penetrating it, like headlights in fog.

  She sat on the couch and stripped the leaves from a potted gardenia. “Too bad we can’t sell some of these damn plants.” She gathered the leaves in her hands and tossed them up like confetti.

  I sat on the edge of the sofa, ignoring the dead- animal smell of the kitchen. I slapped at something inching its way up my neck before I realized that it was just a leaf. “It will work out.”

  “I’ve been on some hard times. I’ve done some things for money. My mama too.” She rubbed her stomach like a crystal ball. “Everybody has, I guess.”

  “The credit card situation?”

  “That, and other stuff too. And I didn’t steal that credit card. He gave it to me. I earned it, you know?”

  I nodded.

  She began to rock herself and worried a keloid on the underside of her ear. “I never told this to anyone before,” she said. “Not even my mama, because we don’t really talk about things. But it wasn’t turning tricks. Sometimes you have to get a man to help you out. It’s hard out here. When I tried to use the credit card and they told me to wait, I didn’t think nothing about it. He had gave me the card to use. Promised me before anything even happened between us. So I was just standing there while the saleslady went in the back and called the police. When the security people came and got me, I didn’t even tell them how I had permission to use the card, how me and him had been together and everything. Because I felt like I deserved what I got. Like I had crossed a line, backed up, and crossed it all over again.”

  When I nodded, she gave me a smirk. “You don’t know nothing about this here.”

  But I did know. Not about having sex for money, but I knew about doing things that made you feel nasty, that made you feel like you deserved whatever you got. I didn’t argue with her, though. I didn’t want Keisha to know all the things I’ve done or the shame I’ve felt. “I brought your assignments,” I said.

  She took the sheaf of paper and set it on the coffee table. “My boyfriend, Omar, said he was going to help us out when he gets paid, but that’s not for another week.”

  I nodded again, thinking about my mother, how she gently corrected anyone who called her a “single mother.” She was a widow, she explained again and again. Keisha didn’t even have any pretty language to fall back on. “Single mother” was what people would call her when they wanted to be polite.

  Keisha and I never talked about my visit to her apartment. She returned to class in less than a week, pretty and clean, her hair rebraided and fresh. After school, she had given me directions, as though I had never been to her home. But still, her disclosures were between us, making our relationship lopsided.

  “I don’t know nothing about you, Miss Aria,” she said again.

  “I’m not trying to be secretive,” I told her. “I am still thinking it out. I haven’t even told Dwayne yet.”

  “That’s your boyfriend’s name? Dwayne? You didn’t tell him yet? How long y’all been together? I’m the first one you told?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How many weeks are you?” Keisha asked again.

  “I’m not sure. Haven’t been to the doctor yet. Five weeks maybe.”

  I put my face in my hand and breathed in the rosewater scent of my hand lotion.
>
  “Lay down on the couch, Miss Aria,” Keisha said.

  I followed her to the gray couch. I stretched out on the cracked vinyl, although I really wasn’t tired and no longer wanted to be there. The ceiling was scarred with brownish water marks. Keisha knelt before me and slid off my cloth loafers. Kneading my feet through my stockings, she said, “When you’re pregnant, you have to take good care of your feet. It’s like everything that’s on your mind gets trapped in your feet.”

  I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feel of her hands. I tried to banish my superstitions. It wouldn’t matter that I had opened my mouth when I shouldn’t have. Keisha rubbed the base of my foot with her knuckles. This was going to be the best part of being pregnant, the way people tried to anticipate your needs. Rochelle would host my baby shower and think of intelligent party games for the guests. Maybe Dwayne would propose without me having to ask him to. And my mother would be pleased, a son-in-law and grandbaby, all within the space of a year.

  Lying on Keisha’s sofa, I wished for Hermione. When I was a teeny little girl, before the accident, she was the one I ran to with my stories of grade school trauma. When I was thirteen, she washed her hands of me, marrying Mr. Phinazee, our father’s friend, the summer she finished high school. They moved to Lawrenceville, thirty miles north. When I tell people these days that my sister lives in Lawrenceville, they don’t react. But Lawrenceville is a lot closer to Atlanta now than it was ten years ago. Then it was as though Hermione had moved to a distant unsettled land, as though she had moved to live on a ranch in Wyoming. Now Lawrenceville is just another suburb. People drive all the way out there just to shop.

  When she first married, I used to call her up, hoping that she’d put clean sheets on the fold-out bed and invite me for a sleepover. She had always been polite enough when I’d call, hinting that I wouldn’t mind the drive, but she claimed that the house was too junky, or she and Earl needed some alone time, or something like that. Now she pretends to want to save me the hassle of struggling with northbound traffic. “You don’t want to drive way out here. I-85 will be constipated at this time of day.”