by Holmes, Gina
“Don’t you walk away from me,” he called. “Get your skinny rear back in this living room and tell me why you think you have the right to talk to my friends like they’re trash.”
Turning the water on, I drowned him out as I started on the dishes he had left for me in the sink. Two plates. Two forks. Two cups—one with her lipstick all over the rim. And of course, I was expected to wash it off.
The image of them together played in my mind. Her lips kissing his cheek, then mouth, then neck. Rage filled me. I slammed the plate to the floor. With a loud crack, it smashed to pieces.
Trent hurried to the kitchen with a look of concern. “What happened?”
I picked up a plastic cup from the sink and threw it at his head, nailing him in the forehead. His hand flew up to protect his face a second too late.
Grabbing the other plate, with every intention of hurling it at him, I froze when I saw him cowering. It took the fight right out of me. My grandmother used to say if you kiss a frog, he doesn’t turn into a prince; you turn into a frog. I realized then, that’s exactly what was happening to me.
I set the dish back in the sink. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Dag, Penny. What’s wrong with you today?”
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling suddenly cold and scared. “You slept with her.”
“What?” He made an annoyed face. “Don’t even start—”
Before I could swallow them back, sobs wrenched from me, and I sank to my knees. “I’m having your baby and you’re sleeping with that woman. My baby’s not going to have her father.” I was crying so hard I could barely breathe.
I felt his hand fall on my shoulder, but I didn’t even have the energy to flinch. I think I wanted him to beat me then. Feeling the physical pain was so much better than the anguish eating me up inside. But he didn’t raise a hand. Instead, he knelt beside me on the linoleum and wrapped his arms tight around me. “No, Penny. No. Shhh. I’m not sleeping with her. She’s just a coworker. Why would I want that weathered old thing, when I’ve got a trophy wife like you?”
As stupid as it was, his words made me feel better. I knew it was a lie. I was no trophy, and she wasn’t all that weathered, but I needed to believe it. I was having his baby. I was his wife. My choice was to believe it or leave, and I wasn’t ready to do that.
“And you’re smoking in the house,” I said around tears. “You promised you wouldn’t. Our baby’s breathing in secondhand smoke right now!” The thought made me cry even harder.
“I’m sorry.” He nuzzled his face into my neck. “You’re right. I’m done. I won’t let her in here anymore if it upsets you this much. And I won’t smoke in the house again. I swear it.” He wiped at my eyes, getting more of my eyebrows than lids. “Shhh, now. Calm down. This has got to be hurting the baby more than a little smoke. Come on, now. I love you. I love our baby. That woman don’t mean nothing to me.”
After a few jagged breaths, I’d calmed down, feeling more pathetic than ever. I hated it that I cared so much what he did or who he did it with, but despite everything, I loved him, Manny. Or rather, that’s what I told myself. Truth was, I was just trying to control my world in a way I wasn’t able to as a child. Like my father, Trent hurt and rejected me, and I realize now I was still trying to right that wrong. Trying desperately to get a man to cherish me who didn’t have it in him to.
I sat beside him on the couch, wiping at my eyes and watching the evening news as he listened. Two burglaries and three murders later, he turned to me and said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
I laid my head on his shoulder, taking in his warmth. “What what means?”
“My check.”
I suspected what he was going to say, but played stupid, hoping I was wrong. “What?”
“You can quit that job now.”
I had no intention of quitting even if I was mad at Fatimah and Callie Mae. If things were bad when he was working, I could imagine how much worse they would be with him home all the time.
“We’ll see,” I said.
His voice lowered an octave. “I said you can quit your job.”
I stood and started picking up his empties. “Trent, please. I’m not up for this right now. I’ve had a terrible day all around.”
“Well, now you don’t have to worry about any more bad days.”
As if that were so. “We’re going to have a lot more bills when the baby comes,” I said. “Diapers, formula, college.”
“You ain’t farming my kid out to some two-bit day care.”
“I’ll quit when she comes, okay?”
He didn’t say anything, just sat back with that crease between his eyebrows.
It dawned on me what life was going to be like for you. Whether I worked or not. Your father might worship the ground you walked on and treat you like a prince or princess, but if he was demeaning me in front of you, what would you grow up to be like? A man who would do the same to your wife someday? Or maybe a woman like me and Mama, who would put up with it?
I tried to push the thought from my mind, but it refused to budge. There was nothing I could do about it, I told myself. It would all work out. I would pray like I never prayed before for your father to change. And somehow, some way, things would be all right.
TWENTY-ONE
ISOLATION is an abuser’s best weapon. If a woman has no friends or family around, then who can tell her that what she’s putting up with at home isn’t normal? Where will she go if she decides she’s finally had enough? Who will build her up so she starts believing in herself enough to say no to what she knows, in her heart of hearts, isn’t right? The abuser tells her that he should be enough for her, but one person can never be all things to someone else.
Most women have sisters, friends, or mothers in their lives to teach them about their bodies. I’d been a teenager when I met your father, and completely isolated until getting the cleaning job. I knew nothing about what was or wasn’t normal for pregnancy.
When I finally spoke to my mother about you, she recommended I pick up some books from the library, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I so wished Trent would go out somewhere and leave me alone in the house so I could call her again. There were so many things I wanted to ask her.
One morning at work, Fatimah and I were just getting started on cleaning our first house when I discovered I was bleeding a little bit. I didn’t know enough to be worried.
Fatimah wore her face mask as she mixed up a new batch of bleach water in the kitchen sink. The smell burned my nostrils as I approached her.
“Where is your mask?” she asked.
I backed up a few steps. “Is it a problem if I’m bleeding?”
She screwed the cap back on the bleach bottle and set it on the tiled floor. “You are bleeding?”
I fidgeted. “It’s just a few spots.”
“You should not have blood.” She set the bottle on the counter beside the toaster and turned around. The look in her eyes worried me. “Have you tell it to your doctor?”
“It’s just a few drops,” I repeated.
“I call Callie Mae.” She used the house phone to relay what was going on. When she hung up, she said to me, “She will meet us at the clinic.”
As we gathered our supplies, the frantic pace at which Fatimah worked troubled me. Here was a woman who delivered babies. She knew a lot better than me what was and wasn’t of concern.
At the clinic, we were led to a small room that smelled of rubbing alcohol and lotion. Several chairs faced a wall of thick procedural manuals and one rough-looking Woman’s Day sitting atop a rolling chair. After what seemed like forever, a redhead dressed in scrubs walked in, holding a clipboard. She picked up the magazine to free the chair, and sat down across from us. “How far along are you? When did the bleeding start? Do you feel cramping?” and the questions continued until her form had been filled out to her satisfaction.
After she finished gathering information, she led me to a room across
from the one I’d gotten my ultrasound in. Fatimah waited outside the door while I replaced the clothes I wore with a thin paper gown. I sat on the examining table listening to overhead music and the sound of wax paper crinkling beneath me as I fidgeted. When I told Fatimah she could come back in, Callie Mae was with her.
She rushed over and gave me a hug, smothering me in her warmth. “Oh, sweetie. It’s going to be okay.”
I was already so in love with you, Manny. Losing you after everything else I’d lost in my life would kill me. “It’s not me I’m worried about,” I said.
“Your baby’s going to be just fine.” Callie Mae guided my head to her shoulder and stroked my hair like my mother used to do.
“What if she’s not?” I dared to ask.
Fatimah took my hand and held it. Hers was so cold. “I see many women bleed in my country. Having blood sometimes is a very bad situation, but sometimes is nothing.”
Very bad. Those words hung in the air like a guillotine ready to crash down on me.
Callie Mae frowned at her. “That’s not helpful.”
Fatimah gave her a perturbed look. “I said sometimes is nothing.”
Instinctively, I held a hand over my belly as if that could protect you somehow. Callie Mae laid her hands over mine. Fatimah added hers to the pile, and the three of us took turns praying you would be okay.
After a while, the nurse returned, along with an Asian man in a white lab coat who looked too young to be a doctor. He put his hand out for me to shake. “Good morning. I’m Doctor Lee.”
His hand felt softer and smaller than any man’s should. I repeated to him the same things I told the nurse.
“I need to have a look.” He turned to Callie Mae and Fatimah. “Would you two please have a seat in the waiting room? I’ll call you when we’re finished.”
Callie Mae must have sensed I didn’t want to be alone because she said, “Can I stay with her?”
He looked to the nurse, who nodded, then to me. “Is it okay with you, Mrs. Taylor?”
“Please,” I said.
Callie Mae stood at the head of the exam table beside me, holding my hand and looking only at my face. The doctor placed my feet in cold, metal stirrups and asked me to relax my knees. I wondered how relaxed he would be if he’d been the one lying there.
He pulled a vinyl curtain, hiding us from the shut door. Trying to ignore the weird foreignness of what the doctor was doing, I concentrated on Callie Mae’s smile. Her thin lips were outlined in peach and filled in with a lighter shade of the same color. Her teeth were small and slightly yellowed. I wondered if they would get whiter if she were to give up the cigarettes.
She made small talk about the weather as the doctor probed around looking for whatever it was he was looking for. He said nothing to give me an indication of what he was or wasn’t finding.
“I called Trent,” Callie Mae said.
“What did he say?” I asked, wondering if he was sober when she reached him. I figured he probably was, since he only rarely started bingeing before noon.
The doctor pulled out the metal speculum from me and, with a clang, set it in the bowl the nurse held out to him.
The noise made Callie Mae turn her head. “He was worried about you and the baby.”
“What did he say?” I repeated.
She fixed her attention back on me. “He’s on his way over here. I offered to pick him up, but he said he’d call a cab.”
I worried about him trying to navigate his way outside, and if he’d be taken advantage of when it came time to pay. The fact he cared enough to do that for me meant everything.
The doctor told me I could slide my bottom up as he helped my feet out of the stirrups. He threw out his gloves, washed his hands, and asked me to pull up my gown so he could get to my stomach. When I did, he squirted cold goo on my belly button, then pushed around a small Doppler over my stomach until the whoosh-whoosh sound of the baby’s heartbeat filled the room. When it did, I smiled.
“That’s too slow,” he said, as if he could read my mind.
He moved the Doppler lower. “That was your heartb—” Before he could even finish, he picked up another beat, this one much faster. He looked at me. “This is your baby’s. It’s strong and steady. That’s what I wanted to hear.”
A huge weight fell off my shoulders when I heard your little heartbeat, Manny. I could have listened to it all day, but Doctor Lee turned the Doppler off and used a small hand towel to wipe the gel off my skin.
He tossed the dirty towel into a hamper, washed his hands again, and then he and Callie Mae stepped out of the room so I could get dressed. He said he would be back to talk to me in a few minutes.
After I was dressed, I walked to the door, intending to let someone know I was ready. As I started to open it, I could hear your father’s voice. He was breathless, asking Callie Mae about me.
When I opened the door, Callie Mae led him to me.
“Trent,” I said. “Thank you for coming.”
He looked a mess with his wrinkled shirt and scruffy face, but even so, he was a sight for sore eyes. “Why are you thanking me for coming?” he asked. “That’s my baby in there. Why wouldn’t I?”
Maybe I was being too sensitive, but his omission of me in that statement of concern made my heart hurt.
I hugged him as Callie Mae excused herself to join Fatimah in the waiting room. I pulled up the chair next to the exam table and sat him down.
“We heard the baby’s heartbeat,” I said. “So she must be okay.”
“Why do you keep calling him a she?” he asked.
“Why do you keep calling her a he?”
His brief smile faded. “I was so scared, Penny. If anything happened to you . . .” his words trailed off as he choked up.
Someone knocked twice on the door and it opened. Doctor Lee stepped in, without the nurse this time. He introduced himself to your father and pulled up a rolling stool to sit on. “I think your bleeding is nothing to be concerned about, but until I get you in for another ultrasound, I want to play it safe. Until we tell you otherwise, I want you to refrain from sex, tub baths, and anything strenuous. Light bleeding is fairly common, but the main worry is you might have something called placenta previa.”
Trent opened his mouth, I’m sure to ask what that was, but the doctor continued. “That’s a condition when the placenta grows in the lowest part of the womb, covering all or part of the cervix.”
I felt like such an idiot. I didn’t even know what a cervix is and was too embarrassed to ask.
“What if she has that?” Trent asked, leaning forward.
Doctor Lee looked down at the beeper hanging on his jacket pocket, then back up at us. “We’ll know for sure when we do the ultrasound. If she does have it, we’ll have to take special precautions. I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily, so let’s try not to go there unless we need to.”
“Do you look as young as you sound?” Trent asked.
The doctor grimaced as if he were sick of the question. “I’m twenty-seven, and yes, to answer your question, I look young.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said, trying to get him out of the room before Trent could say something more to embarrass me. “When do you want me back?”
Doctor Lee stood and rolled the stool back over to the side of the cabinet where he’d gotten it. “Tell the front desk I want them to work you in by the end of this week.”
TWENTY-TWO
THE FIVE DAYS between my doctor visit and the ultrasound appointment were bittersweet. Callie Mae wouldn’t let me work again until my follow-up appointment, so I had to endure nearly a week of being home with Trent. He tried his best not to let me lift a finger, but ended up making more work than if he’d just left me alone.
When he tried to cook spaghetti for dinner, the pot ran over and smoked up the kitchen. When he washed the dishes, he broke a glass and couldn’t see well enough to make sure he got all the shards off the floor. And when the phone rang, he tripped mor
e than once trying to get to it in time. I ended up nursing him more than the other way around. He was trying, though, bless his heart, and I was proud of him for that.
After my return visit to the doctor, I relayed to Callie Mae I didn’t have placenta previa like we feared, but she made me bring her a note that spelled out my limitations just the same. I felt like a child trying to get out of gym class, or rather into it, but knowing concern was her motivation made up for the aggravation.
It was so nice to be cared about. I hadn’t had that kind of love and attention surrounding me since I was a child. I did everything in my power to keep it that way too—ignoring your father’s daily drunkenness and the different turns his abuse took. He no longer hit me, but he found plenty of other ways to torment me. I did whatever he wanted, even through tears sometimes, to keep my job, to keep you safe, and if I’m being honest, to hold on to the illusion that he loved me.
In the months that followed, I received the happy news, via ultrasound, that you were a boy. It took a little while to adjust to, since I’d been so sure you were a girl. But I warmed up to the idea quickly when I saw the tiny bow ties and suspenders in the department store. Your father, of course, had known all along you were a boy. But then, in his mind, what didn’t he know?
His vision returned so gradually we hardly noticed the difference until the day his doctor okayed him to return to work. That’s when the real trouble began.
It was Monday morning, and I was up fixing his breakfast. He strolled into the kitchen in his uniform. “Let me guess, eggs again?”
Now that he could see me, I couldn’t just roll my eyes at him as I’d done before. With my back to him, I stirred the eggs in the pan. “We have a little sausage left. I could mix it in and add some cheese.”
He huffed. “No matter what you do to them, they’re still eggs.”
I closed my eyes and begged God to help me hold my tongue. My hormones were raging and my stomach was cramping. “I didn’t realize you were sick of them.” How would I realize it? I wanted to say. You were the one cooking your own breakfast all weekend. But as usual, I said nothing.