Until then, I’d defined myself solely by what I didn’t possess—money, good clothes, and a respectable upbringing. I was the goose who could pass unnoticed in even the smallest of gaggles. I was no rich girl, no beauty queen, but he complimented me on the way I poured a glass of Barolo for him and thanked me for grinding just the right amount of pepper on his lamb. I basked in these compliments. I was a chasm, an abyss needing to be filled. I was a quantum, and he was the leap I needed to take.
I wanted Jimmy more than I’d ever wanted any man. He returned to my restaurant every night for a week. Sometimes, he’d stay just for a drink, but mostly he ate alone at a corner table. When the restaurant was slow, I hovered around him, inviting conversation. I didn’t care that he was married. One night after closing, I let him walk me back to my apartment. He broke down and cried about the difficulties he and his wife had been having trying to conceive a child. They’d tried the whole hornet’s nest of therapies and fertility treatments, nutritional supplements and fertility drugs, everything. He was at wit’s end. Any man so distraught at the idea of never being a father deserved a child. I led him to my sofa bed, slid off the cushions, and opened the mattress before taking off my simple cream-colored cotton peasant blouse and drying his tears with it. He stood still and startled, and I snapped off my bra and watched as he instinctively pulled away as if having second thoughts about being in my apartment, alone, with me. So much can be said without saying a word. I wanted him so bad. I wanted to be the woman who’d bring purpose to his life. I caressed his shoulders, and after some moments he gave in to the temptation and caressed me back.
We’d been seeing each other for two months, him calling me whenever I had a night off from waitressing gigs. He’d book us into expensive hotel suites and take me to dive bars where he couldn’t possibly run into anyone he knew. One night he took me to a brightly lit Nuevo Latino restaurant in Adams Morgan where pulsating Caribbean club music thundered over the sound system, making conversation impossible. The walls were loud and yellow and soft and pink, the murals a fauvist’s Day-Glo reckoning of mauve palm trees, turquoise beaches, and lime-green oceans. A waiter approached our table. Because of the loud music, Jimmy raised his voice to be heard, something a classy guy like him doesn’t do much. “Bring me a glass of your best sipping rum,” Jimmy said, not bothering to open the leather-bound cocktail menu. Turning to me, he asked what I wanted to drink.
“Ginger ale,” I responded.
Jimmy wriggled his eyebrows. It wasn’t the answer he expected. In our previous outings, I’d made a point of ordering elaborate cocktails, gin fizzes I’d compel bartenders to whip up using fresh egg whites and Hendrick’s gin or chocolate concoctions of my own fancy—jiggers of amaretto Disaronno liqueur mixed with Courvoisier, pale white rum, and maraschino cherries. Half the fun of dating me, I often joked in a flirty giggle, came from being able taste the outrageous cocktails I ordered, but no man acted so oddly in my presence as when I requested that simple ginger ale. Jimmy sidled his chair over to mine. Bougainvillea blossoms sprayed out of the bud vase atop the batik tablecloth. Already, this early in my pregnancy, my sense of smell was greater than it had ever been. The flowers were fragrant. Jimmy leaned into me, whispered into my ear, asked if I was all right.
“I’ve got a zygote problem,” I said, aiming to be humorous, but the terminology tripped him up. The concern in his face deepened. He asked if my condition was contagious. I cast my glance into my lap and confessed to peeing onto the absorbent tip of a home pregnancy test that morning and watching its indicator change from a minus sign into a plus sign, simple arithmetic that informed me the sum total of my life was about to change. He scanned my face with deadly seriousness to judge whether I was kidding. Never had I felt so vulnerable or so much at the mercy of another human being’s compassion. I thought he’d be happy, overjoyed. He’d never explicitly said he wanted me to get pregnant, but I assumed that was his intention. Now, though, in his hesitation to embrace this news, I realized I’d let myself forget he was a married man and that, being married, he might not cotton to the news that his mistress was pregnant.
After some moments he squeezed my hand, his hand warm and pliable, like the modeling clay public school art teachers had doled out whenever my creative urge slouched toward sculpture. Jimmy said he’d take care of everything, that I’d have nothing to worry about, and in the weeks to come I thought he’d hand me a check or offer me transit to a clinic and sit with me in a sterile examination room as clinicians vacuumed out my womb. Driving me back to my apartment that night, he stopped off at an all-night drug store. I waited inside his Volvo—what kind of man willingly drives a Volvo station wagon?—while he ducked into the store, and when he emerged carrying a small paper bag and a bottle of water, I thought he was going to ply me with some caustic poison—something to rid my life of more than just the zygote. He opened the plastic water bottle, handed it to me, and tossed the bag onto my lap. Prenatal vitamins were inside the bag. I didn’t normally cry, but jacked up as I was on mommy hormones, stupendous gratitude overtook me. Tears rushed from my eyes, and I knew at that moment he’d be one of the few decent people I’d ever meet. But I also understood I could never take the solidity of our relationship for granted.
Now, I’m holding our baby, who’s crying. Jimmy is nowhere to be found. What am I supposed to do? Jimmy read the baby books. He was supposed to be here, coaching me, calming me and my child.
“Your baby,” Tricia says, approaching my bed. “She’s crying. Do something about it. Feed her, why don’t you?”
I feel suddenly stupid. “How do I do that?”
Tricia throws up her arms, a sanctimonious fireball of rage. With not an iota of her husband’s grace, she storms out of the room, leaving me to listen to the clack of her heels in the hospital corridor.
Wrapped in her pink receiving blanket, Zerena squirms in my lap like an angry burrito. I wonder how motherhood will change me. Will I be a good mother? Will I be able to love her, nurture her, or at least calm her? Nothing makes you feel as all alone and hopeless as being unable to calm your screaming baby. Zerena reaches toward my chest and puckers her lips. I loosen the sash of my terrycloth robe and raise her to my breast. She latches on instantly, making sweet glurpy sounds. I expect breastfeeding to hurt, but the sensation of her mouth and tongue and the cute way she swallows between mouthfuls of nourishment make it all tickle.
I slip my finger into Zerena’s little palm. Instinctually, her fingers clasp around mine, and like that, as if she flipped the switch to my heart, I’m flooded with this sense of devotion to her. I didn’t expect this to happen so fast. My free hand rests on the back of her head, supporting her. Her skin is so soft, so warm. Only hours ago, she was a melon-sized question nestled in my uterus, someone I’d seen only through smudgy sonogram pictures. This is our first time alone together. Her fingers are so small, and yet her grip is firm, as if she never wants to let go of me. I don’t want to let go of her either. I’ll be a good mother. I’ll teach her to be good, but not so good that she won’t be able to stand up for herself.
Tricia trots back into the room with a middle-aged woman in tow. As soon as Tricia sees me nursing, she freezes. A polite woman, barging in on another woman with a newborn on her breast, would excuse herself and leave, but Tricia stands there, stricken, her fingers over her lips, a longing gaze in her eyes. The other woman, short and graying and wearing a white hospital uniform, comes at me with a smile on her face. She, too, ought to turn around, but she slips her hand over mine on the back of Zerena’s head and gently adjusts the angle at which I hold her to my chest.