A family by choice, not chance. A choice to love, and to be loved in return. A choice to take care of and enjoy one another, not to put up with or to suffer through one another.
It was the best kind of family. A family on our own terms.
I whispered to my baby girl— my entire world, the centerpiece of the family we’d all chosen to be part of. “You can call him Daddy.”
***
Bethany was the only one in the waiting room when I came back out. She was sipping from the tiny straw of an orange juice box.
“Where’s Jake?” I asked.
“The nurse with the attitude came back in and asked for blood donations.” She showed me a small round Band-Aid on the inside of her arm. “He’s in there now. How is she?”
“She’s tired. They’ve got her on a lot of meds, but she’s going to be okay.” It felt good to say it, and after seeing her, I truly believed it. My legs suddenly felt very heavy and weak. I plopped down next to Bethany.
“I’m so sorry, Abby.”
I saw the tears fill her eyes, the quivering of her lip. “Stop, Bethany.” I made a move to put my hand over hers. It burned, but I ignored it. I needed to comfort her, and that was far more important than my own pain. “You gave birth to him. You didn’t put the gun in his hand, and you didn’t tell him to pull the trigger. Just like you didn’t make him rape me.” It was so odd saying it like that, so bluntly, to the woman who helped carry me back to Jake’s apartment after it happened. She was probably as much a victim of her son as I had been. “You made a lot of mistakes, but we all have. I don’t blame you—for any of it. So stop apologizing.”
Jake interrupted us when he stepped back into the waiting room, escorted by a nurse wearing purple scrubs. His face was pale. He was clutching a juice box in one hand and a cookie in the other. He sat on the couch and drained the juice in one long pull. “Well, that sucked,” he said. I almost laughed.
The man who danced with the devil got woozy while giving blood.
The nurse motioned for me. “You’re next, honey. What kind of blood you got for me? Your little girl’s got that rare O we always be needing, so that’s what we are looking for today. But I’ll take anything your veins will give me. Lord knows we need it all.”
How could I refuse a request like that?
I wasn’t at all light-headed afterward like they warned me I could be—like Jake turned out to be—but I sat back in my reclining chair and drank my juice as the nurse instructed. The nurse came over to me with a card with four drops of blood on it. “You ain’t got that O, darlin’...you’re just standard ol’ A.” She flailed her arms when she spoke and flipped a long black braid over her shoulder. “But your tall, blonde and sexy baby daddy out there got the good stuff, so we tapped into that real good.”
“Oh, he’s not her biological father.”
“Oh? Well, since your baby girl’s got the O and you don’t, the biological baby daddy got to have it. So when you talk to him you send him on up to Miss Karla so I can put that liquid gold on tap!” Miss Karla loved her job way too much. “This biological daddy of yours got baby blues like him over there?”
“No, he has green eyes like my daughter,” I said. “It isn’t possible for two blue-eyed parents to have a green-eyed child.” It sounded so rehearsed... probably because it was a conversation I’d had in my head a thousand times.
“Oh, sure they can. My friend Marni, her husband Brian, has got emerald-green eyes, and both his parents got eyes as blue as the waters of the Caribbean.”
“Then your friend Marni needs to tell her husband to check the eye color of the mailman because his parents are lying to him,” I snapped. I think Miss Karla detected our conversation was much more serious than the light banter she initially thought it was.
“I ain’t making this shit up, honey. Freeman,” she shouted, without turning around. A technician in a lab coat, who had previously been sitting in a corner absorbed in a comic book, swiveled around in his chair. “Freeman studied genetics at some fancy college up north.”
“What’s up?” he asked, pushing up the bridge of his thick black framed glasses.
“Can two blue-eyed peoples make a green-eyed baby?”
“This is dumb. I have to go.” I stood to leave, but Freeman’s answer stopped me in my tracks.
“Yeah, it’s pretty rare, but it does happen. I’ve seen several cases.” He turned back around to his comic.
“Mmmhmm... that’s what I thought,” Karla said, declaring victory over my stupidity.
I thanked her and politely refused her offer to assist me to the waiting room.
“Miss?” Karla called to me.