She found out at her annual appointment.
“Coral, are you aware that you’re pregnant?”
She was not.
She was thirty-six years old, and she had always used birth control. No wonder the school nurse’s perfume had seemed so pungent.
Pregnant?
Her heart fluttered dangerously.
What would Koji say?
Their relationship was, well, unconventional. He wasn’t even in town most of the time. Augusta had stopped asking Coral what their plans were. The answer was that they didn’t make plans.
Two years ago, she and Koji had traveled to Japan. Coral had assumed she would meet his family; that he was bringing her home for that reason. But he didn’t introduce her. They’d had a wonderful time. Koji took her to his favorite places—temples and ball fields and gardens and the sea—and each morning, he carefully assembled a tray and fed her natto and pickled vegetables before she dressed. But she never met his father, his mother, his younger brother. It wasn’t difficult to decode what that meant.
After the trip, Coral had decided she needed to move on from Koji. Althea had been right, way back when. A lot of time could go by; a lot already had. For several months, she spent the weeks when Koji was not in Vegas living as if they had separated. She allowed herself to go on dates and told her closest friends that she was looking for someone with whom she could have a family. But each time Koji arrived in town, she accepted him right back. He was always so pleased to see her, he had one suitcase filled with food he would cook for her, he wanted to hear about everything that had happened in his absence again, even though they had often talked about it on the phone. Also, he had a present to celebrate Malcolm’s MVP award at the high school championships; he had found a kimono for Keisha that she might like; had the little girl in the fourth-grade class come back to school or not?
After awhile, Coral accepted that she didn’t want to meet anyone else, that she didn’t want another life, that she loved Koji even if it wasn’t the life she had imagined. She wasn’t ready to let him go. Still, she knew she should tell Koji how she had felt in Japan. How she had waited to meet his family, how she had started to realize she might not, how she had not known what to do, how she had lain awake, heart pounding, wondering whether everything she thought was true between them was not true. What if he had a secret life? What if he didn’t care about her in the same way she cared about him?
For months, she promised herself that she would talk with him on his next trip to Vegas, but each time, she found a reason not to do it. Finally, on a day when puffy white clouds foiled an impossibly blue sky, and the sweet smell of star jasmine hung in the air like a kiss, she asked him.
“Koji?”
He laid his head on her shoulder.
“I wanted to meet your family. We never talked about this.”
He was silent. His head was still on her shoulder, but the weight shifted subtly. Coral felt tears start in her eyes. She concentrated on staying calm, on not thinking ahead of this minute. Koji shifted and sat up, but he didn’t look at her. Instead, he looked at the pool, at the vines snaking up the stucco wall behind it.
“My family’s very traditional.”
Coral said nothing.
“I don’t care what they think, Coral. It’s never mattered to me.”
Coral kept her eyes averted.
“I wanted you to meet them.”
What did he mean?
“You’d really like my brother. His wife would love you.”
Coral concentrated on being perfectly still.
“I didn’t want them to hurt you.”
She tried not to think about what he was going to say.
“My parents wouldn’t understand, Coral. They’ve never left Japan. They don’t like how their country’s changing.”
She knew what was coming.
“My father lost his brother in the war. He hates America.”
Breathe in, breathe out.
“They don’t believe in mixing races.”
There it was.
And Coral had wept. The pain had burst out of her in great gulping sobs, and Koji had said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and held her and wept too. And when it was over, when they sat huddled on the bench under the glorious sky on the beautiful day, they had not talked more about it.
Coral couldn’t bring herself to talk about this. It wasn’t Koji’s fault. It wasn’t anything he could fix. But the pain was so fierce and so hot and so unbearably personal, it reached so far inside, to so many other experiences, to so many memories, to classmates calling her “halfie” and “zebra,” to saleswomen standing just outside the dressing room door when she needed a new pair of jeans, to certain things that had been said to her late at night in those nightclubs where she and Tonya had sung, to a thousand other moments, uncountable memories, whispers and intimations and slights so subtle they couldn’t register as slights, and yet they built up, they piled one on top of the other until the weight smothered one, until the thought of just one more assumption, one more stupid comment, one more sidelong glance, made her feel as if she would never stand again.
Not long after that morning, Koji asked Coral to marry him.
And Coral said no.
She remembered how very stricken he had looked. His face on that day was seared in her mind. But she couldn’t marry someone who might just feel terribly guilty.
Gradually things got easier. It had been a year and a half, and Koji still came to Vegas as often as he could; if anything, the relationship deepened. They settled into a partnership, one that was almost the same as a marriage.
Now Coral didn’t know what Koji would say when she told him she was pregnant. He had mentioned children when he proposed. For the last year, Coral had told herself, over and over, that she was probably already too old.
Apparently not too old.
Coral told Ada first.