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But that’s how we got in this situation.
Not only is my period late, but I’ve been waking up nauseated every morning at five AM sharp. I don’t even get the chance to sleep for another minute before I’m rushing over to the toilet in my bathroom, dry heaving whatever is left of last night’s dinner after I hardly picked at it.
All the signs are pointing to an inevitability that I’m not prepared to face, not yet. The consequences of a pregnancy before my wedding would cause my whole life to collapse. If my father found out that Dominik was the father, he would kill him right in front of me and hang his head from the chandelier.
Every time I think about the possibility of carrying a child, my stomach drops. I’ve never felt such a consistent amount of unrelenting stress before in my life, and I’ve been trapped in the house with no way to escape even for an hour.
How was I going to get a pregnancy test?
I’ve been woefully under-socialized with other women for my whole life, given my father’s occupation and his distaste for young girls. My mother was around, but she was mostly in and out of self-induced benzo comas, lying in bed watching Swedish sitcoms.
The only woman I can call is my mother’s twin sister, Vera. I was never very close with her, but I’ve sensed a quiet solidarity with her during the brief moments that she visited. It was always as if she knew what my mother was going through and sympathized with me to her core.
All I have is the phone number I scrawled in a notebook when my mother was committed, and there’s a high chance that she changed it by now.
I don’t have time to worry about it. I need to try to call her.
I dial the number, feeling my heart beating in my throat all over again as my nervous system revisits my terror.
It rings, each ring endless and obtrusive in the otherwise silent space of my bedroom.
Five rings go by, and I feel my heart begin to sink into my stomach.
On the sixth ring, I hear someone answer the phone, followed by the crash of the phone falling to the floor. “Goddamn it!” my aunt Vera sighs, picking up the phone as her long acrylic nails clack on the glass.
“Hello? Who is this?” she says in a hostile, bossy tone that she could never control to save her life. “I don’t want to buy anything, and I don’t care if my identity was stolen, thank you.”
Her thick Swedish accent reminds me of my mother, and immediately I feel a wave of comfort even though nothing is even close to being resolved.
“Aunt Vera, it’s Mika. Do you have a minute to talk?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“Mika? I haven’t heard from you since you were sixteen. Where have you been?” she asks, the razor’s edge of her outer shell disintegrating now that I’ve established my familiarity.
“I know, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m in a lot of trouble,” I say, ready to burst into tears as I prepare to say it out loud.
“What? Are you hurt? Where is your father?” she asks, giving me whiplash with the sudden seriousness of her voice. I know she never liked my father, so her assumption that he is responsible is noted, but not hard to understand.
“No, it’s not like that. I… fuck,” I reply, stumbling over my words. When I say it, then it’ll be real.
I hear her heels clicking on the hardwood floor in her apartment as she walks through it, closing a door behind her. “Please, dear, what is the problem? You’re making me nervous.”
“My period is late,” I say. There, I said it, now it’s out in the atmosphere. Anything can happen.
She’s quiet for a moment, and every second of silence is agony.
“Is there a possibility that you could be pregnant?” she asks, choosing the least emotional approach to my plight, which I appreciate more than I could ever express.
“Um, yes, there is,” I reply. Even admitting that I could be pregnant without using Dominik’s name makes my belly feel warm, like I’ve only told half of a provocative secret.
“Well, that certainly puts things into perspective. Have you talked to your father about this?”
“No, and I can’t. I’m being forced to marry someone in order to secure a business deal for the Bratva, but the person I’m marrying isn’t the person I’ve been sleeping with,” I reply, taking such deep breaths that I start to become dizzy.
“Oh my fucking- are you serious? Mika, please, you’re not serious?” she replies, exasperated.
I swallow hard as my bone-dry throat attempts to choke me with moderate success. “Yes, I am, I’m so sorry.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not upset atyou.I’m upset with your father. God, he’s such a selfish prick, I should have put that revolver to his head–”
