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“Didn’t you put it in your handbag?”
“Oh, of course!”
Raffi watches me marching to the bathroom, clutching my handbag.
“What is it, baby?”
“I need your phone.”
“Oh, of course! Sorry.”
Raffi smiles tentatively when I toss him my phone, perhaps unsure how to react to my scatteredness today.
I poke my head out of the bathroom door, saying, “Don’t forget to put it on the charger after your calls.”
With the bath running, I sit on the toilet seat and pull the pregnancy test kits out of the paper bag.
With the injury I sustained from Nando’s attack that fateful night and the aftermath of losing Caili, doctors told me that it was impossible for me to have another child. My endometrium simply can’t sustain another pregnancy. Since then, my period has never been regular. So I shouldn’t be concerned that I’ve missed it two months in a row.
Yet, I am.
I brace myself to drench the tip of the test stick with my pee. My eyes slam shut, refusing to see whatever change is happening. I can’t take it. I can’t.
Abstract shapes play behind my closed lids, like luminous jellyfish swimming in dark water. It could’ve been two minutes, it could’ve been fifteen, but when I open my eyes—
My throat is choked with tears. I hush my sobs, telling myself not to get carried away. There’s a reason why I bought two different brands. Just in case.Just in case.
Never have I been so desperate to make myself do a back-to-back pee. I furiously gulp water from the tap.
This time I watch the test stick as if someone would’ve tampered with it if I didn’t.
Two lines.
On both of them.
I smile to heaven, tears wetting my face in an instant—maybe more furiously than the streams of pee I had produced to get to this point.
I step into the bath, immersing myself in the bubbly water—jubilant, humbled, and playful. “Hey, baby…” I caress my belly.
So there is such a thing as a miracle. And this miracle might just answer two of the most important questions of my life: what would it be like to be a mother for the second time? Should I go back to California?
The second question is really: Should I go back to Clayton?
Raffi will like my answer. Hell, I love my answer!
There’s no hiding the fact that I wish the man himself were here. Just there in the living room, perhaps reading a magazine, unaware that I was going to give him the surprise of his life.
My hand stays on my belly as I whisper, “You’ll see Daddy soon. I promise.”
I put on a fresh t-shirt, but I have to settle with wearing the pair of jeans I’ve been wearing for weeks. Even though it’s light here almost twenty-four hours a day, I still haven’t caught up with all my washing.
I dab my hair. Then, with the towel spread on my bed, I lie back. I laugh at the ceiling, hands on my belly, just behind the jeans fly. I’ll have to buy a new pair soon. In fact, I’ll have to buy lots of new clothes. Mine and the baby’s.
Raffi’s room is open, and he’s awfully quiet, as if he’s still on the phone with either Eric or Matty.
“Raffi?” I call out when I can’t find him in his room. How much privacy does the boy need to have his call?
I comb the whole apartment, my heart throttling into fifth gear.
