“Riri look at what I got!” Keisha said as soon as they opened the apartment door, the little girl excited to show off a balloon she took home from the party. Dee was exhausted from watching the kids run around all day. It wasn’t even all the way dark yet and she was ready for bed. The agony overcame her again when she remembered that she still had to tell the father of the baby inside of her that he was going to be a father.
“That is so amazing!” Ricardo said, taking the balloon from Keisha and examining it as if it were a rare object.
“Thanks, I love it,” Keisha told him.
“How was the birthday party?” he asked with a smile. It was nice to come home to see him so happy, but Dee couldn’t help but feel a little scared about keeping this secret from him.
“Families are tough,” she responded, not wanting to get into the details of the day.
“I’m sorry, but isn’t it great to celebrate another year of such a young and innocent life?” he asked. He was in a suspiciously good mood.
“I guess. You seem like you’re feeling pretty good,” she asked.
“How could I not?” he responded. He started tickling Keisha and she laughed hard. Dee was feeling guilty but reminded herself she shouldn’t. She was the one who had to be pregnant. She loved being pregnant with Keisha, but still, he could walk away if he really wanted to. She was growing this child and no matter what she chose to do, it wouldn’t just go away on its own. For that, she didn’t feel as guilty keeping the secret from him, knowing that what she was going through, the inner turmoil, was much worse than if he just found out he was going to be a father.
“You seem to have come a long way for someone that didn’t like children,” she said.
“Well, Keisha is a pretty sweet child. How could you not?” he said.
“Mommy can I go color?” Keisha asked.
“That’s fine baby give me your balloon though, I’ll keep it down here,” Dee said, a little paranoid about Keisha misusing the balloon or string when she was alone. She watched as Keisha walked up the stairs and into her room, Dee proud that she had such an independent little girl.
“Have you ever thought about having more children?” she asked bluntly. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear the answer to that tough question. She hadn’t even really thought too much about children. Every once in a while, the thought would pop into her mind, but she was too busy taking care of the first kid to really think about it.
“I never really thought about having the first one.” He laughed. “I don’t know that I’ve been the greatest father to my son. Having your own kid is different from just liking kids though, of course.”
Dee was getting more anxious by the second. He kept failing to give her a straight answer, but for Dee’s sake, maybe that was for the better. She felt like he was talking in code. She wanted to explode and crack open his brain. Was he so cryptic because he was trying to keep his distance?
“I’m pregnant,” she said, not realizing she was crying until a tear hit her chest. She felt instantly better, as though she was lighter than a feather.
“You are? When did this happen?” he asked. He looked down at the ground and then at Dee, his eyes magnified by his thick glasses. He looked so cute and innocent sitting on the couch. Dee just wanted to crawl over and kiss him, but that might not have been the most appropriate reaction.
“I’m assuming from the first night. That only makes sense,” she told him honestly. She really couldn’t think of another time that it would have happened. It was a couple of weeks ago, so the other times they made love weren’t far enough away to make sense. She found out early, but she figured maybe it was because it was the second time. She felt like when she knew she would know.
“How do you know for sure it’s mine?” he responded. He looked a bit angry and Dee was a bit hurt that he didn’t fully trust her. She hadn’t given him any reason not to, but then again, she hadn’t given him a reason to blindly trust her.
“I know!” she yelled back, offended that he would assume otherwise. He was the only man she had been with in almost a year. It wasn’t easy for someone with a toddler to date or even sleep around. She also shared a room with her sister, so the intimacy in her life was incredibly low.
“I have to think,” he told Dee, silently walking upstairs to his office. She stood there sad and alone, holding a balloon. Dee didn’t know if she could feel any worse.
*****
Ricardo hadn’t come back out of his office for the rest of the day Sunday night, and although it was still early Monday morning, Dee had yet to see Ricardo come out. Part of her was fine with not having to discuss the pregnancy with him right at that moment, but the other part of her was anxiously waiting for him to come out. He didn’t seem mad when he went to his office, but still, he didn’t seem very happy either. It was clear that this wasn’t an easy bit of information for him to take in.
His door was sealed tight, not letting anyone in at all. Dee had walked by his office a few times, just hoping to get a glimpse of what might be going on behind those doors. He hadn’t kicked her out yet and she didn’t hear any yelling or screaming either, so she knew it couldn’t be too bad. She wanted to push the handle open on the door, but that would have felt a little too intrusive. She knew what was on the other side of that wall now, making it feel even more strange that he was still holed up inside of there. It’s not like he was watching hours of television or sitting at a computer. He clearly used the space to think, but it felt strange knowing that he was doing it all alone on the other side of the wall.
Since it was Monday, the chefs were already there preparing breakfast and coffee, and Anastasia had showed up as well. Dee wasn’t sure if she had her own apartment, was staying at a hotel, or if she was actually flying out to Detroit from L.A. every day. Dee didn’t really care enough either way, so she didn’t bother to ask. As long as she wasn’t staying in the same place Ricardo was every night, she didn’t really care.
Dee sat in the living room, sipping tea and listened to Anastasia’s clicking on the cement floor. She could hear the handle to his office door jiggle a bit as well, finding it a bit funny that even she wasn’t allowed in his room. She was suffering a bit without her morning caffeine, but the taste of the warm tea was enough to give her the placebo affect at least. Hearing that Anastasia was just as upset about Ricardo’s isolation helped to soothe her bitter mood a bit as well.
“Do you know what could have gotten into him?” Anastasia asked, confused as she walked down the stairs. “I thought he had a breakthrough. Why would he be locked up in there? He won’t answer my calls, he won’t answer when I knock, how do we even know that he’s OK?”
All of these were concerns that Dee had herself, but it was a bit entertaining to watch Anastasia act so frantically. She didn’t like her throwing out nervous ideas around Keisha, however, who was playing with her dolls on the ground. The doll that looked like Ricardo had turned up clean in her room, a relief for Dee as she didn’t know if her daughter was ever going to get that back.
“No idea,” Dee responded without even looking up from her magazine as she sipped her tea. Anastasia was clearly annoyed and stomped away. Dee wanted to tell her that it was because he was having difficulty accepting the fact that she was pregnant, wanting to see the look on Anastasia’s face when she revealed the shocking details. Instead, she kept to herself, enjoying the meltdown happening in front of her. Dee didn’t have much to do that day other than sit around waiting for direction from Ricardo, not her ideal way to spend a day. It was a Monday, at least, so anything beat Dee’s normal routine of heading to the store to get yelled at by rude customers.
Sitting around also meant that she’d have plenty of free space in her brain to let her anxieties stew. She wanted to play with Keisha, but sometimes Keisha enjoyed just playing alone with her dolls. Dee didn’t want to suffocate her now that she had all this extra free time to spend with her daughter. She worried about her child enough that she didn’t want to come off as a helicopter parent. She didn’t really think there was anything all that wrong with helicopters anyway.
Dee wanted to be positive about it all, but she was certainly feeling anxious about his true feelings. The worst-case scenario would be that he cut ties with Dee, sending her back to her mother’s house to have two children to take care of alone. He wouldn’t have any problem being there financially, and while that was a relief for Dee and a comfort she didn’t have for the last pregnancy, that wasn’t all she needed to feel better about having this child.
She watched Keisha play on the ground, wondering what it would be like to watch two children playing. She loved her siblings more than anything. Though there was a bit more of an age difference between her and Sydney than most siblings, the two girls had managed to become best friends. She also had some cousins that she grew up with, always having built-in friends to play with. Jordan was a nice addition to the family, though Dee was almost twice his age, meaning she was already a teen when he was trying to play like a kid. She would have enjoyed being closer in age to her siblings, but they certainly would have turned out differently.
Dee had to step up and take care of her siblings a lot while their mother was working or dating. If Dee wasn’t there to help take care of the kids, who would have been? Without any parental guidance, they might have turned out much worse. Dee was disappointed Sydney hadn’t gone to college, but that wasn’t really her interest. She wanted to study cosmetology but getting pregnant with Roman put a wrench in that plan. She was always more interested in beauty and glamour than Dee, making her wonder if Sydney was having trouble with her new spontaneous job. Sydney probably would have killed to get the opportunity that Dee was blessed with.
Part of her considered ending the pregnancy as well. She didn’t think about that as an option when she found out she was pregnant with Keisha. She knew that she was in love with Ozzie and wanted to keep the baby. Having so much love inside of her felt wrong to take away, but she couldn’t be selfish in this decision. How would Keisha react to being a big sister? Loving Ozzie and wanting a family made her decision with Keisha so much easier.
Could she say the same about Ricardo? She still couldn’t imagine what it would be like to stop her pregnancy. What if Keisha was never born? Dee didn’t know if she would still be alive. Keisha had become her light on her darkest days. To Dee, there wasn’t anything greater in her life than her daughter and her nephew. She loved them so much that she didn’t think there was any other option than to keep the child growing inside of her.
Once she knew Anastasia was out of earshot, she finally got the courage to call her doctor for an appointment. Before she made any more decisions, she had to get the baby checked out and make sure everything was legit. She still had her OBGYN saved in her phone even though she was due for a normal checkup. He was one of the best doctors in Detroit, so Keisha felt the most comfortable going to him. She never would have thought this was the situation she’d be in when she called him again.
“I need to schedule an appointment,” Dee said with a shaky voice. She didn’t know if she’d ever have more kids, and the situation she was in was certainly the last she would have ever thought she’d be in when she found out she was pregnant with her next baby. It didn’t feel real at all. Before she had Keisha, she’d have dreams that she was pregnant, scared about what her true options were. This certainly felt like a dream, and the hold music on the other line only cemented that fantasy.
“I don’t have anything for two months. But I did have someone cancel today’s 2 P.M. appointment if you can make it in by then,” the woman on the other line told Dee abruptly, interrupting Dee’s stream of consciousness during her period on hold.
“I’ll be there,” Dee responded nervously. Jonathon would be there by that time, and part of her assumed that Ricardo wouldn’t be coming out of his office for the rest of the day. Dee was a little excited to get out of the house again at least. She wondered if it would feel strange to be home the same time as Jonathon, but at least now she would get some use out of the nanny that she had hired. She didn’t feel like it was totally necessary, but Anastasia and Ricardo were insistent on having extra help there in case anything came up. They probably never would have assumed that this was going to be the issue that came up.
*****
Dee looked around the cold office, wearing nothing but a gown having just peed into a cup. The doctor always felt like he took ages to make it back into the room. Why did the rooms at the doctor’s office have to feel so cold? It made sense that there were bright lights to help make sure doctors could see everything when they were doing certain examinations, but there should have been a warmer mode where the doctor could dim the lights and create a more welcoming environment for the patients that were nervously awaiting results in the office.
“Congratulations,” the doctor said as he walked back into the room. Dee sat up, ready to hear the news. At that point, congratulations really could have went either way. Dee knew what he really meant by his comment, however. She swallowed hard, ready to hear more about the little thing growing inside her body. It was probably smaller than a bean, but as soon as he said that word to Dee, she felt a light in her stomach, almost as if she could feel the beating heart pulsing in her body. She wanted to cry and wasn’t quite sure if they would be tears of happiness or streams of panic. She squeezed her nails into her palm just to double check that she wasn’t dreaming.
“So, it was positive?” she asked. She knew the answer, but hearing things repeated out loud made them make more sense to Dee for some reason. “You’re positive, it was, positive?”
“Yup,” he told her. “You found out early. You’re only about four weeks along.”
Four weeks? Dee hadn’t realized that it had been that long since she had gone on vacation in the Bahamas. Ever since she first kissed Ricardo, everything else had seemed to sort of blend together. She wondered if she had just woken up in an alternate universe.
“I’m really pregnant?” Dee asked. She had wanted something exciting to happen during her days of zoning out as assistant manager. She dreamed about someone coming in and taking her away from that terrible situation, so Dee was starting to feel like she wished Ricardo into existence. That old saying, ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ seemed more relevant to Dee now than ever.
“Looks to be that way. Is this something that you didn’t want to happen? I can refer you to a few places,” her doctor told her. What places was he talking about? Dee needed help, but probably not anything that he was trying to offer. She could use a bar, but with the announcement that she was pregnant also came the realization she had at least nine months before she could start drinking again.
“No, this is good. I think I can do this,” she responded. Was it bad that one of the first things she thought about after getting the results was how much worse her breasts might look after she breast-fed this next baby? Was it going to be a little boy or a little girl? What if there were twins? Triplets? She knew that didn’t happen often, but nothing that was happening to Dee was probably something that happened very often.
“If you need help, you know who to call. I’ll want to see you again soon, but in the meantime, start taking prenatal vitamins and give up everything else you did for Keisha. You remember those things, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, definitely,” Dee responded. “I can do this,” she told herself again.
She really thought she could.