“When the Bough Breaks” by Danielle Gilyot

Nadine took the money out of their savings account that morning without telling her boyfriend.  300 dollars.  Gabe would have a fit.  Half-running down Magazine Street because New Orleans’ buses wanted to be extra slow today, she made it to the fancy baby store within ten minutes to closing time.  Thank goodness.  No one had bought it yet.  The white-wooden jewelry box adorned with small pink flowers on vines.  Little hearts instead of thorns.  The ballerina’s brown limbs positioned into a perfect arabesque.  Nadine looked down at her stomach.  Six weeks.  It was a girl.  She felt it.  300 dollars.  Her little girl would be a ballerina, too.

An elderly black woman waved Nadine inside of the store.  Nadine smiled with embarrassment.  No more window stalking.  She had the money.

“Isn’t she lovely?”  The woman asked.  “I’ve seen you.  On your way home, I assume.  I think your nose print it still on the window from yesterday.”

“I’ve been waiting for right moment to buy her,” Nadine answered.  “I used to dance.”

“I see.  Well take your time, dear.”

As the woman disappeared into the back of the store, Nadine looked around.  A pink-and-white-lace wonderland.  Christening dresses packaged inside clear garment-bags.  Tiny black, patent-leather Mary Jane shoes with ruffled socks displayed on a table.  Satin hair bonnets, pink-flowered head bands, porcelain piggy banks.  This place was made for little girls.  The kind of little girl Nadine would have.  Cocoa butter and baby powder.  Powder-puff cheeks.  She’d have Gabe’s beautiful green eyes.  Brown skin like the ballerina.  Like her Mama.  Nadine’s little girl.  Sugar and spice and everything nice.

Lifting the jewelry box so she could hear the music up close, Nadine saw the price tag.  375 dollars written in a beautiful green ink.  She’d have to wait until payday at the end of the week to get the rest of the money.  Using the word “layaway” seemed blasphemous for this kind of store.  Placing the jewelry box back into its spot in the window display, she left the store before the woman could see her.

“We’ll get it soon enough,” Nadine said to her stomach.

Six weeks along.  Nadine had peed on three sticks and felt every part of pregnant but to hear the doctor say it.

“You’re pregnant.”

Something else clicked.  Scared the shit out of her.  A person was in there.  Heartbeat sounding like it raced towards the end at a pace too fast for her.  Soon, hands and feet and a head would form.

She tried to throw up in secret.  Gabe worked two jobs—insurance agent by day and dock worker by night—so it wasn’t that hard to hide this from him.  She’d move his arm whenever he tried to hold her by the stomach as they slept.  Get up before him.  Cut short the time spent wrapped up in his arms, taking in the smell of his soap, or watching him get dressed in the morning while she pretended to need ten more minutes of sleep.  He brushed his wavy hair to the front.  Stretched his white undershirt over his chest and back.  He’d threaten to spray her with his cologne if she didn’t get out of bed.

“I wish you would, damn it,” she’d say to him, bed sheet over her head.

One day, he did.  Stuck his head under the sheet, kissed her neck, and sprayed that shit right where his lips had been.

“I can’t stand you,” she had said.  “Got me smelling like a damn man.”

“A good smelling man.”

“You suck.”

“Only your toes,” he said and kissed her neck again.  “Get your ass up.”

She missed mornings with him but couldn’t risk the morning sickness around him.  At twenty-four, they knew each other better than most married couples she met.  The minute he would’ve heard her in the bathroom, he’d know.  Thankfully, it really didn’t hit her until she made it to work.  Her boss, Mr. Silverstein, knew.  Judging from the saltines, ginger ale, and prenatal vitamins that appeared on her desk a few days after that fateful doctor’s appointment, Mrs. Silverstein knew as well.

Annie, her one good girlfriend, knew.  Annie stayed on the phone with Nadine while she waited for the blood test results that day.  Atlanta was too far away for Annie to do much else.  Nadine wouldn’t dare tell her mother.  When she and Gabe moved in together their senior year at LSU, her mother stopped talking to her.  Her Jackson, Mississippi mother’s good, church-going friends were not going to shun her because her only daughter decided to live in sin.

“Call me when you get married,” Mama had said.  “That is if he’ll ever marry you.”  Nadine had tuned out the conversation by the time Mama got to talking about cows and giving away milk.

“Well, at least the man wants me,” Nadine wanted to say.

Her father left them.  Baby-girl Nadine bouncing in her mother’s arms, and he left them.  She wanted to throw all of that in her mother’s face.  Take the salt of Mama’s words and rub it into all of her old wounds.  But Mama had been through enough.  Didn’t matter if Nadine was going straight to hell, she was still Mama.  Nadine kept her distance.  Sent flowers every Mother’s Day and birthday.  She’d call her mother once she got the ring.  Not just the baby.

A week later, Nadine held a bag of rice as she walked from the bus to their place.  She’d have to defrost the meat in the microwave so that dinner would be ready by the time Gabe came home.  He never had a lot of time in between jobs, and she was about to drop a bomb on him.  Bell peppers, onion, garlic.  Check and check.  Opening the door to the apartment, she damn near bust the bag of rice.

“You’re pregnant.”  Gabe held a letter in his hands.  “Nadine Legreaux,” he read, “thank you for visiting the Obstetrics and Gynecology…”

Nadine squeezed her legs together.  “I can explain,” she said.

“Yes or no.”  The paper shook in his hand.  “Either you’re pregnant or not.  So which is it?”

“Please, let me explain.”

“Are you fucking pregnant?”  Gabe asked with clenched teeth.  A feeble attempt to keep his wrath inside of his mouth.  Anger slid between his lips and across the room.  Nadine breathed it in.

“About seven weeks.”

“I don’t believe this shit.”  He balled up the letter and threw it at the wall.  “What the fuck, Nadine?”

She gripped the bag of rice.  It kept her from dissolving into a shaking mess of tears on the floor.  Not like this.

“Gabe,” Nadine said, “we need to talk.”

“That’s for damn sure,” he blew back.  Reaching into his pants pocket, Gabe pulled out an empty birth-control pill package.  One she had finished a couple of months ago.

“Let’s start with when you stopped taking these.”

Nadine shuffled across the living room and sat down at their two-seater kitchen table across from him.  Heavy with baby.

Mommy loves you so much.

“I finished that one about two months ago and never went back to the drugstore,” she said.

“How could you do this to me?”

“Do what?”

“You fucking trapped me,” he said.

“It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like then?  I took too long to propose?  Didn’t buy the ring fast enough for your ass?”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Don’t be like what?”  Gabe stared at her like how could he have loved such a lying bitch.  He’d never say it.

“I gotta go,” he said and stood up from the table.

“What do you want me to say?” She asked.  “I’m sorry?”

He was in her face.  “You’re not fucking sorry,” he said. “I’m gone.  Don’t say shit to me.  Don’t call me.  Don’t look for me, you hear?”

She didn’t jump.  He slammed the door on his way out, but she didn’t jump.  Baby had been through enough for one night.

Gabe turned the knob to their bedroom door the next morning, and Nadine popped up to face him.  He pointed to the picture of the ballerina jewelry box Nadine held in her hands.

“It’s a girl?”

“I think so,” she said.  “Still too early to tell, but I can feel it.”

“That ballerina looks like you used to,” he said.  “Wore that bun all around campus.  Didn’t know you had all of that hair until our first date.”

“That was the worst first date,” she said.  “Waiter spilled the entire tray of drinks on your new Polo shirt.  You were some mad.”

He sat down on the corner of the bed.   “You must’ve told me to be easy a hundred times.”

Nadine scooted over to him and rested her chin on his shoulder.  “I had to,” she said.  “You were as red as your shirt.”

He leaned his head down so his forehead could touch hers.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asked.

“I only found out a week ago,” she said.  “Everything happened so fast.”  Nadine traced her finger down his spine and then around his back muscles.  It usually calmed him down when he couldn’t get to sleep after coming home from the loading docks.

“Why did you do it?”

Nothing she could’ve said would make it right.  Say the truth?  That after five years and living together for most of those years, Nadine grew tired.  Impatient with Gabe for playing house with her for so long.  It was time for some name changes.  From Baby and Sweetheart to Husband and Wife.  Nadine and Gabe to Mommy and Daddy.  Or the worst of it all?  She actually listened to her mother.  “Why would he ever marry you?  Giving it all away for free anyway.”

Nadine wiped her face.  “Gabe,” she began, “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re not that sorry,” he said.  “I know you’re sorry about how you did it, but you’re not sorry about the baby.”

“Don’t start, please,” she said, “because I can’t fight anymore.”

“I’m still mad as hell with you.” He raised his head up and kissed her forehead.  “What you did was fucked up.”

There were no words.  None that could make him understand.  “So, we’re having a baby,” she said.

“One I’m not ready for,” he said.

“You’ll be a great dad.”  She kissed his neck and put her forehead back on his shoulder.

“Not now,” he said, “and not in this apartment.  Not with me working two jobs.  I want kids when I can be home for them.”

“We’ve been saving,” she said.  “We have enough for you to quit the docks by the time the baby comes.”

“Our child deserves to live somewhere with a backyard,” Gabe said.

“We can find a new place by the time the baby comes.”

“With what money?”

“The money we have saved.”

“That money’s for the kid now,” he said.  “You just don’t get it.”

“Get what?” Nadine asked.  She hated it when he talked to her like she was five years old.  “The whole point of you working a second job was to save money for when this happened.”

“No, Nadine,” he said turning to face her, “it was saved for us to get married, to buy a house, for you to go to dental school or even start dancing again if you wanted to.  For me to get a MBA one day.  Whichever came first.”

“We can still do those things,” she said.  His green eyes were so bloodshot.  “We don’t need a big wedding.  The Justice of the Peace works just fine for me.”

“What about the life I wanted for us?”  He grabbed her hand.  “I never wanted you to be my baby mama.”

“Then why didn’t you marry me before we moved in together?”  Nadine asked.  “You want to shack up with me, and then cry traditions when this happens.”

“You did this,” he said.  “You made this life decision for the both of us.  Did you even think this all the way through?  No.  You haven’t thought beyond ballerina jewelry boxes knowing you.”

“Don’t patronize me.”  Nadine twisted her face.  “I’ve thought about more than that.”

“Did you think about what happens after the baby comes?” Gabe asked.  “Life after your hot-wing cravings and the baby shower.  For a moment, I need you to think of it.  All of it.  It’s not like we can call your mother to watch the baby while you go to work.  Think about that for a minute.”

“So, what would you have me do?”

“There are options,” he said.

“Like what?  An abortion?”  Nadine felt her blood pressure rise.  “You can’t be serious.”

“I’d never expect you to go through with it,” he answered, “but consider it.  We can always have kids later.”

She took his hand and pressed it against her boated belly.  “That’s our baby in there.  You want me to kill that?”

He jerked his hand away.  “I told you I’m not ready for kids.”

Gabriel stood up.  Time to get ready for work.  Nadine had to call in sick.  No sleep isn’t good for her or the baby.  The baby.  They were having a baby.  She listened to the shower.  She watched him move around the room.  Towel wrapped around his waist.  Water drops collected on the middle of his back.  His morning routine.  Open drawer.  Pick out boxers.  Put on boxers under the towel.  Unwrap towel.  He moved, silently, intent on getting to work on time.  He was up for a promotion.  Insurance Sales Manager.

Nadine rubbed her bloated belly.  Grey suit pants, white shirt, red tie.  She watched him move.  Silently.  Falling in new love with him.  Falling in love with the dad he’d become.  The dad that came home from work and stood in the doorway arms stretched out wide.

“Daddy.  Daddy.  You’re home.”

As he finished with his tie, red satin fabric sliding through his fingers, Nadine got up from the bed.  Standing behind him as he pushed the knot against his neck, she threaded her arms around his torso, pulling him closer to her.  His back against her bloated belly.

Gabe broke out of her embrace.  Stone-faced.  He folded his red pocket-square, brushed his shoes, grabbed his suit-jacket, and opened the bedroom door.

***

Gabriel and Nadine could have children later.  Once they were married and settled into their house.  Working in their proper careers.  They could bring little lives into the world when it was in order.  Not a moment sooner.

What about this baby?  What about her?  Or him?  Eight weeks now.  Nadine couldn’t just get rid of it.  Be done with it like spoiled milk.  Dump it down the drain and forget about it after the smell goes away.  An eight-week stomach virus.  Gabe refused to understand.  It wasn’t growing inside of him.  Throbbing against his lower stomach.

I’m here, Mommy.

Never mind the ultrasound.  A red bean with a heartbeat.  Whoosh.  Whoosh.  Whoosh.  Baby’s heartbeat showed up everywhere.  Nadine heard it in the static on the radio in between stations.  In TV commercials when the announcer sped through side-effects for medicine or rules for some contest.  Baby’s heartbeat drowned out bus conversations, elevator music, even Gabe’s basketball games she watched with him in silence.

“Kobe for three…whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.”

A wedding ring, house, or career wouldn’t mute this baby’s heartbeat.  Gabe’s rationalizing, as sweet as his voice sounded when he did talk to her, wouldn’t be loud enough to shut out this baby’s heartbeat.  If only he heard it, too.  Maybe if he saw their little red bean, he’d stop worrying about how he’d pay for it.  Forgive her for getting pregnant for them.  Absolve her for taking away his vote in how they would live.  If only he could hear it, too.  Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

But Nadine knew her man, and loved him still.  Gabe would never leave.  Forgiving Nadine, that would never happen either.  Not even after the baby said, “Dada.”  He’d give her what she wanted.  A ring.  A wedding.  It wouldn’t be the grand celebration of love he tried to save money for.  Not the unexpected ceremony in front of a judge because they couldn’t wait another day.  Gabe squeezing her hands in excitement.  She’d feel every bit of the angel he used to call her.  Smiles bursting with joy.  Not that, but he’d give her a wedding.  A marriage.  He’d stand in front of whoever showed up and take her for better or worse.  The worst had already happened.  But love Nadine, cherish Nadine, have and hold Nadine until death did them part?  Not likely.

He’d give her a family, too.  Accept his child.  Love the baby in a bland I-have-no-choice way of love.  Treat them with submerged disdain.  Let it bust open every time the electricity bill was higher than expected.  Curse her under his breath whenever he had to pick up a pack of diapers on his way home from work.  Each tuition check would stick that knife a little deeper into his wounds, but he’d never leave.  Determined to break the cycle.  Be the father he never had.

Nadine rocked with the bus.  After not sleeping next to Gabe for the seventh night in a row, she decided to do it.  Gabe never brought up the abortion conversation again.  Not since the morning after her bomb dropped in the middle of their relationship.  He stayed late at both jobs and preferred the sofa instead of their bed.  Being alone in their house was never a part of the plan.

Nadine never imagined adding a life would kill the life she had with Gabe.  Replace it with this zombie existence.  He called their baby “It.”  She needed to resurrect their life.  Life before she deceived the man she loved because he dragged his feet.  She expected the anger.  They got through the anger.  Grudges weren’t their thing.  Not in these five years.  He cheated during their junior year in college together, and she got angry.  Slapped him in the face and broke up with him for two days.  They got through it.  She let one of his best friends give her head that same year.  He got angry.  Threw her clothes, shoes, toothbrush, and tampons over the balcony of his on-campus apartment he shared with the same friend.  Almost threw the friend over the balcony.  They got through that shit, too.

She didn’t want to know this Nadine and Gabe.  Looking anywhere else when they talked to each other.  Recoiling if she brushed passed him as she left for work in the morning.  Washing his face and brushing his teeth in the kitchen sink because he couldn’t be in the same bathroom with her.

Nadine changed buses at Magazine Street that Saturday morning.  Gabe would wake up to her absence but wouldn’t bother calling her.  Annie might’ve called her this morning.  Annie knew she was pregnant.  That was it.  Her mother, please.

She’d tell him days after it was done.  As much as she wished she could bust in the apartment that same day, wake him up out of his sleep, and point to her empty stomach.

“I did it for you, so forgive me already.”

But it wasn’t about him.  Not about this magical life he planned for them.  The exact right time to have children within wedlock.  A life that existed in his mind only.

No child deserved a home where love had been lost.  No child should be the reason why Mommy and Daddy tolerated one another.  Why Mommy and Daddy didn’t kiss each other, or laugh together, or rush to get the camera when Baby took its first steps.

She’d never allow her baby to hear Gabe scream, “I never wanted it in the first place,” over buying new school clothes.  No child needed that as a birthright.  U for unwanted.  Nadine knew how to be the reason her mother’s man left.  But Gabe would never leave.

Looking through the rain-streaked bus windows, Nadine saw her favorite Magazine Street stretch out before her.  The baby store with the ballerina jewelry box in the window was coming up soon.  Perfect arabesque.  Pink tutu, brown legs, and pink shoes.  Nadine pressed the button.

“Next stop,” she yelled to the bus driver.

She had taken the money out of their savings account weeks ago.  Still there waiting for her to buy it.  Pretty and delicate like all little girls should be.  Sugar and spice and everything nice.  Felt only right that Nadine said a proper good-bye to the brown ballerina as well.  She pushed the door open and walked right over.  Picking it up with both hands, Nadine twisted the knob on the back of the jewelry box.  She watched.

“First position.  Now, plié.”  Madame Vignaud’s voice mixed with the musical chimes.  Nadine watched the brown ballerina turn.  “And relevé.”

Her baby girl should be a ballerina, too.

“Would you like for me to wrap her up?” The elderly black woman asked to Nadine’s back.

“Yes, that would be lovely.”

Nadine stepped off at the Amtrak Station.  Holding the white shopping bag and her purse, she gave a half-smile to the man at the ticket counter.  Next train to Jackson, Mississippi wouldn’t leave for another three hours.

She’d tell her little girl that her daddy couldn’t wait to meet her, but God had other plans for him.  Loading dock accident.  Daddy had bought this jewelry box for her because he wanted her to be a dancer just like Mommy.  He cried when he heard his baby’s heartbeat for the first time and kept her sonogram picture in his wallet.  He used to say that his baby would be somebody’s CEO or doctor one day.  Nadine would tell her little girl all those things.  Tell her about the dad Gabe would’ve been to the baby that came at the right time.

Three hours to the next train to Jackson.  She’d tell Mama the truth, and let Mama beat her with “I told you so.”  Mama would keep Nadine’s lie for her.  No reason for Mama’s good church-going friends to ever know the real story.

Nadine sat in the plastic chair hugging the jewelry box.  She felt pregnant.  Before, she felt wonderfully aware of the life that took residence in her belly.  Excitement balled up inside of her.  This kind of pregnant weighed on her.  Made her feel fat.  Three hours to the next train to Jackson.

She was about to be some child’s mother.