“Can we not do this?” she asked, taking in short gulps of air. “I’m on my way to the doctor. I really can’t right now.”
“If not now, when?” he asked. “You keep blowing me off.”
Malika had trained herself to know when this was going to happen. She and Channing had broken up four times before, each person initiating twice. They were even, but now he’d have the upper hand. The stalling tactic was her way of harnessing some of the power. He couldn’t have it all. Not this time.
She stepped off the sidewalk, almost getting knocked over by a geriatric bike messenger who hurled a slew of insults laced with profanities, throwing his middle finger up in case she hadn’t heard.
“I’ll call you when I’m out,” she said, pulling the phone away from her ear to look at the time.
“No!” he snapped. “We need to deal with this now.”
Channing’s voice had the pained tone of a child who wasn’t getting his way. It was almost shrill. His voice wasn’t the deepest to begin with and his sense of urgency only highlighted that.
“I’m walking in now,” she said. “Can I call you back when I’m out?”
“No, we’re not putting this off. I’m done. We’re done. It’s over. Done. We’re over,” he said, one word tripping over the next. “We’re done, okay? I mean it this time.”
“Chan—”
“No, we’ve made some sick, twisted game of this and I can’t do it anymore.”
“Are you done?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she said, showing the security guard her New Jersey driver’s license after he requested ID. “Good. I’ll call you when I get out.”
Malika pressed her screen to hang up while looking down at her license. She liked the picture. When she took it, the line was almost non-existent at the Motor Vehicle Commission (why couldn’t Jersey call it the DMV like everybody else?) and she had just polished off a breakfast sandwich soaked in bacon grease. Her braids were done the day before and she still had the lash extensions from a friend’s wedding. She had been in an amazing mood and felt cute, a rarity. The headshot was the image for all her social media channels for a while.
Now she wasn’t feeling cute. Malika hadn’t felt cute all year. Her supple skin was breaking out, veering towards an avocado texture. She had gotten her first grey hair and was convinced a bunion was forming. Channing hadn’t touched her in weeks. He had been curling up in a ball and sequestering himself as far as he could to the edge of the bed without dropping off. The chasm between the two was wide enough for another full-size adult in the full-sized bed.
Dr. Perez’s office was housed in a 1920s neoclassical building in the part of TriBeCa that was basically Chinatown. Malika wanted to switch to the OB-GYN all the women at work went to. He was close to their Flatiron office and Shake Shack. Two places where Malika spent excessive amounts of time, but Dr. Perez knew her and her vagina, her ovaries and her mammaries, plus that part connecting the armpit to the breast. The physician had poked and prodded long enough for Malika to feel comfortable seeing her once a year. She didn’t want to get used to a new set of hands, especially those of an old man who had felt most of her coworkers' reproductive organs.
After making the small talk typical of a doctor and patient who hadn’t seen each other in a year, Dr. Perez asked a battery of questions. Malika’s feet were cradled in the stirrups. Her socks were black, reached her knees, and were covered in tacos with arms, eyes, and legs. The tacos inexplicably had a tail and yellow shoes like Mickey Mouse. The bottom of her left foot read, “If You Can Read This,” while the bottom of her right read, “Bring me a taco.” She was slightly embarrassed, but they were the only pair of matching socks that were clean and Dr. Perez’s office was an icebox.
“While it’s not common,” the doctor began, “some women have experienced mood swings. I’m glad you came in.”
Malika planned on explaining to Channing that she had been bitchy for the past couple of months because of a bad birth control implant. It wasn’t her fault and there was no need to end things because of it. The doctor would insert a new one and they could resume their relationship. He should have known that the yelling was out of character. The snapping back and cold shoulder, also not her. Not all the time anyway.
While discussing the side effects of the new implant, Dr. Perez reminded Malika that a urine test would be needed to ensure she wasn’t pregnant. She hated those. She always missed and splashed her hands. She would use extra sanitizer and slather on soap, but they still never felt clean enough. Malika held the short, plastic cup and walked down the long hall to the restroom. As she opened the door, a very pregnant woman came out, holding the bottom of her blossomed belly. The woman forced a smile through a wince.
At thirty, Malika had barely thought about pregnancy or a biological clock. She wasn’t even sure she wanted kids. She was sure she didn’t like her nephews. When she collected the sample, she was proud that her hands were completely dry. She performed her accidental splash routine nonetheless. Hands were vigorously washed with the generic pink soap, then coated with antibacterial gel, then washed with the pink soap again. She tried to block the smell of synthetic almonds created by the soap as she walked back to the room and pulled herself back onto the exam table. She tapped her heels together, like Dorothy did in her quest to make it back to Kansas. The movement created a crinkly sound in the paper she sat on. She ran her hands around the smooth tissue paper and bunched up little pieces around her body.
The fatigue she had been experiencing set in again. It came in waves. Big, unforgiving waves that led her to doze off at her desk at work. On the train ride home. While talking on the phone to Channing.
Her head began nodding when Dr. Perez knocked on the door and came in. It felt like she’d been there for hours.
“So the test results are in,” she said, placing her hands into the large, flat pockets on her white coat. “And you’re six weeks pregnant.”
Instead of taking the train to 23rd street and walking crosstown, Malika headed uptown on foot. She wasn’t wearing the best shoes for the thirty-plus blocks, but walking was how she cleared her head. She wanted to call Channing back. Tell him the news. Congratulate him on his impending fatherhood. But she was still figuring out what was going on in her body. A human was growing in there. A human she and Channing Chong had created while on the cusp of breaking up for the fifth time.
Malika remembered the night. She had been spending the weekends at Channing’s apartment for a while, to the point where she bought twin plants to mirror the ones she had in Brooklyn. Her roommate’s boyfriend was visiting and sleeping over for days at a time, so she got into the habit of doing the same thing at Channing’s. After work they would meet somewhere in the city for drinks. Her a cocktail, him a craft beer with an extra name. They would take the train to Queens for dinner near his Jackson Heights apartment and overeat Nepalese they couldn’t pronounce. One of the supers would always be outside playing dominoes with the other super and refer to Malika as wifey, make a corny joke everyone laughed at, then end their interaction with, “Ya’ll take care now.” Channing and Malika would have sex, look at golden retriever videos on Instagram (she loved the kind where there were too many in the pool), then watch a Nollywood movie out in the living room.
The Friday night the baby was conceived didn’t go down like that. Channing had told Malika that this particular weekend wasn’t good, but she insisted that she had to come over. He relented. They skipped the cocktails in the city and the Dal-bhat-tarkari in Queens. When they got to Channing’s complex, Malika was the only one who laughed at the super’s jokes. When they got to his apartment, they brushed their teeth and went straight to bed. He said he wasn’t in the mood, she told him he was. He acquiesced. They had sex. And now she was carrying her ex-boyfriend’s child.
When she got back to work, she propped her feet on the duffle bag she used for her weekend visits. It always had two nights’ worth of matching bras and panties and a work outfit for Monday morning. Channing had gifted her a drawer from his dresser where she kept t-shirts, leggings, and a silk scarf for wrapping her hair. Now she had to take the duffle back to Brooklyn, with her tail between her legs and a baby in her stomach.
This could be resolved, she thought. She knew. She would speak to Channing after the meeting with her boss and they would clear things up. If he knew that the misery he was experiencing with Malika was all pharmaceuticals-induced, he would understand. He was a smart guy. The smartest person she knew, in fact. All would be forgiven if she could calmly discuss it with him. If Channing was anything, he was rational.
“To be perfectly honest,” Kimmy James always started her sentences this way. This insistence on prefacing every statement was the thing Malika loathed the most about her boss. That and the fact that she walked around with lipstick on her teeth all day, smiling extra wide, daring somebody to call her out on her smeared Ruby Woo or her Lady Danger.
“To be perfectly honest, I’m actually shocked to see you upset,” her boss continued. “Half the time you don’t seem that interested in being here.”
Malika sat across from Kimmy in the showroom, stunned into silence, hot tears welling up. She’d been fired before and it was always on a Friday morning before 10:00, never in the late afternoon after a full day’s work. She wouldn’t be aware of this until a week later, but Malika had been fired three times wearing the same style of shirt; a button down chambray she had gotten rid of after being fired in the exact same shirt two jobs in a row. She thought a different shirt of the same style would break the curse. She was angry at herself when it didn’t.
Kimmy was only five years older than her, but could easily pass for her mother if they were the same race. Her angular blonde haircut made her look like the kind of woman who tapped her square, French manicured nails on the counter and demanded to speak to the manager’s manager. She wore too many pieces of statement jewelry at once, some of which she claimed to make and sell on Etsy. She also clicked her pen too much in meetings. It was distracting. Malika wanted to have her fired for these offenses and was annoyed that now she herself was on the chopping block.
“Um,” she said, holding her stomach and willing the tears back to wherever they came from. “Just so you know, I’m six weeks pregnant.”
“Oh, oh wow,” Kimmy said, collecting her thoughts while licking the red-orange color off her incisors. Malika knew that Kimmy was aware the lipstick was there. “Wow! You should definitely let HR know. Maybe they’ll give you more severance.”
Not the answer she wanted to hear. Pregnant women could be fired? Kimmy stood up and walked over to offer her newly former assistant a hug. This had happened once before, when Kimmy had gifted Malika a perfume gift set for Christmas, the kind she saw displayed at the drugstores during Valentine’s and Mother’s Days. The scent was a rancid mix of musk and vanilla that made her wheeze and eyes water. She, in turn, had gotten her boss a fake turquoise ring surrounded by a border of multicolored stones from one of the Senegalese street vendors positioned outside their Fifth Avenue office.
Now Malika pulled away, but Kimmy grabbed her forearms and pulled her in tighter. The two women stood in the one-way embrace, Malika’s arms stiff and constrained by her boss’ grip. When she was finally free, Kimmy patted her still flat stomach, squealed, then clapped her hands.
“I can’t believe we’re gonna have another team member. I mean, we’re...you know what I mean.”
They were surrounded by truncated male mannequins wearing the next season’s pleated pants. Kimmy never bothered to turn on the showroom lights, preferring for the natural light to filter in. Malika didn’t enjoy dressing the mannequins. They were overly muscular with cartoonishly large bulges. She never set out to work in menswear, but it was the only job she could get in fashion right out of pharmaceutical advertising. She had been an assistant art director and had gotten fired there, too. But they had had the decency to do it as soon as she’d walked in that morning.
“Um, I guess I’ll be seeing you?” Malika offered, not knowing what else to say.
“Well, let’s be honest,” Kimmy said, nodding, then shaking her head. “Probably not, right?”
She swiped a piece of blonde bang from her forehead and stared back at Malika, doing that rapid blinking thing that was almost as annoying as her ankle shake—another tic which Malika considered a fireable offense. Kimmy grabbed her refrigerator-sized laptop, tablet, spiral notebook, and tucked them into the crook of her elbow. She used her free hand to give Malika a high five, which was barely reciprocated.
“Okay...I guess I’ll go to HR now?” Malika said.
“Yes,” Kimmy confirmed, nodding. “But one word of advice, especially as you go back out into the workforce.”
Malika tilted her head and raised one eyebrow, awaiting her ex-boss’ post-mortem guidance.
“Try to make statements, not ask questions,” she started. “As a woman, you have to say it like you mean it!” She pumped her little fist through the air for emphasis.
On the walk to the subway, Malika passed a Zara, reversed her steps, and went in. She grabbed a handful of dresses and shorts she knew wouldn’t fit in a month, and entered the dressing room. When she took off her sweater, she cursed the chambray button down that had now become her termination shirt. Balling it up, she threw to the ground. She also thought her breasts were starting to look like those pancakes she got at the Waffle House during southern road trips with Channing.
Malika tried to dismiss the last two hours, but she couldn’t forget how the HR director was looking at her. Technically, the woman couldn’t help how she looked at people. She had a lazy left eye, a really glaring lazy eye, and Malika wasn’t sure if she should look at it or the right one. She also was Black and told Malika to keep her head up. She reminded her that, as women of color, they had to work twice as hard to achieve half of what other people did. Malika nodded and said her mother advised her of this all the time. The human resources lady smiled in approval, but Malika didn’t mean it that way. It was more along the lines of Why are you telling me this tired, old cliché?
When she shared that she was pregnant, the HR lady got up from her thick and wide mahogany desk that looked like it had belonged to at least two other people before her, and came around to a seated, newly unemployed Malika and hugged her. What was with all the damn hugging? This time the expectant mother guarded her stomach with both hands to avoid the unsolicited touching. The director apologized for being overzealous and went back to her side of the desk, smoothing out her polka dot shift dress before sitting down. They went over the severance package, which included two months of pay with benefits.
“Consider this a blessing,” she told Malika in the slow, low voice kindergarten teachers employ with children who’ve emerged from a tantrum. “You need to be as stress-free as possible, now more than ever.”
“I’m unemployed and single,” Malika responded. “I’m about to be stressed the fu—”
She cut the word short and apologized when the woman tilted her head and widened her eyes. Malika realized her name was Tracey Goodrich. That’s what the little wood and brushed gold nameplate on her desk said. Tracey Goodrich kept a half-smile plastered on her face and arms folded across a large, cluttered spiral planner.
“So, do I have to do anything else?” Malika asked, trying to temper her annoyed tone.
“No, no,” Tracey confirmed, pulling her lips inward. “My assistant will be mailing out a separation packet which you’ll receive over the next couple of days.”
Tracey went on to tell her to take time to review it, then get it notarized, and send it back with the return mail label. Simple enough. There was also a third party résumé writing service and professional coach who could help her when she was ready to begin looking. Malika, who was starting to experience morning sickness that week, thought this break could do her good.
Tracey smiled again and reached behind her chair to grab a silver frame with the word “family” designed into the top center. A White man with a white beard and white loafers was seated on the sand with Tracey and three tanned boys with full red Afros.
“IVF,” she said, half grinning again, offering the frame to Malika for a closer look. She reluctantly held the heavy frame for three seconds (she counted and thought this was a respectful amount of time) before returning it. She found herself nodding like a bobble head, unable to find the appropriate thing to say.
“Okay, I guess I’ll just go back to my desk and grab—”
Tracey shook her head, “Sorry, can’t do that.”
“Huh?”
“Unfortunately, for security reasons, you have to leave the premises immediately,” Tracey continued. “We’ll pack up your belongings and mail them with the separation packet. You’ll be safely escorted out by one of our building security technicians.” A building security technician. Malika pondered that title for a minute and wondered why “security guard” didn’t suffice.
“But what about my plants?” Malika asked, pointing to the woman’s succulents on the windowsill. “I need to get my plants.”
“We’ll pack those up, too, don’t worry.”
“No, I need to get my plants. Shipping them can be traumatic,” she pleaded, on the verge of tears again. “Can’t you find some security guard to walk me to my desk or something?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said after sighing.
Malika sunk into the chair and felt a surge of defeat sweep over her. Tracey stood up, but stayed behind her desk, signaling that their talk was over. Malika pushed herself up, exaggerating her movements to mimic a woman further along in her pregnancy. She thought showing the struggle would earn her an extra week or two of severance, but Tracey just expanded her half grin into a quick, full smile, then back to the half grin. She smelled like the same drugstore perfume Kimmy had given her for Christmas.
“Take care!” she waved as Malika left her office.
“I’ll try.”
Leaving Zara empty-handed, Malika decided to just go home, man-less, plant-less, and jobless. She resented walking to the subway during regular rush hour, as if it were a typical Friday. The average person who got let go on a Friday had the rest of the day to adjust to the news. They got to leave work at 10:00, 10:30 the latest, and had the luxury of a mostly empty subway car, guaranteeing them a seat and some privacy in case they needed to shed a tear or two. That was the humane way to get fired.
Making her way through the Greenmarket in Union Square, Malika stopped by the guy who sold fresh herbs. She didn’t have a recipe and was a terrible cook, but bought some oregano anyway. She followed several Black female based horticulture accounts on Instagram, even though she was a serial plant killer. She inhaled the little leaves through the little bag as she tried to carve a path down the crowded subway stairs. The L platform was unbearable. She could feel the sweat pellets emerge on the top of her lips and underneath her growing breasts. The incoming train created a semi-cool, filthy breeze. Malika was grateful for it, and allowed the wave of riders to carry her into the already packed car.
“Move to the middle!” a voice howled from the platform. “There’s room! I can see it!”
Malika found a small space in the corner in front of the two-seater reserved for seniors and the handicapped. She took another whiff of her oregano bag and closed her eyes, her arm extended above her head, gripping the metal bar. Her body swayed with the train and she didn’t open her eyes until she reached the Lorimer stop to switch over to the G. She continued listening to an audiobook about taking control of your life and only working for two hours a week. She had been listening to it for the past month.
The G was more manageable, despite its Velveeta and Cheetos-colored seating. Nausea swelled over her a few stops in. Why is it called morning sickness if it could happen at any time of the day? She sat down in a two-seater, across from a teenage lesbian couple sharing hot wings and kisses. They kept squeezing packets of hot sauce and putting the plastic in the empty cover of their Styrofoam plate. It flapped with every turn and bump, fanning the smell in Malika’s direction.
Six more stops, she reminded herself. When she got off at the Clinton-Washington station she accidentally walked in the wrong direction and was mad at herself when she got out of the Clinton exit instead of the one on Washington. Since she’d lived in the same neighborhood for almost six years, she chalked it up to “mom brain.” Malika reasoned that she needed the extra two blocks worth of exercise. She had just learned about the pregnancy, but it seemed like all the early symptoms came on simultaneously: the nausea, tender breasts, fatigue, and frequent trips to the bathroom.
The only people who knew outside of work were her closest friends, the twins, Kya and Keith. She had Facetimed them both when she left Dr. Perez’s. She could trust them not to flap their gums about her business, but it was Keith’s girlfriend Naomi she was worried about. He swore he wouldn’t tell her. She was the type who stuck her long tongue out in Instagram pictures and winked at the same time, and who didn’t like her boyfriend having a best friend who was a woman.
Malika planned on telling Channing soon, but not yet. It wasn’t the right time. He would do something stupid, she wasn’t sure what, but she was sure it would be stupid. Her own parents wouldn’t be too thrilled. It would be just another instance of her not being like her older sister Malinda.
It took Malika six years and four schools to finish her Bachelor’s in Visual Culture, whatever that meant. A couple of years before, Malinda was able to earn her undergraduate degree and an MBA in the same amount of time. She waited until she was married to have three sons, all spaced out two years apart and on the honor roll in their ten out of ten rated New Jersey school district. The assigned elementary school in Malika’s neighborhood had a five rating. Nothing to sneeze at, she thought, but her parents would never be okay with this and Malinda would wonder what long-term effect it would have on the child.
When she got in front of her building on Washington, Malika had to catch her breath from the extra blocks. She was about to ascend three long and narrow flights up to the fourth floor. Thank God Mrs. Sinclair, the landlady on the first floor, had the heart to have carpeting recently installed on the stairs. It was an unfortunate bright blue, but it would be easier on Malika’s knees.
Before she entered the apartment, Malika had gotten to the part of the audiobook where the reader was encouraged to quit a job if it’s sucking their soul dry. The author fails to mention having a backup plan or a certain amount of funds in reserve in order to do this. The last alert from her bank indicated she had $893.88, with a seventy-five dollar deposit pending from some clothes she was able to sell online. She’d spent hundreds on the sold pieces and worn them only a handful of times. Some still had the tags and all were emotional buys tied to a breakup with Channing, or a bad day at work, or a snarky text from Malinda.
Those days were over for now, she told herself. They had to be. She couldn’t justify shopping with her unemployment money. That was strictly to cover rent, utilities, and those student loan balances that seemed to increase in value with each payment. She had bigger things to worry about. Bigger things that would physically take up space in her body. Taking up more space than she was comfortable with. Maybe this wasn’t the right time. No job. No man. What kind of statistic had she turned into in the few hours since she’d left her apartment? It wasn’t fair to bring this child into this disaster of a life. No one would have to know she was ever pregnant, aside from the twins, Dr. Perez, her nurse Kimmy, and the HR lady. She would handle things quickly, keep it all to herself, and get on with her life.