I may have successfully fought the first rumour, but were another to erupt, it won't be as easy.
Andre has travelled back to his home country for a fortnight and I take this chance to invite Caro and Sera over to his apartment. They help me in cleaning it up hoping that he’ll appreciate my work and increase my wage. There isn’t much work to do anyway since his business is falling apart, and may soon go underground. He works as a middleman between European sponsors and Western African students who are in need of financial aid to help them pursue higher education in Christian studies. Being the middleman, he spends most of these funds on meeting his sexual wants.
I later get time to myself to surf the internet and do more research about my condition while Caro and Sera watch a movie on Andre’s 42 inch flat screen TV. The more I click on the web results, the more scared I get. Now, there are two main disturbing diagnoses.
I may after all be pregnant.
Or
I may be suffering from a chronic heart disease.
“OMG, you’re pregnant?” Shouts Sera who is now standing behind me. She freaks me out to the extent that I almost topple the computer monitor.
“You’re pregnant?” Repeats Caro as she jumps from her seat and dashes beside me while craning her neck to see what is on the screen.
“What? Me? Pregnant? Do I look pregnant?” I ask in defense.
They both give me a wide eyed look without saying a word.
Looking back at the monitor, “Oh, this? Don’t be silly! It’s a class assignment.”
“Oh really? And which class is that supposed to be?” Asks Sera with an accusing voice.
“Human Health Issues?”
“Human Health Issues? Didn’t we take that class already? When was it? Second year?” Caro enquires.
“I’m retaking it…”
“Like you have ever retaken a test!” Exclaims Sera as she goes back to her seat.
“What test? No, it's not a test, it's a CAT. It's on Friday." I respond.
“Do we look that dumb to you?” Caro asks. She seems annoyed that I might be lying to her.
“She thinks that we haven’t noticed that she hasn’t said a word about Dru since the two of them eloped to God knows where.” Shouts Sera from the end of the room as she goes through a pile of Andre's DVDs most of which are blue films.
“Plus it’s been a while since I last saw her sit on the back row in class.” Caro adds.
“Stop talking about me as though I am not here. Okay?" I shout back at them.
Putting her hands around my shoulders, Caro asks me in a low whisper.
“Did Dru get you pregnant?”
I don't respond but instead close the tabs, shut down the computer and starts getting my stuff ready to leave.
"Remember to close the door and leave the keys under the door mat." I tell them as I walk out.
“Oh my God, what are we going to do?” I hear Caro ask Sera after I have left.
#3
How was passion meant to be
When both were passionate
But he blew off the fire
And I can rekindle it no more
Never in my past life had I thought that I would one day miss having my period.
There is not a single woman I know of who looks forward to those long two to seven days; days filled with painful cramps, irritability, fatigue, injections, pills, hot water bottles and the endless trips to the loo. As for today, I would give anything to bring back into my life those miseries, for it is a day that I get a clarification; that in a couple of months' time, I will be someone's mother.
Bringing myself to the idea of having a baby grow in my tummy is beyond my imagination. In the East, babies are believed to be the ones responsible for choosing their parents. My Ethan must have been out of his mind to choose me as his mother. I can foresee him having as good looks as those of his father, and he’ll be a genius-just like me, and very creative. I would rather see him grow to become a successful artiste than have him struggle to survive in the corporate world that is already over-saturated.
This is crazy. I shouldn't be thinking about the future, nor the present, but what is in between the present and the future. What's in between is a vacuum full of suspense, fear, regrets and important decisions to be made. In between these months, I will either make the stupidest decision, or the worst of mistakes.
This isn't how I had planned my first pregnancy to be like. It was meant to be until at least two or three years after my superhero husband had promised me everything he knew I desired, but of which he would never afford. Two to three years would be the right time, for we would somehow have gotten used to each other, and would have become more of friends than lovers. Introducing a baby into the marriage would change that, and he would once again start seeing me as his woman, and not his roommate, or a sister he shares his bed with. One evening, when he's pretending to be all busy and tired from work, I would say the four words;
“We need to talk.”
It would scare him. I would wait and watch as his face changed, him muting the sound of the TV, or putting aside his smart-phone as he waits for the bad news, or an opening line for another petty argument. Having had three whole years to unravel my mysteries, he would choose to listen, and only talk when he's sure of what he's talking about, and what my ears want to hear, not what they need to hear.
“We are expecting…” I would say.
Still, he would just sit there, expressionless, waiting for me to finish the sentence.
“We are pregnant. You’re going to be a father.”
He would tenderly embrace me, plant a hundred kisses all over me and even start putting his palm on my belly hoping to be the first to hear the baby kick. He wouldn’t wait to tell his mama, brag about it to his friends. I would be so lucky, so would he.
But, I have messed up, my eggs messed me up. I am now nothing but a broke girl who is on her way to crossing over to the world of single parenthood and with nothing to offer herself, or her son.
Today I received the first portion of my wage from Andre which allowed me to shop for some food. I intend to go on a vegetarian diet so that I don't add too much weight too soon, or before getting a chance to lure a better man underneath these skirts and make him believe that he's the father. I have been working towards accepting the fact that I am pregnant, but never will I embrace the idea of me being a single mother.
While shopping, I can’t get my eyes off some lovely baby’s clothes at the thrift shop. They look so adorable I can picture little Ethan wearing them. It foolish I know but the idea of having a baby seems to excite me, just for a while. In no time though, the reality clock strikes and the excitement turns into a nightmare; a nightmare so scary that I don't know how my parents, my pretentious friends and other students will react once they get wind of the news.
I find myself doing more than just window shopping, praying that none of the campus paparazzi are watching. A young male shop attendant approaches me, asks whether I'm in need of his help. This is the first time someone is offering to help me out, when shopping. Pregnancy must be making me look hot! If not, this must be one of those good looking attendants who are good at flirting with women in order to blind them into buying more than they can afford.
“Lovely choice that is. Would you like me to wrap it for you?” He asks of me after I spend a couple of minutes playing with a light blue baby's bodysuit.
“No…no, I'm fine. Just looking around.” I tell him, hoping that he'll disappear and leave me alone.
“I can do it for free you know, I mean-wrap it for you. I recently had a niece and she is so adorable. Seeing the baby wear your gift is the best thing in the world. Babies are super gorgeous! Are you shopping for a niece or a nephew?” I take a closer look at the guy and it becomes evident that he's gay, though he doesn't seem to be aware of it.
“No, its fine the way it is.” I tell him as
I head to the counter to pay and leave the store in a hurry before anyone sees me. Him thinking that the bodysuit is for a niece or a nephew makes me feel sexier, and a lot in the mood of finding this baby a new daddy.
The bump is yet to start showing and I being the petite size, I am scared to death. I don’t want to start looking funny like some women do. If God sincerely listens to my prayers and gives me the bread I've been praying for rather than a stone, I’ll take in the features of a neighbour of mine from back home. She has 8 children; Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do. She always amazes us all at how talented she is at giving birth. There's this one day when she had been working on her shamba from the mid morning to the late afternoon hours. Later that evening, she gave birth, naturally, without the help of a midwife! Everyone in the village was shocked; including her husband, for not even him had an iota of an idea that she had been pregnant. I am clueless on how she manages to do it, but having witnessed how easy it is for her to hide the pregnancy, and deliver very strong, healthy and beautiful kids with no complications, I want to be like her. My only worry is that if I become like her, I may as well have trouble bringing my baby up.
Should I give up my baby for adoption?
I'm positive that it wouldn't be that hard finding a well-off family to adopt my Ethan, preferably a Caucasian family so that my baby could feel out of place and come back looking for me once I have created a good life for us. In almost all of the city’s upper class estates, there are hundreds of Caucasian couples parenting adopted African kids; it's the in-thing.
Or, I could abandon my baby in a charity home and later return to adopt him when I am all grown and mature to be someone's mother.
No matter how much I try to see life beyond his birth, I can’t. All I think about are my classmates learning about it, and my parents. I am scared for my mum for she had so much hope in me. I can see father blaming her for not having brought up her daughters well, yet, it is him who should have taught me how to connect and interact with men. As for my sisters; he’ll have to be stricter with them. They will have to lead a much more pathetic life than I did. But they are not as strong as I am. My sister Soni is unpredictable. At times, she strains too much to please him, and I’m sure that she would rather dedicate her life to be a nun than offend him. My other sister Ciku is the hard-head. Unlike the persevering Soni, I’m sure that she'll try to follow my footsteps in no time. Lucky for her, she always has her way with men, and knows how to bring them on their knees. Last time I checked, our local MPs son was still so madly in love with this girl.
“When a woman gets pregnant, she instantly falls in love with the father of the baby.” So says my friend who recently had a baby and just came back to school.
“How can you bring yourself to a love a man just because he got you pregnant?” I ask her, for I strongly believe that nothing, not even my baby could make me fall in love, or even get to like Dru.
“Don’t you always have an answer to everything Neema? But hey, wait till you get pregnant and then we can talk.” She tells me. I don't fight her out of fear that I may crucify myself.
“But there’s a rumour going round that you are pregnant.” One of the other girls who used to be my friend back in the day points out. We had a falling out after she called me Neema Suicidal. I had got mad at her, and she said that I was too sensitive for she had been joking. But how on earth do you make jokes that are going to hurt the people you love, especially if you believe that those people are too sensitive?
Very sharp needles start prickling me all over my body-how I'm I supposed to react? And who may have started the rumour? How did they know? How many people has the rumour reached?
Thankfully, no one is smart enough to read my body language. I want to stand and leave before anyone can, but if I do so, that may imply something. If I don't say a thing, that too may be deemed as inferring that the rumour is true. And if I try to change the topic, that will clearly be a way of dodging the BIG question.
“Really, so I’m pregnant? Did the rumour also address on who the father is, or when I'll going to be due?” I ask, sarcastically, hoping to shut her up.
“Three months.” She plainly answers. She pisses me off, no wonder I had to let her go off my friendliest. With her around, you don’t even need to purchase a copy of the weekly Nairobian gossip newspaper.
“Ohh, really? Sorry that you had to hear it from the grapevine. But I seriously had no idea that you still keep tract of the men I sleep around with when I’m ovulating.” With that final blow, she is forced to zip her mouth and excuse herself.
If it’s true that the rumour is in existence, I pray that it doesn’t reach the monster that put this angel inside of me. It would make him proud, knowing that he can just go around getting ladies to spread their legs wide open for him and proving how fertile he really is. The past few weeks have been the hardest for me, especially since I have had to survive them all by myself while he is still out there luring more young college girls into his little sex haven.
I wonder how many more women he has flirted with, flattered and lured to that bed of his since I left. How much alcohol he has had to feed them, how many home made meals he has had to prepare for them and how much petty cash he has had to dish out the morning after. Out there may be a dozen other girls whom he may have made loved to, countless number of whores he may have fucked, and an unimaginable number of young, innocent, desperate and Godly virgins he has raped. Could it be that his goal in life is to be a father of a great nation, or does he pay those girls' to procure abortions?
Very soon he will get wind of the news, and maybe he will call. I don’t intend to pick up, nor read his message, because I already know what his message will be.
‘Get rid of that thing.'
He will call again, again and again. Once I don’t pick, he’ll assume that I have fallen in love with him, and that I am playing hard to get. So he will send me a message, via someone else's phone, probably Caro's, and then M-pesa some cash to pay for the abortion.
I will take the money, and spend it on something else; maybe some books, class assignments, rent, or Ethan’s clothes. I have become extremely addicted to baby clothes.
I hear my phone buzz, and there on the screen is his name. Why didn’t I get rid of his number? Deleting it would however prevent me from knowing when he is calling, and I would have to talk to him, unknowingly. Maybe I'll need to have his number saved on my phone for the rest of my life, so that anytime I see his incoming call, I can watch with satisfaction as it keeps ringing and begs to be picked.
I ignore the call.
He keeps on calling and calling and calling. This must be déjà vu; I think to myself.
It’s either that he has gotten wind of the rumour, of which I don’t care; wants to apologize, of which I am not ready to forgive; or wants to pay me off to get rid of my baby, of which I will never agree to.
“Why don’t you pick up the phone?” The guy sitted on the opposite side of my table in the library asks.
“Because I don’t feel like picking up!"
“That’s not up to you to decide, it’s disturbing the rest of us."
“Not up to me to decide? Do you want to decide for me?”
He reaches out for my phone, picks it up, presses the Talk button and start Halloing. I snatch it from him and hang up.
The phone rings again and I mistakenly press the Talk button.
“What games do you think you are playing?” Dru furiously asks. I sense the same macho and arrogant tone he had when he was dropping me off back then, acting all bossy as though he's God's most treasured gift to women.
“Games? What on earth makes you think that I would be interested in playing any game with you?” I shout back and hang up.
He calls again. I head to the bathrooms to pick the call, with the sole intention of giving him the last piece of my mind.
“I don’t have time to play your games sweethea
rt. Just wanted to tell you to stop sending me those Flashbacks and Please Call Me text messages…"
“My God, you are unbelievable!”
“Let this be the last time I'm warning you. In case you forgot, I am a lawyer, with very good connections; I could have your number suspended in an instance.”
“And may this be the last time you are confusing my number with those of your gay boyfriends. And hey, if you want to scare me, stop hiding behind the empty threats and just act.” As a hang up the phone I can feel my heart beat faster than ever before, and it's feels amazing! I'm proud of myself.
Seconds later he sends me a text message, of which I delete without reading. I later start wondering what he wrote, and whether the message contained insults that could have been used against him in a law court. I wonder how much of a fortune I could have made from that defamatory text message.
The morning is still very young and fresh. It's yet another of the baby making seasons; very cold but serene. Nine months from this season, a season when heavy downpour hits the roof and hypnotises everyone to sleep, a new generation will come in to fill this earth.
Rainy season is beautiful. I love it. Everything about it seems so cool and calm. I had always fantasised about getting married on a rainy day. It's weird I know, but I would have loved to take my vow as heavy rain drops hit our foreheads. We wouldn’t have to sign no certificates for God would have let out a beautiful double rainbow on the horizon to act as a symbol of our marriage covenant.
Now that I am pregnant, I doubt if that will ever happen. I see myself tucking in my little Ethan to bed as I read him his favorite bedtime story everytime he asks about his father. I don’t intend to read him any happily ever after fairy tale, for he will ask questions, the kind of questions that I would rather not answer, or would have to lie about.
How I'm I going to handle single parenthood? That life is too hard to imagine. I have never liked kids, but, the thought of having a son leaves me beaming, I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because I have been emotionally and physically lonely for so long; with no brothers, a father or even good boyfriends. But this bundle of joy will forever be my side.