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4 - Fiction

Mama Tiger

By KateLin Carsrud

I am eating almonds. These days, I can’t seem to get enough of them. Something about the bland crunch of them pulls me in. Biting into an almond is like snapping a twig. It is firm until it is not anymore, solid and then suddenly broken.

My husband Liam has his head resting on my lap, near my pregnant stomach. I can’t tell if he’s napping or not. I softly scratch his hair and wait for a response.

“Sleeping?”

“No.”

Another almond. I place it between my back teeth and pinch it there for a second, not biting down. Then I apply pressure, more and more, until it snaps apart.

“Destiny.”

“What?” I smile to myself and wait for him to tell me to close my mouth when I bite. It’s something he would say.

“Mom wants to be there when you have the baby.”

Chewing my almond. “Of course, we’ll tell her when I go into labor.”

“She wants to be in the delivery room.”

I had placed another almond in my mouth while he was speaking, and I now let my teeth hover over it. I sit there a few seconds, paused, thinking. Finally, I close my jaws around the almond and break it.

I say, “She can’t.”

“It’s important to her.”

“She can’t. I don’t want your mom to see my stomach.”

“You’ll be in a gown,” he says it like it’s a suggestion because he knows that a hospital gown is not secure covering, especially during labor.

“You know it still might show.” My stomach. But not even really my stomach—the scars stretching their way across my skin, my stomach just being their home. My past, my secret; now Liam’s secret too.

“I know.” He says it softly.

“Tell her we want it to be an ‘us’ thing. She can be there and see us right after.”

“Yes.” It is a quiet answer, to pacify me while he tries to find a way.   

I begin to feel frustrated. I want him to have no hesitation in his voice, to be quick to come to my aid.

It is quiet for a few moments. Then: “Des, what if you just told her?”

“No.”

“Baby, she loves you. You are close with her. You could talk to her about it.”

I stare hard at him and only say his name. A warning.

“What?”

I hate him for pushing up against the line of my comfort. He wants to help me, see me grow. He thinks this is growth; I hate him for thinking that. 

“I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.”

He moves up more and sits by me. “This will hurt my mom so much.”

“I’m sorry. This isn’t her business. I don’t want her to know about my past like that.” A breath. 

“She’ll have questions, of course she will, and I don’t want to give answers. It’s in the past.”

“If you say it’s in the past then it shouldn’t be a big deal. Tell her you did it when you were a kid, she’ll understand—”

“She will not understand.”

“She will! She loves you.”

“That doesn’t matter. Liam! I said no, leave it alone. Fuck.”

“Then what do I tell her.”

“Be on my side.” I bite the words out, trying to press them into his skin, hoping to make him feel the same pressure that’s assaulting me from every angle.

He doesn’t look at me. “I am on your side.”

I turn my head from him, angry that he pushed me so hard, angry that this is a fight that ever existed.


The first time we began to take our clothes off together, I felt hot panic rise in me. What do I do, how do I say this, what do I do, what do I do? —these thoughts circled my head. Which words will I choose? How will I tell this man about the thick, mountain scars stretching themselves across my stomach—or, worse, how will I look at him and say: “I did that, but—trust me—it was just a phase.” It would have been better if it had been done to me—I could have been attacked, raped. I longed for a terrible excuse—something, anything to take the weight off me. Maybe if I had an abusive father who took his anger out on me with a knife—that would be an easier story than the truth. The truth was hard to grasp because the truth put a knife in the hand of a young girl and had the girl drag the blade across her skin—and, why, would a little girl do such a thing? What happened to you, girl?

Real life came so fast, though, and my thoughts couldn’t keep up with the hands that were running fingers through my hair, that were touching my face, that were tugging at the bottom of my shirt—the bottom of my shirt, and then the top of my pants. Quickly, without thought, I grabbed his hands and moved them up. I set them on my breasts, held them there, acted like I wanted that most. I thought: please, please keep your hands there—anywhere but the lower parts of my stomach. Safe now, I kissed him without thought, let him move me back to his bed, let myself fall onto the bed.

But his hands—damn his hands—he moved them slowly down again, down to the place that I had pushed them from, down to the lower stomach that I had decided a long time ago would never be touched. Because he felt good, and because I didn’t want to say no, I played the game of how far I could go. I promised myself that I would stop his hands after they traveled two more inches. I longed for those two more inches—and I had them and felt them and loved them. As soon as they were over, and his hands didn’t stop, I pulled myself from the feeling. I told my hands to move, to grab his hands, to pull them away. So, I did, again. I hated this, though, because I knew that this action was me saying no, when all I wanted to say was yes.

He pulled his lips away from mine, looked at me. “Sorry, I’ll stop.”

Immediately, anger filled me—anger at myself, for keeping us from the intimacy that we both wanted. I regretted it, the cutting, the nights alone that I imagined were secret and romantic, somehow—now, they felt like nothing. I was left, underneath this man, feeling like a stupid, inept girl. I was so tired of hiding, so tired of being afraid. The fear and embarrassment that sat on me was heavy—I wanted to throw it off.

I made a decision. “Give me your hand.”

“It’s okay, we don’t have to.”

“No, give me your hand.”

He did.

I grabbed his hand in mine and moved it to the place it wasn’t supposed to go. I placed his fingertips on the mountain scars. My heart was beating, fast and strong, and I was afraid. But, I pressed on. I moved his hands over the tops of the scars, to be sure that he had felt them.

“Do you feel that?”

Slight confusion spread across his face because this was not what he expected. “Yes.”

“Those are scars.” A breath. “Don’t ask me about them.”

I left his hand there, on the mountain scars, and I went back to his lips, to kiss him, to tell him to keep going. With each kiss my power grew—acknowledging what was there but refusing to talk about it. We were good now.

The next morning, I woke up on my stomach and buried in a blanket. I felt the heat of Liam’s presence, but I couldn’t see him. My thoughts were jumping up and down, wild. I could barely grab hold of them, barely settle them down. I was not in the present; instead, I was thrown back to my childhood, back to the girl who first decided to cut herself. I hated her, because of the difficulty that she was causing me now. I hated her, because she had left me a long time ago—her crazy, comforting thoughts didn’t feel as good as they used to, and I was left the consequences of her actions. I was left with scars that I could hardly justify or explain. I thought back to my childhood, to the night that I permanently changed myself.

I had been trying to catch sleep for a few hours, but there was something inside me that ran at a quicker pace than I did; it left me bored, the walls of my mind reverberating with the silence in my room. It was so quiet that it was loud, a startling loudness, one that made me think that the clothes in my closet were speaking to me. They whispered to me that I should come to the closet. They changed their minds and whispered that I shouldn’t, that it was bad. They hummed words that I couldn’t understand—something, something, something. They said that I should turn the lights on in my room. It’s too dark in here, they said. If I turned the lights on then it would be easier to breathe. 

I had a feeling lingering in my stomach—it had been residing in me for a while now. That feeling, mixing around with the silence coating my bedroom walls and carpet, left my mind anxious. It wanted to experience something explosive, just so that the silence wouldn’t be quite so loud. The feeling made me reckless.

This was the first time that I crept barefoot across the wooden floor outside my room. My head was hot with excited anxiousness. Sweat grew on my forehead, the sweat that comes with fever. As I continued forward, the sweat followed me, creeping down my body. It moved down my hair and wrapped itself around my neck, slipped between the front of my breasts, attached itself between my shoulder blades. It nestled in my lower back and somehow moved down to my feet—they stuck to the hardwood, making little clicking sounds as I walked. It was louder than the silence, and I thought that maybe my parents would hear it through the ceiling and stomp downstairs to question why I was out of bed. My mouth was dry from trying not to breathe. Everything felt loud. The sound of my feet, the sound of my in-breath, out-breath, eyes blinking. Every movement reminded me of a noise. This was the first time that I decided to do the thing that had been rolling around in my brain, settling down and taking root in my mind. I was afraid of my parents catching me. I didn’t want them to be involved in something so forbidden. They would label this evil, wrong. They would label me: sad, confused girl who had lost her mind.

Where had my mind gone, though? I didn’t lose it—I never stopped owning it. I had just decided to act on the thoughts that had always been crawling around my head. But, if I had lost my mind, if that were the case, then I decided that I wanted to keep on losing it. This losing of my mind wasn’t bad to me, or dangerous; rather, it was a good-bad and a dangerous-good. This was the real me, the one who was made to push herself to unknown depths and experience secret adventures.

I reached the bathroom. Grabbing the cheap, pink razor that my mother had recently given me to shave the thin girl hair on my legs, I prepared myself.

“Okay, okay, okay,” I whispered quickly.

I set the razor down, briefly, to pull my big pajama t-shirt over my head. Grabbing the razor again, my eyes found the flesh of my stomach. Except for the scattering of soft baby hairs, it was unmarred. I hated the cleanness of it. Quickly, before my fear could pull me back, I pushed the sharp silver onto my skin, until my skin wouldn’t bend inward anymore and the metal broke through me. Holding my breath, I pulled, and then I pulled faster—still pushing downward, trying to hold onto courage. It hurt, it hurt—a sharp, uncomfortable pain that made me breathe out hard. I let up on the pressure, but I still kept dragging. This splitting of skin was one of the most beautiful pictures. It was soothing, addicting. I saw it slowly in my mind. First, my hand moving, slipping over an empty canvas, coloring it; then, a canyon—a ridge of skin on one side, and then a ridge of skin on the other. Only for a moment, the canyon sat empty, but then it filled, flooding through and over with a dark red river. I watched it run over me. I loved it.


I am sitting in the bathroom, waiting for early morning nausea to pass so that I can begin my day. As I wait, I am distracted by the big belly resting in front of me. I am distracted by the life inside, a new life, an entire story to unfold; mostly, though, I am distracted by the skin that covers the growing life. It’s stretched taut, like a balloon about to pop, and the shiny smooth sections of skin look fresh and new—but rare. My stomach is covered with the scars that I have carried for most of my life. But now they are different. They have grown, they are worse—an even bigger reminder of what had once possessed me. With the stretching skin of my stomach also came the stretching of the mountain scars. Two times, three times the size they once were—pink, purple, red, mixing around with the stretch marks that appeared. It’s ugly.

Noise. I look up from my belly to see Liam in the doorway. Standing slowly, laboriously, I walk up to him and give him a hug.

“Morning, baby,” I say.

“Morning.” He gives me a small peck on the lips, then moves his eyes down to my stomach, to our child. Love for what we made flashes there, and he leans in to kiss me again. Then his hands softly caress the skin on my belly, moving around as if to feel the unborn child; but always, as if from long practice, he maneuvers his fingers so that they dance around the ridges of my skin, intricately weaving around the parts of me that he doesn’t want to touch.

Maybe he thinks I don’t notice.

While his hands play hide and seek with the pure skin on my stomach, I turn my face to look at his. I wonder when he began to be afraid of me.

“I don’t care if you touch my scars.” I don’t mean to say this so suddenly, but my chest is swelling with fear, a worry that he has become embarrassed of me. There was never a moment since we met that I felt insecure around him; but suddenly, I do.

“I don’t want to,” he says.

I feel the redness that begins to creep from my chest to my face. I try to push it down, to seem indifferent, but it won’t move. “Why not?” I ask him. My voice is softer now because I am trying not to break down.

This is what I feel: You love me. You said you love me more than anything. Why won’t you look at me—all of me. Why won’t you touch me? When did I become too much for you; when did my big stomach go from being what we conceived to a constant reminder of your least favorite part of me? When did you begin to see me as a weak woman who you can’t understand?

Liam sighs, like this conversation is too much for him. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Panic. “We have to talk about this. I’m carrying your baby, Liam. Why don’t you want to touch me? Do you think I look gross?”

“Not gross.” His words firm and certain. “Something else. I don’t know. Your stomach looks like it could rip open. I never thought they would look this bad. I worry.” 

My voice becomes shrill, frantically grasping for his understanding. “I was confused, we’ve already talked about this. I was just sad, just alone.” I look into his eyes, not wanting pity, but needing it.

Shaking his head, he lifts his hands. He says this slowly: “Little girls don’t get confused like that. Sad girls talk to their parents. Lonely girls make friends—lonely girls don’t do that.” He waves his talking hands at my stomach, the scars on my stomach, as if to push them away or to make them disappear.

“I’m sorry they look so much worse,”I say. “But you signed up for this.”

He sighs. The air he blows out is covered in sadness, resentment, and love. He says, “I know.”

I can’t pull any words out from inside of my head, but they are swimming, rising, drowning me. It is quiet between us now. Neither of Liam’s hands are resting on my belly anymore, nothing holding me there, and all I feel is eagerness to escape this bathroom—to be away from Liam and the new insecurity that I feel while in his presence. But, before I can move, Liam quietly turns and walks out.

Alone, I lean against the wall and slide down inch by inch to the floor.

Pathetic sobs begin to fall from my lips, with each breath worsening, escalating with my panic. I gasp for big gulps of air in between my tears. Hysterical thoughts trample my brain; I think: When. When did this happen? When did he stop loving me—he must not love me anymore. If he loved me, he wouldn’t act afraid of me. He must not even like me anymore. He won’t even touch me anymore. But I’ve changed, I’m not that way anymore, why did he give up?

When we were young and new, he didn’t act this way.

A few weeks after we’d been together, even though I told him not to ask, he did. I didn’t want him to ask; but, at the same time, I was grateful that he did. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders, a relief. I needed him to care. We were eating popcorn. I had made it myself, the way my dad taught me when I was young. I put a bit of vegetable oil in the bottom of the big pot, let it heat up, and then poured in a fourth of a cup of kernels. They hit the bottom of the pot, loudly. Putting the lid on, I held both handles on the sides and shook it around so the kernels wouldn’t burn. My arms were tired by the time that the kernels had all popped.

Liam was sitting down, watching me, but mostly watching the TV. I threw a piece of the popped corn at him to get his attention.

“Hey,” I said, “popcorn is done. Get some and I’ll set up a movie.”

“Ok, ok.”

I put a movie on, and we sat side by side on the couch, hips touching. The bowl of popcorn that we shared was nestled evenly over us—half on his leg and half on mine. After a bit, I slouched down on the couch so that I could tip my head over and lean it on Liam’s shoulder. He turned and put his chin on my head.

Reaching up, he grabbed the remote and paused the movie. “Hey,” he said.

It was the tone of his voice, serious.

“Yeah?”

“I want to talk about something, but you told me not to ask.”

“Yeah,” I agreed softly, remembering, knowing exactly what he was talking about.  

But I knew that he would ask eventually. I thought he might ask me what it was from—who did that to you? I was ready for that question. I thought he was going to ask if someone had hurt me; that seemed reasonable—how did you get those scars?

Instead: “I won’t ask. But, Des?”

As he spoke, his chin dug into my head. I could feel his jaw tense, wanting to say more.

“What?”

“Please, don’t do it ever again.” His voice was pleading, quiet and worried.

I assured him. “No, I don’t do it anymore. Not for a while.”

I was surprised that his first assumption was this—that I did it to myself—but I was glad that I didn’t have to explain it to him. I didn’t want to have to say the words: my hands did that.

Pressing his chin harder into my head. “Never do it again.”

“I won’t,” I said with more force, needing him to trust me. 

I untucked my head from under his chin and turned to look at him. “I promise. The last time I did it was years ago. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m done with it.”

He nodded “yes” to me, agreeing but not fully believing—that’s what I understood that to mean. He closed his eyes, sealed his lips, breathed in and out loudly, heavily. He exhaled and held it out for a bit, thinking, eyes still closed.

Then: “Will you take off your pants?”

By this time, I was used to undressing for Liam. Every time we had sex, I focused myself on him and the love and this was the way that I put the scars out of my mind, forgetting they were there. As long as I was taking my pants off for sex, then my scars remained in the background. That was safe. But, this was different. Liam was asking me to put the scars out in the open with no desire humming between us. This was real.

“I can’t.”

He tipped his head, and a slight smile grew on the left side of his lips, finding humor in the moment, somehow. “You can’t?”

“I don’t want to.”

“But will you?”

I would.

I stood in front of Liam and forced down my fear of exposure. I wanted strength, to be strong and fearless—and, well, if I was brave enough to cut the stripes of the scars into my body, then I should be brave enough to show them off; or, at least, I should be brave enough to not shy away from their existence. Quickly, before I could let myself think and run away from the moment, I put my hands at my hips and I pushed down on the elastic of my sweatpants. I stood in front of Liam with my pants around my ankles, and I stood.

Reaching out, he lightly grabbed the sides of my underwear and pulled. He pulled until the terrain of mountain scars smoothed themselves out into valleys, and then he stopped. My sweats at my ankles and my underwear stuck around my thighs, Liam placed his fingertips on one thick scar, and he traced it until it ended. When he reached the stopping point of that scar, the tips of his fingers lifted and then rested on the beginning of another. He traced. It ended. Another. He stopped. His eyes transfixed on the extended pink flesh crisscrossed around my lower stomach.

“God. This is bad. How old were you?”

“Twelve, thirteen—around there. I don’t know.” I turned my head to the left, stared at the wall.

He didn’t say anything then. It was quiet between us, and the only movement was his hand on me. His fingertips traced more, over the scars that he had already felt. He traced them, pressed on them, testing them and feeling them. Intently, he looked at the scars as he touched them, as if the skin was a mystery and he had to figure it out. When he touched my scars, it was different than him touching my regular skin. The scar tissue was thick, and the nerves not as strong. I could feel his fingers, but lightly. They were whispers on me, trying to know me.

He spoke again. “When was the last time?”

I rotated my head from the left side to up. I looked at the ceiling and then I closed my eyes, then opened them, remembering. But I couldn’t really remember. “Years ago.” I said that with certainty.

He nods his head up and down, saying that he wants to believe me, but he doesn’t say any words. Instead, he grabs my hips and pulls me to him, his forehead pressing tightly into my stomach, and his arms wrapped around my waist.


It’s only a few minutes. That’s how long I sit there in the bathroom crying. It feels like hours because my mind travels back in time and reminds me of the days that were full of forgiveness and free of judgment and fear.

Only minutes, though. Liam must have walked out of the bathroom and then across the house, only to turn and come back. Now, he shuffles in and sits down on the floor, at my feet.

He says, “I don’t know why, but I’m really struggling.”

I sit quiet, not knowing what to say, deciding to let him do the talking.

Gently, he brings his arms up and wraps them around my calves. He hugs himself to me and puts his forehead on my kneecap.

“What if it comes back?”

I sigh, and it tumbles out of my mouth, laced with defeat.

“I worry that after you have the baby you might fall back into it. Sometimes women do, you know?” He asks the question softly, trying to make sure that his voice doesn’t crack around the edges.

“I know.” Whisper. Clear my throat. Sniff. “I just know that I won’t.”

He moves his head from its resting place on my knee, looks at me. “I love you. I’m just worried. Maybe afraid. How can you know? The scars on your stomach are proof that you aren’t always in control.”

I want to argue with him, say that the scars are proof that I was always in control. I had all the control. That’s why I put the sharp metal on my skin and pulled. But, I know that those thoughts came from a part of my head that Liam would never understand. If anything, saying that would prove his point, reinforce his belief that I have the potential to fall apart.

All I can say: “It was such a long time ago. I barely remember it anymore.”

What I mean: I remember it like it was yesterday. I can’t think about those days and not feel a cloud of nostalgia unfurl and bloom inside of me; yet, I don’t want them anymore. I did change, and I’m different and the scars on my belly are the scars of the little girl who made them but not the scars of Liam’s wife, the mother of his child. I miss that girl sometimes, but I don’t want her.

“Yeah. That’s what you always say. It’s just so hard for me to believe you when I see the scars. They are so bad. Worse now than they’ve ever been.”

I feel the love between us; it’s years worth of love. It mixes with the oxygen in the room, and it makes the air thick and heavy, happy and sad and a little bit hard to breathe in. Anxiety builds in me, and I sense my husband is choking on the trouble that I have gotten us into. My past is too much for him. He might never trust me, no matter which words I use to tell him that I’ve changed. I wish that I had magic to make him believe me. I wish that I had magic to push the scars off my skin and my instability out of the room.

But there is no magic. There is just truth and words. Liam says these words, and he means them. I want to flinch when he says them. He says: “Sometimes I just wish I didn’t know this about you. I don’t ever want our child to see those scars, to know this about you.”

His words hurt me, tear me apart, butI only say what I know. “I want to always be happy. I want a happy family with you.”

“I want that too.”

“And our baby might see them.” I inhale deeply and speak with courage. “And I won’t hide myself from her. I’m her mama.” With one hand I gently caress my stomach. I’m talking to my husband as well as my child.

He unwinds his arms from around my legs and reaches both of his hands up to my stomach, and he sets them there, one hand covering mine, holding me—holding all of me. His hands feel light on the scars, as they always have, whenever he touches them. He talks to our child too, quietly, caresses my stomach as he speaks. He says: “Your mama will protect you, baby girl. My baby girl.” 

“Do you remember,” I say, “when we decided to create her? It was after we went to that movie. We got home and you said you wanted a family.”

“I said I wanted a girl that would be as pretty as her mother.”

“And that we would name her Florence.” Liam looks at me and we both smile. “She’s moving,” I say. “Feel.” 

Liam spreads out his fingers, makes his hands as big as they can be, and he covers my stomach with them, holds as much of my swollen belly as he can. I arch my back a little and press myself into his hands. I love the feel of them. 

“You’re my girl,” Liam says, and he moves one of his hands up to touch my face. “It’s me and you.” 

KateLin Carsrud is a graduate student in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Baltimore-based literary magazine JMMW, The Closed Eye Open, Throats to the Sky, and EQUINOX, where she was awarded the 2019 David Jauss Prize for Fiction. 

Filed Under: 4 - Fiction

The “C” Word

By Nadja Maril

Coach said “no excuses.” And what was he going to say anyway when no one wants to hear the word “cancer”?

His father has the “C” word, and no one wants to talk about it. It is 1972 and lasting cures for prostate cancer are few. His sister avoids the topic completely by saying stuff like, “Dad is sick. Maybe he’ll get better.” But who is she kidding? 

And Mom, she avoids his questions by taking on an extra job teaching summer school and coming home just as the dinner dishes are being dried and put away. Mark knows someone has to pay the bills. He is too young to get a job, so he is the one assigned to stay home.

Watch Dad. Sit with Dad. Bring him a glass of water. Make him a sandwich. Boil water for tea. Initially he’d volunteered. This was his opportunity to spend time with his father. He said, “Sure, I’ll do it.”

Before the cancer, Dad’s schedule had been crowded with classes and projects. “It’s an unstable time for engineers,” Dad had explained. He’d been laid off several times, the family forced to rely on Mom’s salary.

To insulate himself from future job losses, Mark’s father had forged a new path by earning a teaching certificate. “A steady paycheck is worth its weight in gold,” he liked to say.

Maybe, if his father started feeling better, they’d go out in the back yard and rebuild the old shed, like they’d planned, and Dad would jabber on about the right way to pound a nail or line up a corner. Or maybe, Dad will get well enough to attend one of Mark’s track meets and see how fast he can run. Now he barely speaks.

In another hour Mom will be up, getting ready to leave for work. The house will remain quiet until his older sister Debbie wakes and self-importantly bustles back and forth from her bedroom to the bathroom, primping for her day job at Mr. Kent’s law office.


Debbie checks to see if the red dots on the top of her electric rollers have turned from red to black. If she is lucky, her light brown hair will easily wrap around the heated rollers. She’ll leave them in for two minutes and the bottom of her hair will curl and the curls will hold and she’ll look like Marlo Thomas. Boys will take a second look and forget she is smart.

She’ll look as pretty as Sally, another sales clerk who is always getting compliments. Not that Sally has much of anything going on inside her head, but she knows the right lipstick and nail polish to wear. Sally says boys don’t like smart girls and she is probably right, because Sally has lots of boyfriends and Debbie has none.

Debbie wants to wear nail polish, but she doesn’t have time to labor over a manicure. She uses her hands too much and the polish will chip.

As she fixes her hair she wonders, is Dad awake? Does he need the bathroom? She prefers using the bathroom because it has better lighting and a large mirror. Dad has a potty chair, what Mom calls a commode, to use if he is too weak to make it across the hall. Anyway, he is probably asleep. She hasn’t heard any sounds coming from his room.

Debbie stares at her reflection and thinks of Mom’s younger sister, Aunt Beverly, who is always saying, “Keep your chin up.” The first time she heard those words, she thought her aunt was worrying about the predilection in the family for double chins. But no, she is talking about something else because she uses that exact same expression every week when she telephones. “Keep your chin up, even if your neck is dirty, and everything will be fine.”  

“Easy enough for her to dole out advice about carrying on despite your troubles,” Mother says, “When she gets a month-long summer vacation.” 

Aunt Beverly, who has two little boys of her own, hasn’t visited in two months. Mom, who sits up with Dad at night, is gone during the day. Sometimes Debbie takes her father to his doctor’s appointments, but she has her two jobs.

It’s not fair. Her friends are off on camping trips and going to the beach with their families, but Debbie doesn’t get to enjoy her summer.

“Think you could do some laundry?” Mom says. “Clothes don’t wash themselves.” With Dad stuck in bed, there are all those sheets to do, and Mark, just a year and a half her junior, doesn’t even keep up with washing his dishes. Barely lifts a finger. It is Deb’s job to keep the place clean.

If she fills her mind with worries, such as whether the Pinto will run out of gas and whether the dress she bought for her first day of classes is going to shrink, there is no room left in her mind to think about her father.

She is going to Notre Dame in the fall. She’s been awarded a scholarship for academic achievement. Dad said, “I always knew you were a smart cookie,” when she opened the acceptance letter.

She is the one who gets good grades (unlike her lazy brother), but she worries that choosing a school so far from home has been a mistake and that college will be harder than anticipated. “Don’t worry about it,” Mom says, “You think too much.”

The black dots in the center of her rollers indicate they are ready to use. She concentrates on not burning the tips of her fingers as she wraps the strands of hair around the hard plastic.

Oh, she is going to look beautiful, if only the pimple on her chin would come to a head. She heats up the water to soak a washrag. Mom suggests hot compresses when something is inflamed.

“You going to spend the whole morning in there?” Her brother is rapping on the door.

She opens the door a crack. “Relax twerp, I’ll be out in a few minutes.” 

What does her brother do while she’s at work? He probably lounges around the house reading comic books. Yet as the youngest and the boy in the family, he is Dad’s favorite.

He can wait. Mark has nowhere special to go.

She starts unraveling her hair, and it looks perfect. When she arrives for her shift at the department store, she is going to impress her supervisor with how professional she looks. The old dried-out people who work at the law office barely notice her appearance, but the people who come into the Jordan Marsh department store will notice. Maybe she’ll earn a 25-cent per hour raise before summer is over.

In the fall, she is off to college, and she’ll be spending the money she’s earned buying new clothes and knick-knacks for her dorm room. She’s even started a hope chest, so when she does meet Mr. Right, she’ll have some of the things she’ll need to set up their household. It’s nice to dream.


Debbie is eating her breakfast, toast spread with cream cheese and jam, when Mark enters the kitchen. He rifles through the cupboards looking for a box of cereal.

“We’re out,” she says. “You’ll have to wait until Mom goes to the store again or walk there yourself.”

Mark starts to ask his sister why she can’t go to the store for the family but doesn’t because he needs to ask for a favor. “Deb, what time do you get back from your receptionist job?”

“Time?” she drums her fingers on the Formica surface of the table. “You want to know what time? Why the interest in my schedule?”

“I need a ride to track practice,” he says. “You get home about three o’clock don’t you? My practice starts at four.”

“Well, I don’t always get home at three. Sometimes, they need me to stay longer, and then I have to get ready to head over to Jordan Marsh.”

“I thought your shift didn’t start until five?” Mark says.

“Jeez. I’m not a machine that works non-stop. I need time to eat dinner and freshen up.”

 “You need almost two hours to eat and wash your face?” he says. “Come on.” Demonic Deborah, he almost says.

“Don’t you have any teammates who might give you a ride?’ Debbie asks. “Some juniors or seniors with driver’s licenses?”

Mark walks towards his sister and leans over her, his face a few inches from her own.

“Yuck. Get out of my space you creep and stop breathing on my food. “

“Didn’t Aunt Beverly give you that deal on her Pinto with the caveat that you help with running errands, shopping, and taking Dad to the doctor? Wouldn’t part of helping the family be to give your brother a ride?”

“Using big words, are you? I didn’t know you even knew what caveat means.”

“Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. Miss Brilliant you are not the only one in this family to take Latin.”

Debbie looks down at her wristwatch “Rats, it’s getting late. Okay twerp,” she says while heading for the stairs. “Be ready at 3:30 sharp.”


During the day Mark feels alone as he struggles with his father’s care. His sister is no help. Yes, Debbie drives Dad to a doctor’s appointment now and then. Yes, she does some laundry. But she isn’t the daily caregiver, and she isn’t responsible for giving Dad his injections.

In the beginning, the doctors prescribed Percocet to ease Dad’s pain, but the pills stopped working. Now, the only way the pain can be endured is with morphine shots. They need to be administered every four hours.

It was Mom’s idea to have Mark give the injections. “I know I can rely on you,” she said. The responsibility made him feel important.

Dr. Milton agreed with the plan. “You’re almost a man. You say you’re interested in science,” he said. “Maybe one day you’ll be a doctor yourself or work in a lab and find a cure.”

Mark practiced on an orange. With a steady hand, you slowly pierce the skin and then the flesh.

The injections become Mark’s responsibility, a tangible way to show his love. Mark wants to make Dad feel better. His father is in such agony some afternoons that he begs, with a slight grimace in his face and terror in his eyes, for the next shot. He can’t wait four hours. Addicted to the morphine, his father’s body craves for more.

Mark watches the clock and acquiesces by carefully drawing the morphine into the syringe thirty minutes ahead of schedule. He flicks at the glass vial with his finger to make certain there are no air bubbles. “Be certain. It is a matter of life and death. No air bubbles in the syringe,” Dr. Milton said.

Mark knows that tomorrow he will have to wean his father back to waiting longer for the injections. By evening, Dad will be twitching, and he’ll start asking for an injection every three hours. Too much morphine and his father dies. In the morning, his father will have to wait a full five hours between shots, cold turkey, until the cycle begins again.

His father’s arms, once strong enough to lift a heavy beam and hoist it into place, have lost their muscle. In order for Mark to find a spot to inject the morphine, he gathers and squeezes together a section of flesh. He swabs the chosen spot with alcohol and recalls his own fear as a child in the doctor’s office bracing for the stab of the needle. He doesn’t want to inflict pain on someone he loves, but no one in the family wants the job. His mother wakes him in the night telling him Dad needs another shot and looks away. Mark doesn’t want to see his father suffer, grows to hate the smell of the rubbing alcohol, but the responsibility of administering the morphine has become his burden.

While he waits for the drug to take hold, he reads a scary Steven King novel or a classic adventure tale like Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Some days he tries his hand at telling Dad a few jokes, trying his best to make him laugh. He reproduces a skit he’s seen on the Red Skelton Show, and sometimes is rewarded when his father pats his hand and says, “You’re a fart smeller, I mean a smart fella,” once the drug has taken hold.

Joining the cross-country and track teams his freshman year was a good decision. He’s a rising sophomore and already he’s earned two varsity letters.

The feeling of exhilaration, breeze blowing against his hair and face as he speeds along the trail, clears his mind. The sound of his feet pounding the ground establishes a comforting rhythm. There is no need to think of anything except the placement of one foot ahead of the next. Grass, trees, buildings, cars, people are left behind, as he propels his body forward, mile after mile.

At practice, he forgets about everything else in his life and focuses on Coach’s instructions. Running five to eight miles each day has become part of Mark’s schedule. He can feel himself improve. Each time he runs, he gets stronger.

As fatigue starts to set in, he thinks of his father. He pictures his drawn haggard face wincing in agony, refusing to let go, and Mark pushes himself harder. It doesn’t matter if his feet ache, legs burn, and throat feel dry; he keeps up with the other runners until he reaches the front of the pack.


The passenger side of Debbie’s Pinto is littered with papers and magazines. As concerned as she is about cleanliness inside their home, Debbie doesn’t take pride in her car. Mark transfers the clutter to the back, sits down, and readjusts the seat to make room for his legs. “Thanks again, Sis, for the ride,” he says.

Debbie shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Sure thing. I’m just a chauffeur service. I just live my life to drive my little brother around.”

“Last time I checked, I was taller than you,” Mark says.

“Little as in little mind,” Debbie says, “And worth even less. Not that you are capable of earning any money. I had to spend 20 minutes scrubbing the ink off my hands. Mrs. Solomon, the office manager, made me run 100 copies of papers off on the mimeograph machine today when I’m supposed to be a receptionist. Why couldn’t she do it herself?”

“Poor Deb. Your hands must be so chapped,” he says.

“Ha, like you know anything about hands and skin,” she says.

Mark thinks of his father’s skin turned sallow and all the dark purple and yellow bruises on his arms. Has his sister even noticed? He studies her profile as she drives. Is she attempting a new hairstyle? The ends of her hair are curled. He doesn’t want to say anything because she might take offense. Her driving is painfully slow. One foot hovers over the brake. She doesn’t deserve a car.

Up ahead, two bicyclists hug the edge of the road. Mark admires their racing bikes equipped with multiple gears and hand brakes. He’d been dreaming of taking a weekend bike excursion with his friends this summer, but there hasn’t been any time to get away. The woman’s blonde hair blows in the breeze. She is pretty.

Debbie sharply turns the steering wheel and slams on the brakes, almost hitting a tree.

“What are you doing?” he says, trying not to raise his voice.

“Avoiding the cyclists, you idiot. They were in the way. I could have hit them.”

“They were on the side of the road. Maybe you need glasses,” he says.

“I need glasses? Like you’re the medical expert. My vision is perfect, ungrateful jerk. I’m giving you a ride and you’re criticizing my driving. I should kick you out of the car right now.”

“Please. I don’t want to get in trouble with the Coach. I’m an important member of the team, and I’m supposed to be there on time,” he says.

“Important member of the team! You’re only a sophomore. What are you talking about?”

He thinks about the Mid State Regional Track Meet three months earlier, riding on the yellow bus to Springfield with his teammates. He’d qualified for the two-mile race.

“Don’t be concerned,” Coach had told Mark “After the first mile there’ll be plenty who fall behind. Just keep and establish your pace.”

Around the track stood parents, siblings, coaches, and students ready to call out words of encouragement to their teammates and friends. Mark paced, waiting for his event. He felt queasy. Twelve other boys were competing against him. How fast could they run?

The bang of the starting pistol propelled him forward to claim a place in the center of the pack. He jockeyed to take a position where he would not be vulnerable to the stabs of his competitors’ spikes. He kept running to hold his position and fell into a trance. His mind became detached from his body. He focused on one thing—passing every runner. By the time he’d completed the first four laps, there were only four runners ahead of him.

Some of the runners, who’d started off with a fast burst of energy, appeared to be slowing their pace. Had they encountered the feared brick wall? Mark’s teammates were always talking about “the wall”, the enemy of the runner who runs out of energy too early in a long race. They talked about legs growing heavier with each stride.

The stabs of pain in his calves, the burn in his thighs kept building, but he ran faster and faster, his father’s face before him. He passed one, two, three runners until first place was within his grasp. And then he heard the cheers. The whistles. The shouts. He pushed harder, until he was in front by more than ten yards.

All his teammates and their parents were shouting, “Go Mark Go!” Every cell in his body had been tingling. He’d felt invincible.

His eyes welled up with tears when they’d placed the first-place medal around his neck. He’d won the race. It was the biggest accomplishment of his life.

It wasn’t something he wanted to share with his jealous sister. He’d tried to tell his mother and his father about the race, but they hadn’t been listening.

“What I’m talking about,” he says to Debbie, “is I run the fastest two-mile on my team, “

“Well they’re in trouble if you’re one of their best runners. Must be a bunch of losers,” she says and reaches for a cartridge to push into the eight-track player.

The last few miles, they listen to Simon and Garfunkel. Debbie carefully rotates the steering wheel of her Pinto to turn into the school driveway and turns the engine off.

“Well, we’re here. I hope you’re grateful because I’m probably going to be late to work, just so you can go to that stupid practice of yours.”

Mark thinks of Dad and the way his eyes look while waiting for his mid- afternoon injection. Too weak to talk, miserable and in pain. How much longer can he hold on to life?

“I’ll be back in two and a half hours,” Mark had told his father before he left. “Mom will stop by around 5:30 before she goes out to teach her class. You’re all set. Should I turn the radio back on?” Dad shook his head and shut his eyes.

Running, all he has to do is focus on putting one foot in front of each other. It isn’t easy to talk about what he is feeling, but when he ran fast and broke the school record, and everyone yelled his name and he won the trophy, that was his reward.

How dare his sister try to shame him? How dare she call his practice stupid? It is the only good thing he has. He slams the door with his anger. Crash. The glass in the door breaks and shatters. The small fragments scatter to the ground.

He looks down at the broken pieces, amazed by his strength. He looks at the small blue car with his sister sitting inside.

“What did you do?” Debbie screams, “What did you do? You broke my window.”

Mark shrugs his shoulders. He feels numb. The team on the field is warming up.

“You’ll have to get this fixed,” she hollers. “You’ll have to pay.”

Mark looks at the fragments of glass scattered across the ground. He thinks of his mother and sister never home. He thinks of the nights and days he’s spent caring for his father.

“I already did,” he says.

Nadja Maril is a former magazine editor and journalist living in Annapolis, Maryland. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine and her short stories, portions of her novel in progress, and essays have been published in a number of small literary magazines including Change Seven, Lunch Ticket, Thin Air and Defunkt Magazine. She blogs weekly at Nadjamaril.com and is the author of two reference books on American Antique Lighting as well as two children’s books. Follow her on Twitter at SN Maril.                          

Filed Under: 4 - Fiction

Time Reveals All Truth

By Metu Osele

Part 1 — First Do No Harm

Ikenna stared longingly at his wife. It has been what now? Eight months. Not even a touch. He kicked his feet aimlessly in a failed attempt to release the tension welling between his legs.

Think of anything else. Anything but this.

“How is the current situation at the clinic?” he inquired across their 400-square-foot contemporary-styled living room. He knew that her answer could only be worse news than yesterday’s.

Although they were practicing social distancing and slept in separate rooms, they still afforded themselves the luxury of seeing each other once a day. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had already announced that the virus could not be transmitted over 30 feet but strongly dissuaded sharing anyspace given that the virus could linger in air molecules for over 72 hours.

Ngozi let out a primal wail. It had been the worst day at the hospital. For eight dreary months, she had had to announce to lovers that they would be returning home alone, to parents that their kids were no more, and to children that they had just been orphaned. And today, her spirit was wrecked because her hospital had just lost ten of its frontline workers to the disease. This was the first day she ever considered quitting as a doctor. Although with no formal announcement to support, today’s tragedy had proven that frontlineworkers had a higher fatality rate for the lenovirus. The instantaneous death of her colleagues confirmed that an increased inoculating dose indeed led to a deadlier disease. Her husband’s question caused the internal turmoil of her day to pour out like a fiery storm. Her pain crippled her and buckled her knees as she fell to the floor.

During her drive home, thoughts of going home and never returning to the hospital burdened her. Her ride down Broadway was a sour reminder that the U.S. economy had been completely shut down. She played back the extremely hard decision she had to make at the hospital between saving a one-year-old baby, an 80-year-old woman, and another 40-year-old colleague with the last ventilator left in her ward. She quickly brushed this thought off because she still was not sure if she made the best call. First, do no harm. For an inexplicable reason, this phrase from the Hippocratic oath she had once proclaimed with pride at Tolu Odugbemi Hall at the University of Lagos came to mind.

“What about harm to doctors?” she retorted in a self-directed cross-examination. “What about harm to my family? What about harm to my mental health?” She was not sure at whom her anger was directed. She was livid and exhausted.

I am not a quitter. This is my life’s work, she concluded in defeat, turning up the radio volume to a distractinghip-hop tune.

Seeing his wife in a tumultuous state made Ikenna self-conscious about his earlier eroticism. As a nurse practitioner, he knew the terrors of working on a regular day, let alone during a pandemic. This was a virus unheard of in centuries, and the U.S. was clearly not braced for a war against this form of infection. Luckily, he thought, they had decided to hold off on children another year after moving to the United States from Canada. All their lives, they had been moving — Nigeria to Europe because that was the easiest visa they could get, Europe to Canada when they heard that Canada was easier to live in permanently, then to the United States when Ngozi was called to work as the Chief Epidemiologist for Mercy Hospital. The pay was irresistible. They had decided that they will finally settle in the United States to raise kids even though they often romanticized sending their kids to Nigeria to get a well-rounded upbringing.

“Achorom I machie ya nti owu na obido nzuzu (I want to slap him very well if he misbehaves),” Ngozi would often state as one of the reasons Nigeria sounded like a good option to raise a child. She believed that Americans were too lenient with their kids. Nonetheless, they knew in their hearts that moving again was not an option.

“Baby, talk to me.” Ikenna finally said. He still pronounced his words with a strong Igbo accent, Baybiiii. She loved it.

Ngozi’s mind raced back to the first time they met in front of Moremi’s Hall. He was escorting a friend who was dating her best friend at the time. Their conversation was short but deep. He was 6’2” with unbrushed hair. His smile was teasing, and his calm demeanor was inviting. She knew that that was not the last time she would be seeing him. She remembered finding it riveting that he was studying midwifery. Not a lot of men studied that. In fact, he was the first man she ever met that studied that. She could tell that he was not strung by his masculinity like most of the Igbo boys she knew. She thought he must be from a family that respected his decisions, or he was blatantly disobeying. Either way was attractive. Around that time, Nigeria had gotten the first few cases of the Ebola virus. She confided in him about her interest in volunteering with the The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) to fight the disease, and she thought he would discourage her like every other person. But he cheered her on, stating that if his program would allow, he would have gone with her. She ended up not going because her parents would not sign the underage release form. But she knew that the moment she was out of her parents’ house, she will build a career on infectious disease. This is what led her to get an M.D./Ph.D. in epidemiology.

“Udo di,” she managed to finally sputter in response to Ikenna’s question.

It was always easier to talk about hard times in Igbo. English made it sound harsher, devoid of emotions,and less hopeful. As her mother tongue rolled out of her mouth, she felt the support of ancestors. Of kinsmen. Of her granddad who had lost his life in the Biafra war.

“Any deaths today?” Ikenna responded, immediately feeling stupid for asking.

She nodded, unable to explain the scene of a one-year-old baby dying while she stood there unable to administer any additional medical care.

Ikenna was unable to ask any more questions because he could see from his wife’s face that he was unraveling her. He chose to think of the day he met her. The day she told him she wanted to be at the frontline fighting Ebola. He married a warrior. At a time when everyone was running away from the disease, she was running toward it. He remembered telling her that he would have gone with her using his program as a cop-out, but he knew that was a lie. She made him want to be stronger. More fearless. But he never was. Not even now. He could not tell her that he quit his nursing career six months ago. He could not tell her that every day he stepped out of the house in scrubs, he walked right back in after she left and spent his day idling in the basement. She could not know that whenever he heard her drive into the compound, he ran to their designated meetup location poised as someone weary from a long day of work. He felt guilty for lying to her or for not being fearless enough to save lives or both. But this is not what he signed up for.

In fact, if there was any chance that she would listen to him, he would have made her quit too. There was no chance in hell she would. This is what she lived for and he knew it. He had known from the first day they met. He was always the weak one in the relationship. All his life, Ikenna had felt like he followed his wife with an air of insufficiency. He loved her, and she was his whole world. That is why he agreed to hop with her from country to country even though he was always okay with living in Nigeria. That is why he consented when she said a career as a nurse will be more rewarding for him in the United States. That is why he agreed to wait all these years to build a future before having children. He had always known without a doubt that she knew what was best for them, and he never felt a need to break free of her persistent chase for fulfillment until the virus hit. He believed her desire to continue working and savinglives was suicidal and although he knew she would accept his decision to quit, he did not want to disappoint her.

“Baby, do you think we should quit? No one will judge us. This thing is just very serious.”

“Nna I have thought about this in several ways, you know I can’t live with myself if I quit.”

“But why do you always …” he started to nag.

“We got this, baby. We will weather this storm as always,” he said instead.

Ngozi sighed and nodded. Now dry-eyed and soothed from her breakdown, she began to stand. She could not believe that he still thought she did not know who he was after 15 years of marriage. He did not know that she saw him come up from the basement every day or that she waited one minute at the door to give him time to get to his pretend position. He did not know that she knew every healthcare student was, in fact, qualified to volunteer with the NCDC during the Ebola crisis. He did not know that she saw him behind Sodeinde Hall giving all his tuition to the agberos—the gangbangers—that were disturbing her even though he lied about beating one of them up to ward them off. She could not believe that all their lives, he had kept up with the facade. For what? she asked herself, unable to find an answer. She also could not explain why she had always been okay with the lies. Maybe she wanted him to be the person he showed her that he was, so she accepted the lies until they began to feel true. She thought aboutconfronting him now, but she doubted his ego would survive years of the act that they were both accustomed to. “First do no harm,” she thought again and decided this meant allowing herself to believe that her husband stepped out with her every day to save lives. This was the only way she could save her marriage.

Part 2 — My Love Stays

I am not a weak man. No. I am Ikenna. The same blood that flowed through Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first president, flows through me. I come from a lineage of leaders. Abum Agu (I am a tiger), buru Odum (I am a lion), burukwa Eze (I am a king).

Trauma causes a person to question their whole existence. This is when the question “why me?” is heavy in the heart and lips of the traumatized. This was the position that Ikenna was in the first time Ngozi hit him. It was a blow that ringed in his ears long after it had landed on his face. But it was not the impact that startled him. It was the person that hit him that shocked him. It was the way she looked at him, the way one looks at a trash bag that houses rotten fish. It was the way she walked away, unapologetically, as if she had just given him a kiss. And it was his reaction that scared him the most. He had stood immobile for a long time before he opened his mouth and cried like a hungry infant. It was not the intensity of the punch that moved him to tears. It was that he, an Agu, had been slapped by his wife, and that he had stood there and taken it like a punching bag unresistant to a boxer’s blows.

But couldn’t it all be explained? Ikenna’s musings continued. She was experiencing a lot of pressure, more than he could ever know. The fatigue of working as the chief epidemiologist in a hotspot zone of the lenovirus could turn a pet to a predator.

Moreover, he thought, maybe he should have waited till this blew over before he told her. Or maybe it could have remained a secret. One of those death-bed secrets dying partners reveal like “Oh, and by the way, I did not ever travel for business all those years. I was always in Costa Rica with a lover. But I love you. You are the only one on my life insurance policy” or “Oh, you know Chimeke is not your child. He is Ebuka’s, your best friend’s. Please take him to meet his real father.” This secret was, however, one Ikenna could not keep any longer.

As usual, they were across each other in the living room to talk about their respective days. If she had good news, a smile would begin to form on her face and then disappear as if to say there isn’t much to smile about in a pandemic but enough for that initial crack of a smile. If her eyes dropped to the floor, or began to aimlessly survey the rooms, he would know that today held grimly stories — like the one she told him about how she let a one-year-old child die because she could not possibly save him and her colleague at the same time. His, of course, were tell-tales. If he planned to tell her a positive story, he would deepen his voice, move his arms around like a Met Opera choir master, and intermittently cough to give himself enough time to make sure his story on how many lives were saved under his watch was rational. Otherwise, he would rub his fingers vigorously on his septum, sniffling like someone who has a cold, and concoct a story of a patient who had lost his life due to limited medical supplies. But today, when she asked about his day, he felt a strong persuasion forcing his lips to speak the truth.

“I quit,” he had responded quickly. “Today?” she asked.

“No, a while ago,” he said.

“And I think you should quit too,” he added right after.

“You know, I thought about it, and I think it is a suicide mission to be …” He continued to speak because he was now emboldened by his incipient act of honesty.

He did not notice when she walked towards him, breaking their 30-feet social distancing rule, before smacking him right in the middle of his face.

Knowing his wife for as long as he did, this was the last response he expected. Ngozi was the girl who would give all her food away to a hungry classmate back in the university. She was the girl that threw her self in front of a Molue bus to pull a kid out of the road. This act earned her the limp she still carried to this day.

In her room, Ngozi sat on her bed livid. How dare he? she thought. She felt not even the slightest remorse for her actions. In fact, she felt relieved, like she had just released years of sufferance. All her life, she had pulled this man around like a bag of cement. Even their marriage was by her own doing. After five years of courtship, Ikenna still did not have the balls to ask her to be his wife. Not until she gave him an ultimatum. She remembered how she had said to him: “If you do not ask me to marry you before the end of this year, consider yourself single.” The next week, he proposed. This was the same way she had to force him to come to the U.S. with her, and even the same way she forced him to change his career. The only thing left, she thought, is for me to force him to clean his own crap. Now, he has the audacity to try and impose his impotency on me.

“Tufiakwa,” she said out loud whilst raising her hands over her head and snapping her fingers in the way Nigerian Igbos do to reject something of bad omen.

She was not only angry that he quit or that he wanted her to quit too. She was angry that he took away the only thing that allowed her to tolerate him. At least, in pretense, it was easier for her to ignore the fact that her husband was a disappointment. As her anger heightened, an unexpected image appeared in her subconscious: Dr. Johnathan. Dr. Johnathan was an attending physician at their hospital. She had caught herself throwing glances of admiration towards him and sometimes, she had even caught herself flirting. She imagined what her life with a man like Dr. Johnathan would have been like. Both working hand in hand to contain this deathly virus. Both sharing dreams of the future of healthcare they desired. Both… She had to cut herself from the rabbit hole these thoughts were leading her to. She had chosen Ikenna and would have to stand by her choices.

One would think that the first time would be the last time, but there is something about the feeling of unburdening that is addictive. Take for example, the first time a depressed person takes opioids. Such a person may have convinced themselves that this was just a one-time thing – just to see what it feels like. But after that initial feeling of peace that the drug affords them, the soul yearns ceaselessly for that thing that took the pain away.

But Ikenna did not know this. He believed that Ngozi had only made a mistake the first time and never brought that altercation up again. Now that he had divulged his lies, he did not need to escape into the basement everyday like he had done in the past to pretend like he was at work. He began a ritual of sitting in the front of the garage after his daily walk to clear his mind. On this day, he was engrossed in a peculiar matter: the origin of his name. He thought about how his parents had given all his siblings names that meant something. His first sister, Adaku, was born around the time his father had amassed wealth from his textile business. Adaku means “daughter of wealth.” His brother Binyelum, meaning “stay with me,” was born after his mother had already suffered three miscarriages before his birth.

His, Ikenna, is a tragicomic story. His father was a serial beater and serial cheater. After years of suffering the abuse, his mother decided to leave but that was when she found out that she was pregnant with Ikenna and chose to stay. In the days of his mother, bearing a child outside of one’s matrimonial home was synonymous with prostitution.

Ikenna, meaning “father’s power”, was his father’s evil way of telling his mother that she could never leave him. Although the validity of this story was questionable, Ikenna truly believed that he was the reason his mother remained in an abusive marriage. He had heard this story from his older brother, Binyelum, when they were young. During a fight, Binyelum had told him that he was the reason why their mother suffered and went further to prove his accusation by explaining to Ikenna the origin of his name. This recollection drove him into a state of melancholy that was cut short by the presence of his wife driving toward their home.

Ikenna could not believe how beautiful his wife still was after all these years. Her skin still shined like perfectly polished wood. And except for the dark eyebags that hung beneath her eyes, her face was unblemished. She was tall, slender, and if she were not a doctor, he knew she could have been a successful model. Well, maybe not a runway model, he thought, not with her crooked gait.

“Have you given any thought to what we discussed?” he said when she drew closer.

Ngozi ignored him. She dusted her feet over the welcome home mat and proceeded to unlock the door.

He stood up and followed her.

“Am I not talking to you?” he asked. “See, you cannot keep endangering my life.” “If you do not quit, I will leave,” he added, shocked at his utterance.

“You will leave?” she said and began to laugh. She laughed so hard that she toppled over the side table that lay too close to the door.

When Ikenna saw that she was about to fall, he placed his hands on her arms to help her regain balance.

This touch set off a rage in her. With the force of a disturbed Africanized bee, she turned around and landed her palm right in the center of his face in a way that caused her fingers to end up in his eyes. She kicked him between his legs which caused him to let out a sound that resembled a lion’s mating call, recoil in pain, and then land on the floor. She knelt over him and continued to lay punches on him. Realizing that her punches were not inflicting the level of pain she desired him to feel, she ran toward the kitchen and returned with a ceramic saucepan. Just as Ikenna was beginning to stand, she hit the saucepan on his groin: an act that forced him to roll into a ball like an armadillo. His capitulation gave her room to continue to hit him repeatedly with the saucepan until she felt her rage dissipate. She spat on him, gave him one last kick, and walked into her room again like nothing had just happened.

Either from shock or from pain or both, Ikenna laid immobile on the floor throughout the evening and into the night. He was still there when she left for work in the morning and even though he heard the jingle of her keys as she walked away, he pretended to be asleep. That was the last time Ikenna would hear from his wife for a while.

Ikenna was in bed when he heard someone walk into his room. Like abusees commonly do, he had isolated himself, neither answering phone nor door. The only time he stood from his bed was to get food, and even that was rare. And the only time he left his house was to search for an apartment as he already decided that he would leave Ngozi. He could not see who had walked into his room because he was turned away from the door, but he smelled her and then felt her hands graze his bare back. She did this for a while, not saying anything, before she placed a kiss on the back of his head. She stood up, but before leaving, she said the first sentence he had heard from her in two weeks.

“Obim,” a term that means “my heart” in Igbo. “I am pregnant.”

Ikenna let these words lay on his mind for a while. Slowly and unexpectedly he felt the tightness of his chest begin to loosen. He felt joy slowly begin to melt the cloud of darkness that enveloped him. He began to imagine himself as a father. Someone whom he could love, and someone who could love him back. Someone whom he could spend his idle days with. Someone who would help him cope with the depression that had taken over his life. The prospects of being a father excited Ikenna so much so that heforgot the requirement for conception.

Five days before the expected delivery date, Ikenna and Ngozi arrived at the hospital. This was a new rule set in place because of the virus. All patients and whomever wished to be there with the patient had to be isolated and observed for at least five days.

Because of his wife’s pregnancy, and especially because she was diagnosed with preeclampsia, Ikenna decided not to move into the new apartment he had already paid a deposit for. Yet, they lived like strangers, and only spoke to each other in dire circumstances. This child made it bearable for him to spend five idle days together in isolation with this woman he hated so much. This child stopped him every time he wished upon her death.

Now in the delivery room, Ikenna stood beside his wife’s bed ready to give her every support she needed. As a former nurse himself, he knew that the curse God placed on Eve followed all her descendants and that the pain of childbearing was formidable. At the final push, he watched with joyful expectation as the doctor gently cradled and pulled the head of his son from his wife’s expanded vagina. At this point, he thought he felt a change in atmosphere in the room – the type of change he was used to when a doctor was about to announce bad news. This scared him, but he could see that his child looked fine. His fear was abated when his son, the one God had sent to give him joy, let out a loud sorrowful cry in the way newborn babies do to protest being taken from the tranquility of the womb. Yet, there was a strangeness in the room – a deadpan silence between the nurses that was unusual for a successful birth. Ikenna looked at his son and saw the tanned whiteness of his son’s skin, the bright blueness of his eyes, and the curly blondness of his hair.

It was only then that Ikenna accepted it. That was not his child.

Metu Osele is a graduate student in the UAMS Department of Biomedical Informatics. She is currently working on her debut novel which she hopes to publish in 2023. She writes short stories on her blog – creativewritingbymetu.com – and ghostwrites non-fiction and fiction publications.  

Filed Under: 4 - Fiction

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