Adela
Dad answered the phone and when he coughed up my name, I immediately felt tears wet my cheeks.
“Hi, Dad,” I whispered.
“Is it over?” he asked.
Over. Done. Completed. Had I fulfilled my responsibility of birthing a human and giving them up, had I checked off my to-do list and booked my flight back home. Could I be his daughter again.
“No, it’s not.” And it never would be.
I’d been thinking lately about how, even if I did what Dad wanted me to and returned home without a baby, giving it up to some nice family who’d love it, I would never be able to simply resume the life I’d been living before, like these months were a black hole in the timeline of my life.
They’d changed me. I couldn’t sit poolside next to Lindsay and listen to her complaints about her hair and the renovations on their kitchen and who she wanted to ask her to prom.
Even the way I swam had changed. Instead of diving straight and narrow, kicking with precision, and cutting the water with a rigid hand, I curved with the current. I smiled as I came up for air. I cherished every ripple of the water created from the gentle cup of my fingers.
“I spoke with your coach, and he thinks if you train hard this summer and get back to peak condition, you should be ready to compete nationally by next spring.”
I still felt a jolt of drive every time I thought of this thing that had been my dream for so long, but I also felt the full weight of the sacrifices that would get me there. Sometimes a dream isn’t worth the life you lose on the journey there. Sometimes a dream is not meant for waking hours.
“Dad, I need to tell you something.” I choked on my own spit. I was sitting on my bed, the dress I planned to wear for Emory’s graduation already on, Noni already in the kitchen upstairs, the soles of her feet making music above me. “I’m not coming back.”
Dad was not the laughing type. Instead, he coughed once and then composed his question. “What do you mean, Adela?”
“I’m keeping my baby. And I’m staying with Noni and she’s going to help me raise her, at least until I graduate.”
I’d imagined saying this to him so many times and I knew if I let him talk before I was done, I’d lose all conviction.
“I understand if you and Mom aren’t willing to help us out, with money or anything. I’m going to be teaching swimming lessons here in the evenings and I’m prepared to get another job if I need to. However, I would really appreciate your support because I…I know I’m giving up a lot, but I’d rather not give up my family too. But I need you to know that I will, if I have to. Because I found family here too, and if I have to lose you to love my daughter, well, I will.”
I heaved in a breath. I waited. The other end of the line remained static, Dad’s breath barely audible, and then he coughed. Once, twice.
“Adela, I don’t think you understand what it means to raise a child. You’re too young—”
“I understand as much as anyone who hasn’t raised one yet can. And what I don’t understand, I can learn. I know you think it’s a transgression to a good life, having a child young, but maybe this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. Just because it’s not going to be easy doesn’t mean it’s the wrong choice. And even if it is, it’s my choice to make.”
“I’m sorry, Adela, but no. Your mother and I will come down to get you and bring you back. We are not going to let you destroy your entire future.”
I’d expected him to say this. “You’re welcome to come visit us. But you can’t make me give up my baby and I don’t think you want me raising her in your house.”
Dad went silent, but I could hear his jaw clicking, could imagine his knee shaking, trying to come up with some way to tie me down.
“I don’t know what to say, Adela. I think this is a massive misjudgment and your mother and I are very disappointed you haven’t seemed to learn any better. We will be calling your grandmother immediately and we strongly encourage you to rethink your decision.”
Dad had disappeared into his lawyer talk, speaking for him and Mom even though I knew she wasn’t even there.
“Okay,” I said. “Noni’s expecting your call and, you should know, she supports my choice completely.”
Dad grunted. “I should’ve sent you to that boarding school instead.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I would’ve made the same decision anyway.”
We sat on the phone with neither of us talking for minutes, and the sounds of Dad’s familiar breath calmed me.
“I never told you sorry,” I started. “For telling everyone you were from France. There’s no reason you or me or anyone should have to hide this place or pretend it doesn’t belong to us, that we don’t belong to it.”
Dad coughed. Three times. “We won’t be withdrawing our support. Financially or otherwise.”
It wasn’t warm or kind or sweet, but it was his way to love me.
“I love you too, Dad.” And before he could cough again, before he could argue or reverse or ruin it, I hung up. I looked in the mirror, belly forming a full cone it was so big, the dress draped over it. This was what Noni was talking about: I ate sand and it was so gritty.
It didn’t feel like what they always said contractions felt like. I’d been in and out of prodromal labor for weeks now, that’s what the doctor said, and all of those contractions took place in my pelvis, where I expected it to hurt, but when I was standing, clapping for Emory as she graced the stage and shook the dean’s hand, I felt it in my back.
It was more of a throb than anything and it only lasted for a few seconds before it released. I assumed it was just another symptom that came with passing my due date, refusing to induce labor because I’d heard that made the contractions even worse. I was three days past forty weeks and the baby was so big now that my entire body drooped. I didn’t think anything of the throbbing in my back and pelvis, even after it returned, became just another part of my day’s pains, and I never even said a word, not to Simone, not to Emory, not to any of the Girls.
I let the current of pain seize me and then pass and by the time I realized it was not just an ordinary part of pregnancy, it was too late.