Xhenet Aliu - Brass

“I’ve been busy. Working, moving,” I said, and I realized that those things made up my entire to-do list. “And anyway, doctors are expensive.”

“Bashkim’s got money. He’s becoming a millionaire, I hear,” Dardata said.

I shrugged. “My mother didn’t go until the very end and everything turned out fine,” I said.

“Did it?” Dardata said.

“You should see a doctor,” Yllka said. “This is not the old country, you don’t have to do it like these ladies did it.”

“And I thought we were the ones living in a time warp,” Dardata said.

“Hesht,” Yllka said. “When you have a baby you will mess things up, too.”

“I have to get some air,” I said.

Bashkim’s eyes tracked me as I rushed through the kitchen, but he didn’t lay down his hand and follow me outside. It didn’t matter, though, because for once I didn’t want his attention, or anybody else’s. For just that minute I wanted to be left alone, and then my stomach cramped up and reminded me that there was a little person in there, and that I wouldn’t be alone again for a long, long time. Already it was a needy little thing: it needed me to eat so it could eat, it needed me to empty my bladder so there was more space for it inside of me. No doctor was going to be able to tell me what I really wanted to know, which wasn’t boy or girl, healthy or monster. I wanted to know just what kind of person this thing was going to be. Like, be . Muscly and quiet and serious like Bashkim, or skinny and smart and broken like Greta, or bitter and tipsy and mean like Mamie? Or would it be like me? I thought for a minute and realized that I didn’t even know what that meant, what few things I could be boiled down to. Acne-prone waitress who deferred acceptance to a community college? Was that really it? And then there was Bashkim’s whole history, a black hole that I wouldn’t even know existed except that Bashkim had to come from somewhere, he hadn’t just rolled in from nowhere like a thunderstorm, although those blue eyes did resemble storm clouds. And even if genetics didn’t determine it all, if this thing relied mostly on nurture, did that mean it had a better or worse shot of turning out okay?

“She is right, you should go to a doctor,” Yllka said. She’d slipped outside with me silently, like a ninja. “Dardata is wrong about most things in life, but she is right about that. Babies are hard enough without something going wrong.”

“I’m going to go,” I said, though I hadn’t really thought much about it until that night. My people weren’t doctor people; we went from healthy to dead in one fell swoop. Mamie had had to be talked into going to the hospital when she lost a finger at the knuckle, afraid that she’d get in trouble with her boss for missing work or bloodying up the machine she’d been assigned to, back when there were still a few jobs at the mills. We’d never been to the dentist, we treated strep throat with mint chocolate chip ice cream, we collected scar tissue from infected wounds like tribal body art. Mamie agreed to send Greta to the shrink only when the guidance counselor threatened to call DCF on her like she was some worthless junkie.

“Those are all the wives inside, you know. The wives of the men in there,” Yllka said.

“I figured,” I said.

“So what do you think they think of you?”

“Not much, obviously.”

“You are here with the wives. Not the girlfriends. That happens other nights, with other girls. They don’t understand why you’re here.”

“I’m here because I live here,” I said.

“That’s what I mean. Why are you here, in this house, instead of the places where they keep girls like you? Those women know Bashkim is married, and it makes them wonder what kind of company their husbands kept before they made enough money to bring their wives over.”

“That’s their problem. I’m not some dumb mistress. Agnes didn’t even want to come over. It’s done, it’s over with her, she lost her chance, and now it’s my turn. And it was his idea to move in together, anyway. I don’t see why I have to be the bad guy for the rest of my life.”

“I think you are young and dumb. I don’t think you’re bad.”

“I’d rather be bad than dumb.”

“Well, you’re off to a good start. A woman who doesn’t know enough to go to the doctor when she’s pregnant is dumb. One who knows better but still doesn’t go is bad.”

“I am going to go to the doctor,” I said. “So after that, what will I be?”

She shrugged. “I guess just regular.”

“That’s a start,” I said.

“Yes, just a start. Listen, Bashkim is family, and you are not, but that child inside of you is my family, too. And while it is inside of your belly, it eats the food you eat, but that’s not all. It feels what you feel. You feel sad, it is sad. You are hurt, it is hurt, too. I want what is good for that child, and so I don’t want you being hurt. That’s all.”

“I’m not trying to get hurt, either. I’m not looking for pain,” I said.

“You should be,” she said. “You should look all the time for it, so you know where it is, and you can stay far, far away.”

She walked inside, her shadow a moment or two behind her, a ghost of rosewater perfume always the last part of her to leave. Once that faded I sat alone in the dull light that the kitchen window let out, looking at all the other dull lights in the houses to my left and right. There were lights on in most of them, and swarms of moths panicking at each. What a shitty, sad life moths led, I thought. They’d do anything to get at the warmth of the light, and as soon as they reached it they burned up and died.

Those kinds of flaws were everywhere in nature. I wasn’t saying I had everything figured out, that I wasn’t making mistakes all over the place, I just didn’t see why I had to be singled out for it.

The next morning Bashkim collected the money his friends had shoved at me, which I’d crammed into the pockets of my jeans and looked forward to counting.

“Where are you going with that?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Wait,” I said, sitting up on my elbows, or trying to anyway. The air mattress had deflated enough that it couldn’t support things like right angles. “I was going to use that to go to the doctor.”

“You don’t need this to go to the doctor.”

“Yes I do. I don’t have any other money.”

“Why do you need money to see a doctor?”

“Because they cost money,” I said. I watched Bashkim take in that information, process it for a second, and then reject it.

“This is America,” I said. “Everything costs money.”

He thought about it some more. “You don’t need to go to a fancy doctor. Nothing is wrong with you,” he said.

“I’m not talking about a fancy doctor. Just a regular doctor, to make sure everything’s going okay with the baby.”

He looked down at the money in his hands and sighed. “How much?”

“I have no idea. I just know that it costs money to go to the doctor.”

He handed me forty dollars.

“I don’t think that’s enough,” I said. “It’s probably a couple hundred at least. Doctors are rich. They don’t get rich charging forty bucks at a time.”

Bashkim was getting frustrated, which was probably compounded by the hangover he had to have. “Why don’t you find out how much it is going to be first?”

“Bashkim, this is your child, ” I said.

He hesitated.

“Your son, remember?”

He looked at the knot in his hand again, then looked me up and down, wondering if my rounded belly were some kind of elaborate hoax, before he put the money back on the dresser.