Mitchell Jackson - The Residue Years

I’m just about to dive on someone else when another nurse pushes through the door and calls Kim. We follow the nurse to a scale in the hall and afterwards to an empty waiting room, where Kim climbs on the table and kicks the shoes off her swollen feet.

Have you started prenatals? she says.

Yes, Kim says.

Great, she says. Concerned today about anything especially?

No, not that I can think of, Kim says.

The nurse checks the rest of her vitals, marks them in her chart, and sets the chart on the counter. She fishes a gown from a top drawer and tells us the doctor will be right in. Kim strips, folds her pants and top, and gives the neat stack to me. She turns in the mirror in her bra and panties and it reminds me of the cover girl. Before this, seeing my girl in any degree of naked would excite me to off-the-Mohs-chart stiffness, but today she inspires not even a tingle. She puts on her gown, unhooks her bra, slips out of her panties, and I’llbedamned still nothing.

Why are you so quiet? she says.

There a law against quiet? I say.

You aren’t any other time, she says. Why now?

Let’s not do this here, I say. Not now.

You almost don’t hear the doctor come in. The doc’s got silver hair above floppy ears but most noticeable is that he’s huge. I’m talking retired-hooper-big, alien hands and feet.

How’s my favorite patient? he says.

Hey, Doc, she says. I’m great.

And you must be Shawn, he says. I’ve heard good things. Good, good things. Doc seems intent on turning my fingers to mush, waits waaaaaay too long to let me loose. He stoops to tie a faded off-brand running shoe, and a thatch of surly chest hair sprouts from the V of his V-neck. He picks up the chart and reads. Okay, okay, okay. All is well, he says. You’re a few pounds off weightwise, but no worry.

So, Shawn, he says. How’re the studies?

Good, I say. Pretty good, I guess.

Looking forward to the Christmas break? he says. You two have any plans for the holidays?

Just dinner, I say.

Nice, he says. I love holiday meals. So, Kim tells me you finish this year. Have you decided on a grad school yet?

Not yet, I say. Not sure about grad school.

He gazes at me through what must be the clearest Aryan blue eyes in the hemisphere. You should make that a surety, he says. You know a bachelor’s is just the start these days. Besides, this new life will need an example. Gorgeous girlfriend, new baby, you are one lucky young man, my friend. He stuffs his hands (it’s miraculous they fit) into a pair of rubber gloves. Enough about school, he says. Let’s have a look at that uterus. He turns his head and slips under her gown. Ahh, this feels like ten weeks, he says. Feels like eleven weeks, he says. Maybe twelve.

Sixteen weeks, state law, twenty-four if there’s a grave risk to the mother. This kind of info is everywhere in those cheerless clinics. We last visited one not enough months ago. I dropped off Kim, gave her a knot of fifties, and, with a tornado whipping my guts into a FEMA site, waited some safe blocks away. They called for pickup, and I drove to the clinic’s back lot, where a frowning woman wheeled Kim down a ramp and helped me load her into the car. Kim grabbed my arm before we left. That’s it, she said. That’s it and I mean it. No more.

Doc snaps off his gloves, trashes them, marks notes. Well, we’re far enough along, he says. How’d you two like to hear the heartbeat? Kim, of course, says we’d love to, and while the doctor is gone, she puts on her pants and inspects herself in the mirror. She catches me gazing. In truth it is half at her and half at what could be the rest of our days.

Please tell me why you don’t seem excited, she says.

You’re excited enough for us both, I say. But I don’t know.

Don’t know what? she says.

About this, I say.

You are not sayin what I think you’re sayin, she says.

Life has options is what they preached in my old youth program, but to keep it all the way funky, options are forevermore my trick knee.

But like I said in so many words, maybe my affliction’s a product of genes, biology.

Dude was a magician, my biological pops, showed up when Moms was in labor but when it came time to sign the birth certificate: POOF! For the better half of my life the nigger was a hocus-pocus Harry Houdini. But check it, don’t throw me no pity parade, nor chasten Pops too tough. There’s no doubt at all a third baby in less than a year was not, if dude had any, part of his plans; plus, with the efficacies of Big Ken, there’s a chance things worked out fine, finer, the finest.

The silence is an overripe piece of fruit between us yearning to be split wide. Let’s talk, I should say, gash the gushy quiet right down the center and seize this fleet-footed moment before it puts on track shoes and sprints off.

They’ve told me for most of my life that my life is optionful, but what they should’ve said was this: You’ve got a choice, youngin, till you don’t.

Doc tugs in the Doppler (it’s a machine resembling an oversized CB), and tells Kim to lie down. He spreads gel over her taut belly and circles it with a wand. He turns a knob and the room fills with a swoosh-swoosh, swoosh-swoosh .

Now, there’s a healthy heart, he says.

We listen. The light in her face says it’s an all-around charm for her. It’s a charm for me as well (how could it not be, this living being that we made?) but also a dread.

Doc kills the Doppler, scrawls more notes, tucks Kim’s file under his arm. You be sure and take good care of her, he says. You be sure and take great care of her.

No hype, there might be a curse in how hard he slaps my back.

My girl sits up, yearns her head at me. Her eyes could spark flames.

Say it, she says. Go ahead and say it.

There are options. There are choices. There are chances. There are last chances. There is the last chance of the last chances — the end.

Outside, a hall scale clanks, a baby wails, someone calls a name.

Look, I’d like to believe that about mines, about the one who’d burst squalling and splashing into the world, that we (me and you, you and I) could bet breath, that I’d be no spine-chilling or mind-bending nothing, no part voila or poof, not one scintilla of abracadabra alakazam.

Or would I be?

Or would we all?

Some people are latecomers to themselves, but who we are will soon enough surround us.

Kim stands back. She’s wearing pajamas and an apron over them that reads CHEF. STAND BACK. She wishes me a merry Christmas and helps me with my bags — the gifts and desserts. Soon as my hands are free, I hike for the bathroom, where I run the sink till the water steams and run my hands in the hot stream and rub my hands on my face to unthaw. When I come out, she’s laid my desserts on the counter. She stands by the stove with a rolled bundle under her arm. She snaps it open, shows off an apron that says NUMBER ONE CHEF.

How about that? I say.

I’ve been making holiday dinners since Mom was alive, and I wonder when was Kim’s first dinner, how much she knows about these kinds of meals.

I should get to it, I say. Or we’ll be eating at midnight.

Don’t you need help? she says. I was hoping I could help, she says.

Later, I say. I do my best work alone.

Don’t mean to exclude but what could she know about the frying or baking or broiling, what it means to season with heart? Go ahead and rest while I get things going, I say. She skulks into the front room and sprawls on the couch and powers the TV (the screen’s so big the actors are life-sized!) and raises the volume to a level that might peeve the neighbors. Champ lazes in a commercial or so later wearing long johns with his hands dug in his crotch. He stoops by Kim and whispers in her ear and she sits up and shakes her head. He calls me into the room and I take seasonings out of the cupboard and follow him. He mutes the TV and throws his eyes, those big innocent eyes, from me to Kim, from Kim to me. Kim has something she wants to tell you, she says. We have something we’d like to tell you, he says. He pushes Kim closer and takes my hand and lays it on her stomach. Feel, he says. Can you feel it?