Deal With It (18 page)

Tameka

Roni
and I changed the sheets on the bed in the guest bedroom, even though I knew she would end up sleeping in the extra twin bed in my room. We still went through the motions. Whenever she stayed with us, she took the guest bedroom, but we always ended up talking until the wee hours of the morning, and she would just crash in my room. She headed for the shower, and I pulled out my cell phone. Dialed Vance’s number. He had to be told once and for all. There was no way around it.

“You’re home?” he said when he picked up the phone. “Your pops must’ve been doing about a hundred on the highway.”

“He was doing the speed limit.” I smiled. It was good hearing Vance’s voice and knowing that we were in the same state again.

“I can’t wait to see you at school tomorrow,” he said. “I miss your pretty face.”

“Remember last night…when I said I had something to tell you?”

“Yeah. What’s up with that?” he asked.

“It’s not good. I hope you’re sitting down.” I took a long breath, gathered my courage.

“What is it, Tameka? You’re scaring me.”

“Remember when we did…you know…it.”

“How could I forget?” he asked. “It was the best night of my life. Even though I got my butt chewed out when I got home. It was still a special moment.”

“Vance, I think I’m pregnant.”

There was a long silence. It was as if he’d hung up the phone or something. I knew he was still there, because I could hear him breathing, but there were no words spoken. I needed for him to say something. Anything.

“For real?” he finally asked.

“Yeah, for real,” I said reluctantly. I wished it wasn’t for real. Wished it was a joke or a hoax, but it was real for now. It was real according to a home pregnancy test. “I took a pregnancy test the other day. The kind you get at Walgreens. It was positive. Also, my menstrual cycle is late. Eleven days to be exact.”

“This is pretty heavy for me right now, Tameka. I don’t know what to say.”

“I know. It’s pretty heavy for me, too,” I said.

“Is it mine?” He asked those three little words. Words that suddenly ripped my heart apart. Did he have to ask? Didn’t he know that I didn’t give it up to just anybody?

“Yes, it’s yours! Who else’s would it be?” I was hurt. Wanted to wrap my fingers around his throat and choke some sense into him.

“I don’t know. My dad warned me about girls that try to trap you. Especially when you’re trying to do something with your life,” he rambled. “I just told you last night that I got a scholarship to Grambling, and now, the next day, you come at me with this pregnancy stuff.”

“The only reason I didn’t tell you last night was that I didn’t want to ruin your night. You were so excited about your ac
ceptance letter, and I didn’t want to rain on your parade,” I tried to explain.

“I just need to think things through, Tameka,” he said. “You got my head all messed up.”

“My head is messed up, too. This is not just
my
problem, Vance. This is
our
problem.”

“I need to call you back,” he said, “I need to think.”

There was silence for a moment. This was not how things should be. His response was not what I’d expected. I needed to keep him on the line. Needed to know that he was there for me, that I wasn’t in this alone.

“Call me later,” I begged.

He never said another word. Just hung up the phone. I’d never felt more alone in my entire life, and I wanted to crawl underneath my bed and never come out. Instead, I cried. Cried harder than I had before, until there were no more tears.

At my locker, I pulled my coat off and hung it on the hook, grabbed my red spiral notebook and my Spanish book. I was tired. I’d stayed up most of the night, wondering if Vance would call back like he’d promised. He hadn’t, and I’d finally dozed off at about three o’clock, the Quiet Storm playing in my ear the whole time. Crying wasn’t going to change my circumstances, so I’d stopped that long before 3:00 a.m., but I’d still been wide-awake. My head hurt, and I wasn’t feeling Spanish at all. I’d thrown up twice before I’d left the house, and it felt as if I was about to puke again at any moment. Roni had convinced me that it was nothing more than morning sickness. Whatever type of sickness it was, I wished it would go away.

Vance approached, wearing a pair of navy-blue jeans and an oversize Sean John shirt. His sneakers looked as if he’d just cleaned them with a toothbrush. He looked just as worn-out as I did, with bloodshot eyes and bags underneath them. He’d graduated from his crutches and was simply wearing a funny-looking shoe on his foot instead.

“Hey, what’s up?” he said once he got close.

What did he think was up? Nothing had changed since last night.

“Nothing.” I had an attitude. My morning had been just as lousy as his.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back last night,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s just that you caught me off guard and everything…you know, with this whole baby thing,” he said. “I needed to think things through a little bit.”

“Well, good. I’m glad you had time to think,” I said and slammed my locker shut, walked away from Vance. “I don’t really have that kind of time. I’ve got to make some decisions about my life, and I have to do it now.”

“If you need money for an abortion, I can probably get it for you this week. I get an allowance, plus I got my dad’s credit card.”

“I haven’t decided if that’s what I want to do yet,” I explained.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “You’re not really considering having it, are you?”

“I don’t know yet,” I explained. “I don’t really believe in abortion.”

“You mentioned that you did a home pregnancy test. Have you considered going to a real doctor? Someone who can give you a second opinion?”

“I have an appointment this afternoon at the free clinic,” I explained.

“You want me to go with you?” he asked.

“Only if you want to, Vance,” I said. “Don’t let me twist your arm or anything.”

“No…I want to go,” Vance stated. “I should be there with you.”

Those were just the words that I needed to hear. I needed to know that he had my back.

In the waiting room at the free clinic, babies cried and toddlers ran around in soggy Pampers, which needed to be changed. Some woman spoke Spanish to her child and grabbed her by the arm. The woman seated across from us wore a frown on her face. She held an ice pack on her forehead, while the man seated next to her snored loudly, his head bouncing against the wall, as he waited for the nurse to call his name.

“This place is disgusting,” Vance whispered. “Why did you come here?”

“It’s not like I can go to my regular doctor’s office,” I explained. “She knows my parents too well. They’ve been on cruises together. I need to do this privately.”

“What if it turns out that you’re pregnant? What do we do then?” Vance asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far,” I said.

A wrinkle in his forehead, Vance nervously rested his elbows on his knees and intertwined his fingers. I could imagine that his heart was beating at maximum speed.

“Tameka Brown?” the nurse called.

It was finally my turn. I hopped from my seat, and Vance sat still. I gave him a puzzled look, wondered why he just sat there.

“What? You want me to come?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

Together, my hand in his, we followed the nurse to a small room, where she handed me a plastic cup with my name on it.

“You can step right in there and urinate in the cup,” she said and pointed toward the ladies’ restroom. “When you’re done, just slip the cup into the little cubbyhole, and the doctor will see you in a moment.”

I did as she’d instructed: I urinated into the cup, tightened the lid and slipped the cup into the cubbyhole. I washed my hands and then joined Vance in the examination room, where
he had patiently waited for me. We were silent as he flipped through an
American Baby
magazine. I examined the posters on the walls; one of them showed the stages of pregnancy and described what to expect during each stage. After a few minutes, there was a light tap on the door.

“Miss Brown?” said a foreign doctor as he stepped inside.

“Yes, that’s me.” I gave a fake smile.

He offered his hand. “I’m Dr. Lei.”

“Glad to meet you.” I shook Dr. Lei’s hand. “This is my boyfriend, Vance.”

He shook Vance’s hand and then took an ink pen out of the pocket of his jacket. Pulled out a notepad and began scribbling something on it.

“I’m writing you a prescription for prenatal vitamins,” he began. “You are in your first trimester, of course.”

“So I am pregnant?” I asked.

“Yes, you are pregnant,” Dr. Lei said. “Seven weeks to be exact. I would like to get you started on the prenatal vitamins right away, and you should make an appointment to come back in about thirty days.”

I was in a daze. After hearing the words, “Yes, you are pregnant,” I didn’t hear much else. As the doctor continued to scribble the prescription for vitamins on the pad, I felt light-headed.

“Are you okay, Tameka?” Vance was asking.

“It’s not unusual for her to experience light-headedness, nausea, some vomiting,” Dr. Lei explained. “Especially during the first trimester. But it should pass after a while.” He ripped the prescription from the pad and handed it to Vance. “Do you have any questions for me?”

“I don’t,” I heard Vance saying. “Tameka, you got any questions?”

I was somewhere else, in another place…another zone. My head was spinning out of control, and I felt like I needed to
throw up. I wanted to lie down, take a nap, and hoped that once I woke up, all of this would be just a bad dream.

Vance held my hand all the way to the automatic doors at the front of the free clinic. We walked across the street to the MARTA station and waited for the train. Once it pulled up to the platform, we hopped on. Vance held on to my hand, our fingers intertwined, as we sat on the orange leather seats. My head on his shoulder, I remained still until the train finally pulled into the College Park station. When the doors opened, we hopped off and walked two blocks to my subdivision.

“Thank you for going with me today.” I smiled.

“I’m sorry about what I said last night,” he said. “You know…asking you if the baby was mine and all. It was just a surprise for me, and I was scared.”

“I’m scared, too,” I said. “I don’t really know what to do.”

“Well, I’ll definitely go with you when you have the abortion,” he said. “And I’ll pay for it, too. Just let me know how much it costs.”

There was that conversation again—about abortion, something I wasn’t sure I wanted.

“I’m not sure if that’s what I want to do.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “You’re not thinking about keeping it, are you?”

“I don’t know, Vance.”

“Tameka, neither one of us is ready to be anybody’s parent. You have to know that. And I’m going away to college in the fall.” He explained things that I already knew. “And you’re still a kid yourself.”

“I know all that, Vance. But I don’t believe in abortion. It’s wrong to take another person’s life like that,” I said. “There are other alternatives. Like adoption.”

“You mean, go all the way through with the pregnancy and then give the baby away to someone else?”

“Yes, to a family that can take care of it,” I explained.

“But in the meantime, your whole life will be ruined. You’ll have to drop out of school or go to an alternative school. Your reputation will be at stake. Your parents will be pissed off for the next eighteen years,” he said. “But if you just have the abortion, you won’t have to tell anyone. It’ll be a secret between me and you, and no one else will ever have to know.”

“I’ll know, and it would haunt me for the rest of my life,” I said. “My mother had me at sixteen. What if she had just aborted me? I wouldn’t be standing here, talking to you, right now.”

He sighed. We had reached a crossroads. Neither of us agreed with the other, and we were getting nowhere fast.

“Well, if you decide to have it, I can’t promise that I’ll be around. I have a bright future ahead of me, Tameka, and I’m not trying to throw it away,” he said. “I’m not ready to be a father. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but that’s the way I feel about it.”

As we approached my house, Jaylen pulled up beside us, driving his mother’s Toyota Corolla. The bass from the music was so loud, the car vibrated as he pulled next to the curb.

“I told J to meet me here, to pick me up,” Vance explained. “I gotta get home.”

“Will you call me later?” I smiled. “Not like last night.”

“Yeah, I’ll call you when I finish my homework,” he said. “And you need to decide what you’re gonna do by then. You need to let me know tonight.”

I sighed. My heart was heavy. Vance had given me something of an ultimatum. If I decided to keep the baby, he wouldn’t be around. If I aborted the baby, I couldn’t live with my own guilt. But the reality was, I needed to decide one way or another, and quickly. I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder, got a better grip. I pulled my house key out of my Coach purse and unlocked the front door.