Three Minutes

We laughed when she told us the first time. Seated around the table, charred meat and rice off of white paper plates that were already grease-stained and translucent. I keep remembering the plate, ridges digging into my fingers, rice spilling onto the floor, least of our worries. But, before that, we laughed. She was wearing striped red pajamas and looked about twelve years old, me wanting to wrap her up in my arms and protect her from whatever made her look so tired so young. When she said it again, my wife told her not to joke about such things.

Stop looking so serious, baby. Laugh with us like you always have, old joke, right? You wouldn’t let this happen to you. So young, baby girl, when you were five you used to crawl onto my lap and run your tiny hands over my face when I forgot to shave. Remember that? You didn’t want to go to swimming lessons because the water was too cold, but you would scramble, hands and knees, through the snow for hours. Do you remember that, baby girl? Why won’t you laugh with us?

She started to cry, then. Crumple on the floor, discarded blue towels left on the bathroom tiles after a shower. A paper bag, shrinking and wrinkling into nothing, tossed out the window of a moving car. And crying said more than words, because everyone knew after that. And she was just a small red dot, a million miles away from me.

At time of testing pouch should be at room temperature open pouch just before testing results should appear within three minutes. Results should appear within three minutes. Three minutes, waiting, waiting, waiting for that single colored band. One band, and then I’ll let myself breathe again. And it will all be over.

Two. Two bands, thick and red, bubbling out of the white strip of paper. Tauntingly visible. And then the angry words begin, because we all knew it didn’t end there. When? How?

WHO?

There’s no air left in the dingy little bathroom, and I’m only human. Only man. I want to hold her in my arms, protect her, crush her because I love her, and I don’t think she’ll survive. She’s glass, she’s so young. Who the fuck is Rob? And why, baby girl, why?

I am elastic. There will be plastic toys again, screams at sunrise and diapers. I can stretch, and maybe, just maybe, save her. Because I would die for her. Because she is me, and my wife, and just so, so young. Rob is gone, old story, only now it’s us, and it’s our little girl. And I think that maybe I would like to murder Rob. Same words, how do you know it was me? What the fuck, we never did anything! You can’t prove, I can’t, I won’t, never never never.

A month later I sit with my daughter on our porch, watching the sunset. She has her legs curled up under her, looking so tiny, she’s going to break, my god, she’s going to break under all of this.

I hate this thing inside of me, she says. This thing. Her face is white and small, and tight with something. With loathing. It’s a tumor, a sick growth, and it’s eating me from inside out.

No, no, no. It’s a baby, a person with tiny, white hands. With feet, eyes, ears, toes. It’s your mother and me. It’s you, and it’s also Rob.

He put this inside of me. Daddy, he killed me. It’s going to eat me alive.

Stop. Stop talking like that.

And I feel sick, then. She is quiet, but her small hand finds mine. And she’s shaking, unstoppable, in the warm night air.

Later, another word. A-word. She wants it over, wants the end. Terrified, her stomach is swelling already, please, please, please let me get rid of it? And her arms are crossed over herself, white, skinny locks, we can't say yes, baby girl. Don't do this. And her eyes are dry.

But then, she feels it. Against her hand, an tiny foot, a kick. A silent voice, speaking without words or air or breath from within. And her face is harder, but she doesn't say the A-word again.

And now is white, sterile fear. Hospital panic, the clean kind. Useless energy, slam your fist into the wall, just to do something, anything. Her body is swelled when we see her, and she’s breathing, almost moving. I can see her breathing. There, there, there, there, there!

We come back when she’s awake, sitting up, and her eyes look dead. She stares through us. Her mouth is thin, wiry, and a million miles from laughter. But when they hand her the baby, her baby, her son, there’s something new in her face. The tension seeps out, and my little girl looks at her child for the first time, and I remember. I remember the clear, liquid, ancient gaze of a newborn. Seeing the future in the eyes of your child. Then her hand finds mine again, so soft and so, so small, but she isn’t shaking now. And then she looks up at me, my little daughter looks up with her baby in her arms, and smiles.