Danasha Solomon (“Into an ocean of violence/a world of empty streets”)

I spent the next few days in a weird haze. I went to class and work and everything else, while I could imagine the cells inside of me growing and multiplying and turning into human body parts. I had nightmares about individual legs floating around in my uterus. They eventually kicked through me, but there was no baby, just leg. Then I had another one where I had a real live baby—but Ray told everyone it wasn’t his, it belonged to the male nurse who gave me the pregnancy test—the one who gave off the very gay vibe. It was when I dreamt that my grandmother had the baby, but it was white, and the crazy clinic protester killed her for it that I knew I needed to tell Ray.

I showed up at his apartment Tuesday evening. Mike greeted me, as usual. “Hey dude,” I said. “Where’s Ray?”

“In the shower. You can join him if you like, I’m sure.”

I rolled my eyes—this was so typical of Mike—and went straight to Ray’s bedroom. I wouldn’t’ve made it from there to the bathroom without having to walk through the living room naked, which was what Mike wanted.

Ray came in soon enough. “Hey!” he said, looking happy. “Wow! Danasha!”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s me.”

“I wasn’t expecting you. Thought you might’ve disappeared.”

“No…things’ve just been…weird.”

“Weird how? Is everything okay?” He put a pair of boxers on and sat down beside me on the bed.

“Yeah…and no. I don’t know. You know that time we had sex and the condom broke?”

“Umm…yeah.” But he clearly had to think about it a bit first. Not like me, it hadn’t been seared into his brain. “Are you late?”

“I was late. Now there’s no question, I’m pregnant.”

He stared at me. “Oh, God.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Look, Danasha, I love you, you know that, right? You know I’ll do anything for you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Will you drive me to the clinic?” I asked.

“Clinic?”

“For the abortion procedure?”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “We can keep the baby.”

“How? Neither one of us has any money. I won’t even have my associate’s degree until December. You’ve still got a whole nother year. My job barely pays over minimum wage. We can’t raise a baby here with Mike around and there’s no way we’d be able to afford a better place. And future presidents like you don’t have kids this young!”

“Danasha,” he said. “It’s okay. We’ll work it out. Just…”

“What?” I asked. I was very frustrated. I need a hug.

Ray wrapped his arms around me. “My mother had an abortion when she was our age. She said she always regretted it. I don’t want you to have to live with that.”

I had never met Ray’s mother—she didn’t like cold weather and therefore refused to come to Cleveland. So I had no idea how much this regret had actually effected her. “Well, I’m worried I’ll regret having it,” I said.

He started crying then. I looked at the clock: I had to leave for work soon. “I love you,” I said. “I don’t want this to destroy us.”

He just held onto me without saying a word until I had to leave.

As I was sitting on the train I saw a woman—a few years older than me, white, and blond—with three children, all young, all adorable, none angelic. They were climbing all over the train seats, being loud and obnoxious—and beautiful.

The woman herself obviously had money, because she was carrying a designer purse and wearing very nice loafers, and I wondered what she was doing on the Rapid when she most likely had her own car. Unless she was one of those environmentalists. But they usually didn’t wear leather.

And she seems to be having fun, joking around with her children and listening to their babble.

Oh, fuck it, she’s happy, I thought. She likes this. How…how can I pass this up?

But how can I do this? This isn’t an issue of sentimentality, Danasha, it’s an issue of money. I cannot do this because I do not have the cash.

There was one more issue weighing on me, of course: my own parents.

There’s a reason I live with my grandmother, of course, and it’s as old as the city itself. My parents got married and had me young. Younger than I am now. My grandmother had tried to raise my father the right way, but he had fallen in with a bad crowd at a young age, and my mother had grown up in the foster care system.

After I was born, my parents had no money, but that was when my father tried to get his life back on track. We lived in an even shittier part of town than the one I live in now. My father got killed in a gang crossfire. He was just walking home from his factory job.

After that, my mother was a wreck. She didn’t know how to make enough money to get by, so she turned to selling drugs. I’d be left with my grandparents for extended periods of time. One day she got caught, and thrown in jail. I would’ve been put in the system like she was, but my grandparents stepped in of course.

She got out a few years ago, and came by to tell us she was moving to Florida to maybe find a job. Doing what, I don’t know, but she told me that mothering just wasn’t in our genes and she knew I’d be happier with my grandmother. I was already old enough to make that decision on my own by then.

I don’t believe that nature determines everything. I think my mother’s mother was probably in a difficult position, whatever that was, and my mother herself definitely was. But it’s my grandmother who taught me everything about being a person. I think I could, probably, prove my mother wrong, if I were a mother myself.

Stop it, Danasha, I thought. There will be other chances. Your whole life is ahead of you. A life where you will be able to raise a baby in a stable environment with your money.

I looked at the blond woman again. She didn’t have to wait, I thought. She’s not that much older and the oldest kid’s at least five.

But she has money, Danasha. She has money and you don’t. And she probably has a husband and you’ve only been with Ray for six months.

And that was when I started crying, as the train dove into Cleveland. Because I didn’t know right then if Ray and I would actually survive this, and I also didn’t know why we deserved this.

I got out at Tower City and walked to work and went up the elevator and walked in only to be immediately ambushed by the office manager, managing partner, and the computer network guy yelling my name. I yelped in total surprise. “What’s going on?” I asked.

Mrs. Bond, the office manager, said, “we’re just so glad you’re here, Danasha. So happy to see you.”

Crap, I thought. How do they know I’m pregnant? “Ah, cool,” I said.

“Oh, cut to the chase, Miranda,” said Mr. Jeffries, the managing partner—my fearsome ‘Big Boss’ who I had hardly said two words to. One of the most well-respected (and one of the most-feared) lawyers in Cleveland. What could he want? What ‘chase’ were we cutting to?

“All right,” she said. “Gordon here is leaving.” Gordon was the network guy, a young guy who was way too charming for his own good. He spent most of his days in argyle sweaters. He’s a big Republican, always tried to flirt with me, and got dismayed when I told him I was actually dating an Obama campaign worker.

“You are,” I asked him. “Why?”

“Yeah, Dani, you’ll miss me, won’t you?”

“You still can’t call me Dani,” I said. “Why are you leaving?”

“I’m going to Washington,” he said. “Got a job at Microsoft.”

“Wow,” I said. “Cool.” Then I realized that Gordon’s imminent move had no discernible effect on me. “So…why did you all want to see me?” I asked.

“Well, with Gordon gone we’ll be in a bit of a jam, technology-wise,” Mrs. Bond said. “And he said you were taking computer classes at Tri-C.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“So…we want you to take over Gordon’s job. It’s yours in a week,” Mr. Jeffries said.

“Oh my God,” I said. This was insane: I would love to become the network manager here. I’d get paid more. Way more. Gordon made around $14.00 an hour. He had revamped the firm’s entire website. He was respected for his capabilities.

“So you’ll do it?” Mrs. Bond asked.

“Of course! Thank you!”

I think what was most surprising was that they had considered me for this at all. I wasn’t used to getting the kind of notice and respect I’d just gotten. I was used to having my talents go unrecognized and getting passed over for positions I was already overqualified for. This, I was possibly underqualified for—yet I was ready to accept the challenge and they saw that.

I asked Gordon about it when I had the chance in the backroom we clerks usually sit around in. “Did you do this?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“To swing you over to the McCain camp,” he said. I glared at him, and, chuckling, he said, “no, Danasha, you’re actually good at this stuff. You know this stuff. And I didn’t like the idea of them bringing in some new person when they could just promote you.”

He walked off then, and my co-worker Jane, an older woman, walked in. She logged onto her e-mail account on the computer and called me over immediately. “Danasha!” she exclaimed. “Mary Ann sent some new pictures of my grandkids!”

And when I looked at them, I knew. The money? The multiple babies I had seen in one day? Ray’s amazing amounts of affection for me? The polls showing Obama in the lead? I was supposed to have this baby.

“Jane,” I said, “can I borrow your cell phone?”