Disappearing Acts (35 page)

At any rate, I found something nice in Boerum Hill. It was two floors of a brownstone with two bathrooms—thank God—and cost $750 a month. “We can handle that,” was what Franklin said when I told him. He didn’t even want to see it. “You got good taste, so I know it’s probably more than decent.”

Our new landlord—a fat, white-haired Jewish man—didn’t even bother to check our references. He
was more impressed by the fact that I’d been to college, was a teacher, and was able to bring him back a certified check for fifteen hundred dollars the same day. Although Franklin proudly forked up over a thousand, it broke my heart to withdraw all but two hundred of my studio money. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe it’s not the time for me to pursue my singing, because all kinds of roadblocks keep popping up to prevent it. We’ll see.

“What kind of work does your husband do?” Sol asked, as I signed my half of the lease.

“He’s not my husband, but he works construction,” I said.

His bushy white eyebrows rose up, and I wanted to tell him that this was the eighties, so don’t act so damn surprised.

The day before we were moving in, Sol finally met Franklin. “You look like a football player,” he said.

“I ain’t never played no football,” Franklin said, while he signed.

“Basketball?”

“I watch it on TV.”

“There won’t be any loud parties, hey?” he asked.

“Why?” Franklin asked.

“Oh, I was just wondering. Nothing wrong with a party every now and then.”

Franklin slammed the front door and left Sol sitting on the steps, chewing his cigar and tapping his cane on the sidewalk.

When we got upstairs, he said, “I can already tell that I don’t like that motherfucker.”

*   *   *

We bought every kind of cleaner and disinfectant you could think of. I told Franklin that I couldn’t put our food and stuff into this refrigerator or these cabinets until I knew they were my kind of clean. Sol had said there weren’t any roaches, but I knew that was bullshit.
This was New York, and as soon as I opened the cabinets, I saw their eggs in the corners.

There are two things I hate doing: cleaning the oven and cleaning the refrigerator. Franklin said he’d do it. I swear, I love that man. My job was the cabinets and bathroom. Before I got started, I decided to go to the corner and get us both something to eat. I was starving. When I came back, Franklin had all the burners sitting on the windowsill and the shelves from the refrigerator in the sink, and he was singing “Billie Jean” along with Michael Jackson, blasting on his boom box.

I sprayed some stuff inside the medicine cabinet and on all the bathroom tiles, then I sat down and ate my sandwich. The combination of Comet, Fantastik, and ammonia started making me feel dizzy and light-headed, so I walked back into the living room. It wasn’t any better out there. My roach spray and Franklin’s Easy-Off fumes felt like they were caught in my throat, and all of a sudden I thought I was about to throw up.

“Franklin, I’ve got to get out of here for a few minutes. We’ve got too much stuff going in here, and it’s making me sick.”

“Go on, baby. This shit is starting to get to me too.”

I heard him opening the windows, but I still had to leave. I went downstairs and sat on the front steps. My head was spinning. The cool spring air helped, and after ten or fifteen minutes I felt better, so I went back upstairs. Now he had the boom box blasting on WBLS, and he was singing “Baby, Come to Me,” along with Patti Austin and James Ingram. After another ten or fifteen minutes, I started feeling nauseous all over again.

“Franklin, I can’t take this.”

He turned the volume down. “What’d you say?”

“I said, these fumes are really getting to me.”

“This shit
is
strong, ain’t it? Look, I can do the rest
of this shit. As long as I got some music, I can clean all day. Why don’t you go on back over to the other place and finish up the rest of the packing.”

He only had to tell me once.

*   *   *

It took us about two weeks to get the place in any kind of order, but finally we had everything where we wanted it and some space to ourselves.

Franklin was watching “60 Minutes,” I was cooking dinner, feeling great, and singing “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics, and I happened to look up at the Sierra Club wilderness calendar. A herd of elephants were coming toward me, and that’s when it hit me. I hadn’t gotten my period yet. “Shit,” I said.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Franklin yelled from the living room. He was working on measurements for the wall unit he was going to build us.

“Nothing,” I said, and flipped back to March. Three baby lions were squirming and fighting for their mother’s nipples. This was impossible, I thought. Like always, I circle the day I’m due, which was supposed to be the twenty-eighth. I turned the calendar back to April and stared at the eleventh, which was today. That’s when I remembered the night I’d come from Marie’s and was so hot and bothered that I never got around to putting my gook in. How stupid. How fucking stupid.

“What’s going on in April that you gotta be staring at it?” Franklin asked, walking up behind me.

“Franklin, my period’s two weeks late.”

“So I guess that means we having a baby. Good thing we moved, ’cause at least we got someplace to put it.”

“Are you crazy?”

“What makes you think I’m crazy?”

“I can’t have a baby right now.”

“Why not?”

“First of all, we’re not married and you’re not even divorced; and second of all, I’m just on the verge of going into the studio; and…what would we do with a baby?”

“Love it.”

“Love it?”

“I’ll have my divorce before it’s born. I promise.”

He must be losing his fucking mind. “Franklin, let’s be realistic.”

“I am being realistic, baby. I want you to have my baby.”

“Simple as that, right? Look. You never know how long a job is going to last, and we just moved into this expensive apartment. Just when things are starting to look good, you want me to up and have a baby?”

“You done already got rid of one of my babies. And I ain’t letting you kill this one. But I guess now ain’t the time to bring that up, is it?”

“Go ahead, lay a guilt trip on me.”

“I’ll work two jobs, if that’s what it’ll take, baby.”

He looked so sincere I actually believed him and felt like saying okay. I wished it was that simple. What would I tell my Daddy? And Portia and Claudette and Marie? And the school? “First let me get the test and make sure. It could be that I’m just stressed out from moving and everything.”

“You pregnant, baby,” he said.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Remember when we was doing the cleaning in here?”

“Yeah.”

“I knew you was pregnant then, and that’s why I made you get out the house. I’ve told you and told you, baby: I know when your period is due. Anyway, I want a daughter.”

“Franklin, stop it! I’d be crazy to have a baby now, and you know it.”

“Okay. It’s your body. Do whatever you want with it. Be selfish. Don’t think about me. I mean, all I did was stick my dick in you, right? I ain’t gotta have the baby, right? So whatever you decide to do is okay with me. Really.” He looked at me while I checked the rice. “Really,” he repeated. “I’m going to the store. You want anything?”

“Nothing I can think of.”

I didn’t put enough water in the rice, burned the lamb chops, scorched the zucchini, and put too much salt on the salad. When Franklin came back, he had already opened his fifth of Jack Daniel’s. He hasn’t had a drink since he started working.

“Dinner’s ready,” I said anyway.

“I ain’t hungry,” he said, and picked up his boom box, walking toward the door with it and his bottle. “I’ll be back.”

“Where you going?” I asked.

“Nowhere,” he said, and slammed the door.

I heard the music outside the front window and walked over and looked out. He was sitting on the stoop, smoking a cigarette and sipping from the bottle, which was inside a brown paper bag. I swear I wasn’t trying to hurt him. But this was my life too. I sat down on the couch. My picture of “Running Men” was crooked, so I got up to straighten it. All of a sudden, I wished I had some grass to water, or a mother to call.

Was I being too cold and selfish about this? The truth of the matter was, I was just scared. Confused. I want to do the right thing, but this isn’t how I dreamed it. I’ve always wanted things to be right whenever I did have a baby. To be married to the man I loved. To have made my mark in the music industry. To…

I put my hand over my belly, which felt thick. There was some kind of throbbing going on, and it felt like my period. But I’d been feeling like this for at least
a week now. Okay, Zora. Calm down. Be realistic. You’re just trying to find a way to justify not going through with it. You’re good at justifying things you can’t deal with, aren’t you, Zora? But just remember, this would make four. Shut up. You’ve gotten off too easy as it is. Would you just shut the fuck up! You’re a selfish little bitch—go ahead, admit it!

“You coming to bed, baby?” Franklin asked.

I didn’t hear him come in the door, and I jumped. Somehow I was sitting at the dining room table, even though I don’t remember walking over here or sitting down. He set the half-empty bottle down in front of me. “In a few minutes,” I said.

I turned out all the lights and then took a fifteen-minute shower. I was hoping he’d be asleep by the time I got out, but he wasn’t. I got under the covers, and he put his arms around me. I collapsed inside his arms and buried my face in his chest.

“Please don’t kill my baby, Zora.”

“Franklin, don’t start, please. You’re drunk.”

“What makes you think I’m drunk?”

“You’ve drunk a pint of bourbon, that’s why.”

“I still don’t want you to kill my baby.”

“I don’t want to
kill
your baby.”

“Then why you doing this to me? I love you and want you to be my wife, and I want you to have my baby.”

“Franklin, didn’t you say earlier that it was my body?”

“I was lying. I mean, shit. You taking this fuckin’ intellectual approach about a emotional situation. At first I figured I’d go along with it. But fuck it. I had to get high to tell you what I really felt. What you talking is a bunch of crap. It ain’t never gon’ be no perfect time to have no baby. But I do know one thing. That’s my baby you carrying inside you, and I don’t want you to kill it. And you may think
I’m drunk, and maybe I am, but I swear to God, I’ll get my divorce, and I’ll bust my nuts and work three jobs if I have to to take care of y’all. Look at me, Zora.”

God, he was making this so hard. I broke away and looked up at him. I loved him. I wanted to have his baby. But why now, God? That’s all I wanted to know.

“You won’t regret it, baby. I swear you won’t.”

I didn’t want to say anything I might regret later, so I eased away from him and put my head on my pillow. “Can we just sleep on this?” I asked.

“Why not?”

In the morning, I felt his lips brush across mine, but I pretended to be asleep until I heard the front door close. When I got up, I saw a note Franklin had left me on the kitchen table. “I want us to be a family.”

*   *   *

I called in sick.

I took the subway to the Women’s Center in Manhattan and cried all the way there. After the test, I sat in the waiting room with twenty or thirty other women. Some of the men paced. This was the very same place where I’d had my last abortion. No matter how many times I blinked, I kept seeing that table, those white gowns, that IV bottle, and the plastic needle in my arm. My mouth was beginning to taste like gas, and I heard somebody say, “Start counting backward from a hundred.” “I can’t,” I said out loud, and a few people looked at me. I cannot climb up on one of those tables again. I had promised myself that that would be the last time. Besides, how many times can you do it without feeling guilty? Once. Twice. Three or four times? Isn’t it about time, Zora, to grow up and take responsibility for your actions?

“Zora Banks,” a voice called.

I jumped up. My heart was racing, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in a little beige room. The
young blond woman was all in white, and in her hands was a little white dial.

“Have a seat.”

I sat down, I think. I looked around the room. There were pictures of little unborn babies at different stages, and a plastic sculpture of a fetus.

“How do you feel?” she asked me.

“Nervous.”

“Well, I hope I’ve got good news for you,” she said, turning the arrow on the little dial. “Your baby—if you choose to have it—will be born right around New Year’s.”

Be born. Be born. Your baby will be born. I couldn’t say anything. I was trying hard not to cry, and she looked over at me real nice and put her hands on top of mine.

“You’re not happy about this, honey?”

“Did you say
my
baby will be
born
around New Year’s?”

“If everything is accurate, you’re about six weeks pregnant, which gives you a delivery date of January first.”

Delivery date. Deliver me. Six weeks. Pregnant. Me. So it was real. Me. Six weeks pregnant. And with Franklin’s baby.

“Do you need some time to think about this?”

Something weird started happening. My heart was beginning to feel lighter and lighter. Instead of my feeling burdened by the whole notion of giving birth to a child by a man I loved, all of a sudden it made perfect sense. It was
time
for me to do this, and regardless of what the outcome, I was going to do it. I looked at the embryos on the wall and tried to imagine what mine looked like. I was going to have a baby. For the first time in a long, long time, it felt like I was actually going to finish something I had started and would be able to see tangible results.

“Ms. Banks, are you all right? Do you need some time to think about this?”

“No,” I said, feeling a grin emerge on my face. I stood up and looked down at her.

“Well, you’re smiling,” she said.

“It looks like I’m going to be a mother,” I said.

I walked forty blocks before I realized I’d walked at all. Just like that, I had made a decision to bring a life into the world. Me. A mother. My whole life was about to change, by one decision. I stopped at Forty-eighth and Madison and went into a Japanese restaurant. I ate twenty dollars’ worth of sushi. There are plenty of women who sing and have children, I thought. Daddy’ll be happy, once Franklin and I are married. Me married. By the time I paid the check, I felt as if someone had shot me up with laughing gas.