Two Steps Back (2 page)

Three

“Wake up sleepyhead,” Mrs. Baldwin said
as she tapped on Jaylah’s bedroom door. She could hear her mother’s nails rapping against the wood, but refused to move. After their conversation last night she was in no mood to hear another lecture, so Jaylah reverted back to her high school self and pretended to be a dead body.

When Mrs. Baldwin noticed her polite wakeup
call wasn’t garnering any results she walked to the window and yanked back the blackout curtains Jaylah begged her to install in when she was in the tenth grade.

“It’s after 1 p.m., Jay Jay, time to get up!”

“Ugh,” Jaylah grunted, pulling the striped duvet over her head. “I’m still jet lagged, mom. Do you know what the time difference is between here and London?”

“Eight hours. Now
get up, you have an appointment.”

“An appointment? The movers aren’t coming
till Saturday. That gives me two days to catch up on sleep.”

“
Later,” she said moving to Jaylah’s bedside and pulling back the cover. “Get dressed, we’re going to see Dr. Lawson.”

“For what?”

Mrs. Baldwin raised an eyebrow; Jaylah already knew.

This damn baby
is
already cramping my style.

“Can’t you reschedule, mom? I’m exhausted.”

“Do you even know how far along you are?”

Jaylah felt groggy and irritated, her mother was on a mission and would not be stopped, no matter what
Jaylah said.

“A few weeks, maybe a month.” She shrugged.
What difference does it make?
she wanted to ask her mother,
I’m probably not even having it anyway.

“Exa
ctly. You have no clue,” her mother patted the cover. “Up and at ‘em. We’re leaving in a half hour. And Jaylah?” Mrs. Baldwin ran her hands over her daughter’s unruly hair, “please do something about this.”

Jaylah wa
tched her mother leave then stared at her starry ceiling. She flirted with the idea of skipping the shower and grabbing fifteen more minutes of shuteye, but seeing a doctor without properly bathing was just straight up wrong, so she pulled herself out of bed and schlepped to the bathroom down the hall.

Jaylah
turned on the hot water and stepped into it before allowing it to cool. Penance for her stupidity. It stung her flesh, but she did not move, just stood there as it burned her back. Three minutes passed before she eased on the cold water, turning her shower tepid to match her tears.

Jaylah did not want to see Dr. Lawson, her personal physician since
she was a teen. She didn’t want to let yet another person down and have them look at her like she’d thrown away her life. Yes, she was grown enough to not give a damn about anyone’s opinion, but she did, especially those who loved her.

“
Keep it together, Jay. No need to fall apart now,” she said aloud, continuing a ritual she’d started in childhood. While other kids created best friends out of thin air, Jaylah talked to herself. Whenever she had a problem, was feeling down, or conflicted about something she’d ask herself for advice. It was strange, but Jaylah had to admit, she rarely led herself wrong.

T
his time was different, however. This time she had no clue what to do, but she was running out of room to decide.

“
Everything will be fine, right
?
”

“Right,” she answered. “E
ven when it ain’t. It’s still okay.”

Jaylah
dried her face, jumped out of the shower, and scurried back to her bedroom to get dressed. She picked out a red animal print dress and slathered shea butter on her chest, arms, and elbows, then paused when she got to her belly.

“
What the fuck am I going to do about you, huh?”
she asked the blob growing inside her. “Your timing couldn’t be any worse. You know that, right?”

She paused,
waiting for the blob to answer the question (or apologize), but nothing happened.

“Figures,” she grunted. “I bet if I had a sandwich you’d speak up.”

Jaylah stifled a giggle and rubbed more Shea Butter across her stomach hoping to stave off any stretch marks even thinking about scaring her skin. If only figuring out what to do was just as simple.

* * *

Dr. Lawson’s office was as bright and annoying as Jaylah remembered.
The walls were painted fire engine red and preschool blue as if she were a pediatrician instead of a general practitioner who catered to teens and 20-somethings who were too afraid, or too stubborn, to make the switch to a “grown up” doctor. Jaylah had been seeing Dr. Lawson since she was 14 when Dr. Johns, her pediatrician, suggested she might feel more comfortable visiting the teen lounge.  Her mother scoffed at the recommendation, telling Dr. Johns in a huff, “But those girls are having sex! I don’t want a doctor who hands out condoms and tells Jay Jay, ‘Good luck!’”

Mrs. Baldwin
had nothing to worry about, of course. Jaylah didn’t dare have sex, too scared she’d get knocked up and publically shamed. She’d seen how the pregnant girls in her church were paraded in front of the congregation to repent for their sins and Jaylah vowed she would never ever make that walk alone. Jaylah didn’t even
talk
about sex until she got to college, 3,000 miles away from her mother’s all-knowing ears. But after meeting Emile, a Haitian-born Brooklynite with soft lips and wandering hands, her freshman year at NYU, all of her mother’s advice to keep her legs closed flew out the window.

Jaylah stared at the giant fish tank in the corner of the room and tried to will herself to disappear. She did not want to be
there. Not in the doctor’s office, not even in L.A. She let her mind drift back to her favorite spot in London, the café at the Tate Modern. The first time she ambled to the second floor eatery looking to grab a quick snack before seeing the rest of the galleries at the museum, she was not prepared for what she would see.

A wall of glass
overlooking the south bank of the River Thames, St Paul’s Cathedral dominating the sky, and the Millennium Bridge stretching across the water. Jaylah stared out of the windows, transfixed. It was as if she was gazing at a postcard come to life, and in that moment she knew she’d actually made it to London—its gray sky threatening rain, boats trudging to and fro, and Jaylah standing in the middle of it all.

As she sat in Dr. Lawson’s office waiting for the nurse to call her name, she longed to be back on the South Bank, waiting for her breath to be taken away again.
She was tired of thinking about the baby or how her life was in complete upheaval. She wanted to be back in her flat, or at the Tate, or dancing with Jourdan, or tucked away in Johnny’s arms.

Jaylah
sighed and tried to push him to the farthest corner of her mind. She couldn’t think about him right now, not when she had her mother breathing down her neck about the baby. Jaylah felt ganged up on, everyone wanting—no, demanding—her to have it as if raising a child was as easy as deciding on a new hairstyle.

Having
a baby would mean deferring to someone else’s needs—again. Hadn’t she done that enough? Hadn’t she always been the perfect daughter, sensible friend, good employee?

Moving to London had been her stab at finally reclaiming herself. After a lifetime of being upright, levelheaded Jaylah she did something crazy. And it worked. She’d met a friend who was more like a sister, snagged a job
writing for
Glamour
, fell in love, and for the first time in her entire life felt completely comfortable in her own skin.

And now this,
Jaylah thought, sucking her teeth so loud her mother turned to look at her.
Everything was going so well and I couldn’t even enjoy it for a year. Three months, that’s all I got, then bam!
She shook her head as an unruly chuckle rolled through her body.

What the fuck am I gonna do now?
The question banged around in her head demanding to be answered.

“Baldwin! Jaylah Baldwin,”
the nurse called, dragging her out of her thoughts.

Mrs. Baldwin stood first, grabbed her things and headed to the door. Jaylah eyed her mother
and suppressed a laugh.

She really thinks I’m still a child
. 

Jaylah
watched as Mrs. Baldwin stepped past the nurse to wait for her. Jaylah could have protested, could have told her mother to have a seat in the waiting room, but why bother? She’d just have to repeat whatever Dr. Lawson said, verbatim, so why not just cut out the middle man?

The nurse led Jaylah and her mother down a small
, neat hallway. The walls were lined with pictures of smiling patients, some holding babies, some merely staring into the camera with grins slathered on their faces. Jaylah grew increasingly annoyed as she moved through the corridor and felt like slapping every single ounce of happiness out of the Polaroid people.

This was not a happy time. Jaylah was confused and exhausted and ready for this whole distraction to be done. She wanted to
ask God for a do-over. Jaylah wished she could go back to whenever she and Johnny had conceived this child and do something differently—insist he wear two condoms, tell him to pull out, get a double dose of the Plan B pill.

Unfortunately
, there were no take-backs. Jaylah couldn’t rewind the clock; she was stuck in the present, and would have to deal with this before everything spun too far out of control.

“Here you are,” the nurse said directing Jaylah and her mother to a tiny room. “Get undressed and put this on. Dr. Lawson will be
with you in a minute.”

“Thank you,” Jaylah said, then turned her attention to her mother, “Do you mind?”

“Oh please, Jay Jay. It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”

Mrs. Baldwin took a seat in the corner and fished through her purse. Jaylah glared at her mother, rolled her eyes and began undressing. She decided to conserve her waning energy for more important matters than
a pointless argument.

“I hope Dr. Lawson doesn’t take too long,” Mrs. Baldwin said while Jaylah slipped into the gown. She ign
ored her mother, sat on the examination table, and tried to get comfortable while paper crunched beneath her.

Dr. Lawson knocked on the door quickly before poking her head inside. “Ready for me?”

“Yes, we’re ready,” Mrs. Baldwin answered before Jaylah had a chance to open her mouth.

“Great! Jaylah, so good to see you. How’s everything?”

“Pretty good, Dr. Lawson. Well, except I’m pregnant,” she half-laughed, half-shrugged.

“I see. How far along are you?”

“Well—“

“She doesn’t know. That’s why we’re here,” Mrs. Baldwin
cut in.

Dr. Lawson raised an eyebrow. After seeing Jaylah for the last fourteen years she knew just how overbearing Mrs. Baldwin could be.

“Okay, well, let’s try to get to the bottom of it today,” she said, patting Jaylah’s hand. “Mrs. Baldwin, would you mind waiting for us out front? These rooms are so small and I’ll probably need to bring in the ultrasound machine.”

“Uh, sure, sure,” Mrs. Baldwin stammered.

“Thank you. I’ll call you back in before we wrap-up.” Dr. Lawson winked at Jaylah.

Mrs. Baldwin gave the pair a tight-lipped smile. “See you in a
bit.”

Jaylah stifled a laughed and waved at her mother as she walked out the door.
“Thank you. She still thinks I’m a kid.”

“Old habits die hard. Now, what’s this about you being pregnant?”

“I know,” Jaylah threw up her hands.

“Was it planned? You’re 28, correct?
These
are
your prime childbearing years.”

“No, not at all. We even used protection and everything.”

“I see. So, are you happy about this or…”

“Definitely or,” Jaylah huffed.

“Gotcha. When was your last period?”

“The third week in July,” Jaylah said, remembering how she’d bee
n so excited about her new city, and then caught up in the news that Johnny was married that she didn’t even realize she’d missed her cycle. “I noticed I was late in August and took a pregnancy test.”

“
Okay, let’s see what’s going on here. Assume the position,” Dr. Lawson said, smiling.

Jaylah put her legs in the
cold, metal stirrups and tried to relax. She hated getting pelvic exams, didn’t like anyone probing around in her ladyparts unless they were trying to get her off, but Dr. Lawson made the situation slightly more bearable. She would walk Jaylah through the process and explain exactly what she was about to do, even though they’d both been down this road several times before.

“I’m just going to insert the
speculum, so I can do the pap test first, okay?”

“Umm hmm,” Jaylah responded, willing her mind to think about other things, happier things.