“Have you been to a doctor?” he asks quietly. Toby’s always been soft-spoken. You’d think that would contradict his tall physical stature, but his gentle nature complements it.
I shake my head.
Elbows resting on his knees and hands clasped loosely in front of him, he drops his eyes to the floor and nods slowly. After an extended pause he asks, “Does your grandma know?”
Knowing I won’t answer him verbally, he glances up in my direction and I shake my head again. But then I add, “She’ll kick me out when she finds out who the father is.” Trying to blink back tears doesn’t keep them at bay.
His eyes begin to aimlessly roam the room, he’s thinking.
I let him.
“You can still go to the police,” he whispers. He doesn’t want to bring it up because it will upset me, but that doesn’t stop the burn of embarrassment from creeping up my neck and the bile to rise in my throat.
I shake my head fiercely and my tone gets defensive. “No, that’s not an option.”
“Why not? He’s a professor and he took advantage of you,” he pleads.
“Exactly,” I say exasperatedly. “He’s my professor and no one would believe me.” My words have dissolved into a torrent of tears. “Iwent out to dinner with him when he asked me to.Ilet him kiss me in his office at schoolknowinghe was married—”
“You also saidnowhen it mattered most,” he cuts me off to gently remind me.
I’m shaking my head again. I don’t know if it’s to ward off the awful memory of what happened or to get him to stop talking. “I shouldn’t have been there to begin with.”
He stands and walks toward me slowly. When he’s directly in front of me, he stops and says, “Herapedyou. Thatwill neverbe your fault.”
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was in shock, numb, when I came home and I couldn’t go to our apartment because I couldn’t bear the thought of facing my grandma. Going through something like that changes a person: physically, emotionally, psychologically. I felt like she would be able to tell what happened with one look at me, and things between us would never be the same again. My shame drove me downstairs to the basement of the house instead of upstairs to our apartment. That’s where Toby found me crying, shattered. He’s probably the only person in the world who could’ve gotten me to tell the truth that night about what happened, because for some reason, I knew he wouldn’t judge me. Toby might be a loner and have no one, but I think he’s also one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever known. He’s perpetually melancholy and that somehow translates into being perpetually in need of taking sadness from others, like he’s willing to harbor sadness for the world so others have a chance at happiness because he thinks he doesn’t.
Covering my face with my hands because I’ve always believed I was strong and I hate feeling weak, I say, “I could lose my scholarship if I reported him, Toby. You don’t understand. My parents had nothing. My grandma has nothing.Ihave nothing. This degree is my only hope to change that. It was my mom’s dream for me to go to college. I want to make a difference someday. That’s not going to happen if I tell the world my English professor raped me and I’m having his baby.” This feels like a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.
“Are you keeping the baby?” Toby asks.
The thought never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t. Abortion isn’t something I can do and adoption isn’t either. Half of this baby is mine, no matter how it was conceived.
“It’s mine,” I plead soberly, like that should explain everything.
He nods thoughtfully. “Do you really think your grandma would kick you out if she found out?”
“I can’t tell her I was raped. I can’t.” The tears have stopped, and I look up at him so he knows how serious I am. “I just can’t.You’re the only one who knows my secret and it’s going to stay that way.”
He nods again, but he doesn’t agree with my logic. “She needs you, she can’t kick you out. She wouldn’t do it.”
“My grandma is the sweetest person I know, but if she found out the baby’s father is a married man, she would never forgive me. Marriage is sacred.” The final words stick in my throat. I always thought it was sacred to me too. I watched my parents, a white man and a black woman, endure prejudice and racist remarks in the name of love and the sanctity of marriage. Their relationship in the late sixties and seventies in this country was marginalized, rare, and inexplicably misunderstood by the majority. Which is bullshit, love is love, but that’s how it was. I feel like I’ve betrayed them and the love they were forced to fight for. Guilt, I have so much guilt.
I’m looking at Toby’s hands hanging at his sides. There’s pencil lead smudged on his fingertips; he was drawing before he came down here. That small thought is a distraction that I grasp onto because I’ve seen his drawings and they’re unbelievably good.
His voice pulls me out of my thoughts like a swimmer trying, but failing, to tread water. “Hear me out before you say anything.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nod anyway.
“What if your grandma thought the baby was mine?”
I’m stunned, but I find the words to cut him off. “No. Absolutely not. I can’t let you do that for me.”
He tilts his head and licks his lips. “Hear me out,” he repeats patiently. “She caught us kissing on the couch the day we…you know…” he trails off and shrugs and letsslept togethergo unsaid. “She already assumes we were dating. Maybe she still thinks we are.”
She does. Neither Toby nor I have ever talked about what happened that day. It was two months before the incident with my professor. Toby came to our apartment to fix the stove. Grandma was taking a nap. We commiserated in our unspoken loneliness. It was profound that day, a driving force. We went from staring at each other, understanding and empathizing completely without words, to kissing with the same conviction within moments. One thing led to another; it was like we both turned our brains off and let emotion guide us into the blissful whirl of connection we both so desperately needed. Neither of us intended for it to go that far, but it was a combined force that neither of us wanted to stop. I will never forget the look on his face when he was inside me; it was devastatingly beautiful and tragic at the same time. He looked like someone who was suspended in the imagination of another person’s vivid dream, taking in every detail because it didn’t belong to him. He was curious but also knew it was impossible and wouldn’t last. I felt the same way. So like a soap bubble, we both floated on it, inside it, until it burst and disappeared. Afterward, we dressed and kissed on the couch, trying to regain the magic. The magic didn’t return because it wasn’t supposed to. Grandma caught us, and we ended up standing in the hallway wholeheartedly thanking and apologizing to each other with our eyes, while awkwardly saying nothing with our mouths because that’s how we both are. He may be quiet and I may be outspoken, but neither of us talk about feelings. We keep that shit bottled up tight. His eyes are soulful and honest. I’m looking at them now.
“I can’t do that to you.Youcan’t do that to you.”
