Too late. They were too late. LaLa had done what they refused to do. This woman I’d known for barely a month had delivered my babies while the people paid to protect me left me to die.
“Stay awake, mami. Look at your babies. Look at them.”
I looked down at the two faces pressed against my chest. One girl. One boy. Both with their father’s nose, their mother’s lips, their own story already written into their features.
“Tell Prime,” I managed, my voice barely a whisper. “Tell him… we have twins. Tell him… I love him.”
“You’re gonna tell him yourself.” LaLa was pressing towels between my legs, her hands covered in blood, her voice fierce with determination. “You hear me? You’re gonna walk out of here with both these babies and you’re gonna put them in his arms yourself. Don’t you DARE leave me to explain this shit alone.”
I wanted to laugh. It came out as a wheeze.
The cell door crashed open. COs and medical staff finally flooding in, too many voices talking at once, hands reaching for my babies, machines beeping, orders being shouted.
But all I could see was LaLa’s face above me. Her eyes fierce. Her jaw set. Her bloody hands still holding mine.
“You did it, mami,” she whispered. “You did good.”
Then everything went dark.
38
MEHAR
“ZAINAB! ZAINAB WHAT’S WRONG?!”
There was nothing but dead air. Then a click, and the automated recording kicked in that saidthe inmate has disconnected from this call.
I stared at my phone. Hit redial. Got the generic voicemail for the facility. Hit redial again. Same thing. Again. Again. Again, until my fingers were trembling so bad I could barely find the buttons.
“Come on, come on, come on?—”
Nothing. No way back in. No way to reach her. No way to find out if she was okay or if she was bleeding out on the floor of that disgusting place while some underpaid guard stepped over her body on the way to their break.
“Babe?” Thad appeared in the doorway of his bedroom, shirtless, face still soft from the nap he’d been taking when I came over. “What’s going on? I heard you yelling.”
“Something’s wrong with Zainab.” I was pacing his living room now, phone pressed to my chest, my mind replaying that scream over and over. It wasn’t a scared scream. It wasn’t an emotional scream. It was pain. Raw, animal pain, the kind that comes from deep inside your body when something is goingvery, very wrong. “We were on the phone and she just…she screamed and then the line went dead and I can’t get through and I think… I think she might be in labor, Thad.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” He was in front of me now, hands on my shoulders, bending down to catch my eyes. “Breathe. Take a breath for me.”
“I can’t BREATHE, something is wrong with my sister!”
“I hear you. I understand. But you panicking ain’t gonna help her right now.” His voice was steady, grounding. The way it always was when I started spiraling. “What do you need? What can I do?”
I pulled away from him, already grabbing my purse off the counter, shoving my feet into my sneakers by the door. My hands were still shaking. My whole body was shaking.
“I have to go.”
“Go where? She’s in California?—”
“I have to call Prime. I have to tell him something might be happening. I have to—” I was rambling, stuffing my phone in my pocket, patting myself down to make sure I had my keys. “He needs to know. He can get people there faster than I can, he can call the jail, he can?—”
“Mehar.” Thad caught my hand as I reached for the door. His grip was gentle but firm. “At least let me drive you. You’re shaking, baby. You shouldn’t be behind the wheel like this.”
For half a second I almost said yes. Almost let him take care of me the way he always did, the way that made everything feel manageable and safe.
But something was pulling me out of that apartment. Something beyond the panic about Zainab. A feeling I couldn’t name yet, buzzing under my skin like static, telling me to move. To go. To be alone with whatever was happening inside my own body.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” I pulled my hand free and opened the door. “I’ll call you when I get home.”
