She patted my back a couple of times before her muffled voice asked, “Can we please hurry? I feel like I’m about to throw up all over Habib’s floor.”
I laughed. “What you know ’bout Habib?”
“Boy, hush. I been coming here since I was little.”
Of course she had. Every Black or Brown kid who grew up in The Bay knew who Habib was.
I spotted the pregnancy tests, and we stopped. I stared at them, confused. Arielle looked just as lost, so I said, “Let’s just get one of each.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary?—”
“We want this shit to be accurate, so one of each. Come on, help me,” I said as I snatched tests off the shelf.
With a sigh, she followed suit, and we walked up to the front of the store. I wanted to go grab a sub from the back, but I didn’t want to keep my baby waiting, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet to pay for all the tests.
Habib looked at all the tests and then at me and then at the tests again before he shook his head and laughed.
“What?” I asked defensively.
Habib shook his head. “Nothin’, young blood.”
Normally, when he spoke with slang, it cracked me up. Right now, I didn’t feel much like smiling. Maybe I went overboard with all the tests, but shit, I was nervous.
After paying two hundred and twenty dollars, we left the store.
Once we were in the car and I pulled out of the parking lot, I glanced at Arielle and said, “Talk to me. How you feelin’?”
She groaned. “Mostly car sick.”
“And what about the possibility of carrying my baby?” My hand slid from her thigh to her flat stomach.
“I mean, that’s the dream, isn’t it?” she asked.
I glanced at her before taking a right turn. “It is, but it doesn’t worry you because it happened so fast?”
She leaned her head against the window again and shook it. “No. I think I’m too exhausted to worry about anything. If I’m pregnant, I’ll be happy as hell to carry your big-headed baby, and I’ll pray extra hard that I’ll feel better really soon and that this doesn’t last the entire pregnancy. If I’m not pregnant, then we’llsee what the doctor says tomorrow. Either way, things will get figured out.”
My hand moved to her cheek, and I caressed it. “That’s my baby.”
I let her rest for the rest of the drive. When we got back to my house, where we’d been spending most of our time, I helped her out of the car, and we made a beeline toward the downstairs bathroom.
“We have a problem,” she muttered as she looked up at me from inside the bathroom.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have to pee.”
I blinked at her. “Not even a little?” She shook her head. I let out a breath to release some of the nerves I felt bouncing around my stomach. “Okay . . . Do you want some water?”
“Yeah, that should help.”
And so for the next half an hour, I watched as she guzzled down three water bottles.
“Still don’t have to go?” I asked impatiently.
“I don’t know. I must be a nervous pee-er or something,” she said as she paced the length of the bathroom.
I had already grabbed a plastic cup from the kitchen after reading the instructions on all the pregnancy tests. I snatched it from the counter by the sink and handed it to her. “Try, baby.”
