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“Can’t.” He squeezes my thigh. “It’s loud in there.”
It’s the third Sunday in January. I’m nine weeks along. I’ve thrown up every morning for two weeks straight, I can’t stand the smell of coffee, and I cried in the shower yesterday because Nik used the last of the good towels. My mama has called me four times this week to ask why I sound so tired, and I can’t lie to that woman one more day. She’ll find out on her own and never forgive me.
So we’re telling them. Today. At Sunday dinner.
Lord, take the wheel.
The little blue house comes into view three blocks from the water, and my stomach does a flip that has nothing to do with morning sickness. Daddy’s truck is in the driveway. Jalen’s bike is on the lawn. The porch light’s already on, even though it’s only four in the afternoon, because Mama likes us to see it from the corner.
Nik parks and turns off the car. Then he looks over at me, completely unimpressed.
“Breathe, Red. You pass out on your mama’s lawn, I have to carry you in, and then your daddy really will kill me.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.” He leans over the console and grips the back of my neck right over my mark, hard enough to make me look at him. “Whatever happens in there, you’re coming home with me tonight. That part’s not up for discussion.”
“Daddy might have something to say about that. Like six feet under.”
He grins. “I’d like to see him try.”
“Nik!”
“I’m joking.” He kisses me, hard and quick, then lets me go. “Mostly.”
Mama made oxtails, greens, cornbread, mac and cheese, and a whole peach cobbler, because she’s been convinced since Christmas that Nik doesn’t eat. She hugs him at the door before she hugs me. She makes him a plate before she makes Daddy’s. Jalen asks him if he can lift the back of a car, and Nik says “Probably,” and I kick him under the table so hard I hurt my own toe.
Daddy watches all of it from the head of the table with his arms crossed, chewing slow.
I can’t eat. Not a bite. Every time I look at the oxtails my stomach rolls, and Mama notices, because Mama notices everything.
“Kisha, baby, you’re not eating.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You love my oxtails.”
“I know, Mama, I just…”
“You’ve been tired for weeks. You don’t sound right on the phone.” She narrows her eyes at me across the table. “And you look puffy.”
“Mama!”
“I’m just saying, your face is puffy.”
Nik makes a sound next to me that might be a laugh he’s choking down. I’m going to murder him in his sleep.
Then Mama sets down her fork. She looks at me. She looks at Nik. She looks at the hand Nik’s had spread over my lower belly under the table this whole time, which she apparently saw, because of course she did.
Her eyes go huge.
“Both of,” she whispers.
Oh, shit.
“Mama…”
“At Christmas! On my porch! He said ‘both of’! I KNEW IT!” She shoves her chair back so hard it screeches. “I knew it, I knew it, I KNEW IT! Kisha Monique Williams, are you pregnant?!”
