Page 4 of Crossroads Magic
“They didn’t tell me I wouldneverconceive,” Ghaliya said now. “Just that I probably wouldn’t carry a child to full term.” She put her hands over her face once more. I was beginning to understand why her makeup was smeared. “I wish I’d remembered that,” she whispered into her hands.
“You had unprotected sex,” I concluded.
She dropped her hands. Her eyes sparkled with defiance. Her back straightened. “So?”
“And the father?”
Her chin came up. Her high cheekbones seemed to grow even higher and haughtier. The expression made her nose ring and blue hair look out of place. “It doesn’t matter.”
“He might think differently.”
Her tone was cool. “I guarantee he wouldn’t give a damn, and he never will.” She sounded as though she was my age, and full of weary wisdom. Again, I wondered what she had been doing in San Fransisco. But that was a conversation for later.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked her. The million-dollar question.
Ghaliya’s defiant posture collapsed. She shrank in on herself. Her hand came up to her mouth. She wiped her lips, her gaze skittering around the kitchen. Then, her shoulders straightened a little. “I want to keep the baby.” Her voice was firm. Then she swallowed. “That is, if Icankeep the baby,” she whispered. Her eyes filled with tears. “I want to try. To see if I can. I gotpregnant, Mom! It’s…it’s a one in a hundred chance and it happened.”
“The odds are higher than that,” I told her. “They said you were unlikely to ever conceive.”
She nodded. Her mouth quivered into a weak smile. “It would be insane to get rid of it. This one chance… I have to see if I can do this.”
My heart ached for her. “You know how unlikely it is that you’ll bear the child to term, don’t you?”
Ghaliya’s eyes filled with more tears. “I know,” she said softly. “But…I have to try. Now this has happened, I have to try.”
I sighed, because she was right. “Eat your pie,” I told her, instead of the million other things I might have said about the fear and the heartache she was voluntarily walking into, and the years she was facing as a single mother. She was so unprepared, so…vulnerable.
?
Even though it was still early, I insisted that Ghaliya shower and then sleep. Everything else—all the talk, the decisions, the planning that would be needed—could wait until tomorrow.
I changed the sheets on my bed while she was in the bathroom. The loveseat unfolded into a bed that I could use. Ghaliya needed a good mattress more than I did.
I was pulling out the extra quilt and pillow from the very top shelf of the shelves behind the head of the bed when Ghaliya stepped out of the bathroom. She wore a clean tee shirt and panties, which meant I could see even more clearly how thin she had grown. She looked frail.
“Why didn’t you keep the house, mom?” she asked. “You sold it off like it didn’t mean a thing to you.”
That stung. “You have no idea…” I began, my tone heated. Then I saw, once more, the paleness of her face.
“You’re not working at the production company anymore, either,” Ghaliya added.
I felt my lips open in surprise.
“I went there first,” Ghaliya said. “The middle of the day, I figured you would be there, working, as you always were.” She tilted her head. “Whatdoyou do, now?”
There was an accusatory note in her voice.
I drew in a deep, deep breath. Then another one. It wasn’t working.
“I’ve closed the blinds,” I told her. “Sleep as long as you need to. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I marched out of the room and shut the door. Then through the living room and the kitchen. I fumbled at the apartment door, because I couldn’t really focus. I should have stayedinthe apartment, but after listening to my next-door neighbors’ sex games for three years (he liked to dress up as Obi Wan Kenobi), I knew exactly how thin the walls were.
I got the door open at last, stepped outside and shut it as silently as I could.
Then I leaned my head against the door jamb and let the panic take me. My breath came shorter and shorter, while my heart tried to climb out of my chest. It was the palpitations that scared me the most, and my fear added to the whole cycle.
I began to tremble—that was the lack of oxygen from my panting. Oh, I knew every signal and symptom. But that didn’t help take these moments away. Knowing I was having a panic attack didn’t reduce it.
