And Then The Sky Bled Red Things started to shatter, the cracks becoming painfully expansive in the days following the birth of my baby. We were fine, elated even, before our baby was born–at least I’d like to think so. Tijésùnimí—TJ to most people who’d known him as a child—and I had decided to wait for two years post-wedding before trying for kids. I’d bumped into TJ nearly five years ago on the way out of the luxury hospice facility where I’d just dropped Mother off after her most recent schizophrenic episode. At that moment our eyes locked, and something had settled beneath my gut—I didn’t know what it was, but I was certain it was there to stay for the long haul. Sure, he was conventionally beautiful—sporting the typical black guy fade, full beard and a black stud shining in his left lobe—but it ran deeper than that for me. Perhaps it was instant infatuation, lust or simply fate pulling me to him—whatever it was, I knew I would not leave the facility without at least knowing his name. We’d bonded over our mutual parental care responsibility we’d never imagined adulthood would welcome us into—him caring for his cancer-ridden father and having spent hours loitering around the facility talking about our shared—but vastly different—selection of music, literature and movies. We’d spent the early days of our marriage the happiest versions of ourselves, never once worrying about family and societal pressure to bear offspring or questioning any underlying medical condition that would deter us from becoming great parents in the future. Those two years saw us wrapped up in the love bubble we’d enjoyed before we’d said our I Dos. Ours was a love that had easily consumed us, almost to the point of damnation and for brief moments in our cocoon–when time seemed to stop and it was just us–I’d questioned the reality of bringing kids into the safe mix we’d built for ourselves. I never told TJ any of this, for fear it would lead him to question whether he’d made the right choice with me. TJ wanted kids–the whole half a dozen of them–and the idea in and of itself was terrifying, I’d come to admit. “Kéjì,” He would murmur when we lay satisfied beneath the rumpled sheets, tracing a finger along my naked back with a lazy smile on his face. “Can you imagine it? Tiny hands, tiny feet running all over the house…” It was his dream and the next automatic step after our two years of trifling about was up. I would smile, wearing a perfectly crafted form of excitement whenever he would bring the topic up, even though everything within me screamed against the very idea. But then somehow–as if by a stroke of magic–I began warming up to the idea. Having a mini- me–someone who could and would become my best friend. Tiny hands, tiny feet like he’d said. I could see the full picture and for the first time, I felt a fraction of the flutters of excitement he proudly wore. So when a missed period and a series of over-the-counter tests confirmed her existence to me, I must confess, my fears took precedence over any elation I’d once felt at the idea. But we were fine. “She’s crying, Kéjì.” TJ’s tired voice breaks through the tumultuous thoughts holding me captive. I stare at him but don’t really see anything. It’s been like this for weeks, staring but not seeing. It was all my life amounted to these days. Staring at her. Glaring at him. Wondering. Pondering. Envisioning what a life without her would look like. It was in those moments the voices in my head became louder than any emotional attachment I was supposed to feel towards her. They would tell me to shove her little body under the bathtub until the curling sounds of gargling water becomes louder than her already piercing wails. They’d remind me that I’d had inhibitions about bringing her to the world anyway, whispering to me how she’d always be in danger anyway and I was the only one capable of freeing her from a lifetime of pain. On some days I looked at her and agreed with them–my mind yanking me back to painful memories of my schizophrenic mother who’d smashed my hand against the burning stove, convinced I was one of the demons her pastor had warned her about. Other days, I was more angry. At myself, at the world and at them. Those were the
