Balance

by Elaje López

The day I ran into Rishi at the grocery store, I was still living at home. I was buying butter and a lime, and I had been debating between two equally pitiful looking hard yellow-green limes when I saw him walking towards me. 

The first thing I saw was his hair. It had always been thick and curly, but it looked like he’d finally figured out the perfect length for it, and it looked so much better than it used to in high school, with all these lush dark loops like brushstrokes. When I had stopped paying attention to his hair, I saw that his face had crinkled up in a smile, and I registered that he had said hello to me. 

“Long time no see!” I responded, and I reached out to give him a hug, accidentally dropping my lime in the process. He went in for the hug before picking it up for me, an order I was relieved by, because I didn’t want to do that awkward dance of both bending down for it at the same time or whatever. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked me when the lime was securely back in my hand. 

“I’m living at home right now. And doing some research. I mean, looking for a research position,” I clarified, realizing it was pointless to lie when he could check my LinkedIn to find that I was certifiably jobless. It had been a month since I had gotten rejected from every medical school I had applied to. At that point I was no longer a prospective medical school applicant or even a student anymore. I was, shall we say, professionally challenged, or whatever polite term you could use for someone with a bachelor’s degree and no job. 

“That’s great!” he said, and it actually sounded genuine, unlike many others who had done a poorer job hiding their pity for me at this news. 

“What about you?” I asked. 

“I’m in software development now, living pretty close by. Though right now I’m home visiting my parents for the weekend.”

“So…you’re an engineer? You’re working in tech? Where?” 

“Oh, just the Bay Area,” he said, quite casually. 

I narrowed my eyes at him a little. “You mean like in Mountain View?” You mean you work for Google? being the underlying inquiry. 

He just shrugged bashfully, the bastard.

“Is it fun? Do you like the people?”

“It’s nothing like I expected,” he said. “But I have met some really interesting people.”

“I can’t wait to tell my mom that you work for Google,” I said. “This is going to rock her world.”

Rishi’s face lit up. “How is she? I haven’t seen her in forever.”

And even though I hadn’t seen him since the end of high school, even though we had fallen out of touch, even though I had texted him to hang out each break home and we had never been able to find time, we fell right back into it: me, trying to get him to laugh. Him, laughing. Me, talking. Him, listening. Me, realizing I was talking too much. Him, telling me he never minded. Me, asking him how long he would be in town. Him, asking me to get a drink later that night. And I said yes. What else could I have done? 

When we got to the bar, I ordered a vodka cran. He got a vodka soda. 

“You’re so boring,” I said. 

“We basically got the same thing.”

“Well, I never said I wasn’t also boring.” 

He laughed. He paid for our drinks. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “I’ll pay you back.”

“No worries,” he said. “I ate so much of your mom’s cooking in high school. I have to make up for it somehow.”

“In that case, I’ll take 500 more vodka crans.”

“There’s no way it was that much.”

“You’re right. Maybe more like 1000.”

“Come on,” he protested. “She’s the one that was always pushing it! ‘Rishi, you look so skinny. Rishi, come try this lentil rice. Rishi, when are you going to stop playing with computers and go to medical school?’”

I was laughing now. “You did take a lot of the heat off me when you were around. Maybe I’m the one who owes you.”

We slid into a booth near the back of the bar, and I sat back, shivering slightly as I felt the green leather on my back. I had worn a tank top, and I already had goosebumps from the air conditioning. 

Before long, warmth was filling my chest and it was making me giggle. I know it sounds like I don’t hold alcohol very well, and most of the time, I was a four-drink girl. But something about the absurdity of being with Rishi in this bar in our hometown was bringing that fifth-drink feeling right around drink number one. 

“What’s so funny?” he said, sipping his drink. I watched the smooth skin of his throat shift as he swallowed. 

“Nothing. This. Us, I guess. I don’t think high school me would have ever pictured us in a bar together. Actually, at this bar together.”

“What’s wrong with this bar?”

I gestured around at the dark booths with their cracked booths, the sticky patch on the floor that someone always tripped over, the flickering lightbulb above us. “It’s Tommy’s.”

Rishi cocked his head to the side. “So?”

I mirrored his head movement. “So…I saw Mrs. Simpson and Ms. Tanaka doing shots at that table when I came home for spring break sophomore year of college.” I pointed over to the booth in the corner, which was the only one that had blue vinyl seats and a lamp attached to the table. 

“So you’re afraid of seeing people you know?”

“Maybe just when it’s unexpected.”

“You and I ran into each other on accident, didn’t we? And that turned out pretty okay. You have a drink now, which is more than you had earlier when we hadn’t run into each other yet.”

“Wow, that’s an incredibly positive way to think about it.” 

“Well, it’s that, and also Percy Walton is the bartender here, so I get my drinks half off.”

My jaw dropped open. “Percy Walton works here?” I craned my head, searching for him behind the brown counter, but I couldn’t see anything over the sea of booths other than the giant stuffed and mounted fish and dirty green dart board hanging high above the array of liquor bottles behind the bar. “You know, he and Amina Ray gave me my first edible in ninth grade, and I got so paranoid that he was secretly a police officer because of his weird wispy mustache. I kept trying to pretend not to be high because I thought he was going to arrest me.” 

“The mustache is a little more grown out now,” Rishi said, laughing. “So I think you’re safe.”

 I was smiling now too. The way he looked when he laughed was always my favorite thing about him. His eyebrows would rise and meet in the middle, as if he was shocked to hear whatever nonsense it was that I was saying, like he was at that moment when I was then struck by another sudden memory at my own evocation of ninth grade. “Oh my God,” I groaned. “Remember that time we got in trouble for eating hot cheetos during orchestra rehearsal–”

“And Mrs. Simpson made you walk all the way down to the front of the classroom and throw them away in front of everyone?” he said. 

“Yes! Because she thought I was the only one eating them! Even though you were the one who brought them to class!”

“I don’t recall that,” he said. “If I remember correctly, you were the one eating them when she asked what you had in your hand, which would make the bag yours.” 

I flicked a drop of condensation from the table at him. “Just because she happened to notice at the moment that I was holding the bag doesn’t mean you couldn’t have taken the fall for me!”

“Oh no, I really couldn’t have. It was so embarrassing what happened to you. I couldn’t have risked that,” he said, just barely dodging another condensation flick. 

“Coward.” 

“Nope. Just a lot of self preservation. Actually, if you really think about it, I took a loss for that bag. Maybe you should forgive some of my debts to you.” 

“Fine,” I said. “Where does that leave us, then? Who owes who more?”

“Depends what kind of owing you mean,” Rishi said. 

“There’s more than one kind?”

“There could be.”

“Okay. What kind do you think you owe me?”

“Just cold hard cash.”

“And what kind do I owe you?”

Rishi seemed to hesitate at this. His silence lasted a beat too long, and I suddenly felt the discomfort of a loss of momentum in the conversation. His facial expression seemed to have subtly shifted, but I wasn’t sure how, or why. I still knew we were joking, and I had felt Rishi knowing it along with me, until suddenly he didn’t. 

“Well, I’ll let you think about that one, while I get us another round,” he said finally, and he picked up my empty glass along with his and walked away before I could say anything. 

When Rishi came back, he slid it across the table to me, sitting back down with his own freshened drink. I grabbed mine and sucked as hard as I could on the tiny little straws, wincing at the stream of vodka that hit the back of my throat. I stirred the drink as best I could. 

“So is medicine still what you’re planning to do?” he asked me. 

I thought about it for a moment. It had been my only plan, hadn’t it? Nothing else had ever really appealed to me. Growing up, I did the things my mom insisted I would have to do that I knew she learned from her friends who had successful children: I dutifully attended my piano lessons, I took the hardest AP classes, I volunteered at the local youth center, and I tutored our neighbor’s son even though he never for a moment paid attention to anything I said. When I had gone to college, I defaulted to the same types of things, knowing that going through the mechanics of those things couldn’t possibly lead me astray. I never considered that on the other side, I would be left facing a future that I had contributed nothing to build. “I don’t know.”

“But it’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so?”

“I mean, I guess I do want it. Yes. I do,” I decided. 

“Well, do you like the idea of being a doctor? Like, being in a clinic, getting coughed on, that kind of thing?”

“Does it really matter?” I asked. Seeing that he was opening his mouth to answer, quite seriously, yes, of course it does, I quickly reframed: “I mean, it does matter, and I don’t hate any of those things, which is good. But if this was all I was ever going to be, it’s not that important whether or not I love it, right?”

Rishi did not look convinced. I tried again. “I mean, do you love working in tech? Do you love writing code? Do you love being surrounded by tech bros?”

“I’m good at it. Which makes it feel good to do. So yes, I think I love the work itself. The environment, the other stuff, that’s just work stuff that I would have at any job.” 

I sucked on a piece of ice from my glass and crunched on it, studying him. “So tell me something. Do your parents think tech is a good enough career for you?”

“Definitely,” he said.

“Did you do it because they wanted you to?”

“No,” he responded. “They’re happy about it, obviously. But I’m not doing it because of them.”

I sat back, pulling my straw out of my glass to point at him. “How do you know that there’s a difference? They were happy you were going into tech, so there was no negative reinforcement. Ergo–”

“I can’t believe you’re saying the word ‘ergo’ after three drinks–”

“–I have an excellent vocabulary, and ergo, there’s no way to really know if you would have wanted to go into tech so badly if your parents hated computers or something.” 

“Don’t you think your parents would be happy with whatever you end up doing? Because it’s you?”

I rolled my eyes. “My mother isn’t here right now, Rishi.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means stop being a kiss-ass.”

“Why would I need to kiss ass? She already loves me.”

This time I snorted a little as I laughed. “It’s really cute that you think that.”

He said nothing, just leaned back, smiling a little. I studied him again, and this time his eyes met mine. We sat in silence, watching each other. The glass was cold and sweating in my hand, but I felt warm all over now, the lights shining in an even deeper orange. The air felt thicker, and I found my eyes wandering down his face again. It was learner, sharper in some places, different than I remembered. He had changed. There was something about seeing him as a version of himself that was fully formed, I think. In high school, he had been shyer, less confident, less quick with a witty comment, more prone to an awkward laugh. And now, as I felt myself regressing into a version of me that was even more unsure of myself now than I was back then, he had come into his own body and mind. He was the one that was confident, funny, and successful. Like the points of a rhombus, we had diverged, but not in the directions I would have expected. He leaned forward, moving his hand towards me until it was resting on the table so close to my hand that I could almost feel the cool press of his fingers. 

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asked. I nodded.

When he pressed me up against the back door of the bar and kissed me, I couldn’t help but notice how different this felt from the first time, all the way back in high school. Somehow I expected the feeling to be the same, even though I had by then kissed my fair share of people and I was sure he had too. I was ready for the same awkward hesitance, an acute awareness of his tongue in my mouth, the same feeling of utter wrongness knowing this was Rishi, my friend Rishi, someone I had never considered in that way. But this was different. It was deep, and warm, and he smelled like something musky and delicious, and he held me so softly, like I was a delicate thing that he would only get to touch once so he’d better be gentle. 

The next morning, I laid wide-eyed in my bed. Images of Rishi from the night before flashed in my mind, and I slammed my hands over my eyes as if that would make them disappear. We had hooked up, and it had felt so good, too good, that I knew it had to be a trap. This was the Iranian way, after all: you couldn’t brag about anything, or wear your fancy jewelry in public, or tell anyone you were having a great day rather than just a good one. You had to burn incense in the house if someone found out your daughter got into college, and wear your plainest clothes to parties, and tell everyone your day had been “not bad.” Otherwise, your arrogance would hunt you down and make you regret that you had ever been foolish enough to think your joy came alone. It always, always came at a cost. 

A few weeks after the night at the bar, it was May 1st. This was the deadline for all prospective medical students to commit to whatever school they were going to end up at. Mom had made lunch and we were just sitting down when she brought up Khanoom Mortazavi’s daughter, Maryam. I found Khanoom Mortazavi’s perfume nauseating and her personality even worse. But she was the one who supplied my mother with the majority of her gossip about the other Iranians in our community, so I knew I would never hear the end of references to her. 

“You know, she said Maryam is doing an MD-PhD. She is planning to go to UCLA. Did you apply there?”

I was taking a large sip of water and used that moment to put a long pause between her question and my answer. “Yes,” I said finally. 

“She says that for MD-PhD programs, the students pay no tuition. Maryam will not have student loans. It’s the best path, she says.”

Well, at least now I could take comfort in the fact that Khanoom Mortazavi was going to evil eye herself by bragging and would wake up and find that all her hair had fallen out or something. “Yeah, I heard that somewhere,” I mumbled, mashing the eggplant stew on my plate into my rice. 

“Have you found out about what medical school you are going to?” Baba asked me. Now I could see what they were doing. They were hoping I could give them an answer so Mom could come back to Khanoom Mortazavi and faux-humbly let slip that I had gotten into Harvard or started an expedited program that would have me doing neurosurgery by June. 

“I actually was going to talk to you about that,” I said. “It turns out that most of the schools did not get back to me about my application.”

“You were rejected?” Mom asked, a spoonful of rice halfway to her mouth, forgotten now. “From where?”

There was no use trying to hide it now. “From everywhere.” I stabbed a piece of eggplant on my plate. 

“What does that mean, everywhere? How many places?”

“It means I’m not going. I didn’t get in anywhere.”

“So what now? You are just nothing? You stay here and do nothing?” Mom demanded. 

“Mom, it’s not a big deal. I can just apply again.” 

“What will you say on your new application? You’re doing nothing! You haven’t done anything since you came home!”

Baba put his hand on her wrist and she shook it off. “After everything we did for you,” she said, standing up from the table, and I didn’t dare look up to see that she had grown to nine feet tall, that she now blocked out the sun. “After everything we sacrificed to come to this country so you could have a better life. My life is not my own anymore. It is yours. And you are throwing it away. Yours and your father’s and my life.”

I stared at my plate. The eggplant stew on it looked revolting now. I felt my stomach churning and my leg began to shake. Tears burned the corners of my eyes. I listened to Mom walk away, and then I looked up. Baba was looking at me from his seat directly across from me at the table, Mom’s empty seat leaving us not as a triangle but simply a line, a direct channel from him to me for the sorrow etched plainly on his face. I retched, and ran to the bathroom, where I threw up in the toilet. 

It wasn’t until the fifth time that I threw up over the next two days that I started to wonder if something was wrong with me. I had eaten meals at home only, and Mom and Baba weren’t sick. Of course, I didn’t know that for certain; I was too scared to ask them and pop the bubble of silence that had encompassed us since our last lunch together. It was bad enough that if one of us was in a room in the house, the others would avoid going in. But from what I deduced, the two of them weren’t running to throw up any more than normal. When the reason occurred to me, I sat bolt upright in bed. As quickly as I could, I threw on sweatpants that I could go outside in and car keys. Luckily, neither Mom nor Baba were downstairs, so I ran out to the car as quickly as I could to drive to CVS. 

I didn’t even know where to look for the pregnancy tests once I was there. At the last second, I grabbed a Snapple, knowing I would have to be hydrated enough to pee on command. I couldn’t risk doing a test at home where someone could see the kit in the garbage, so I ran to the cafe next door and locked myself in their bathroom. I took the test. I waited. I watched the seconds tick by on the alarm I set on my phone, and I quickly turned it off a moment before it could ring so that nobody would hear me. Slowly, I tucked my phone back into my pocket, and gingerly picked up the pregnancy test. For a moment, I knew that I was wrong. There was just no way. The little white space would be blank. 

When I saw the pink plus sign, I was shocked at just how unquestionably dark it was. I had considered only that maybe there would be the faintest mark that could leave me dwelling in the space of ambiguity for longer, a reason to buy another test, to convince myself it was a false positive. But the seriousness of the pink insisted on its existence so strongly that I had no choice to accept the reality of it at that moment. I was pregnant. While I had been hiding my rejections and dodging getting a real job and lying to my parents, while I was having sex with Rishi, I had been buying myself time. Now it had caught up to me. I stood there, planted like a rod in an iron gate, staring at the test until I was sure when I closed my eyes I would see a pink plus sign burned into the floating darkness of my vision. I recalled learning in my introductory psychology class in college that the concept of fight or flight wasn’t accurate to every reaction someone can have in an emergency. There were more options, like fawn, or freeze. That was all I could do for those moments after. Just stand there, frozen, staring dumbly at this white stick in my hand, and realize that this was what I deserved. 

Where does selfishness come from? It can’t be inherited, because I have no one to have inherited it from. It sprung up in me fully formed with no precedent. I was a selfish girl, and in the days following, I wondered: if I were to have this baby, would I still be selfish? Would I actually be able to put the baby first, make it my everything, lay down my life for it if it came to that? The idea of this hypothetical baby as a real person was so distant and shrouded in unbelievability that these questions were purely theoretical, never concrete in my concern. I suppose I was still being selfish in that way. 

All I kept coming back to was how I would be able to do it. How would I be as a mother? In the days that followed, I conducted an almost methodical unraveling of who I was as a person to see if I could view myself that way. If I were to grow another person and create a life for them, there had to be some force within me, some substance to shape a baby out of. The act of creation wasn’t always a move from nothing to something. Having a baby seemed to me to be a process much like marble sculpture; you took and took and took from raw material until nothing was left but your creation. And it was a dual creation–of not just a figure but also of absence, of negative space. I thought back to what my mother had said at the lunch table days ago. She was right. She and my father had given their whole lives in exchange for mine, a life they chiseled to be better than theirs, to reach farther. If I were to have this baby, it would inherit that exchange. The cycle would reproduce itself. And I, the negative space, would be left behind. 

You can make something out of nothing, maybe, but you can’t take nothing from nothing. I realized that I had nothing to give to this hypothetical baby. I barely felt like a real person most of the time. Most of my life had been spent carrying out the duties of the things that were expected of me, while I told myself that I would do it because I didn’t mind any of those things anyway. The science classes, the grades, the hobbies prescribed by my mom’s friendships–all these things I carried out with an indifference just weak enough that I was functional and just strong enough that I didn’t question how I felt about any of it. That was how I knew I was selfish. On the surface, I did these things for other people, but I was still comfortable in the chrysalis of my life. There was nothing there that I truly didn’t want to do. 

This led me to my final three conclusions after days of thinking that spiraled like dirty water down a drain: One, that I was selfish enough to know I didn’t want to have to endure the pain of motherhood to find out if I could rise to the challenge. Two, that I wouldn’t be able to go through with something if I didn’t really want it. And three, that Rishi would be completely justified in hating me for that.

Five days after the plus sign appeared on the pregnancy test, Rishi texted me. 

Hey, the message said. I’m coming back into town to see my parents this weekend…can I see you?

I stared and stared at that message for hours. I closed and reopened my phone just to look at it and then I closed it again. I pictured myself seeing him again, rejecting his offer to buy me a drink, using that as a segue to tell him that I was pregnant. I imagined saying it as a joke, him laughing, me pretending like it was still nothing but a joke. I imagined telling him nothing at all. 

I texted him back and told him I was busy during the weekend but that I could go on a walk with him tomorrow evening. He said okay. When I arrived at the park next to his parents’ house where he agreed we would meet, I was surprised to see him sitting on a bench with a small bouquet of flowers, looking nervous.

“Hi,” I said. I did not reach out to touch him or the flowers. 

“Hi,” he replied. He held out the bouquet. “These are for you.” 

“Am I dying?” I joked. 

He smiled an uncomfortable smile. I was not making this easy for him. “I hope not.” 

“They’re beautiful,” I said, as I remembered I was going to be presenting him with life altering news. It was probably better not to humiliate someone before you told them you were going to potentially kill their unborn fetus.

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” Rishi said. “I know we haven’t talked much since the last time we hung out, but I want you to know I really enjoyed seeing you. And I,” and he started to rush through his words a little as if he had practiced them in the rearview mirror of his car, “I still definitely have feelings for you. And I was wondering if you would want to go on a real date with me.”

I stared at him. I could feel my hand start to sweat against the plastic wrapping of the flowers. 

“I’m pregnant.” 

I watched his face cycle through the emotions that I was very well-acquainted with at this point. I looked down. Now it was my turn to deliver the rearview mirror speech. 

“I’m pregnant, and I do know for sure that it’s, um, yours. And I mean, we just saw each other again for the first time in a long time, and I’m still living with my parents, and it’s just definitely not the right time for me to have a, well.” I couldn’t bring myself to say baby because it wasn’t a baby at that point to me and never would be, but I watched Rishi wait for me to finish my sentence and felt my growing dread and discomfort overtake the silence now sitting between us. 

“When did you find out?” he finally said. 

“Last Sunday.” 

He nodded. We sat in silence again. 

“Is there anything you want to know? We can talk about it,” I finally said when I was unable to bear the silence anymore. 

He looked at me, unreadable. “What is there to talk about?” Before I could respond, he continued: “I mean, you’ve already decided, haven’t you?”

“Decided what?”

“That you’re not going to keep the baby.” 

Hearing that come out of his mouth conjured both immediate guilt and immediate defensiveness in me. “That doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it. It’s a weird, crazy situation. If you have feelings about it, I would love to hear them.” 

“Why bother talking about something when we already know the outcome?”

“What’s your problem?” I snapped. “I’m trying to respect your point of view and be a good friend to you.”

“A friend?”

“Isn’t that what we are?”

“Jesus, Noor,” Rishi said, and he looked completely exasperated. I had never seen him like this before, ever. “What I feel is irrelevant because you don’t want to go through with the pregnancy, and that’s the only thing that matters, because that determines what’s actually going to happen.”

“But I’m asking for your opinion! I want to know your feelings! They’re not irrelevant to me!” I could hear my voice rising. 

“Fine,” he said, and he stood up, running his fingers through his hair with all the agitation of a caged animal. “You want to know how I feel? I feel completely blindsided. I feel insane. I cannot believe that for the hundredth time I’ve been pulled in by you only to be pushed out again. I came here to ask you if we could actually give this a try,” and now he was pacing back and forth, looking everywhere but at me, “if we could actually date, if we could be together, because I’m in love with you, and I always have been, and you know that. I know you know that. But you never cared. All through high school, all I did was try to be there for you, to be someone you knew cared for you. You never cared.”

“What do you mean, I never cared?” 

“And now you come to tell me that you’re pregnant and you don’t want the baby, and anything real between us is going to disappear again, and of course I don’t think you should carry a baby that you don’t actually want, but for fuck’s sake, I can’t be this pathetic forever, Noor. I can’t do it anymore.” 

Something very strange happened to me while he was saying this. Every part of me had gone hot, then cold, then hot again. For a second, my body was racing faster than my brain could comprehend, and it took a few seconds for me to realize that the heat I felt running through me was actually anger pulsing from my last toenail to the roots of my hair. I realized this was the one emotion I had not prepared for. I had figured Rishi would be upset, or disappointed, or sad, and that I would feel guilty, or sad along with him, but I looked at this boy I had been closest to in the last years of my childhood, and all I could feel was contempt. 

“You can’t actually be serious,” I said. “Rishi, I haven’t heard from you in over a month. Before that, we hadn’t talked for most of college. Where was I supposed to get the idea that you liked me? You didn’t even text me after we had sex!” Love felt like a completely ridiculous and insane word to even attempt to use. 

“I didn’t know if I could!” 

“Why? Did your fingers stop working?” At this point, it was such a stupid thing to say, but the absurdity of the situation was clouding my ability to think rationally. 

“You’re always in your own world, Noor. We come close to something, and then you say nothing, you act like it didn’t happen. After that time we kissed in high school, you acted like nothing happened, so I finally realized I had to get over you. And I thought I had. But now,” and his voice really was rising, “we’re right back where we always are.” 

“And where is that?”

He was quiet. I realized at that moment that I was asking him to say it one more time. To admit that what he really felt was humiliation that he thought I was the agent of, all while realizing that I had nothing I could offer him that would take it away. 

“I’m done,” he announced. “I’m done with this conversation. It’s pointless.” 

I stood up, picking up the bouquet of flowers, throwing them to the ground. Watching Rishi’s face turn from defiance to bare, utter shock. “There is no way,” I said, “no way you thought it would be okay to stand there and yell at a pregnant woman.” With that, I left. 

The next few days were a flurry of silent, solitary action. Googling how to get an abortion. Comparing the prices of the treatments. Looking at the side effects of the pills versus the procedure. Calling Planned Parenthood in the car, which I parked blocks away from the house to guarantee nobody would hear me. 

When I showed up to the appointment, there were three women standing outside holding posters with pictures of pink lumps of flesh on them. I had deliberately picked a clinic far away from any city center to avoid the screaming masses of people that I had seen news articles and videos about. Here, it seemed they had deployed a proportionate number of people to try to stop the few patients coming in or out. Were we not important enough to warrant a crowd yelling and screaming, I wondered? As I walked up, I eyed them warily, and for a moment I wondered if they would even say anything. I envisioned walking straight past them through the doors without hearing a word. But of course, they came towards me as soon as I got close enough, pressing their way to my sides, trying to get me to come talk to them. 

“You don’t have to do this,” one of them kept repeating. I considered telling them I was just getting a mammogram or something. I wondered if that would have changed their minds. Probably not. I stayed silent and walked through the doors. 

Once I was inside, I checked in, then sat in the waiting area. I crossed my legs, and when the knee underneath grew sore, uncrossed them and crossed the opposite one on top. My gaze wandered to the small table across from me, which had a stack of magazines, and a book of sudoku puzzles. I reached forward to pick up the sudoku book. I fished a pen out of my bag, then considered that pencil might be a better choice, since other people would probably want to solve sudoku puzzles in the future. I tried to do one solely mentally, attempting to hold all nine numbers in my mind at once, to remember their places in the boxes and rows and columns, but I couldn’t keep my grip on the visualizations, and eventually gave up. 

Later the next day, after I had gotten my pill prescription, and I had walked back out past the women who gazed at me with silent disappointment to drive home, I was sick, bleeding, lying in bed. There was a knock on my bedroom door. 

“Come in,” I said, sitting upright. It was Baba. He walked in and sat on the edge of my bed, holding out a bowl to me. I looked down. Peeled cucumbers with salt. Cut watermelon. A bunch of grapes. 

“Did you…?”

“Your mom wants me to tell you to come downstairs for dinner.”

I felt tears stinging my eyes. 

“Mersi, Baba,” I whispered. 

“Eat,” he said gently. 

I picked up one of the cucumbers and held it out to him. He took it from me, and I picked up the other one. We both took a bite, and chewed. I relished the saltiness on my tongue, the cold freshness. 

“Baba, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to break the silence with a tone louder than a whisper, but saying it out loud only made the tears fall freely. All of a sudden, the apology held such unbearable weight. “I know I failed you guys. I feel horrible. I’ll make it better, I promise.” 

He patted my knee. “Don’t cry, azizam. Don’t cry.” Of course, that only made the tears flow faster. Soon I was an avalanche of tears and snot and spit dribbling out of my mouth as I attempted to continue chewing. He left the room and returned with a roll of toilet paper. Gently, he wiped my face. I wondered, in that moment, what he would have thought of me had he seen me earlier that day, pushing past the women at the clinic, all alone. What my apology would have been good for, then. 

“Come downstairs,” he said, patting my knee. “Your mom made lubiya polo.” 

“I’m coming,” I promised. He nodded. He left my room, and I piled the pieces of watermelon in my mouth and chewed. The sweet coldness burst against my teeth. I swallowed. I took two grapes and sucked them both into my mouth at the same time, coughing a little when one lodged itself in my throat for a moment. I crunched down on the remaining cucumber and pushed it deeply into my mouth. I ate from the bowl until there was nothing left, and then I picked it up and brought it to my face, extending my tongue so I could lick the salt and the running juices off of it until there was nothing left in the bowl but my own saliva. I put the bowl down and sat back for a moment on my pillows. 

Then, slowly, I got up. I threw away the used tissues. I smoothed my covers. I plumped the pillows. I picked up the bowl, now empty, and walked downstairs. 

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Elaje López is from Northern California. Their work has previously been published in Short Story, Long and Star 82 Review.

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Image: Priscilla Du Preez

ID: an unmade bed with white sheets.