Jubilee

by Jennifer Givhan

  “Okay,” he said, freezing in a stiff, robotic pose, mock bracing himself, playing along. “I’m ready. What’s the good word?”

  She set the hammer in her lap and said, her eyes straight at his, “I’m pregnant.”

  He stared at her, waiting for her to crack a smile or jump up and start laughing and say she was teasing him and he was so gullible. But she stayed composed, returning his gaze without flinching. He cleared his throat, the muscles in his neck and jaw tensing.

  “You are?”

  She nodded.

  He pulled out his inhaler and puffed. Seriously, there was no air in his lungs. There went his theory she’d cured his asthma. “When did you . . . you’re preg . . . really?” Why are you questioning her? You think she’s lying? Like one of those fake pregnancies? You want to ask her for the damn pee stick?

  Bianca nodded again, and her face looked like it might crack, this strange half-smiling, half-on-the-brink-of-tears. “I can bring you the sticks I peed on as proof.”

  “Nah, I’m good. I mean, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?”

  “No, I’m sorry for asking you like that. I’m . . . I’m . . . You’re pregnant?”

  She threw a pillow at him. She was crying but in this weird hiccough way like she was also laughing only she was crying. “I am. With child. In calf. Half-caff. Knocked up.”

  He wanted to hold her. But he couldn’t move. He stared, transfixed by her, cross-legged on the bed, tank top hugging her breasts, the thin material showing the outlines of her nipples, rounded belly, and hips he couldn’t get enough holding.

  Could she handle this? Were they ready? What about Jayden?

  She frowned. “Josh, are you upset?” She looked at him like he’d run over Kanga and threatened to run over her too. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “I’m . . .” He grabbed his inhaler, puffed it twice more.

  “Great, I’ve sent you into an asthma attack.” She rolled her eyes melodramatically.

  He strode across the room and lifted her from the bed, wrapping her legs around him. “You’re pregnant?” he asked again, as if those were the only words he knew.

  She laughed in that same hiccough way. “Yes. I’m pregnant.”

  He held her in the air, clasping her feet around his torso. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “We’re having a baby,” he said.

  “Another one.”

  His stomach dropped.

  He glanced past her at the bassinet in the corner of the room. She’d replaced the playpen he’d set up there for her with the one from her old bedroom at Matty’s, the one that rocked and vibrated and played weird “womb” sounds. Bee was pregnant. With a real child.

  And mostly Joshua was happy. But also, it was hard to breathe, like his heart had grown too large for his chest. There was no room for his lungs.

  Bianca stopped seeing Dr. Norris. His receptionist called to reschedule the appointment she’d missed, and when Bianca told her she wasn’t returning, Dr. Norris called, in his Scottish accent that slayed her. He was concerned, and why had she made such a hasty decision when they were beginning to make progress? She stood on the balcony of Josh’s apartment watching traffic cross the 57; she pictured Dr. Norris as William Wallace or Mama’s priest, riding a horse into battle for her. She’d never needed him, she said. It was Mama’s idea to unshock her in the first place. She was fine.

  While he talked, Bianca stared at the arboretum, catty-corner to the freeway. The sugar pines were her favorite. They never lost their leaves, when all the others yellowed or bared their branches toward winter. The cactus were resilient too. But shorter, so she couldn’t see them over the garden walls, not like the tall pines and oaks and firs.

  Dr. Norris asked about Jubilee.

  She reminded him their sessions were voluntary. It was her right to end them. He was calm in a patronizing way that soothed her, which she hated, because she fessed up about Joshua. She didn’t owe Dr. Norris anything. She would never have to see the psychiatrist again, and it wasn’t his business what she did in her noncrazy life. But something about his soothing accent and the fact that she could also picture him inside a confessional booth, the phone offering the anonymity of a veil, made her want to swear to this neutral territory that she’d moved past the Valley and that Joshua took good care of her (not that she needed taking care of . . . with those fucking conventional and misogynist undertones . . . but also, it was true).

  Dr. Norris asked about her meds, and she told him she’d had to stop taking those a long time ago because she was pregnant. She steeled herself for a speech, but instead Dr. Norris said, “It sounds like you’ve found a way to reshape yourself from that wishbone you loved. You’ve found a way to reconcile the floating pieces of The Lovers.”

  She had to put her phone down for a second to wipe tears from her face and the screen of the phone with her sleeve before she could say anything. The arboretum’s trees were nodding her on in the breeze. Dr. Norris had remembered what she’d said about his painting. He’d understood what she’d meant when she began splitting—self from self.

  “Thank you, Dr. Norris. I think I’ll miss you after all.”

  Joshua marveled at how the semester had commenced and somehow they were making it work, their situation: college students, Bee pregnant, raising Jayden. They’d picked classes to coincide with each other’s schedules, and he still had foster care money for Jayden and his grants and scholarships for growing up in the foster care system himself. Bianca had scholarships and loans, and her part-time job at the writing center, so it didn’t feel like a stretch in the beginning, their new state of affairs. He drove them all to Matty’s to drop off Jubilee in the mornings, then to campus where Jayden went to daycare and they went to class, and in the afternoons they picked up Jubilee then all went home together. Like a family. Yeah, it was weird they had to drop off and pick up Jubilee, but he didn’t want to tip the scales. They were fine. They were normal. It was such a small detail.

  He went with Bee to her ob-gyn, but that first appointment, she asked him to wait in the lobby. “I’m embarrassed about the pap smear,” she said.

  He said he understood, but he didn’t. You sure she’s not lying to you about this pregnancy? This wasn’t the fifties anymore. He hadn’t expected to wait like the husbands in old sitcoms. But he respected Bee, so he waited outside.

  At the next doctor appointment a month later, she asked him to come in because the ultrasound tech was there. “I want you to hold my hand when the tech looks for a heartbeat,” Bee said. She was all jittery and cold, which made him nervous too. But he was relieved. Bee was letting him in. She was telling the truth. He felt ashamed for doubting her. “I’m ten weeks,” she said. “The heart should’ve been beating for a while. It’s not always detectable this early. I hope they find it.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be there.” He said it, but he was scared. Things he loved got taken away. His sister, Olivia, for instance. He had no idea where she was. Jayden never asked for her anymore, not since Bee had come along.

  Bee clutched his hand as the tech squeezed cold jelly onto her skin and began sliding the monitor around. Joshua held his breath and imagined for a split second what would happen if the tech couldn’t find anything. If from her white coat she looked at them sadly, shaking her head. For a split second, he imagined everything falling apart.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump. A baby. The tech found it. A baby he’d helped make.

  Tears smeared Bee’s cheeks. He put his face to hers and whispered, “Marry me.” Stay with me. Sign the papers that show me I’m yours. That I’m real. That we are.

  At first she looked at him as if he’d told a wildly inappropriate joke. Like he was a clown and needed to stop messing with her. His heart beat so loud he swore she could hear it. She didn’t say anything for so long, he was choking on his own heartbe
at against her silence. He was tempted to start laughing and pretend to be a damn clown.

  Then she grinned and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Yes.”

  He kissed Bee and the tech was clapping, saying, “Congratulations.”

  The baby was real. Bee was marrying him.

  Then why was he still scared?

  Sundays, if they’d finished all their papers and studied for their exams, they visited the Getty Museum, a white castle atop a hill overlooking UCLA, the school Bianca said she should’ve gone to, pointing it out on the tram that carried them upward from the street-level entrance where the park-and-ride bus dropped them off to the marbled museum stairs.

  “But then you wouldn’t have met me,” he answered.

  “Ever the optimist, Joshy.”

  Los Angeles glimmered through the glass, so pristine from the tram. The Getty was a favorite spot in the city; every time he visited, he turned from pauper to prince, and riding up toward Olympus, he felt, just briefly, the separation rich folks must’ve felt in their sparkling, white architecture high above folks like him and his little family.

  Bianca, who was beginning to show, held Jayden’s hand as they stared out the window. Joshua tugged off the straps of his heavy backpack, chock-full of everything he needed, and dug through the front pocket for the camera. He sifted through a miniature first-aid kit, flashlight, batteries, cell phone charger cords, and Swiss army knife. It had taken a few years, but he finally stopped carrying a change of clothes for himself the way he’d done growing up, since he’d never known when he’d need to run. He still carried a change of clothes for Jayden, because accidents happen.

  He snapped the picture, and Jayden asked, “Bee, what do we get at the getting museum?”

  She smiled and winked over at Joshua, aware he’d been photographing them. “You mean, the Getty Museum?”

  “That’s what I said, the getting museum. What do we get there?”

  “An appreciation for works of art.”

  “Huh?”

  “You get to fall in love with art.”

  “I already love him.”

  “Who?”

  “Art!”

  Bee smiled wide, tickling him. “Tontito, you got me.”

  They stepped off the shuttle and climbed the white steps, everything shining and clear as a fantasy. A photograph of a family. Joshua’s own version of the American dream.

  “What’s the sign say?” Jayden asked.

  “The J. Paul Getty Museum,” Bee answered.

  “I thought this was Art’s museum.”

  As they walked around the galleries, Bee’s phone rang several times though she never answered, and in the East Pavilion, staring intently at the late-Renaissance art, she silenced it.

  He’d never pried before, but something about this family outing as an engaged couple with a baby on the way piqued his interest and gave him the courage to speak up. “Hey,” he whispered, “who’s been calling you all day?” She didn’t answer immediately but kept her gaze fixed on the painting of Lot and His Daughters by Orazio Gentileschi, and for an uncomfortable moment, he wondered if it was her ex, the notorious Gabe he’d heard about with such disdain from Matty.

  “The bible twists . . .” she said, nodding toward the painting of two women in a cave, shielding their father, who appeared to be grieving, from the destruction beyond. Bianca said nothing else, but the melancholy in her voice told him her mood had shifted from playful to somber in the time it had taken him to ask her who’d called. He was accustomed to her mood swings, but even he had to admit that her sidetracks, her evasions, sometimes grew tiresome. He knew loving her required patience. And he had that in droves. A kid waiting for parents who never came learns all the waiting games.

  He didn’t press. He could wait.

  It wasn’t until later that evening as they sat together, legs tangled on the couch reading for their separate classes, once Jayden had gone to bed and Jubilee was laid down in her bassinet for the night, that he asked again.

  She didn’t even put down her book. “That was no one, I told you.” (No, she hadn’t told him. But he wouldn’t start a fight.)

  And one last time when they brushed their teeth for bed, after she’d eaten a few saltines to sop up the sleep nausea.

  “Seriously, Bee. Who was on the phone?”

  “Joshy. What’s going on? Why are you acting so inquisitive? It was just a solicitor. I blocked their number.”

  “Why are you being so dodgy? If it were a solicitor, why didn’t you tell me the first time I asked? And come to think of it, that’s a diligent solicitor, calling you all damn day.”

  She stopped brushing and turned toward him, paste foaming at her mouth, but said nothing. Any other day he would’ve thought she looked cute. He shoved his toothbrush into the holder. He couldn’t remember being this mad at her, and he couldn’t even pinpoint why. He just couldn’t understand why she was keeping more secrets from him. The past, fine. But whoever was calling was calling now. Why didn’t she want him to know? He sighed. “Just forget it. You have toothpaste on your face,” he said and walked out of the bathroom.

  After she’d fallen asleep hugging her pregnancy pillow, he got up and took her phone into the bathroom. Tried a few different birthdays for the code. His. Hers. Nothing worked. He couldn’t get in without her knowing.

  Then a text message flashed across the screen. “Mija, I hope you’re safe.” It was from someone named Esme.

  He typed Jubilee into the password box. The screen unlocked.

  Esme had texted Bee a dozen messages over the past several months, all of which were unanswered. The predominant theme was I miss you and worry about you and hope all is well.

  His stomach clenched as he clicked over to another string of unanswered messages in her log. “Bee answer me. I’m sorry okay? I was an insensitive shit! But this has gone on long enough!” and “Chica! I’ve tried calling you 100x! Answer me!” and “I don’t have your fam’s # & this isn’t funny. I just want to know you’re okay” and “If I have to drag my ass to LA I will” and “Sigh. I hope you’re safe. Love you forever.”

  They were all from someone named Lily.

  He said nothing that night, to keep the peace. He was biding his time. He told himself, She will open up to me. I know she will. At least it wasn’t her ex. Just a fight between friends. Esme and Lily. Esme sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on where Bee had mentioned her. Bee’s childhood bestie. He’d never had one, so he didn’t know what friendship was like beyond the movies. And from those he inferred girl fights could be catty and vicious. He didn’t need to get in the middle. He was sure Bee would tell him all about it, in her own time. Like she always did.

  The weeks leading up to the wedding were hectic. He hadn’t meant to upset her, not at the apartment laundromat. He’d had every intention of allowing Bee to bring Lily up on her own. But as they went through their routine (her loading the dirty clothes into the washers and him folding the clean clothes) they discussed who would come to witness and sign the marriage certificate, and he couldn’t help himself.

  “Are you going to invite your friend Lily? I’d love to meet her.” He almost slipped and asked about Esme too, but couldn’t remember what Bee had said about her, and she would’ve known he’d been spying.

  Instead of answering him, she dropped the bag of quarters into the washing machine and cursed. He stopped folding, sighed, shook his head. This woman. He crossed the aisle to her and started fishing out the coins. “You trying to launder our money now?”

  She smiled but said nothing.

  Once all the quarters were back in the bag, he lifted her onto a machine, and she wrapped her legs around him. He put his forehead against hers, sighed again.

  “You got wedding jitters or what?” he asked. “You want to call the whole thing off? Or run to Vegas?
”

  She smiled again, but her eyes were wet with tears. She shook her head no.

  He sighed. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” He wanted to add, You are cutting people off who are trying to contact you. I feel like you’re cutting me off too. But he held his tongue. How could he say that without admitting he’d invaded her privacy?

  “Josh, it’s complicated, okay? Lily’s in the Valley. And that’s all in the past. I just want to be here, now. Nowhere else.”

  He pressed his head to her chest. “Fair enough.”

  “Hey, Josh.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Let’s get married,” she whispered.

  “It’s a date.”

  She said she was here, now. But dammit, he wasn’t so sure. Not two nights later and she was screaming from the bathroom where she was giving Jayden a bath. “He’s drowning!”

  Joshua ran from the kitchen, heart pounding.

  She kept yelling as he stood in the doorway confused about what was happening.

  “Fucking help him, Josh! He’s drowning. I can’t. I can’t!”

  She hunched on the tile beside the toilet.

  Jayden, covered in bubbles and holding a plastic pirate ship, sat upright, staring at Bee.

  “Are you hurt, little guy?”

  He shook his head.

  “He’s fine, look, he’s fine.”

  She looked up from the toilet bowl, toward Jayden in the tub.

  “Bee? What happened?”

  “He was drowning,” she said, softly.

  “Were you playing underwater, Jay? Did you stick your head under the water?”

  “No, Dada. Can I get out?”

  Joshua grabbed him from the sudsy water and wrapped him in a blue monster-hooded towel. As he covered the boy’s dripping curls with the hood, Joshua told Bee, “I’ll dry him off and get him in bed. Are you all right?”