More Than I Can Bear

by E. N. Joy

  Paige just stood there looking at Norman through the glass only wishing she’d been lucky enough to have a terminal illness. That way she wouldn’t have to live with her current diagnosis . . . if that made any sense.

  “Well, if you’re not going to talk to me, can you at least let me in?” Norman pleaded.

  “I don’t feel like talking. Not tonight, Norman.”

  Norman knew it had to be something serious for Paige to refuse talking to him. Paige always talked to Norman, and he to her. They were like BFFs, if guys could be considered BFFs. They had worked at the movie theatre, where Paige was his boss, over the years. Here, recently, they even attended church together. Norman and Paige had been living proof that a male and female could be friends and comingle without hooking up. In spite of Blake’s accusations, Paige had never been unfaithful to him with Norman. Norman had never played any other role than that of a friend.

  Paige couldn’t 100 percent say there wasn’t a time when she had entertained the idea of being with Norman while married to Blake. It was the first few months of her marriage when Blake was so engrossed in his job and making money that he barely had time for Paige. He’d cancel dinner dates with Paige and even fun outings. It got to the point where Blake would even suggest Paige hang out with Norman; of course that was before he started suspecting something was going on between the two. When Blake cancelled last minute on their dinner reservations at Fondue Restaurant, reservations that weren’t easy to get, it was Norman who filled in. When Blake couldn’t attend the Cleveland Cavaliers game with Paige, back when the King himself was still playing for the team, it was Norman who filled in.

  Because Paige had felt so neglected by her husband, she was in a vulnerable state around that time. She was starting to enjoy the company of Norman a little more than a married woman should. Mentally, she was allowing herself to cross the line of just coworker/ friend. It only made things worse when she and Norman shared an accidental kiss. Then of course there was the time when they did attend the game in Cleveland, had car trouble, and ended up having to share the last available room at a hotel. Feeling neglected by Blake, Paige enjoyed being with Norman. Being next to Norman. Even being accidentally kissed by Norman. Truth be told, it could have been any man. Paige just needed confirmation that she was a woman worthy of a man’s attention . . . since her own husband wasn’t showing her any.

  Eventually Paige pulled herself out of la-la land and realized she was treading dangerous waters with the thoughts she was having about Norman. They were able to resume their close friendship without any awkwardness. Norman had been there for Paige ever since. He was there when she ended her friendship with Tamarra. He was there the day Blake came up to their job threatening Paige. He was even there to support Paige the day in the courtroom during her hearing against Blake assaulting her. It shouldn’t have surprised Paige that he’d be there for her now.

  “I’m not leaving until you let me in and talk to me, Paige,” Norman warned.

  “Go home, Norman, please,” Paige pleaded right back.

  Norman shook his head. “I’m a white guy standing outside of a black chick’s bedroom window in the hood in the middle of the night. We’ve probably got about ten more seconds before one of your neighbors dial nine-one-one. So either you let me in or you take that money you’ve been saving up for years for that Louis Vuitton luggage set and bail me out of jail.”

  Norman knew just what buttons to push to open Paige’s doors, literally. She sucked her teeth, threw the curtains back closed, and then marched to her front door. She unlocked it and sharply flung it open. “There. Happy?” she snapped at Norman as he stepped up onto her porch.

  “Not yet,” he replied, entering her house, closing the door, and locking it behind him. “Not until you tell me what’s going on with you.” He eyeballed the room for any telltale signs of what had Paige in such a funk that she’d barricaded herself in her home, avoiding all phone calls. That’s when he spotted two crumpled pieces of paper on her couch. He looked to Paige then back to the couch. He did this a couple of times before Paige caught on and followed his eyes to the papers.

  Paige hurriedly rushed over and retrieved the papers just in case her friend had any ideas about snooping.

  “I take it those have something to do with the way you are acting,” Norman surmised.

  “No,” Paige was quick to say. “They have everything to do with the way I’m acting.” Just like clockwork, the tears filled Paige’s eyes and flowed down her cheeks.

  “Paige, honey, what is it?” Norman asked as he approached her, resting his hands on her heaving shoulders.

  Paige took in Norman’s comforting hands, resting her face on one of them while closing her eyes. Norman allowed her all the time she needed to gather her thoughts. After a few seconds, Paige finally opened her eyes to find Norman’s, filled with sympathy, staring into hers. Right now he was more than just her friend. He was her superman, willing and ready to take the world off of her shoulders and place it upon his. Paige knew that couldn’t be done, but it touched her soul to know that if Norman could, he would. He’d proven he’d place himself in harm’s way if it meant protecting her the day Blake came up to her job in an evil fit. The gelled, dirty blond–haired, tall, slinky white guy didn’t stand a chance against the tall, muscular-built, 230-pound black guy he found himself nose to nose with. Still, he didn’t back down until Blake was out of there. Norman was indeed that genuine friend she thought she’d never have after being betrayed by Tamarra. He was her sign that God did, in fact, have a heart after all.

  “Want me to get you something to drink? A glass of water?” Norman offered.

  “Only if you’re going to do a Nikki Newman and put vodka in it.” Paige chuckled at her own reference to one of her favorite soap operas, The Young and the Restless. There were plenty of times during her lunch break she would sit and talk to Norman about the characters like they were real people. The storyline of Nikki Newman being an alcoholic and pretending her vodka was water was one of them.

  “Here, sit down.” Norman escorted Paige over to the couch.

  Paige sat and then stared at the documents she knew Norman was patiently waiting to be clued in on. She figured there was no need to torture her friend any longer, or herself, as she really needed to talk to someone about her situation. She picked the papers up, then handed one to Norman.

  Norman took the paper and then briefly scanned it. “Your divorce decree.” A look of confusion accompanied Norman’s statement. “I guess I kind of thought you would have called me over to celebrate, not be sitting here moping.” With paper in hand, Norman sat next to Paige. “I thought this is what you wanted.”

  “It was,” Paige said. “I mean it is. I mean, it would have been if it weren’t for this.” She handed Norman the other document.

  He skimmed the second document. “Holy—”

  “Didn’t you just walk down the altar and get saved last Sunday?” Paige reminded Norman.

  When Paige first started working with Norman at the movie theatre a few years ago, neither one of them had been into church. Paige was the first to join the Kingdom. Once she did, it kind of put a dent in her and Norman’s friendship. Prior to Paige getting saved, her conversation was different and more compatible with Norman’s, as the two often enjoyed conversations about dating experiences and sex. Paige getting saved came along right around the time she got promoted to Norman’s supervisor. Paige began to distance herself from Norman, as the conversations he’d been used to having with her became uncomfortable to Paige in her newfound Christianity. The two ended up exchanging words when Norman accused Paige of acting “too good” to associate with him anymore.

  Once Paige explained her walk with Christ to Norman, not only did he accept it and the new “trying to stay saved” Paige, he even agreed to visit her church. One visit turned into a couple more here and there. Those couple turned into a few before Norman ended up, just last week, both joining the church and the Kingdom. Paig
e liked to think she’d led the horse to the water on that one.

  “I got saved last week, not last year. It’s going to take me a minute to get rid of some of the words my vocabulary has been accustomed to,” Norman explained, still staring down at the paper regarding Paige’s pregnancy. “You’re pregnant. But how?” He looked at Paige.

  She tilted her head and twisted her lips as if to say, “Really?”

  “I mean, I had no idea you two were still . . . after he came up to the job and all. The court hearing . . . I just thought . . .” Norman threw his hands in the air and then let them drop. “Heck, I don’t know what I thought.” He shook his head, stared at the paper one more time and then looked to Paige. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you going to do? Are you going to go visit him in jail and tell him? Are you going to give him visitation of the baby when he gets out of jail? Joint custody?” There were dozens of other questions Norman had, but he decided to pause to allow Paige to answer the ones he’d already posed.

  “I have no idea,” Paige said. “The reality of it all still hasn’t set in.” She placed her hands on her stomach. “There is a frickin’ baby growing inside here. A baby by a man who raped me, Norman.” Paige tightened her lips to fight off the emotion that she couldn’t quite put words to. “A baby by a man who I divorced, who I never want to see again for as long as I stay black.”

  Norman scrunched up his nose.

  “Oh, that’s just a saying some of us black folk use every now and again.”

  He straightened his face out in understanding.

  “Anyway, what do I do?” Paige asked Norman with all sincerity as if he were the master of her fate and whatever door he suggested she walk through, she’d do just that. She wanted to be free from the burden of decision making. She had a saying that you only have to deal with the consequences of the choices you make in life, not the ones someone else makes for you. She figured if she let Norman make her choice, she’d be off the hook in the consequence department. “Just tell me what to do, Norman, because I can’t even think straight.”

  Norman was silent for a moment as he put the words together in a decent order in his head before they left his mouth in any ol’ fashion. “Do you want to be a mommy?”

  “Of course, just not right now, and not with the seed of Satan.”

  “Paige!” Norman was appalled that a mother would refer to her child as a seed of Satan, no matter how it was conceived.

  “I’m sorry. I know that sounds cold, but, Norman, that’s how I feel.” Paige looked down at her stomach as tears filled her eyes. “I don’t want any part of Blake and it sickens me to know a part of him is growing inside of me.”

  “But it’s a part of you too.”

  “But I don’t want it to be and I don’t look at it that way. To me, it’s my rapist’s baby. Because my baby, the one I’m going to call my child, will be made in love with a person I am in love with and who is in love with me. Now I’ve read the books and I’ve seen the movies where a woman finds herself pregnant by a rapist and she still considers the baby a gift from God. Well my life is not scripted. This is the way I feel and being a Christian does not protect those kinds of feelings from infiltrating my heart. I’m still a Christian.”

  “I hear you. I get it and I’m not judging you. I believe you absolutely feel that way right now, but once you have—”

  Paige threw her hand up in Norman’s face, coming a mere inch from accidentally mushing him. “Unh, unh. Don’t you say it. Don’t even think about saying it.” Paige stood to her feet and began to pace the floor.

  “So if you don’t even want me to make a mere mention of you having the baby, then obviously your mind is already made up. So what the hel . . . what the heck are you asking me my advice for?”

  “Because you’re my friend,” Paige said in a tone begging for her best friend’s sympathy.

  “No, because you wanted me to say it so that you wouldn’t have to. You wanted me to give you marching orders so that you wouldn’t feel like it was all your idea. Well it ain’t happening.”

  “Tah, and since when did it become such an issue with you?” Paige spat. “It wasn’t an issue with that trifling Britney Spears lookalike you dated three years ago who told you she was knocked up and ganked you for five hundred dollars to get rid of the baby.”

  “Well you know like I know that it turns out she was never really pregnant. She just wanted money so that she could go to Cancun with her girlfriends.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know that at the time you were laying five Benjis in her grimy little paws. You didn’t have a conscience about your own poor little unborn baby then, so why have one with mine now?”

  “Because yours is real,” Norman countered.

  “You thought yours was at the time you laid money for the procedure in her hand.”

  “But I wasn’t saved then. I didn’t know then what I know now. Do you not think for one minute there are not any Christian women today who had abortions back before they knew the Word and were saved? God’s not holding that against them. When you know better you do better. Well I know better now, and you can’t throw in my face now what I didn’t know then. That’s not how this Christian thing works. I’ve only been saved a week and even I know that. That’s not how God works.”

  “What’s God got to do with it?” Paige roared. “This is about me and my inability to love this child the way it would need to be loved. I don’t have it in me.”

  The word “revelation” might as well have appeared on Norman’s forehead as he digested and dissected Paige’s words. “Oh, I get it now. This whole ‘you not wanting to have this baby’ thing goes beyond the rape and this being Blake’s child. You’re afraid that the same way you and your mother didn’t have the loving mother-daughter relationship you desired, you won’t be able to have that with your child either. You’re afraid that you won’t be able to give your child what you feel your mother didn’t give you when you were a child.”

  “No, it’s not . . .” Paige started, but then decided against lying. “Okay, so maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s all of those things. And all of those issues equal three strikes. I’m already out of the game before the national anthem is even sung. I can’t do this, Norman. I won’t. And I haven’t even mentioned the challenge of raising a child without a father. I was raised in a two-parent home and I half made it out sane. I can’t bring a baby into the world knowing its father isn’t going to be in its life because he’ll be in jail the next four years for raping and beating his mother, and then on top of that assaulting a court officer during the trial. And what if it’s a boy? I can’t teach a boy how to be a man. I’m not having this baby.”

  “Are you not having this baby or are you not keeping this baby? There is a difference. And not once have I heard you say either ‘A’ word. So which is it, Paige. What are you going to do? Which ‘A’ word is it going to be?”

  Paige paused for a moment and then spoke. “I’m not having this baby, Norman.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Not have this baby.”

  “We can dance around the word all you want, but if you’re big and bold enough to do it, then surely you’re big and bold enough to say it. So say it. What are you going to do, Paige?”

  Paige shook her head and turned away in shame. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Say it,” Norman demanded.

  “I won’t.”

  “You can’t.”

  “It’s not that I can’t—”

  “Then say it. You mean you can trot out here to some clinic to have the procedure done but you can’t even fix your lips to say the technical term for it. Wow,” Norman pressed.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I need you to listen to yourself. I really want to hear you put that out in the universe if that is truly what you are hell bent on doing. Because I’m not going to stand here and try to talk you out of something your mind is made u
p on doing. Now if your heart is still on the fence, that is a different story. But if you’re all in, then just say it and do what you need to do.”

  Paige looked into Norman’s eyes that silently pleaded with her to please consider other options. The other ‘A’ word might not be so bad, especially if the child landed with a family who could do all the things for the child that Paige couldn’t. But did she really want to sacrifice her body for something she felt no connection to?

  “Well, what’s it going to be?” Norman said.

  Paige swallowed hard and then forced herself to say what deep within she’d made up her mind to do from the moment she got her pregnancy results. “Abortion. I’m getting an abortion.” Hearing herself say it almost brought Paige to her knees. As a matter of fact, she would have fallen to her knees if Norman hadn’t been there to catch her fall and take her over to the couch.

  The two just sat on the couch while Paige buried her face in Norman’s chest and cried. “Please don’t hate me for my decision, Norman. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I’m still a Christian.” Paige tried to convince herself more so than Norman.

  Kissing Paige on the forehead Norman replied, “And I’m still your friend.”

  Chapter Three

  When Paige first opened her eyes, she had no idea where she was, as they were greeted with darkness. She jumped up, the cover that had been pulled up to her neck dropping to her waist. She frantically looked around until her eyes became familiar with her surroundings. She exhaled once she realized she was in her living room on her couch.

  “What time is it?” she mumbled. She pulled the covers off of her and placed her legs on the floor. She wiped her eyes and then that’s when something else familiar caught her eye. “Norman?”

  He stirred upon hearing his name, but he didn’t wake up. He was curled up on the living room chair. Seeing how uncomfortable he looked made Paige wish she hadn’t been so cheap and splurged for the matching loveseat instead. No, his six-feet self wouldn’t have stretched out comfortably on that either, but it would have been better than that chair.