Finding Yvonne

by Brandy Colbert

  “I’m pregnant, Sabina.” My voice is muffled, but she hears me loud and clear.

  “I just mean… no matter what you decide, I’m here for you.”

  “My dad is going to be so pissed at me.”

  “Yvonne, it happens.” She pauses. “And you don’t have to tell him if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s not supposed to happen to me. He doesn’t care what I do most of the time, but getting pregnant…” I shake my head. Take a deep breath before I go on. “I know I don’t have to tell him, but I feel cheated, not having my mom here. I hate feeling like I don’t have anyone I can go to with this kind of stuff, just because he’s my dad. Just because he can’t handle anything personal.”

  Sabina is still rubbing my back, her hand making small, comforting circles through my shirt.

  I release a shaky breath. “He barely talks to me now. I don’t want him to pull away even more. I don’t want him to be ashamed of me.”

  “He’s your dad. He’ll love you no matter what.”

  I nod but I don’t lift my head. I don’t say anything, and I don’t move from the hallway. Neither does Sabina. She sits with me for the rest of the afternoon and then, when it’s time for dinner, she calls Mama Jess and tells her she won’t be home.

  Sabina persuades me to move to my bed, and she orders in food that I don’t eat. She doesn’t try to get me to talk, and she takes away the food when I refuse it.

  I ache for some sort of release. Hysterical tears, shouting, incoherent rambling—anything to make me feel present. Alive.

  But I feel nothing.

  When it gets late, Sabina sets a glass of water on my nightstand. Then she turns out the light and climbs into bed and holds me.

  Loneliness leaves me feeling a lot of things: sad, angry, betrayed. Sometimes I think I could choke on it. But I prefer it to numbness.

  Numbness is nothing, and that feels unfixable.

  24.

  Omar is missing.

  We haven’t seen each other since we had sex, and we’ve only talked once. Part of that is because I was still processing what happened with Warren. As soon as I told him I loved him, I knew I couldn’t be with Omar again. Not without feeling an immense amount of guilt about and betrayal to Warren.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m not annoyed I haven’t heard from Omar. He doesn’t seem like the type of guy who would just disappear. He’s always shown up when we have plans—been exactly where he’s said he’ll be, and usually early. He never left me alone when I went to his house, except for when he was playing—and even then, he made sure I was only a few feet away. This seems out of character, and I’m starting to wonder if something has happened.

  Even before I got pregnant, I wondered what people would think if they knew I’d been with Omar and Warren not even a week apart. I can’t imagine they’d have anything nice to say, though we were careful. Even though I liked both of them and wanted it just as much as they did. Even though I wasn’t in a committed relationship with either of them and did nothing wrong.

  Maybe there would have been potential for more with Omar if Warren hadn’t been around. I am attracted to him—his looks, his personality, his musical talent. The timing isn’t right for us, even though I like spending time with him. I like how he makes me feel—open and free. Enraptured. We aren’t together, so there will be no breakup, but I need closure. Especially before I talk to Warren.

  I don’t know if I’ll tell Omar about the pregnancy. It’s too soon to know what I want to do. Every time I think about that day with Sabina, I wonder if I imagined the positive tests lined up on the bathroom counter. At least four times a day, I fool myself into believing it’s all a dream and I’ll wake up not pregnant.

  I call Omar again and again, but he never picks up. There is no voicemail, and of course I can’t text him. I keep calling and calling until I become so tired of getting no answer, I decide to track him down.

  I start close to home. He works a couple of days a week at the Cooper Youth Center, which is just downtown, so I go there first, rather than drive all the way to Venice. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. I don’t know why we haven’t seen each other more when he’s over on my side of town twice a week. Maybe he’s embarrassed about his lack of money and the fact that he has no car, but I thought I made it clear that those things don’t matter to me.

  I’ve never been to the youth center. It’s easy to find, located in a nondescript building next to a parking garage. Inside, it smells like a cross between a locker room and a cafeteria, and the walls are painted with murals of kids of multiple races and ethnicities surrounded by books and soccer balls and baseball bats and animals and splashes of big golden suns.

  A young woman with golden-brown skin and long, silky black hair is sitting at the front desk. She looks up and smiles. “Hi, how can I help you?”

  I wait until I’m standing right in front of her until I speak. I don’t want Omar to overhear me if he’s nearby. I’m already embarrassed to be here, but I don’t know how else to get a hold of him.

  “I’m looking for Omar?”

  It occurs to me then that I don’t know his last name. I thought about asking him a couple of times, but then I’d get distracted and forget, and I guess it just never seemed all that important.

  Her eyebrows knit together. “Omar?”

  “Yeah, he said he works on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” She might be new, so I add, “He teaches violin.”

  “Oh, I thought you meant one of the kids. No, we don’t have anyone with that name who works here.”

  My stomach sinks. “Are you sure? Black guy with dreads?”

  She shakes her head. “Our staff is small, and I’m in charge of payroll. There’s no one here by that name. We actually don’t have anyone who teaches strings right now.”

  “Okay.” I want to tell her to think harder or ask if she’ll let me go in back to look for him, but I know I wouldn’t find him. “Thanks for your help.”

  “No problem.” She pauses, then: “I hope you find your friend.”

  “Yeah, me too. Thanks.”

  Why would he lie to me about working here? I don’t know him that well, but he doesn’t seem like a liar. Every word he’s spoken has seemed so sincere. I never once got the feeling I couldn’t trust him. The little details of his family and his past don’t matter so much as how we feel when we’re around each other. And now I wonder how much of that was a lie, too.

  I get back in my car and drive to the beach because I don’t know where else to look for him. I check his normal spot, but neither he nor Keely are there. No chairs, no violin, no Omar. The sick feeling in my stomach spreads.

  I walk up and down the whole boardwalk, scanning all the booths. I poke my head into the burger place we went to and peer through the windows of the other bars and restaurants. I look out over the skate park and scour Muscle Beach. He’s not here.

  There’s one more place to look. I’ve only been there once, but I remember the way to the communal house. And it doesn’t look any better in the fading daylight.

  I walk up the front steps. Through the screen door, I see a couple of guys in the front room, rolling a joint.

  “Hi,” I call out.

  One of them looks over. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Is Omar here?”

  “Nope. He and Keely won’t be back till next week.”

  “Next week? Where’d they go?”

  He spins a lighter on the coffee table. “On tour or something? Keely got a gig, and he went with her.”

  “Oh.”

  He must hear the disappointment in my voice because he says, “Wanna smoke up with us?”

  “No, I’m good. Next week, you said?”

  “Yeah, next Wednesday, ’cause they’ve got someone subletting their room while they’re gone, and they gotta be out by then.”

  I thank him and trudge down the steps and back to my car. I have an answer now, but I don’t feel any better. Why did Omar even bri
ng up the youth center that day? It’s gross, pretending to work with kids who would need him the most. And I can’t shake the nagging feeling that there’s still something there with Keely. Why else would he go on tour with her? The guy said Keely got the gig, not both of them.

  The worst part is I have no one to talk to about this. I can’t tell Warren, of course. Sabina has been great, checking on me all the time, but I don’t want to give her another reason to judge me. I didn’t regret sleeping with Omar, but now I am so embarrassed. I feel stupid for believing his lie, no matter how small.

  At home, my violin is still sitting by the front door where I put it down after school. I glare at it. I never would have gotten caught up with Omar if it wasn’t for that thing. I open the case with visions of smashing it to splinters on the foyer tile, of snapping the bow in half over my knee. That would make the choice for me about my future.

  But instead, I pull it out of the case and slip it under my chin. I play everything I can think of. First, the Vivaldi from the night I was with Omar because I was so angry when I played it last time, it seems like a good outlet now. I move on to the Prokofiev piece we heard that night, the “Montagues and Capulets,” because I’ve always felt so good about it. I need it. There’s nothing that makes me feel more powerless than being lied to, and this is the antidote.

  My arms are tired, and still I move on to the Haydn concerto we’re working on in class. I should be better, but I remember enough for it to be recognizable, and that’s good enough for now. I play and I play until I start to get sloppy and the notes muddle together and my neck starts to hurt. I am sweating when I put down my violin, and I’m shocked to see an hour has passed.

  I feel better than I have in weeks, maybe months. Not because it was perfect—far from it. I needed to feel better, to express my emotions through my music, and it worked. I wasn’t playing for Ortiz or Denis or Omar. I wasn’t playing to impress anyone or prove that I’m good enough to attend a conservatory or perform in a symphony.

  I was playing for me.

  25.

  Knowing there’s something growing inside me doesn’t make me feel less alone.

  But I don’t really want to be with other people. Sabina has been wonderful, even with the weirdness still hovering over us. It’s sort of like we put our disagreement on hold because we had to—because of my situation. She checks on me all the time at school and at home: to see how I’m feeling, if I need anything to eat or drink, if I want to talk about anything. She offers to drive me anywhere I want to go, but there’s nowhere I want to be.

  It’s only been a week since I found out, but I don’t feel that different. Not yet. No morning sickness. I’m not showing. And even though I know it’s way too early, I check for changes every morning and night in the full-length mirror, examining myself from as many angles as possible.

  I did ask Sabina to drive me to Planned Parenthood the day after I went looking for Omar, so I could get another test. My fourth. The nurse, who was kind and patient with me even as I asked a never-ending list of questions, said I could get a blood test if I wanted to but that the urine tests are quite accurate. And for the fourth time, I learned that I am pregnant.

  I got tested for STDs, too, after Sabina suggested it. I hated that she was right; it made me feel even more foolish about Omar. Because the truth is, I was so caught up in the moment with him that I forgot to ask about the last time he was tested… and now I’m not so sure he would have been honest with me, anyway.

  Sabina held my hand. The nurse’s voice was filled with empathy as she discussed my options, all of which I already knew: I can see the pregnancy to full term and have a child that I keep, I can see the pregnancy to full term and give up the child for adoption, or I can have an abortion. I declined the brochures. It was the oddest feeling, listening to someone confirm the biggest problem I’ve ever had to face while alternately feeling like I was in the safest, most supportive space ever.

  I’ve been spending a lot of time in the sunroom when my father isn’t home. I eat snacks and meals and do homework in there, even though it takes me forever because I can’t seem to focus on anything. I have to reread whole pages and double-check all my work. And it feels like I’m already doing twice the work because I’m barely present in class; there in body only.

  Today I go into the room immediately after school and lie down on the chaise. I’ve felt more tired than normal in the past week, but I don’t know if that’s because of the pregnancy or because I know it’s an early symptom. Maybe it’s just the exhaustion from constantly thinking about what I’m going to do.

  I’ve never really thought about what I’d choose if I got pregnant. I guess I never thought I’d get pregnant before I wanted to, despite my father’s warning. I guess I should have been on birth control. I guess one of the condoms broke. I felt safe and supported at Planned Parenthood, but I was still embarrassed. Hopeful that the nurse believed me when I said I’d used protection both times. I get the feeling she would have been just as empathetic if I hadn’t.

  I’ve never had a mothering instinct. Some girls at Courtland have been talking about their ten-year plans, how they’ll go to undergrad, then grad school, then immediately get married and start having children. That sounds so boring to me, planning out my life like that. I still don’t know what I want to do and when, but I think I want to travel. I want to meet more people and see new places and eat food that even my father hasn’t tried. A lot of that seems harder to do if I had a baby. Even college sounds daunting. People do it, but I can’t imagine raising a child while trying to hold down a serious load of classes. Or working full-time. Those people seem like superheroes to me.

  But then I think of what it would actually be like to have a family of my own. What would it feel like to be needed and wanted by someone instead of just happening to live with a person who is related to me? I think of Warren and how well we fit together. I wonder if we could ever be parents together. I wonder what he will do when I tell him—because I am going to tell him. No matter what I decide, I want Warren to know.

  I close my eyes and try to think of anything except the pregnancy… but then my mother comes to mind. I wonder if she wanted me as soon as she found out she was pregnant or if she struggled over her decision. It’s hard to imagine she’d always wanted a child; she left so soon after entering into the deal. What if she’d wanted an abortion and didn’t get it? What if she wanted me at first and then changed her mind?

  It’s always been buried deep in the internal collection of things I don’t want to think about, the possibility that I drove my mother away. But now I wonder if that’s why my father has been so vague about her all these years. That’s not something you can admit to your child.

  As much as I hoped I could find the answers in the walls of this room, being in here doesn’t help. I don’t feel the presence of my mother, and I don’t have any idea what she would have done if she were in my place. I don’t feel anything at all in here, and that’s the worst part.

  I peel myself off the chaise to go to the kitchen. I owe Lou another French apple tart. He couldn’t articulate what was wrong with the first one. He simply said something was off. I don’t mind making another one. In fact, I can’t think of a better way to keep myself busy.

  I take the tart up to Mount Washington the next evening.

  Lou told me to come over for dinner because he’s making a whole roasted chicken that will take him days to eat by himself.

  He opens the door wearing his usual gray T-shirt and big smile. “Apple tart, take two?”

  “Just for you.” I hold out the covered pie plate in my hands.

  The smell of roasting chicken permeates the air, and for the first time since I realized my period was late, I feel hungry. Like I’m actually looking forward to eating. Everything has tasted like paper.

  During dinner, Lou mentions Claudia—how she was the one who taught him the best way to roast a chicken so that it came out tender and juicy with golden, cr
ispy skin.

  “She never wanted to take credit for it,” he says, looking wistfully out the large bay window of the dining room, “but she was the inspiration for many of my dishes. She always knew how to make food better, even when I thought it was already perfect.”

  “Lou?”

  He glances over sharply, as if I’ve jarred him back into the present. As if he were seeing Claudia in the distant mountaintops.

  “Why did you and Claudia never have kids?”

  “Well, I guess it was one of those things where we always thought we had time. We knew we didn’t want to be young parents. We wanted to see the world and visit every restaurant with a Michelin star and make sure we didn’t miss out on our own lives.” He takes a sip of water. “And then it never seemed like a good idea to have a kid when I’d just opened a restaurant, so we held off… and then it was too late.”

  I spear a garlicky brussels sprout with the end of my fork. “Do you regret it?”

  “Not at the time. We were so busy, and life moves so fast.” He pauses. “But after she died? Yes. I wish we’d had children. I’d give anything to have someone here who was a part of her… someone we’d made together.”

  Under the table, my hands instinctively go to my stomach.

  “I’m sorry, Lou.”

  He smiles. “Oh, it’s not as sad as all that. I had many years with Claud, and she was my true love. Some people will never be that lucky.”

  I want to leave the table when he brings out the tart, but I know I have to sit here and listen to whatever he has to say. It’s part of the deal.

  This one is just as pretty as the last, but I felt different while I was making it. A part of my brain shut off when I began crafting the dough—a part that allowed me to take pure pleasure in the act of baking. I didn’t think about the fact that I am pregnant or how Lou would judge my second attempt at the tart; my brain didn’t even flicker on the image of my mother at the farmers’ market, talking to the strange man. Creating this tart was like a balm for my soul.