“How? Who told—” He pushed me off him and I landed beside him in the grass.
“Does it matter? Does it really matter how I know?” I started getting up.
“Let me explain,” Reginald said, getting up on his knees in front of me. “I can explain. I didn’t mean to do it. She said she was on the pill—”
I slapped him hard.
“What didn’t I do? What?” I asked.
“You did—”
“What?” I hollered. “You tell me. You make sense of this right now. You tell me what I did to deserve such a shitty life. Oh, God! Oh, my God!” I cried and looked up at the sky through the rain. Vacant of anything to keep me up, I fell into Reginald and he wrapped his arms around me.
“Babe, I can fix it. I can fix it,” he said and I swear I almost believed him. Needing to hear anything, I almost believed that this, a child, could be fixed. That’s what Reginald did. It was who he was. “That’s why I’m here,” he went on, “to tell you that I’m going to make everything OK. Make everything like it was.”
I started hearing voices. Words splitting my ears. Screaming. Ms. Juanita Jordan’s voice saying, “Nothing can ever be like it was.” My ringleader holding my hand and whispering in my ear, “No matter what he says, and no matter what you want to believe, it can never be like it was. There’s either today and tomorrow or no day and never. The past, dear Ms. Aniston, is prologue.” My mother telling me to have hope. Praying over me as I slept on the floor.
I pushed away from Reginald.
“What?” he asked still on his knees.
“We can never go back to the way things were,” I said defiantly. “I almost forgot that, but now I know.” I started walking back to the car.
“But she said I don’t even have to be there for the baby. That I can sign my rights away if I want to.”
“And you considered it, didn’t you? Signing away your unborn child just like you signed away your whole family,” I said without turning around. Reginald tried to grab me, but he fell down in the muck. “You can keep this house. I want a divorce.”
I opened the car door and was about to get inside when I heard a familiar ring. It was Reginald’s cell phone.
I had the key in my hand, but I stopped myself from getting into the car. The way that ring sounded—there was just something about it. And somehow I knew instantly, in the way that any woman who’s ever given birth does, that something was wrong.
“It’s your mother. She’s called five times. Now it’s a text. She said she’s been trying to reach you, too. She’s at the hospital, at Grady. Something happened with one of the twins.”
We ran to my car and got on the road without so much as a comment. I had to get to my child. I didn’t care who was in the car. I kept calling my mother, but her phone was off and Reginald said it was probably because she was in the hospital.
“I never should’ve left him alone,” I said.
“He’s fine. I’m sure your mother’s handling it,” Reginald said.
“If something happens to him, I’ll never forgive myself.”
I kicked off my shoes and ran up the pavement toward the emergency room doors at the hospital in my bare feet. I stopped right out front and left Reginald to park the car. In my mind, I could hear my baby crying. His cries from his crib when he was a baby. I was always there. Would sit there with him, rock him to sleep, and let him know I’d never leave him alone and he was safe.
I had to know that he really was safe now. That his world, unlike mine, hadn’t come crashing in.
Reginald caught up with me and we followed a zigzag of little rooms and hallways, closets, and staircases to find my mother. The front desk didn’t have a patient registered named Reginald Johnson Jr., but we knew he was there.
I saw my mother’s purple jacket hanging out of one of the rooms and Reginald and I rushed to the door.
“R. J.? Where’s R. J.?” I asked immediately as I walked into the room.
But inside there was a doctor standing beside the bed, helping Cheyenne up. They were laughing. R. J. was actually standing beside my mother, eating a chocolate-covered pretzel.
“Me?” R. J. asked, making his way to me. “I’m fine. Cheyenne fell down.” He pointed to Cheyenne.
“Cheyenne? Is it you? What happened?” I went and stood in front of the doctor. “Are you OK?” The doctor and my mother explained everything to Reginald as I pressed and patted Cheyenne’s arms and legs.
“We came as soon as we could.” Reginald reached over and patted Cheyenne’s head.