Nafissa Is Born

The thing slipped from her as she squatted over the toilet— a soft thud against the porcelain. Small enough to fit in her hand, she fished it out of the bowl. Her hands sifting through the blood and urine. No bigger than a large grape, slick-skinned and unfinished.

To her, it looked fully formed. Little eyes closed. Ears curled sharp against the skull. She couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl. She didn’t care. The fifth she’d lost. This one almost made it to ten weeks. Almost.

Outside, the R train grumbled low under the building, the vibrations making the mirrored cabinet above the sink shudder, the walls trembling like the loose teeth in her mother-in-law’s bitter mouth.

She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone knowing she’d lost another one. Not again. Least of all his mother. The pious but mean-spirited Hajji Najla had already started whispering things in her son’s ear. Things that grew and took up residence with them. Suffocating their shared space. They showed up in the way he looked at her stomach when he thought she wasn’t watching. In the way his hand lingered too long on the crib they never packed away.

She could still hear Najla’s voice, low and sour, that day in the kitchen: A woman’s body is like soil, Habibti. Some soil is fertile, some soil is barren. You can’t grow flowers in barren land. She said it while slicing a pear with a small, sharp knife, her eyes never leaving Nafeesa’s. That day had been only twenty-four hours since the last miscarriage. The blood hadn’t even stopped yet.

No. Not this time.

She looked at it in her palm. At the closed eyes. At the small unfinished mouth.

Nafeesa brought the baby to her mouth, opened wide, tilted her head back, and forced it down. One hard swallow, her throat burning raw against the push of it. The blood still slick between her fingers. She put her hand to her mouth to make sure she wouldn’t throw up. She sat on the edge of the tub with her eyes closed until the nausea passed.

Tucked inside her. Safe.

The hollow in her belly began to fill up. She pressed her hands there, whispering under her breath: Stay. Stay.

She cleaned the toilet, the floor, the sink, scrubbing until the bleach stung her nostrils, until her knees burned against the tile. By the time she left the bathroom, there was no blood, no stains. Everything was in order.

She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and slipped into a pretty dress. The kind she wore when she wanted to feel good about herself. Long, puffy sleeves, flowing, and butter yellow to highlight her hazel eyes. She applied plum-colored eyeliner to make the green in her eyes stand out.

She balled up the blood-stained underwear and dirty cleaning rags, stuffed them in a plastic bag, and walked out into the dimly lit hallway and over to the garbage chute. She pulled the door open. The smell of garbage filled her nostrils. She pulled down the metal shaft door and threw the evidence into the incinerator.

Stepping back into the hallway just as Marta, the super’s wife and part-time assistant, was coming up the stairs, a little out of breath.

Marta wore gloves, even when she wasn’t elbow-deep in garbage bins. She always separated the trash on Sundays. Monday was pickup. She sang opera while she did it. Said she gave her husband the day off —two jobs and all that — but all the tenants of 72nd Street knew better. She liked to know things. She liked to know people. And she knew enough to burn you down quiet, if she felt like it. She gave Nafeesa a small nod as they passed on the landing. Then, without looking back, said, “Pretty dress,” and kept climbing.

Time to get the day going.

The kitchen was thick with heat, the window sweating against the fraying wooden frame. Okra stew. That’s what Khalid had asked for.

Nafeesa hated the way the okra kept its slime even after you fried it, hated the way it clung to the spoon like spit. She would never eat the stuff. Disgusting, she thought. But she had fried it the night before, the way his mother taught her. Roll it in flour, flash-fry, and drain it from oil. It was still slimy.The okra went into the bubbling pot with cilantro and minced garlic. Tomato sauce hissing as it boiled. The smell rose, clinging to the walls, to her skin. Her stomach twisted. The floor swayed under her feet.

Nafeesa turned toward the hallway, toward the bathroom, but she couldn’t move. She bent over the stove and threw up just a little bit into the steaming pot. Red fluids mixing in with red stew.

And for a moment, for the briefest, most unexpected moment Nafeesa laughed.

A loud, cracked sound, slipping out of her before she could stop it. The food, the blood, the loss, all of it folding into each other like bad magic.

She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her dress and just stirred a bit of herself and their baby into his food.

Fold it in, she thought. Fold it in like everything else.

The front door creaked open. Khalid came in quiet, as always. Took off his shoes and lined them up inside the closet like he did every day. Slipped on his house shoes. She heard him cross the floor, his steps light.

In the bathroom, she listened to the long sound of his piss hitting the bowl. The same bowl their child had floated in hours before, for just a few minutes. He stepped into the kitchen, sniffed the air once. “Smells divine,” he said.

“Extra garlic,” Nafeesa said, smoothing her dress, steadying her hands as he leaned in and kissed her, soft and quick. “Sit,” she told him. “Sit. I think the okra might actually be good this time.”

He sat at the round table that filled most of their narrow kitchen, same chair as always — the one backed tight to the window. Later, after he ate, he’d turn it sideways, light a cigarette, and stare out at the old green Methodist church pressed up against their building. It had been there long before the apartments were poured around it, holding its ground. He loved that something so old lived next to him. It reminded him of the homes he left in Southern Lebanon. Stones stacked by hand, generations pressed quiet into the mortar.

His face was gentle, but his shoulders sagged with the weight of too much. Nafeesa did love Khalid. She figured he still loved her, too, in his way. But she knew what she was worth in that house, and it wasn’t her cooking, or her kindness, or even her beauty. Which she was. It was in her womb. Her worth lived there now, in what it hadn’t yet done.

She had to give him a child. Their families and friends made sure she understood this is what a marriage needs to survive. A family. Legacy. But it wasn’t just them. She saw it in him, the longing in his eyes. She felt the urgency in their lovemaking. That want pressed on him like the rest. Constant and heavy as stone.

She watched him lining up his fork and spoon, shifting each just slightly until they lay perfect and straight beside the plate. She’d thought she’d set it right, but she never did.

She ladled the stew into bowls. Placed one in front of him. Sat down across from him. He stopped fiddling with the silverware and looked up. “You’re eating okra?” he asked, puzzled. “You okay?”

She didn’t look up. Just brought the spoon to her mouth, slow and steady. Blew on the food to cool it down.

“The baby likes it,” she said. “Must take after his father.” A small pause, “New craving, I guess.”

“Bismillah,” they both said.

She chewed. Swallowed. Swallowed again.

And just as she forced down another mouthful, she felt something in her belly. A flutter.

A beat no heavier than the wings of a moth tapping on a windowpane. She pressed her hand flat against her belly, willing it to stay, to root, to become real. Feeling the small weight inside her — the hidden, desperate thing she had tucked back into herself. Outside, everything and everyone raged. Inside her, for one trembling moment, it was still. It was warm. It was almost enough.  Almost.