After Nothing (22 page)

‘You forgave him just like that?’ I asked.

‘What happened was my fault too. He couldn’t have hit me if I wasn’t there. I was her mother. She was inside of me, and I didn’t protect her.’

Tears were once more running freely down Reesey’s face, and I realized they were running down mine too.

‘I love him, Nat. People don’t change, but he really has. I promised him though,’ said Reesey, her eyes resting on a nearby photo of the two of them, ‘that if he ever hurts me again, or if I even get the smallest feeling that he might hurt this new baby, it’ll be the last time he ever sees either of us.’

‘You’d just leave, and never see him again?’

‘Yes,’ said Reesey. ‘If Beyden ever hurt this baby, that would be it forever.’

I was about to fall into bed when Kane came home. I heard the key in the lock, then the front door opening and closing.

My mind had been occupied with everything Reesey had told me that evening, but all thought of anyone else disappeared when Kane appeared in the bedroom door.

He looked at me warily, waiting to see what I’d do or say.

‘Hi,’ I said quietly.

‘Hey,’ said Kane, coming further into the room.

‘I was just going to bed.’

He narrowed his eyes, and I knew he was taking in the new piercings. But he didn’t say anything – just walked out. I held my breath until I heard the refrigerator door open. He wasn’t leaving. I could breathe again.

I couldn’t sleep. I’d left the bedroom door ajar, and I could hear him moving around. I heard the television; I heard the refrigerator door open and close again. I heard the static click of the television being turned off, and then I heard him going into the bathroom and shutting the door. There was the squeak of the rusted hinge as he opened the tiny window above the basin, and then the sound of running water as he turned the shower on.

He came to bed, and my senses were full of him. I was acutely tuned to his presence: the dip in the bed as he lay down, the sound of his breathing, the scent of toothpaste and soap. Then there was just that enveloping feeling I’d been living without for so many weeks: the feeling of being safe.

‘Kane?’

‘Yeah?’

‘If you want to have sex, then I do.’

My voice came out high and small-sounding.

Kane didn’t respond. I could feel my cheeks burning, but I went ahead and added the word ‘please’.

I heard him exhale a lungful of air, and then he turned toward me.

I pulled the old t-shirt of his I was wearing over my head, and he moved on top of me.

We didn’t talk and we didn’t kiss. Not on the mouth. I didn’t try and he didn’t try. The rest of it was so familiar though. My body just fitted in against his, exactly how it was supposed to. Kane’s weight on me; the feel of his skin as his body moved against mine; the way he felt moving inside me. It wasn’t just sex – it was us, us being together. Kane was my home. I couldn’t understand why I’d left him like that, why I hadn’t fought harder against myself to keep this safe from harm.

I loved him. I told him that, and he stayed quiet, and neither of us slept. When I got up to go to work in the dark hours of early morning, he rolled over in bed and said, looking toward me, ‘Can’t you go in late?’

‘If you want me to.’

‘Do you want to?’

I sent my boss a text telling her something had happened and I wouldn’t be in till late.

You find a way to push out the hate. I’d breathe in the smell of my first coffee in the morning, and when I breathed out I’d try to exhale all the day’s misgivings before they’d even arrived.

When the till wouldn’t balance out at work, instead of allowing the usual flare of anger, I’d force myself to shift my mind onto the next job.

When a customer yelled at me because we’d sold out of the bread they bought every Wednesday without fail, I merely smiled, took her name and told her we’d always hold one for her from now on.

Walking home from the bus stop, I’d look up at the lone oak tree on our street and notice how each day more of its green leaves became red and yellow. I wanted to be able to change how I felt, the way those leaves could change their color.

The night Kane left a wet towel on our bed, I almost lost it. I was standing at the foot of the bed with my fists clenched and my jaw clamped shut, screaming expletives at him in my mind. Then I forced myself to take deep breaths. A rational part of my brain kicked in, and I realized that it was just a wet towel. It wasn’t even lying on my side of the bed. I went and had a cold shower. It was painful, standing under that pathetic stream of freezing water, but I made myself stay in there until I was a shivering mess and couldn’t think about anything other than getting warm.

Then I went and sat on his lap, wrapped in my own wet towel.

‘What the hell, Natalie? And why are you so cold?’ he said, putting a warm hand over the goosebumps on my thigh.

I clutched at him, and just managed to speak the words ‘Please warm me up’ through blue lips.

‘Jesus, Nat,’ said Kane. He was pretty pissed off, because he was watching a live basketball game on a tablet Bey had just given him. He didn’t take me to bed and try to warm me up that way, like I wanted him to. Instead he forced me to get up off him, went into the bathroom and turned the shower on again.

I followed him in and he opened the age-stained shower door, which no amount of scrubbing could relieve of its ingrained marks. His hand on my elbow, he took the towel from around me and guided me back into the shower, not letting me back out when the sharp pain of hot water on my ice-cold skin caused me to flinch. Then he shut the bathroom door and, leaning back against the washbasin, watched me stand under it.

The transparent plastic panes of the shower fogged up quickly, but I could still make out the form of his body, the color of his clothes.

I stayed in the shower till the water ran cold, and he stayed with me.

‘Warm?’ he asked when I stepped out.

I nodded, but shivered at the same time. He grabbed a dry towel and wrapped it around me, trapping my arms against my body. He then rubbed his hands over the towel, providing continued heat.

The friction, and the warmth, brought back a memory. Dad used to do that when I was young: get me out of the bath and then immediately wrap a towel around me and rub me dry. I’d taken it for granted as a kid. Just wanted to be dry and in my pajamas and onto the next thing the evening offered before I had to go to bed. But Kane doing that for me – drying my body and not missing a single inch of my skin – I didn’t take that for granted at all.

He didn’t ask me about my hypothermia attempt. Maybe he thought it would lead to a fight; maybe he just put it down to me being the crazy bitch he knew I was. But when I joined him on the couch, wearing old sweatpants and one of his hoodies, he pulled me into his lap and held me a long time. He told me he’d be working late the rest of the week. I asked him if I could come see where he worked.

‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ he replied.

Mending. That’s what I called it. There was a lot of mending going on between us. Sometimes things would unravel a bit too.

We were having homemade cheeseburgers for dinner the night I asked about the girls he’d slept with. I couldn’t help asking. I
wanted
to help it – told myself over and over I had no right to ask. But the whole time I’d been making dinner it had been drumming around in my head. How many? Who were they? Was he with any of them more than once?

Kane had three cheeseburgers on his plate when we sat down on the broken couch to eat. He’d barely got through one when I asked.

He swallowed his mouthful and stared at me a moment, before saying, ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Please tell me.’

‘One.’

One? That meant … that meant something. She meant something. She might still mean something.

I put my plate on the ground and stood up. I couldn’t see past the next moment. I was completely overwhelmed with hurt, and I couldn’t escape it.

I went into the kitchen. There was nothing to clean up. I always cleaned as I cooked, and I never left any food on the bench because of the rats. Which meant there was nothing to distract me from the thought of Kane being with
her
. Touching her body. Kissing her. Undressing her …

‘You think she compare to you, Nat?’

He was standing behind me. I turned around and faced him.

‘I wanted you,’ he said.

‘You should have come home.’

‘Couldn’t. Not after what happened between us.’

‘Who is she?’

‘I don't know. Some bitch Chuck introduced me to. It was fucked up. I felt like shit afterwards. Still do.’

You don’t know her?’

‘We didn’t even leave the club. I was fucked. I kept thinking about what I’d done to you. Just got really wasted.’ He looked more helpless than I’d ever seen Kane look. ‘I was shitfaced, Nat. It wasn’t what you think it was. I spent most the night throwing up.’

‘I was right here.’

‘You know I couldn’t come home.’

We stared at each other a long time.

‘I made you do it,’ I said quietly.

‘You didn’t make me do shit. You think I don’t know when you’re trying to fuck with me? You think I don’t know why you do it? Should have walked away sooner instead of losing my shit. Shouldn’t have gone near that bitch. Nat, I –’

He paused.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘What I did… I didn’t think I was one of those motherfuckers.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I am. It’s done. And I fucking hate myself for it. I can’t fucking believe I hurt you. I can still see you… Nat, I swear, I’ll leave before I’ll ever let that happen again.’

‘Kane, I did this to us.’

He shook his head.

‘You can own what you did, but I gotta own what I did. It ain’t right. I can’t ever make it right. But I still want you, Nat. Want you more now than ever. Don’t want to hurt you, don’t want to stop you having the things you used to. But I fucking want you, simple as that.’

‘Kane, I’m so sorry.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

‘I want you,’ I said.

Kane’s smile, the one that was never normally far away, slid hesitantly into place.

We went back into the lounge. Kane’s plate was beside mine, on the floor, by the couch. We both saw the rat at the same time.

Kane swore, and tried to kick it. I jumped up onto the couch. We both watched it run toward the gap under the front door, where it managed to squeeze its mass through the narrow opening.

‘Motherfucker,’ said Kane, staring in dismay at his plate of burgers.

I started laughing.

‘What?’ said Kane.

‘The look on your face.’

‘Those burgers were good.’

‘I’ll make something else.’

Kane reached out his hand and helped me clamber off the couch.

‘We need a cat,’ said Kane.

Tank was about the ugliest, meanest-looking cat you ever saw in your whole life.

That’s why Kane picked him. I wanted the pretty Siamese-looking one in the cage opposite him at the animal shelter. But Kane was convinced that Tank was a killer.

‘Look at him, Nat. He’s hungry. We need a hungry cat.’

I looked at him. He had scars on his face and his ears were torn. He was a mix of tabby colors, his coat short and dull.

‘He’s just so ugly, Kane.’

‘Yeah, but he’s big. Baby, that cat you’re looking at is too small.’

‘That’s because it’s still a kitten.’

‘We don’t want a kitten. We want a rat killer.’

He took Tank out of his cage, testing his weight, and then gave him to me. Tank started purring in my arms. I smiled, and then pulled a face at Kane when I saw he was grinning like he’d just won the lottery.

We took our ugly cat home and I suggested we call him Leo.

Kane named him Tank.

Reesey came over to meet him, and then said she didn’t really like to look at him. I took offence at that, and said to Kane later that she looked at Bey every damn day.

Kane and I loved that cat. He was the first pet for both of us, and the first living thing we were responsible for together. We thought he was awesome. Sometimes we would watch him for ages, trying to guess what he was thinking. Then we’d make up stories about his past; all the things he’d done in his life. He looked like a cat who had definitely lived – and yet he was so affectionate. I could put him around my neck while we watched television and he’d stay there, purring away.

I thought he resembled an old boxer: especially the way he walked, all shoulders and deliberate and low to the ground. Kane said Tank was a street fighter who gave the impression he was a slow, one-combination sort of cat, but then moved like lightning and used all his claws to disable whatever or whoever offended him.

The one plant I kept in our house definitely offended Tank, and he sure did deal to it. Shredded the leaves and the thick stems – pretty much demolished the whole plant. Then he dug into the remaining soil and used it as a toilet.

But really, as far as I was concerned, he could do no wrong, because he killed and ate and generally terrorized the rat population that lived under our house. When he brought half-eaten bodies inside to show off, I praised and patted him. One time he left a bald baby rat on our bed – I gave him a big scratch and poured him a saucer of milk.

Within a month he cleared that house out of rats. There were no more sightings, we stopped hearing them in the ceiling and walls, and there were no more rat droppings in the cupboards.

Most nights Tank slept on our bed. Some nights he wouldn’t come when we called, but we’d hear him having fights with other cats in the neighborhood. He’d turn up in the morning looking the worse for wear, and occasionally he got some nasty abscesses, but it never put him off his food.

We’d had Tank less than three months when some asshole ran him over.

Kane found him one street over when he went out for a run. He was lying in the gutter, cold and stiff. I cried my eyes out, and even Kane seemed to struggle to speak. We didn’t have a spade, so Kane used his bare hands and a piece of plywood, which he found under the house, to dig a grave for him in our backyard. Reesey, a week overdue and barely able to sit still, brought over a batch of chocolate chip cookies. She listened to me talk and cry about Tank non-stop for an hour.

I will always remember the date Tank died, because that was the day Reesey went into labor.

It was early evening. Reesey had gone home a couple of hours before. Kane was lying on the couch, his legs resting over mine, as he read about electric cars on his tablet. I was flicking through a recipe book that Melissa had given me for Christmas. Every few minutes the pages would blur as I remembered anew that Tank wouldn’t be in for dinner that night, or any night after. Kane suddenly sat up, his expression a mix of concentration and concern.

‘Is that Reesey calling out to you?’ he said.

She was standing on her side of the fence, a bag in her hand, while she waited for Bey to come pick her up. I don’t know if she was trembling because she was in the early stages of labor or if it was more from excitement. Regardless, she couldn’t stop smiling.

Kane had followed me outside. He jumped the fence and asked her if she was okay.

‘The baby’s coming.’

Alarm lit Kane’s features.

‘Shouldn’t you sit down?’

Reesey actually giggled, which made me giggle, and climb over the fence myself. I reached for her hand and she squeezed it tight.

‘Finally, Natalie!’

‘Are you sure?’ I said, because she’d already had some false alarms.

‘My waters broke.’

I caught Kane looking at her clothes skeptically. Reesey must have seen him too.

‘I got changed,’ she said, giggling again.

‘What do you want us to do?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. Beyden will be here soon.’

We stayed with her till Bey arrived, speeding into the driveway like he was being chased by the cops. Kane and I worked hard not to laugh as he made a huge fuss of Reesey while she just kept telling him to calm down.

Kane’s phone rang at 2 am. We had both been asleep, but were immediately wide awake at the sound of Kane’s ringtone. I could hear Bey’s voice coming through the speaker.

‘A boy, got here an hour ago … Reesey’s good … Gonna call him Joseph. Joey for short … after Reverend Joe.’

Kane was laughing, and offering his congratulations, and then Reesey wanted to speak to me.

‘Hi,’ I said, in awe of her.

‘Hi,’ replied Reesey, her tone hushed. ‘He’s here, Nat.’

‘I bet he’s beautiful.’

‘He is so beautiful. I think he looks like Beyden. He’s sleeping right beside me. He looks so peaceful. Honestly, Nat, he’s perfect.’

We spoke a few minutes longer, and then Kane spoke to Reesey and then Bey again. When the call ended, Kane and I were left in our quiet little room with their joy buzzing inside us.

‘That’s so cool,’ said Kane as he lay back down.

‘Amazing,’ I replied.

We were silent a long while, but neither of us slept. Then we had sex. Then afterwards, as Kane spooned against me, I asked the question. ‘Should we have a baby?’

‘No,’ he said, immediately.

‘Okay, just checking.’

I wasn’t disappointed. But I did ask him again after we’d met Reesey and Bey’s tiny perfect baby boy in the hospital later that day.

‘What if it happened accidentally?’ I said, as we took an elevator down to the ground floor of the hospital.

Kane glared at me.

‘It happens,’ I said defensively. ‘It happens all the time.’

‘If you get pregnant, I will fucking kill you,’ said Kane.

The woman who had gotten into the elevator on the same floor as us looked up from her cell phone in alarm.

‘He wouldn’t actually kill me,’ I said to her.

‘Yes, I would,’ said Kane.

The woman quickly went back to staring at her phone. I poked my tongue out at Kane. He laughed.

Joey came home in Reesey’s arms, and Bey doted on them both. He barely left the house for an entire week, and when he did it was only to get groceries.

They had so many visitors: Bey’s crew, a whole lot more of Bey’s ‘friends’, and then friends of Reesey’s from her old neighborhood, most of them with their own babies. More than anything else, those friends put me off having a baby. Their bodies were not in good shape. And some of their kids ran around Bey and Reesey’s backyard like they were wild animals. One toddler, ignored by her mother, was running round biting the other kids – her mother seemed to think that parenting was about pretending you didn’t have a child and knocking back as many drinks as possible.

When one of the other mothers smacked her kid, she laughed.

That baby girl cried like her heart was breaking, and it was Reesey, and not the useless bitch who had given birth to the kid, who ended up comforting her.

‘I don’t care what Joey does,’ I said to Reesey when we talked about it later. ‘I would never smack him. I would never smack anyone else’s child.’

‘Natalie, you smack my child and I will smack you.’

We both laughed, and then I said more soberly, ‘Don’t leave Joey with your friends, if that’s how you feel.’

Reesey frowned down at the newborn baby she was breast-feeding. ‘Trust me, I won’t be.’

She was doing all the feeding herself, determined that for a year the only milk he would drink would come from her. She was even drinking a certain tea and eating certain foods that were known for increasing breast milk production.

When I used the words ‘breast milk production’ to Kane he said I made her sound like a dairy cow. Anyway, whether it was Reesey herself or all that special tea and food, something did the trick. Joey was soon in the seventieth percentile for height but the ninetieth percentile for weight.

It took Kane a while before he was comfortable around Reesey while she breast-fed. She didn’t feed in front of just anyone – definitely not Bey’s crew, as Bey had specifically told her not to – but Kane and I had started spending so much time with them that we tended to be the exception.

One warm spring evening, we sat outside their place in the last rays of the day’s sun. Everyone but me had just finished eating the burritos I’d made for dinner when Reesey, having pulled one top up and one top down to expose her maternity bra, held out her hands for Joey. Instead of eating my burrito, I’d been holding him, looking down into his steadfast eyes thinking that he was the most beautiful baby in the entire world.

As I handed Joey over to her, Bey suddenly laughed. We all looked at him. He was laughing at Kane.

‘What?’ snapped Kane.

I realized what the problem was. When Reesey had taken Joey, the bra cup she’d unclipped had fallen down, revealing an engorged breast and a swollen nipple. Kane was clearly embarrassed.

‘Nigga, come on,’ said Bey.

Kane frowned. ‘You know you ain’t okay with it.’

Bey shook his head at him. ‘My baby is feeding my baby. That’s all I care about.’

That wasn’t quite true, of course. No other guy ever saw Reesey feed Joey. Reesey told me later that Bey hadn’t made a big deal of it because Bey trusted Kane. Bey had said to her that he’d felt better leaving her at night now than before we’d moved in.

Kane relaxed a whole lot more around Reesey after that, although he was still careful to look her directly in the eye if he was talking to her while she was feeding Joey.

I never worried about whether I was looking at Reesey’s breast or not – a lot of the time I probably was. I’d never been close to a baby breast-feeding before that. Joey might go on to Reesey’s breast crying, but so quickly he was the most content being in the world. I liked seeing that, and being around it. It was peaceful.

I asked Kane one more time in that first month of Joey’s life about us having a baby.

He was watching TV, and he muted the sound.

‘You get pregnant now, Nat, I’d want you to abort it.’

‘Kane,’ I said, shocked. ‘I wouldn’t abort your baby. I’d want it.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘Why not? You love Joey.’

‘I wouldn’t say love.’

‘You told me he was beautiful.’

‘No, you told me that.’

‘Whatever; you’d love our baby.’

‘Nat, we live in a shithole. We don’t have any extra. Bey, he’s got extra. And fuck. I’m nineteen, why would I want a kid? I actually want to do something with my life. I thought you did too.’

‘I do.’

‘You won’t be able to open a cafe if you’ve got a kid.’

I’d only recently told him about wanting to do that. He was talking about having his own workshop at the time, and I just came out with what
I
wanted. He thought it was a good idea, and drilled me with questions about it.

His words now were a good reminder. I did badly want that cafe, or a cake shop, or something like that one day. I then thought of the biting toddler and the mother who so easily ignored her.

‘No kids, Nat,’ said Kane.

‘Okay, fine,’ I conceded. ‘But tell me if I did get pregnant you wouldn’t want to abort it.’

‘No. I’d want you to abort it.’

‘Even though it would be half me?’

Kane hesitated. I waited.

‘Nat, just don’t do that to me. And can you stop asking? I don’t want a kid yet. Later, fine – but not yet.’

I sighed, then shrugged. ‘Okay, but no more sex.’

‘What?’

‘We can’t risk it.’

‘You’re on the pill.’

‘There’s still a chance.’

‘I’ve got a condom somewhere,’ said Kane, a slow grin making its way across his face.

‘Still too risky.’