Blue (27 page)

Tabitha grabbed Alyssa’s hand and guided her over to a table in the back of the room where the lights didn’t seem to reach very often, and they sat down together.

“I think they have food over there. You stay here, I’ll go get us something,” Tabitha said, practically screaming into her ear in order to be heard.

Tabitha walked over to where they had a bar of food set up and grabbed a couple of plates, piling them with little finger sandwiches and fruit. She walked back over to the table where Alyssa was sitting and noticed that the same man, Jack, had found her and sat down next to her. Tabitha ducked back into the corner, to watch for a moment in the flashing light before breaking in. She saw that Jack handed Alyssa a drink, and Alyssa just held it in her lap, smiling shyly at him as he spoke with her.

Tabitha walked back over to the table and set down the plates of food.

“Hi, I’m Tabitha,” she said, extending her hand to Jack.

“Jack,” he said, setting his drink down on the table and shaking her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Tabitha said, releasing his hand and leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest.

“You too,” Jack said, turning his attention back to Alyssa and leaning in close to her to talk to her in her ear.

Tabitha guessed that he asked her if she wanted to go dance with him, but Alyssa shook her head and pointed to her plate. Jack turned and walked over to another young woman at a nearby table and started chatting her up.

Tabitha and Alyssa sat together finishing their sandwiches and people watching. Many of the girls became drunk, and the men just continued passing around the drinks. As the night drew on, Tabitha noticed many couples in the corners of the room kissing, and a few of the men walking out of the room with a few of the girls. When Tabitha saw some of the girls beginning to leave, she leaned over to Alyssa to speak into her ear.

“You wanna go? I think we can go now,” Tabitha said.

Alyssa nodded, and the girls stood up together, throwing their plates in the trash and walking out into the lobby.

The sound of their heels clicking under their feet resonated through the hallway, as the heavy wooden doors to the main hall shut behind them, trapping most of the music inside. They stepped outside onto the marble staircase and saw Jack and one of the girls leaning up against a column, wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing passionately.

“Thanks for saving me from all this today,” Alyssa said, reaching down to take off her shoes.

They walked together toward their dorm when they heard the sound of running steps coming up behind them. Suddenly, Alyssa was spun around by someone pulling her arm.

“You! Do you know who Jack is?” Dr. Hance asked Alyssa, pointing in her face.

“Sir, what? I—” Alyssa stammered.

“Jack is the Commissioner for the entire Johannesburg chapter of Blue. He’s one of the wealthiest sponsors we have,” Dr. Hance said, squeezing her arm. “He told me that you denied him! I saw you flirting with him last week. Why would you lead him on like that? Now I don’t know if he will ever come back!”

“Well, if you go look out in front of your little ‘dance club,’ you’ll see that he found himself someone else real quick!” Tabitha yelled, stepping in front of her friend. “So leave her alone.”

“Oh, Tabitha,” Dr. Hance said, laughing. “You better be glad that Inali has his eye on you, or I would have half a mind to teach you a lesson tonight.”

C h a p t e r 
25

Anytha sat next to her mother in the waiting room of the doctor’s office and flipped through a parenting magazine. Her mother sat twiddling her thumbs in the chair next to her, obviously nervous about her appointment. Delah jumped up from her chair and ran into the waiting room bathroom, and Anytha could hear her vomiting behind the door. Anytha couldn’t help but smile wryly at the familiar sound. Her mom’s obvious morning sickness was a sign that her baby brother or sister was still very much alive—afflicted with albinism or not.

Anytha remembered back to the conversation with her mother two weeks earlier in the kitchen, the day that she confronted them about the baby. Watching her mother cry at the kitchen table wasn’t satisfying to her; it was very much the opposite. She hated to see her mother in pain, but she knew that if nobody stood up to her and told her that what she was contemplating doing was wrong, then she would go through with it and never even look back.

“Anytha, you know our stance on abortion. You know that we believe that if a woman doesn’t feel equipped to bear a child, she shouldn’t have to. You know that we don’t believe that a woman should have to put her life on hold to bear a child. We went to many counseling sessions with Inali since we got the positive test. He was very supportive and said that he would get behind whatever decision that we felt was best for our family,” Delah said to Anytha that night, as tears flowed down her face. “He encouraged us to do the amniotic test to find out if this baby will have albinism, and then make a decision.”

“Mom, how will that help you make the decision? What if they don’t have albinism? You said that you were honestly thinking about keeping the baby. Are you still considering abortion? What will be different if they have albinism? Are you going to sell them to the compound again?” Anytha asked. “Because we all see how well that worked out last time, right?”

“Anytha, that is enough! Your mother shouldn’t feel pressured by anyone, especially her own daughter, to continue a pregnancy that she doesn’t want to continue. She has every legal right in a couple of weeks to terminate this pregnancy if she feels that it is the right thing to do,” Chester said, slamming his hand down on the table.

“Chester, calm down. Anytha has every right to be angry,” Delah said, wiping the tears from her eyes and placing her hand over Chester’s hand on the table.

“So, just so I’m clear, what you’re saying is that whether or not this baby has albinism has no effect on whether or not you will terminate it?” Anytha asked, shifting her gaze back and forth between her father and mother’s eyes. “You’re saying that you aren’t even considering selling this baby to the compound.”

“I—just don’t know,” Delah said, pausing and putting her head in her hands with her elbows on the table. “I guess not.”

“So, what’s the point of having the albinism test done, then?” Anytha asked.

Delah stared at the table blankly.

“Because. It’s just nice to be prepared, either way,” Chester said.

“No. Mom, I want you to answer me,” Anytha said frankly, looking at her mother. “What is the point of getting the albinism test done if the information that you find out has nothing to do with your decision? If your decision has nothing to do with money, what is the point?”

Delah continued staring at the table, as tears ran down her face.

“Mom?” Anytha asked insistently, ducking her head down to get into her mother’s line of vision.

“I guess there is no point!” Delah said, erupting into tears.

Chester shook his head in disagreement, but remained silent.

“Okay. Well, I want you to prove it to me then,” Anytha said.

“Anytha! Your mother doesn’t have to prove anything to you!” Chester said, as Delah looked up at him with a disapproving glance.

“Prove to me that your decision has nothing to do with the money that you could get from selling your baby to the compound,” Anytha said. “Don’t get the test done. Show me that it doesn’t matter. And prove to me that you are truly considering keeping this baby too, like you say you are. Let’s go to the doctor together.”

Chester threw his hands up into the air and walked out of the room as Anytha grabbed her mom’s hand on the table. Delah started crying even harder at her daughter’s touch.

“Mom, I hope you know that I just don’t want you to make a decision that you are going to regret. This isn’t something that should ever be decided based on money. That’s not okay. This is a human life we’re talking about,” Anytha said. “Inali can’t speak to you levelheadedly about this. He owns the abortion clinics. He practically invented the prenatal testing for albinism, and he donates a ton of money to the compounds. Please, stop speaking to him about all this and just think for yourself. And also consider that I would even take care of the baby. I’ll even adopt them as my own, if that would be what you want. I mean, you took care of me when you were much younger than I am. I could do it.”

Delah cried harder at her daughter’s offer, and Anytha stood up and scooted her chair around the table, wrapping her arm around her mother. Chester came back into the room, pacing up and down the length of the kitchen.

“How dare you, Anytha? How dare you say something like that about Commissioner Inali? After all he’s done for you!” Chester said, pointing at Anytha.

“All he’s done for me? You mean how he practically groped me at my activation party?” Anytha asked, standing up and looking at her father. “How I trusted him as a father figure for over a decade, and as soon as I turn eighteen, he can’t keep his hand out from underneath my skirt?”

Chester stood blankly staring at her.

“Yeah. How dare I not thank him for all he’s done for me? He practically was just waiting until I was ‘of age’ before he pounced on his first opportunity,” Anytha said, turning to her mother. “Prove to me that you are serious about this. Don’t talk to Inali about this anymore.”

Anytha remembered the conversation so vividly, but was snapped back into reality as she saw her mother come back out of the bathroom. The memory brought a queasy feeling to her stomach. She hated seeing her parents getting so angry, but she knew that she did what she had to do. She set down her magazine as her mother sat down beside her. A nurse came out from behind a wooden door and called her mother’s name.

They walked back together into the room, and Anytha sat down in a chair against the wall. Her mother sat up on the table, kicking her feet against the side of the table as they waited for the doctor.

A nurse came in and took Delah’s blood pressure and checked her heartbeat. She handed her a small cup and asked her to run to the bathroom and leave a urine sample for them in the small compartment in the wall of the bathroom. Delah grabbed the cup, walked to the bathroom, and came back to sit on the table.

After a few minutes, the doctor came in and introduced herself, then asked Delah some questions. She asked her to lie back on the table and lift up her shirt. She ran a tape measure from the top of her stomach, which looked nothing like it would be carrying a child yet, and ran it down to her pelvis. Gently touching her belly, she pulled out a small device from a large pocket in her white coat. She picked up a tube of blue liquid from the counter, and unscrewed the cap.

“Heads up, this will be cold,” the doctor said, squirting some blue gel on her belly, then taking a wand from the side of the device and rubbing it around in the gel. “This is a heartbeat Doppler. If your estimation is right, your baby would be around twelve weeks right now, and we should be able to hear the heartbeat with this.”

The doctor rubbed the wand around on her stomach for a few minutes, taking it from one side to the other as the Doppler emitted fuzzy noises, not seeming to find what she was looking for. She wiped the gel off the tip and reattached the wand to the side of the device, placing it back into her pocket.

“Well, sometimes we can’t find the heartbeat on the Doppler, but our office just got an ultrasound machine. I would like to have our ultrasound tech find the heartbeat for us, if you don’t mind. You can just hold your shirt up, if you don’t want to clean up before you go into the other room,” the doctor said, taking off her gloves.

The doctor escorted Delah and Anytha out into the hall and into another room, then asked Delah to lie down on the table. A nurse came into the room and started pressing buttons on the ultrasound machine, picking up what looked like a larger version of the wand that was on the Doppler.

“Have you ever had an ultrasound before?” the nurse asked.

“No. They didn’t offer them on my other baby,” Delah answered, catching Anytha’s eye. “I mean—babies.”

“Okay, well it’s pretty simple. I’ll just rub this wand on your belly and we will hopefully be able to see your healthy, little baby growing in there,” the nurse said, squirting some more gel onto her stomach and moving the wand around her stomach for a few seconds.

Anytha looked up at the black and white screen, trying to make sense of whatever she was looking at. She saw a black circle with a small white spot in the middle in the shape of a kidney bean. In the middle of the little kidney bean was a small, white place that looked like a blinking white light.

“There’s your baby,” the nurse said. She pressed a button on the machine and a thumping sound emanated from a speaker on the top. “And there’s the heartbeat.”

Anytha stared at the blinking white light on the screen and noticed how it matched up with the sound that came from the speaker. She could see her sibling’s heart beating on the screen, and as she sat looking at it, she saw the entire white kidney bean wiggle inside of the black circle.

“Oh, there’s some dancing!” the nurse said, chuckling.

The nurse clicked a bunch of buttons on the machine and told her that the baby looked good, estimating that she was almost eleven weeks along, based on the baby’s size. She pressed another button and printed out a picture of the baby, handing it to Delah. Delah nodded and grinned at the nurse, and looked at Anytha who was smiling from ear to ear.

“Thank you,” Delah said, as the nurse gave her a towel to wipe the gel off her belly.

Delah jumped down off the table and opened the door to the room, and Anytha followed her out into the hall outside of the elevator.

They stood by each other awkwardly in the elevator until Anytha decided to break the silence.

“Well, I thought that was incredible,” Anytha said.

“It was really amazing to see it dancing,” Delah said. “I wish I could have seen that with you.”

“So, are you at least glad that you came?” Anytha asked eagerly.

“Yeah. I am definitely glad that I came. I’m glad that I got a chance to hear its heartbeat and see it swimming around in there,” Delah said.

“So, are you leaning toward keeping it, now?” Anytha asked, smiling at her mother.

“I just—I can’t imagine terminating now,” Delah said, starting to cry. “But I also can’t imagine starting over from the beginning again. Your father does not want to raise another baby right now. I have to talk to him first. I’ll show him the picture. Maybe it will change his mind.”

Anytha decided against pressing the matter any more until her mother and father had a chance to talk. She knew that there was no use in making this decision any harder than it already was for her mother. Anytha shivered at the thought of her mother terminating the life of the little kidney bean that was growing inside of her so happily. She couldn’t believe that in less than a week, it would be legal for her to stop that little beating heart for any reason she could come up with. Her mother had the choice to stop the beating heart of what could be Anytha’s only living sibling, and she knew that she would never be able to live with herself if she didn’t try with everything that she had to prevent it from happening—even if it ultimately caused the demise of her parents’ marriage.

Anytha and her mother pulled into their driveway and walked into the house. As soon as Delah made it in the door, she ran into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. Anytha rubbed her back and got her a warm washcloth.