Zoma Crum-Tesfa
When Malaika Had a Baby
Excerpt
After waiting on hold for forty minutes, Malaika still could not get the surgeon to tell her any details about the procedure, including its name. She asked about the recovery, the potential long-term consequences. Statistics are irrelevant, he hummed, the surgeon’s skill defines much of the outcome. She asked if she would scar. Isn’t your C-section scar already pretty visible? That’s when she noticed Akeem sitting at her dining table, smirking. A stylist, Akeem was already uptown on business and decided to show up four-hours early to her dinner that evening. She was trying to remember if she had even invited him when, Hello?! She told the surgeon she needed time to think. Fine, why don’t we catch up in one-to-two years, if I’m even available, and he hung up. Akeem shook his head, Never thought I’d see the day that you’d let some white nigga school you.
“Look, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. And he didn’t. Malaika was Black, more “black” on paper than in-person; unmarried, with a baby, and on Medicaid. It had been three months since the unplanned hospital birth, which began with the doctor inducing her without her knowledge and ended with a C-section without her consent. “This surgery could leave me infertile, and no doctor will refer me to a specialist. It’s not just about the money—” a foggy flash of a doctor caressing her cheek while she was wheeled into the operating room came to mind. “They all want to cut you up themselves. It’s like cutting is their fetish, the reason they became surgeons in the first place. It’s all very Freudian.” She began feeling the fibrous split again, now in her hands, and saw—carrots? She was at her kitchen cutting board brandishing a knife, she realized, vaguely in the direction of Akeem, who said cautiously, I’m sure it is.
Dinner started simply enough. Sam arrived home from work early and took the baby and Akeem out for a walk. Their two other guests, photographers David and Solomon, arrived on time. Akeem and Sam then came back an hour late, a little drunk. They had lost track of time selecting natural wines and returned with nine-bottles. “Do we really need nine-bottles of orange wine? It always tastes like the barnyard floor.” Not to mention David and Solomon had brought a bottle, and she and Sam had two bottles of champagne for the toast. It was a deal! Sam said, stocking the fridge. Let the man live, Akeem hissed, but Sam wasn’t the drinker—she was. After the birth, she had become an insomniac and began drinking nightly to sleep. When she switched from wine to tequila, Sam stopped pretending he didn’t notice. Finally, she told Sam of the recurring dream involving a fortune-teller summoning a wave in which she and sometimes her baby would drown. They agreed not to leave alcohol in the house anymore.
And what is this—Akeem was pointing to Malaika, who, still feeling a bit more like an heirloom tomato in a dress than she would prefer, wore slacks and a sweater—no dress? She said she was between sizes. He replied, “Between?” Honey, three-months post-birth, this is your size. You could have at least put on jewelry, or does that not fit too? (It didn’t, actually.) Where’s the push present? Sam began to blush, and Akeem giggled, Well, I guess she didn’t really “push” in the end, and in uproarious laughter continued, although she did give it a stab!
It wasn’t as if it were a secret. Like many of the women in her circle, she had been very public about her decision to do a homebirth, espousing the rhetoric her mother had espoused to her that Childbirth is perfectly normal, natural, and, for thousands of years, not a highly medicated-medical-event. In fact, David and Solomon were on call to shoot the birth, reserving production gear for a variety of scenarios: night-birth, water birth, water birth at night. They were the first to hear she would now be birthing at the hospital and, when three days had gone by without Sam’s call to meet the couple outside the facility, it was pretty clear what happened. One after another, women who had been pregnant at the same time published their water-birth photos. It wasn’t hard to imagine what might have happened, but they didn’t actually know. They didn’t know about the routine visit scheduled at exactly forty-one-weeks-gestation: the day a nurse strapped her to a bed and a series of monitors, placing an IV in her arm before she saw the doctor, who would later explain the fluid was Pitocin and can be quite painful, so let us know if you need anything. They would never know that not only had she caved and asked for the epidural, the epidural didn’t work. So, after forty-hours, they would give her fentanyl and when she awoke with the baby, she didn’t feel love. She felt nothing.
The group was waiting to see how she would respond to Akeem’s comment. Ordinarily, she was nothing if not punitive, so it shocked everyone when she said nothing at all. Sam would later ask, Why didn’t you bring up his liposuction? “Because that would really hurt him.” Instead, she drank the remaining sips of wine from her glass and moved to refill it, first topping off whoever’s glass felt low. She was about to replenish Akeem’s when, Oh—and he nudged Sam—I’m good. You know, sweetie? Sometimes, one-glass is all you need. Sam had told Akeem about her drinking. Stunned, Malaika unconsciously poured orange wine all over the tablecloth. Shit, she thought, before spotting Sam swipe a photo across his screen. Did he check his emails during the C-section? He had always denied it, calling her paranoid, saying he only used his phone to take the first photo of their child, but she had visions: looking up to her left, between flares of light, she would see his eyes peering down, over his own hovering fingers, which stroked the screen in just the same way. She could feel tears forming. She didn’t understand why. She tried not to cry, but it happened anyway. That night, she let Sam say she was tired and spent the remainder of the evening in bed, not sleeping, listening to the voices coo over her baby.
this-is-the-rhy-thm-of-the-nigh-t, the-nigh-t — O-ye-ah
the-rhy-thm-of-the-nigh-t…
New Year’s Eve 2017 in a high-rise in downtown Miami. David, Solomon, and Malaika were locked in a mosh pit screaming the lyrics to Malaika’s favorite song: Wo n’t you teach me how to laugh and ler -n, nuh thin’ left for me to yer -n, think of me an- d bur -n, let me hol- d your han- d… “I swear! I’d marry the man who understands this song!” She began, before clarifying to David, “I mean the heterosexual man!” David nodded and yelled in her ear, Tweet that! “You’re so right!” She had to manifest it, here and now. “Thank you so much for your energy.” That’s when she heard it: la la-la, la la, la la la, la la la, la la, la la la, I-jus-kan’t get u out ta my hed… It was Solomon’s song. Solomon’s shoulders began to shimmy uncontrollably backwards towards the floor. Then he collapsed. He was on the floor sort of spasming, and David began voguing healing patterns over his body. The circle around them packed in even tighter. Malaika decided she needed air. She made her way towards the nearest wall and moseyed down that wall toward the bar.
Malaika crawled extra slowly against the floor to ceiling windows, hoping to glimpse life in the neighboring lit apartments. She loved Downtown Miami and what it promised. There were pools everywhere. Quaint bridges between private islands jammed with every epoch of modern architecture. Blue and white painted concrete by day; by night, everything—the water, the sky, the unfinished high-rises—became black. It felt like being in outer space, and it occurred to her: Miami is the most honest place on earth, because of course the whole planet is in space. She had again convinced herself that she was a genius and looked for someone to tell this all to. She saw Akeem further down the glass, entranced by his own reflection. “Akeem!”
Not now. I got this trade I’m trying to nut.
“Who?!” She peered in every direction but saw only white men. Girl you are staring right at him, Akeem said while wearing sunglasses and pretending to be on his phone. She decided she didn’t want to be seen with Akeem. He wasn’t often nervous and didn’t wear the emotion well. She then noticed a tall figure wearing a maroon moth-eaten sweater—On New Year’s Eve? Ew. He was walking toward them carrying mixed drinks and bottled water. “Dude,” she called back to Akeem, who was ready to laugh performatively at anything she said, “This guy—if he is the guy—is hella straight.”
You’re so stupid, Malaika! Jesus. May God bless you with more than a waistline one day, OK? Seriously. We worry about you. You’re about to be twenty-six— “You’re about to be thirty.” Can you just shut the fuck up for once? This is what I’m saying. Before he could explain what he was saying, Akeem discretely elbowed Malaika in the ribs so firmly that she crumbled to the side. Sam! Akeem cooed, is that for me?
About the Author
Zoma Crum-Tesfa is a writer currently based in New York. Her work explores race, birth, and life in a society so alienating that often the only people available to relate to are one’s betrayers. Her personal interests include looking at paintings and caring for other living things.