Freshwater(19)

What I cared about was that he felt good. Or maybe not good, but he made me feel full. He was thick and he stretched deep inside Ada, against the oath’s velveteen, pushing her body open in a way that seemed to say, with confidence, you are alive and you have not died. For me, that was enough. Alive was flesh. Alive meant I had a body to move with.

Ada went with him to Planned Parenthood twice to get the morning-after pill, even after he bought the condoms. You see, she was the one who insisted on protection, but she was never the one he slept with—I was. On their second visit to the clinic, the nurse there looked at Ada with contempt.

“Maybe try using contraception?” she said, and her sarcasm brought blood rushing to Ada’s cheeks.

“Don’t mind her,” I whispered to Ada, looking back at the woman with hatred. “Who is she, sef? Stupid bitch.”

She’s just a fucking human, I almost added, she doesn’t even matter, none of this matters. Still, I didn’t let Ada go back to the clinic after that, not even when it would have been the smart thing to do. There are many things I did to protect her and there are many ways in which I failed.



I continued to sleep with Itohan’s brother, and one morning back at their mother’s house in the suburbs, the sun was breaking like thin water through the window when Itohan’s mother walked into the room and caught Ada lying inside the curve of the boy’s long body. They were both wearing clothes—it was actually innocent, not like the night when Ada had been sleeping on the sofa in the upstairs parlor, when he held his penis to her face, thick and partial, bumping into her nose and nudging her lips apart. I had overtaken her before she woke up fully, moving quickly so I could push back the first wave of terror and disgust that was breaking in her. This was mine. He was mine. I had promised her, never again.

When his mother opened the door, Ada and the boy startled awake just in time to catch her firm gaze sweeping over them.

“Come to my room,” she told her son, and shut the door with a sharp click.

Ada’s stomach dropped. I stretched inside her and looked around lazily.

“Oh fuck,” she said, sitting up. “Should I go also?”

“Shit.” Itohan’s brother leaped off the bed and pulled on a T-shirt. His face was twisted with worry. “Just stay here. I’m coming.”

He left the room, carefully closing the door behind him as if someone else might walk past and see Ada in his sheets. I sat with her, excitement thudding through me. It was so bad, being caught. I loved it.

“What’s going to happen?” Ada asked me, chewing on the corner of her thumb. “What if she finds out?”

I thought about it. “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You know what will happen.”

She was right. If Itohan’s mother found out I had been fucking her third child under her roof, Ada wouldn’t be welcome there anymore. Their family had wrapped her up as if she had a right to feel safe with them, and if this secret was discovered, she would lose them all.

“Don’t worry,” I told Ada. “She didn’t see anything.”

Ada wrapped her arm over her stomach. She was wearing an old oversized T-shirt, green with large colorful butterflies all over, a souvenir from the Philippines that Saachi had given her. She also wasn’t really listening to me, not anymore; she was too afraid. I sat with her anyway, until the boy came back into the room looking chastened.

“She wants to talk to you,” he said.

“What?!” Ada clambered off the bed. “For what? What did she say to you?”

He shrugged uncomfortably, not wanting to explain more. “Just go,” he said. “She’s waiting for you.”

By then, even I had become cautious, although the thrill of being bad still hummed quietly in me. Ada walked down the short hallway and knocked on his mother’s bedroom door, pushing it open when the woman’s voice told her to come in. She had never been inside that room before. It was shadowed and Itohan’s mother was sitting on the edge of her bed with a Bible lying next to her on the duvet. When she spoke, her voice was firm but not angry.

“I’ve seen you two cuddling on the couch before, and that one is fine,” she said. “I know you weren’t doing anything, but you should never share a bed with a man unless you are wearing his ring. Not even your own brother.”

Ada kept a scared and straight face, but I caught her relief and broke out in rib-tearing laughter inside her.

“She doesn’t know! I can’t believe she doesn’t know,” I gasped. “Fuck!”

“Shut up,” hissed Ada, her mouth closed.

The woman continued talking and my laughter turned bitter at how blind she was. So much had changed. So much had changed, and if this had happened six months before … but that wasn’t even possible. Six months before, Ada would never have been in Soren’s bed, I wouldn’t have been born, and Ada would still be the sweet and good girl who this mother thought she was talking to. But I was here now and I was the world, lying in ugly entrails. I envied his mother the cleanliness she lived in, where everything was still innocent and no one had ever touched Ada. It was such a fucking lie.

After she released Ada from her room, Ada went back to the boy’s bedroom, but she made sure to leave his door open. He was leaning against his wardrobe, looking beautiful and stressed out.