Queenie(2)

“Wasn’t Prince a Gemini?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure he was born in June.”

“Prince—God rest his soul—was Prince,” Maggie said, looking me dead in the eye. “Astrology did not, and does not, apply to Prince . . . if you get involved with a Gemini man, you’ll regret it. They like the chase—trust me. The pursuit of a woman makes them feel strong, it makes them feel good, and it makes them think they have a purpose in life. And we all know that unless men have a purpose, they feel aimless. But Gemini men are a whole different story,” Maggie continued with awe-inspiring enthusiasm. “When they do finally get the woman, they’ll drop her. Drop her like they didn’t even know her. Gemini men don’t mind who they hurt, who they have to use, who they have to step over—they don’t even bloody notice.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean white men, Maggie?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. Her line of fire sounded a little too specific.

“You can take it how you want to,” she said, folding her arms and pursing her lips. “You’re the one who thought she found her white savior. And look!”

Maggie is a big woman. In all ways. She has a new and even more surprising wig made every week, she doesn’t like to wear black because it’s too depressing, and she has to wear more than one pattern at any given time, even when she’s pottering around the house, because “Jesus wants life to be about color.” The obsession with color is a nod to her fleeting career as an artist, a career in which she never created anything but hype around herself. Maggie is also intensely religious, but the less ever said about that, the better. My aunt and grandmother always use religion as a stick to beat everyone with, and even to dwell on it for more than one second would be to entertain something I had no time for.

I sat on the edge of my seat to prevent the hospital staff from screaming my full name out this time around. “What’s to stop them from looking me up when I’ve gone?” I asked Maggie, trying to derail her rant. “What are the rules?”

“Who’s looking you up?” she asked me.

“Anyone in the waiting room?” I answered quietly.

“You’re not a celebrity, Queenie,” Maggie said. “Don’t be so paranoid.”

“Queenie Jenkins?” the nurse from before bellowed. I patted Maggie on the knee to signify that I was about to go in, and jumped up; she didn’t stop talking.

The nurse didn’t smile back at me; instead she placed a hand gently on my shoulder and trotted me down the clinical corridor and led me back into the room that smelled like someone had spilled a bucket of bleach.

I glanced nervously at the machine with the intrusive attachment that had bothered me earlier as it hummed lowly in the corner.

“You can put your things back down there,” she said, and pointed to a chair by the door. For the second time, maybe more so this time, I wished it had been Tom there in that chair, but I didn’t have time to lament because the nurse was staring at me, so threw my bag on it.

“Can you remove your tights and your underwear and put your legs back in the stirrups? I’ll go and get the doctor.”

“Again?” I asked, throwing my head back like a surly teenager.

“Mmm. Yes, please.” She left the room. I should have worn sweatpants for this, both because I would live in them if I could, and because tights are a complete faff. Putting them on requires half dance, half contortion, and should only be done once in a day, in a private sphere. I got my phone out to text my best friend, who was probably doing something less horrifying with her afternoon.

Queenie

Darcy. They’re asking to examine me for the second time! I’ll have had this machine in me more times than Tom in the last few weeks



The doctor, a brisk woman with kind eyes that had clearly seen a lot of women’s fear, swept back into the room. She spoke very slowly, explaining that she was going to have one more check of something. I sat up.

“What are you looking for? You said the IUD was there.” She responded by snapping on a pair of latex gloves, so I lay back down.

“Okay,” she said after a pause and a prod. “I’ve asked another doctor for a second opinion. And having had another look, it’s just that—well, is there any chance you were pregnant, Queenie?” I sat up again; my stomach muscles would be shocked into thinking that I was exercising at this rate.

“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

“Well,” the doctor said, peering at the ultrasound, “it looks like you’ve had a miscarriage.”

I lifted my hand to my mouth, forgetting that I was holding anything. My phone slipped out of my grip and onto the floor. The doctor paid no attention to my reaction and continued looking at the screen.

“Why?” I asked, desperate for her to look at me, to acknowledge that this news might have affected me in some way.

“It can happen with most forms of contraception,” she told me clinically, her eyes that I’d previously thought were kind still fixed on the screen. “Most women just don’t know about it. At least it’s done the job.”

I lay back on the examination table long after she’d left the room.

? ? ?

“Oh, you two will have beautiful children,” Tom’s grandmother said, staring at us from across the table. Joyce had cataracts, but she could still see the future, it seemed.