The Almost Sisters(73)

He didn’t change his profile picture often, because one more click brought me to a shot of his family’s Christmas tree from three years back. He’d told me about it while we were playing Words with Friends. That year, he and his dad had conspired with all the older grandkids to scandalize his deeply religious mom. They’d turned her tree into a scene straight out of Star Wars.

They’d picked out the darkest dark green Douglas fir they could find, then dotted it with twinkling white lights for stars and large colored balls for planets. All over the tree, they’d hung TIE fighter ornaments flying in formation against X-wings. Carefully arranged sprays of tinsel acted as laser blasts, and they’d twisted red and orange and yellow tissue paper into flames, strategically gluing them onto damaged ships. His dad had even found a Millennium Falcon tree topper, displacing the angel.

I sat staring at my screen for several endless minutes. I couldn’t take my eyes away. It was not because of the tree. Well, the tree was hella cool, no doubt about it, and it was right in the middle of the frame. Even so, it was not really a picture of a tree.

It was a family. A whole family. His parents and him and all the kids who’d helped, clustered around this enormous Star Wars tree.

I was having trouble swallowing. Batman’s mother was tall and elegant, a very dark-skinned woman with a crown of graying braids, glaring at the tree with comical mock horror. His father, skinny and bespectacled, had an enormous Adam’s apple and high-waisted grampa pants. He was the biggest dork that I’d ever seen in a picture, except for maybe my own dad. In a dorkcathlon there would be no clear winner, but the two of them would both make the Olympic team. He’d given Batman his big eyes and those ridiculous long lashes.

Batman was there, one arm around his dad, the other holding an adorable round-bellied toddler. His dad cradled a very new baby. All the older kids were clustered around, the three biggest kneeling in front and making ta-da jazz hands at the tree. There were seven of them all told, and they came in a rainbow of shades that ranged from tan to Cyprus umber. No matter how he came out, Digby was going to fit onto their spectrum.

I wasn’t looking at a tree; I was looking at a treasure chest. A mawmaw and a poppy, as his sister’s children called them. Aunts and uncles, not pictured, but no doubt close by, one of them holding the camera that had snapped this shot. Seven cousins—no, eight soon. His youngest sister was due in a few weeks, he’d said. Cousins who ranged from Digby’s own age to Lavender’s. Cousins who looked like Digby’s father. Cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents who knew what it was like to grow up in America with brown skin. They were spread across Georgia and Alabama and South Carolina, a host of relatives who didn’t have to shift their gaze to know when they’d crossed into the Second South. Relatives who always knew.

Digby deserved to have them, these smiling human beings clustered tight together. Poppy cradled the littlest baby with wise hands that looked like they’d cradled umpty babies before her. Those hands deserved the opportunity to hold Digby, and Digby deserved to be held in them.

Most of all Digby deserved a father. I could vet Batman forever if I wanted. I would eventually see past his shiny second-date persona to his flaws, whatever they might be. Maybe he’d turn out to be a bit of a jackass, but there was a righteous jackass in my Birchie’s kitchen right now, and he was fixing necessary cocoa for his kid.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, a prayer more than a blasphemy, and my voice had gone all funny—breathy and thick. I had to tell him. I had to tell him now, while I was wonky and punchy and exhausted enough to do it. If I waited, I would find a thousand reasons not to. I would coward my way out of it and pretend that it was logic.

I got my phone and opened our long string of texts, then navigated to his number. I pressed it, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my eyeballs, in my throat, in my shaking hands.

Two rings and he picked up. Just as JJ had when I’d called him from his daughter’s phone. Maybe that was how many rings it took to call a man to fatherhood.

“Hello?” he said. He’d been asleep. Even if it hadn’t been past four in the morning, I would have known it from his graveled voice. I couldn’t answer. I hardly knew what to say. He must have looked at his screen and seen that it was me, because he said, “Leia? Hello? If this is a butt dial, I may kill you later.” He didn’t sound mad, though. He sounded amused, if sleepy.

“Not a butt dial,” I said. My own voice was scared and small.

“Hey. Are you fff . . . good?” he said. More awake now. A little hesitant.

“I’m okay. I’m good. I’m just . . .” I paused, my heart pounding. Now I wanted to say that this was a butt dial. I wanted to hang up. But I kept thinking of all his nieces and nephews, pressed in close and grinning by that gonzo Star Wars Christmas tree they’d made with him. “Pregnant.”

It was the only way to end the sentence, really.

“B-beg pardon?” he said, nonreactive. Polite. Like he hadn’t quite heard me.

“I’m pregnant. We are. You and me,” I said, except he wasn’t. It was just me, actually. “Well, no, that’s not how biology goes. I mean that you and me together got me pregnant.”

There was a silence, and then he said, “I . . . I . . . I . . .” And then stopped talking.

I was gripping the phone so tight I was surprised my screen didn’t shatter. He was breathing on the other end like he’d been running. So was I, I realized. We were both panting like dogs, almost in sync. This was going poorly, although I wasn’t sure what would have to happen to qualify this call as going well.