What's Mine and Yours(22)

If there was something she could do for her son, it would be to never be indifferent to the course of his life. She would advise him. She would watch over him. It would be either her or no one, and he deserved more than that.

They worked together in the kitchen, Gee salting the water, showing her where Ray had kept the red pepper. They ate spoonfuls of powdered cheese while they waited for the pasta to cook. The boy seemed content.

“This is good,” she said, tasting the spirals of the spaghetti. It was all she said out loud, but she hoped he’d get her other meaning—it could be good, just the two of them, together. She didn’t believe it fully herself, but she didn’t want him to feel alone. Would it be better, after all, if she were really pregnant like Linette had said?

With Gee, she’d had weeks of cramps she’d mistaken for a period taking its time to arrive. She’d felt nothing this time, but even if there was a churning within her, the buildup of new cells, would she have noticed? They weren’t always careful. She didn’t like it when there was anything between the two of them, and she felt fine about it because she was good at timing her cycles. After sex, Ray liked to get up and rinse off, and she would pin him down on the bed, try to get him to stay where she wanted him. It was one of the only times she let on how much she needed him. She assumed it was obvious from their life, all the ways they were one, but now she couldn’t be sure she’d done enough to make him know. She shook the thought away—it was too bottomless. She heard his voice in her ears comforting her. You didn’t never know, he said. How short our time would be.

Jade’s mouth dropped open. It was the visitation she had been waiting for. His spirit. She strained to hear him again.

“Mommy?”

It was the first time she had cried in front of her son. She had done her best at the funeral, the ensuing days, to shield him, to be strong. She built the shrine for her private mourning.

“Mommy,” he said again, reaching up to her. She brought his arms down to his side.

“Now, now,” she said, “no more tears,” although she was the one who was crying. “Remember what I told you? We’ve got to keep moving forward. Daddy would have wanted that.”

Gee gaped at her. She patted him on the head, told him to bring down the plates. When Gee didn’t move, she told him to pay her mind. She kept her voice soft, went on giving him directions. This was better: to calm him, turn his mind elsewhere. She went through the motions: serving food, eating, cleaning up, but she was waiting to hear Ray’s voice again. She didn’t. He’d already gone away from her.



That night at the hospital, Jade went to see the attending physician on her break. She brought him a cup of coffee and knocked on the door. She liked working with Dr. Henriquez, his full head of silver hair, his green eyes and thin face, his wide, pouting lips. He was always laughing at his own jokes, clapping staff on the shoulders to congratulate them on the smallest of tasks—a smooth handoff of a patient, a quick draw of blood. He didn’t look past forty, despite his hair, and Jade wondered if he’d gone gray from all these terrible night shifts.

He offered her a wrapped pineapple candy from a crystal dish on his desk. Jade said no, still working up the nerve to say what she had to.

“You know we don’t get insurance in this job, right?”

“You’re part-time,” Dr. Henriquez said. “And they keep it that way on purpose.”

“My boyfriend died last month. I haven’t brought it up cause there’s always a different attending, and I didn’t want to keep having to say it, over and over.”

Dr. Henriquez snapped his jaw shut, relaxed his brow. It was the same composure she had seen him use with patients. She wondered if it was real, his ability to tolerate bad news, or if he’d learned how to switch something off inside himself.

“Jade, I’m sorry. You need some time off?”

“I can’t afford that. I’ve got a little boy.”

Dr. Henriquez didn’t react to the mention of Gee, which Jade appreciated. She was sick of the doctors looking shocked and saying, But you’re so young! It was worst with the female residents, who were older but didn’t have any children of their own. They could hardly cover up their envy, disgust.

“That’s a big burden, raising him all by yourself now.”

“I used to think of him that way. Like a big old weight tied to my ankle. But it felt different with Ray. Like maybe my turn wasn’t up yet. Like maybe I still had a shot at my own life. You know I’m in school, right? I’m not going to be a medical assistant forever.”

“You’ll make a great nurse one day. Your boyfriend was right to support you. Good man.”

“He was. My son is, too. We call him Gee.”

She took a candy from the dish. It stuck to her tongue, the tart, artificial yellow tang. “I think I might be pregnant.”

“Then you ought to check.”

“Could you give me a test?”

“All right,” he said, rising. “Let’s get this done.”



Dr. Henriquez met her back in his office. He cleared off an area of his desk, handled the plastic canister that Jade had brought back from the bathroom. It was embarrassing to watch him hold the cupful of her pee. He dipped in one of the test strips, laid it flat on a paper towel.