The fight I had with my parents after the dinner was terrible. We shouted for hours—or, I should say, my father and I shouted. My mother sat there, silent and pale, shocked at the both of us.
“How could you do this to us?” my father demanded. “After everything we’ve done for you, Simone! What have you ever needed or wanted that we have not provided? Parties, clothes, vacations, the finest education money can buy! You’re spoiled. Horribly spoiled. To think that you’d disgrace us like this! That you’d disgrace yourself! A thug, a criminal, a mafioso! It’s disgusting. I thought we raised you better than that. I thought you had morals. This is what you want for yourself? To be the wife of a gangster? Until he kills you, or one of his associates does. Is that what you want? To be obliterated by a car bomb? Or maybe you’d like to sit alone in a house bought with blood money while your husband rots in jail!”
His words are like razor blades, slashing at me over and over from every direction. No single cut is enough to kill, but I feel weakened by the bleeding.
The problem is that he’s shouting my own thoughts back at me. My own worst fears.
“Even if you don’t care about your future, how could you do this to us? After everything your mother and I have worked for. You’d put this stain on our name and reputation? And what about your sister? You think she’ll keep her job in the banking industry when they know she’s connected to the Italian mafia? Selfish! You’re completely selfish.”
I have to sit down on the couch as his words keep hammering me down, over and over.
Finally Mama speaks.
“Simone, I know you think you love this man—”
“I do, Mama. I love him.”
“You don’t know what love is yet, ma chérie. You are so young. You’ll fall in love so many times . . .”
“No, Mama. Not like this . . .”
I can’t explain it to them. I can’t explain that love may come and go, but my bond with Dante is forever. I’m sewn to him down every inch of my skin. My heart is in his chest, and his in mine. I see inside of him. And he sees me.
I know that I’m young and foolish. But if I’ve ever been sure of anything in my life it’s this: what I feel for Dante will never come again. Not in any other person. He’s my first, last, and only.
Now I really am a prisoner. They take my phone, my laptop. I’m not allowed to leave the house for any reason.
I’m in agony knowing that Dante must be trying to text and call me. I’m terrified of what my father will do if Dante persists.
I cry in my room until I’m as dry as desert sand. No tears left in my head. Nothing but aching sobs.
Mama brings up trays of food and I ignore them.
Only Serwa is allowed in my room. She sits next to me on the bed and strokes my back.
“It was very brave of him to come to the house,” she says.
Serwa, at least, formed a gentle opinion of Dante upon meeting him.
“I don’t want you to leave,” I sob.
She’s supposed to go to London in a few more days, to start her new job.
“I’ll stay if you want,” she says.
I do want that. Badly. But I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “You should go. Maybe Tata will let you call me . . .”
“Of course he will,” Serwa says.
I sleep hours and hours every day. I don’t know why I’m so tired. It must be the thick, black misery choking me.
I try to eat some of the food Mama brings up, so I won’t be so sick and dizzy, but as often as not I end up throwing it up again.
One of the nights, I hear a commotion in the yard—shouting and scuffling. I can’t see anything out my window, but I’m sure it’s Dante, trying to break in to see me. My father has increased our security detail. Dante doesn’t get through. I assume they don’t catch him either, since my father would surely rub it in my face.
Does Dante know I’m a prisoner in here? Does he know how badly I want to speak to him, even just for a minute?
Or does he think I’m caving in to my parents? That I’m going to give him up like they want?
I’m not giving up.
And yet . . .
If I’m honest with myself . . .
I’m not exactly trying to escape the house, either.
It’s not just because I’m ill and miserable. I feel like I’m balancing on the blade of a knife—on either side of me, a ten-thousand-foot drop into nothingness.
It’s an impossible choice between Dante and my family. Either way, I lose something precious to me. A part of myself.
I don’t know what to do. The longer I balance on the blade, the more it bites into my flesh, cutting me in half.
In the end, it becomes a completely different choice.
Serwa brings a bowl of ice cream up to my room. It’s seven o’clock at night, eight days after the disastrous dinner.
She sets the ice cream down in my lap. Mint chocolate chip—my favorite.
“You have to eat something, onuabaa,” she says.
I stir the ice cream around in the bowl. It’s already starting to melt. The green looks garish.
I take a bite, then set it down.
“It doesn’t taste right,” I say.
Serwa frowns. She’s always sensitive to signs of illness in other people, because she herself has always been unwell. She’s always the first one to bring me a hot pad when I have period cramps, or to lend me her nebulizer when I have a cold.
“You look pale,” she says to me.
“I’ve barely been out of the room in a week,” I say. “No sunshine in here.”
I know I’m being sulky. Serwa is supposed to leave tomorrow for London. I should ask her if she wants to cuddle up and watch a movie. Or if she needs any help packing her suitcase.
Before I can offer, Serwa stands up abruptly.
“I’ve got to run over to the pharmacy,” she says. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Send Wilson why don’t you?” I say.
“I’ll be back,” Serwa repeats.
I lay down on the bed again, too tired to care much about why she needs to run to the pharmacy right this minute. Actually, I’m a bit jealous that she can run errands whenever she likes while I’m stuck here under full-scale surveillance.
She returns an hour later, carrying a plastic bag from CVS.
“Simone,” she says hesitantly. “I think you should use this.”
She holds out a rectangular box.
It’s a pregnancy test. I stare at it blankly, then scowl at her.
“I don’t need that.”
Dante and I only had unprotected sex one time. It would be very unlikely that I got pregnant from one single time.
“Please,” Serwa says quietly. “For my peace of mind.”
I take the box from her hand. I don’t want to take the test. It’s humiliating, and I’m stressed enough as it is. But the sight of the test has put a kernel of doubt in my mind.
I’ve been tired, headachy, nauseous . . .
I try to think back to the last time I bled. The past few weeks seem like a blur. I can’t exactly remember if I had a period this month, or the one before. I’m not very regular.
I plan to pee on the stick just to be sure. To show Serwa there’s nothing to worry about—other than the thousand other things I’m already worried about.
I stalk over to my en suite bathroom, which isn’t nearly as tidy and sparkling clean as usual. I haven’t been letting the maid in to clean. Damp towels litter the floor and toothpaste flecks the mirror. My cosmetics are scattered across the countertop, and the waste bin is overflowing.
I sit down on the toilet to read the instructions. It’s simple enough—I take the cap off the indicator, pee on the end of the stick, and let it sit for ninety seconds.
I follow the steps, trying not to consider what would happen if I were pregnant. What a disaster that would be.
Even the smell of my own urine turns my stomach. I can barely stand to put the cap back on the test and set it on the counter next to the mess of Bobby pins and half-used lipstick.
I look at myself in the mirror, pulling up my oversized t-shirt to examine my body.
I look the same as ever. No bulge on my belly. No change in my shape.
Even my breasts look the same. I squeeze them in my hands to see if they feel any fuller. They seem normal—though a little sore.
It hasn’t been ninety seconds yet. I don’t care. I snatch up the stick, to prove to myself that this whole thing is ridiculous.
I see one vertical pink line. Negative.
Then, right before my eyes, a second horizontal line begins to rise into existence. Like invisible ink held up to the light, it blooms out of pure white cotton, growing thicker and darker by the moment.
The two pink lines form a cross. A plus sign. Positive.
The test falls from my numb fingers into the sink.
Serwa hears it fall. She comes to the doorway.
Her big dark eyes look down at the test, then up to my face. “What are you going to do?” she says.
I shake my head, silently. I have no idea.
“We have to tell Mama,” Serwa says.
“No!” I say, a little too sharply.
If we tell Mama, she’ll tell Tata. And he’ll be furious. I can’t even imagine that level of anger.
No, there’s only one person I want to turn to right now: Dante.
“You have to get my phone,” I beg Serwa. “I have to talk to him.”
She presses her lips together, nervously. “I know where it is,” she says.
Serwa goes off to steal back my phone. As soon as I’m alone in my room, reality comes crashing down on me.
Pregnant. I’m pregnant. Right this moment, there’s a bundle of cells growing and dividing inside of me.
It seems impossible, and yet it’s the most real and immediate thing in the world.
The walls of my bedroom seem to rush toward me like a collapsing box and then speed away again. I sink down to the carpet, sweating and shaking. I’m breathing too hard, too fast. My heart is seizing up in my chest. I think I might be dying . . .
What am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
“Simone!” Serwa cries, dropping down next to me. She puts her arm around my shoulders, pulling my head against her chest.
I’m crying again. My reserve of tears has replenished enough for my face to be soaking wet once more.
Serwa pushes the phone into my hand. The screen is cracked. I don’t know if my father dropped it or threw it in anger.
Luckily, it still switches on. I see fifty-seven missed calls and a dozen messages from Dante.
I was planning to call him right now, but I’m crying too hard.
I type a message instead:
I have to talk to you. Come meet me at midnight, at the gazebo in the park.
He’ll know the one I mean. We’ve gone for walks together in Lincoln Park. We sat in that gazebo and kissed and talked for hours.
It’s only a moment until Dante replies, as if he’d been holding his phone in his hand, staring at the screen.
Simone! I tried to call you. I tried to come see you.
I know, I reply.
Are you alright?
My hands are shaking so hard I can hardly type.
Yes. Come to the gazebo. Midnight. It’s important. I have to see you.
I’ll be there, he says. I promise.
I hand the phone back to Serwa, so she can return it to its hiding place, wherever my father had it stashed away.
“How are you going to get out?” Serwa asks me.
“I need your help,” I tell her.
