“What?” Darcy asked. I rinsed my Daily Read branded mug under the boiling water tap and threw a tea bag into it.
“A car,” I repeated, opening the ten-foot-tall chrome high-tech fridge and taking the milk out.
“No. Have you?” Darcy took the milk from me and poured it into her mug, directly onto the tea bag. As always, I turned my nose up at her technique.
“After the party,” I said, shame flooding my body.
“With the Uber driver?” Darcy asked, slamming her mug onto the counter. “Queenie!”
“What?” I snorted. “No? Obviously not?”
We quickly finished making our tea and scuttled into the meeting room next door. All of the rooms in the building had glass walls, so we laid out some pens and papers and a rogue iPad so it looked like we were talking about work. “Not with my Uber driver, with Adi,” I told her, watching people moving around the street below.
“Are you serious? That sleazy guy who’s always asking about the size of your bum?” Darcy asked, mouth agape.
“I know, but I was just feeling so lonely and shit after that party, so I sent him a text not really thinking that he’d respond, but he did, and now I feel so bad,” I said quietly.
“Because of Tom?” she asked. “Well, you are on a break, so what you do in this period doesn’t matter.”
“Partly because of that, but mainly because it’s not me! I don’t do this sort of thing!” I yelped.
“Well, look. You’re going through something confusing, so you’re allowed to do some out-of-character stuff,” Darcy reassured me. “And you know I would never judge you, but . . . I hope you were at least careful.”
“We were careful,” I lied. I opened my mouth to speak again, knowing that I should probably tell her about the miscarriage. “No sleazy babies on the way.”
* * *
A day of very minimal work passed, and I stayed late to avoid going back to the house I still wasn’t anywhere near settled into. On the bus home, after a day dodging waves of guilt after my auto encounter and of not doing any work at all, I stared at mine and Tom’s message chain, willing him to reply. Nothing since his “clean break” reinforcement on Saturday night. My phone buzzed in my hand, but after checking my texts and WhatsApp and e-mail, I couldn’t figure out why. I scrolled across screens and saw an app with a heart icon, a red notification dot in the right-hand corner. It was the OkCupid app that the party girls had installed on my phone. I took a deep breath and opened it up cautiously, having no idea what it would contain.
“Nice pics. How big would your tits be in my hands?” From This_Guy_Fucks.
Is this how it’s going to go? I am a young woman with a good job and fairly nice pictures, and the first message is about my breasts?
“I like the one of you laughing. What else does that mouth do?”
And the second message is about my mouth, fantastic.
“Chocolate girl ;)”
Oh, and some classic fetishizing. This is a really, really good start.
“Nice curves, I like bigger girls. Some of my favorite porn is BBW.”
Do women respond to that positively? I wonder.
“I want to go out with you, chocolate girl. How about it.”
Another chocolate reference, this time from “Sexy69,” whose age range of preference was a very discerning eighteen to ninety-nine.
When I got back to the house, I skimmed the OkCupid messages again. Was this what my life without Tom could be? Men in their droves calling me confectionary? Even with his neuroses and his love of logic and his racist family, at least I knew where I was with him. At least he cared about me, and at least I didn’t have to delete all of this thinly veiled sexual harassment. What could I do to get Tom to love me again? Was time really all we needed? With a big, heavy groan, I got ready for bed. I had to go to the hospital in the morning to make sure everything had “passed smoothly.” I wished I could tell someone about it; but, as with other parts of my life I’d rather bury, better to just keep it moving.
* * *
The hospital was fine. Apparently all of the “fetal tissue has gone, lovely,” but because some of the pain had come back after I had sex with Adi, I needed antibiotics to ward off potential infection. The sex wasn’t even worth it. Should I tell Tom about any of this? Not the stuff about Adi. I guess he should know about the rest, because it’s part of him? Is that too romantic a thought? Anyway, surely clean-break rules don’t apply when you add a miscarriage to the equation. I sent him a text on the way back to the office.
Hello, Tom. Could you give me a call?
I went back to work clutching the new round of antibiotics, and for the rest of the day was a mix of 50 percent public smiling and 50 percent talking to myself, listing reasons why Tom should know that I’d had a miscarriage. Tweed Glasses saw me pacing in the smoking area and walked past, paused in front of me as if to say something, but then carried on walking. Maybe he was going to have a go about me stepping on his shoes a few weeks ago; they did look really fancy.
I’d put my phone in my desk drawer in an attempt to get even the simplest of tasks done, and when I got it out four hours later, nothing from Tom. That answers my question. He doesn’t deserve to know about the miscarriage, I thought angrily. Still not able to focus on any work, but feeling less shame about Adi, I checked OkCupid. I’d filled in my profile and added some things about myself in the About Me section that might remind men that I was a person as well as someone they could have sex with. Turns out the sadness that silence from the person you love brings can be temporarily erased by the dull thrill of attention from strangers.
“Good profile. How’s it going? Just putting it out there but I know exactly how to handle a girl with a body like yours. I might not be black, but trust me, you wouldn’t know it from my dick.”
. . . albeit mainly negative.
chapter
FOUR
I SENT A text to Kyazike. The first friend I made on the first day of our secondary school when we found each other amongst a sea of white faces. We all had name tags and she blew my tiny westernized mind when she told me that her name was pronounced chess-keh. She continues to blow my mind.
Queenie
Kyazike, what are you up to?
Kyazike
Nothing. Just chilling. U?
Queenie
Just sitting in bed, being sad
Kyazike
Come thru
I was on my way there when my phone started to buzz with requests. She hadn’t changed since school.
Kyazike
Can you bring me a Coke
Kyazike
And a packet of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, it’s cheat day
Kyazike
A Twix
Kyazike
NOT Coke, changed my mind. A Sprite
I walked through Kyazike’s housing estate and arrived at her block, a high-rise within a cluster of buildings like it, blue plastic bag in hand. When I stepped into the elevator, I stood as close as I could to its stained mirror and pulled at the bags under my eyes. When had they got here? When I got to the eighteenth floor and outside Kyazike’s front door, I knocked and waited. Rapped it again. Nothing.
I put my hand through the iron security grille that covered the entrance and knocked three times. Kyazike wrenched the front door open so quickly a blast of food-scented air blew my hair from my face.
“Why you banging the door like police, fam?” I rolled my eyes as she unlocked the grille and stepped back as she swung it open.
“What’s good?” she asked, hugging me. I think I held on a bit too long. “Ah, fam. You struggling?”
“The struggle is very real, as my cousin Diana says.” I took my shoes off and crept into the living room. “Have I said it right?” I heard Kyazike laugh from the door as she closed the grille.
“Why you creeping? My mum’s not here, she’s on nights this week.” Kyazike carried on laughing as she followed me.