THE ART OF LOVING

Family Affairs

"No son, there is no way she can stay here. I mean, how sure are you that she is carrying your child? You know these low lives, they will do anything to get hold of someone like us," the old man said. I could tell he was the final say in the family from the way he talked with absolute authority. "Dad, she was a virgin when I met her, believe me," Bill went on in an attempt to defend me. All that while, I was in the kitchen, hiding. "We had an agreement Bill, you get to marry Rosette. She is smart, strong, beautiful, learned, and I would like to get closer to her father, you know, he could be good for business," the old man added and my heart sunk a little bit further. "No, I don't even like the girl dad. Her ego, ye high, her respect, ye low, and she is a drunk and I mean seriously," watching Bill do the high and low descriptions was funny but the look on his father's face was even funnier. "Will you shut up Bill, you are a drunk too and that pregnant girl you are talking about, she was a barkeep. Who is worse, Rosette, or that poor gold digger?" Bill was clearly upset with his fathers words and he just asked him to get out. "Well, I will leave because I want to. However, a meeting will be held this weekend to discuss this stupid matter and I expect you to show," the old man said and walked out in measured, arrogant steps. "I wish you were not my father you hard a*s old man," Bill said in a low tone. "You know I am old but not deaf right? You have no idea how I wish I would have a different son too," he said as he walked out the door.

"Lucy, you can come out now even though I don't understand why you had to hide in the first place. My old man, he is all bark but no bite kind of a..." he was gonna say something really bad about his father and I couldn't take it so I asked him to shut up. " You are lucky to have parents who love you enough to think about your future," I found myself saying while staring to a n***d couple's painting on the wall. "Wait, didn't you have parents?" he asked and even though I wanted to answer him, words failed me. I ended up touching the scar on my right side shoulder. "You promised to tell me all about the scars," he added. "And you promised me that your family would be okay with this whole situation," I answered back and we stood there just looking at each other for a while. You would have thought I was thinking about his father and the conversation the two had just had but no, I was thinking about how lavishing Bill was at the moment. All I wanted at that point was to reap off his clothes and have him right there. Ever since the beginning of the second trimester, it felt like someone had flipped a lustful switch in me and sometimes all I could think or even dream of was s*x. I even drooled over a homeless guy once. I tried to fight it but it always got the better of me and I ended up overeating in an attempt to push it away. "You look hooot," I found myself saying after struggling to keep it together for a while. "Wow, just how much can you take at this point?" he asked with a wicked smile on his face.

"What can I say? I guess I am becoming a s*x monster," I meant it, that was exactly how I felt inside. "Okay, I guess I don't have a choice then," he answered and made his way towards me. Watching his slow teasing steps aroused a thousand different feelings in me. Ever since I walked into his life after the pregnancy, all I wanted was to make him take responsibility. I was broke, I had lost my job and Alice had abandoned me at the worst possible moment. I was locked out of my apartment and I had nowhere else to go. At the moment, I wanted to get rid of the pregnancy buy I just couldn't bring myself to actually do it. I had grown up in a merciless family and I had promised myself to be different and abortion went all the way against it. The second thought I had was to end it all. My life was all pain, never had a moment I would call "better" except for the day I left home and the night I had spent with Bill. The night that got me into the mess I was in. Death seemed like a way to end it all but then I thought of Bill who had every right to know what was going on. I needed him to know so that he could at least help me and if he wasn't willing to help, I was to take that as a sign that death was the only way. And now we were here, living under the same roof and having the best time of our lives. The idea of becoming a father had seen to Bill sobering up and getting serious with life.

"So, I know you really need it, but I feel like we need to talk about our future and that of our kid. By the way, what do you feel about a scan later today?" he said kissing me passionately. I was falling deeper in love with him every time he did those little acts of kindness. "Well, I can't wait. I really hope its a girl," I said. The urge to get physical had just disappeared and I craved dates at the moment. "Well, then what are we going to do next?" he asked and we looked at in each other for a long while. I knew what I would have loved to happen next, we would get a crib, I would help him put it together, we would then paint the baby's room and get to buying those cute little outfits for our little angel. I would have loved to live in that house with him forever if possible. I wanted him to be mine. I wanted all that kindness and love, but I felt deep down that it wasn't going to be all that easy. "Since when was my life about getting something I needed leave alone wanted?" I asked myself out loud and he heard me. "Well, what about this ones. We can do everything you want starting with getting you lots of dates after the prenatal visit today," he said with a smile and carried me to the shower. By then I was used to him cleaning me and also cleaning after me. My life has never been that smooth which was the reason why I kept waiting to wake up and find that it was all a dream. Even with all that, I also knew that his father had too much influence on him and he was the one to decide whether Bill and I could stick together. Deep down, I already knew what it was gonna be and I didn't want to think about it much.

The checkup went by smoothly. My little angel was kicking strong and we knew now that it was a little prince. I expected a girl but a boy sounded even better. I would teach him how to loving and kind. I would teach him to treat women like queens. I would make sure he became the change I wanted in the world. All those thoughts would take me through the rest of the tough pregnancy. The evening came by and Bill thought we would celebrate by treating ourselves to a nice dinner date and as well settled in his favorite hotel, I saw the engagement ring in his jacket. I knew he was going to ask me to marry him about a week before but he had decided against it that morning. He wanted to hear what his family had to say first and that scared the hell out of me. "What if they convinced me him to let me go?" was the question that kept ringing in my mind over and over again and every time it did, I held on my belly and tried to chanel positive thoughts for my kid's sake. "Go ahead, order all you can eat and even if you won't finish, we could always take the rest to go," he assured me and gave me the menu. I wanted to eat a little bit of everything in there and making a choice was one hell of a task so he asked the waitress to pack a little bit of everything. I was embarrassed to dig in with all those people around so I asked him to take me home where I ate myself to sleep while he watched lovingly. He even laughed out loud at a a certain moment.

The night was nice except for the endless toilet visits that I hated more with each passing day. Finally it was that day, the day he would go to the so called family meeting. As expected, I was not invited. His father made it clear that the meeting was a "family affair" and I was not family. I watched Bill walk out of the door and I knew in my heart that I was done for. He was about to present himself in front of a family that only saw the poor as a burden to mother earth. A family that was convinced that my pregnancy was never his and even though it was, I just became pregnant for the money. I feared they would get to him and I think they did. I waited for him all day and all night but he never showed. I called him but I was directed to voicemail. I tried to text him.but he never replied and at that moment, I knew it was over. Early the next morning, his sister showed up with a business face. She presented some papers to me without even as little as a hello or hey. They were agreement papers and I was supposed to sign them. They said that the family would take care of me for the remaining months, a DNA would then be conducted once the baby was born and if it turned out the baby was Bill's, then they would pay me a lot of money, two million to be exact, and I would leave the baby with them and never return.

That was unfair and I let her know. She however didn't care and she told me that that was the best deal I could ever get. I wanted to talk to Bill, make sure he was on board with the plan. Maybe I would have convinced him to change his mind or something. The sister however assured me that that wasn't going to happen. Bill had been sent to oversee one of his father's many businesses outside the country and he wasn't coming back until the giving birth deal was done and I had been paid off. You can never imagine the kind of pain I felt at that moment. Once again, life has showed me the middle finger like it always did. "Why did I expect that it was ever going to change," I wondered out loud. Either way, I was not ready to give up my baby for any reason. I knew I would have loved for my mother to be around growing up. I knew how it felt to live without her and I couldn't bear the thought of my baby feeling the same way so I refused to sign the papers. "Well then, that proves that you are lying about the pregnancy and in that case, you should be out of this house by tomorrow. I will be sending someone to make sure you are gone and if you will be around by then, he will throw you out, and not in a kind way," the sister said and left without any more words. I knew there was no need to argue with the family so I got to parking. I wrote a few more texts to Bill and as expected, he never answered. He had chosen sides and he sure as hell wasn't on mine.

I had nothing to my name except the clothes Bill had bought me. I was about to make the most painful decision in my life. There was no way I would give up my son and that meant I had to drag him into my miserable life. I know he would regret my decisions some day but I didn't care. I parked my little bag and walked out, made one long last look at the house that would have been mine if I made one little signature before leaving. I had no place to go. I wasn't welcome back home, not after I had slapped my mother in law and ran away. No one could hire a seven months pregnant lady and Alice had blocked me. I was about to start a pretty hard life in the streets. A place that was never meant for ladies leave alone pregnant ones. As I walked through the well lit estate, I thought about the perfect life we would have lived. A perfect family with enough to eat and spare. I would have even had a couple more kids, probably a girls. It would have been a nice life with me waking up next to the love of my life every morning. The heavens knew I had prayed for that endless times but no one up there cared enough to answer. I knew that nobody cared about me or my problems and I also knew that I could not kill myself. Not since I heard my baby's heartbeat. I knew it was going to be one hell of a journey but I was willing to take it since no one else would take it with me. I held on to my then huge belly and completely ignored my aching legs and the nausea. As I made my way to the only place a person like me could find refuge, the slums. I never understood why most of the rich neighborhoods were always surrounded by the damn slums and I figured it was time I found out as that was the only way forward. From a place surrounded by beautiful flowers, big houses, and fresh air, I was welcomed to the next place by the foul smell of sewer and tiny tin houses with holes all over. There dogs didn't need to be walked as they just roamed around. Kids were all over the place playing games and enjoying the little they had. That was my new home, I had to make peace with it.