This Fragile Life

And after all, it’s one little mark. It might not be a cigarette burn. Hell, it could be anything. A birthmark. An accident. Anything at all.

I drift through the rest of the day, and when Ramon’s mother comes to collect him I move forward impulsively, smile at her even as I search her face for clues, her body for bruises.

“Hi, I just wanted to let you know how much I’m enjoying having Ramon at camp. He’s a budding artist, really takes his time with things.”

She stares at me, a little surprised, a little wary, and says nothing. She tugs at Ramon’s hand and says something to him in Spanish. And then they’re walking out of the gym, and I just stand there, undecided. Undecided about so much.

I decide not to call today. I’ll see Ramon tomorrow, get a better look at the mark. I know I’m rationalizing, at least a little, but I also know what it could be like with a low-income Hispanic woman. She might not even have a chance.

Still I feel as if I’m hiding something as I help clean and lock up the center. Normally I would tell Jim, the director of the camp, about my suspicions. But really, what is there to say? I barely know Ramon, and I didn’t get a good look at that mark. Even so, everything in me churns with fear for Ramon, sympathy for his mother.

I push it all out of my mind, or try to. It’s a beautiful day, a light breeze keeping it from being too hot, and I stop by the farmers’ market at Union Square. I love walking by all the stalls, the mounds of grapes and punnets of juicy red strawberries, soaps and honey from farms upstate. I buy three perfectly ripe peaches and a punnet of strawberries, my mouth watering at the thought of them.

Back in my apartment I wash and slice up all the fruit and put it in a bowl. I sit on my futon with the window open and the breeze blowing over me, and eat it for dinner. Such a simple act, and yet with it something in me loosens, lightens. This is me, I think. This is the me I’ve been missing, the me who enjoys the simple sweetness of fruit, my independence, the freedom and joy found in this moment.

I go to bed happier than I’ve been in a long time, since I first took that pregnancy test. And the next morning when I come to the community center Ramon doesn’t show up.

At first I don’t notice because I assume he’s just late. And then I’m busy with classes and kids and chaos, and I don’t think about it again until his class troops in for art, sweaty and rambunctious after a running-around game in the gym. I set them up all finishing the paintings they’re going to take home to their families, making sure the paint pots with their spill-proof lids are accessible to every pair of grubby hands, that everyone has a paintbrush and is actually putting paint to paper rather than to something else.

I pause, look around, tense. No Ramon. I think back quickly through the day, trying to remember if I saw him. When I saw him, because I want to have seen him even as I accept, the knowledge like a stone inside me, that I didn’t.

Somehow I get through the class, my mind numb, the kids around me a blur. The camp ends at lunch time on the last day and for the last hour we have a party in the gym with families invited, and as I circulate through the hyper kids and the tables with platters of supermarket cookies and watery red fruit punch I keep looking for Ramon. Thinking that maybe he will show up for the party, at least. He doesn’t.

While everyone is busy in the gym I go to Jim’s office and look through the registration files, find Ramon’s address. I’m working on instinct even as I’m wildly, savagely hoping that this is pointless, that it’s nothing. I feel a heavy certainty inside me that it isn’t.

Ramon lives in a housing project on Avenue D. In daylight it’s not really dangerous, but as the only white person I can see I feel both conspicuous and uncomfortable. Rap music blares from balconies, and a bunch of teen boys lounge in the doorway of Ramon’s building, drinking beer from forty-ounce bottles and laughing in a way that has alarm prickling between my shoulder blades. I have to squeeze by them, and they don’t move out of the way.

I’ve been to places like this before, but even so I am always astonished at how in just a few blocks I feel as if I’ve entered another country. I take the concrete stairs up to the third floor, and then down a narrow, urine-smelling corridor to Apartment 3F. The doorbell is broken and I knock.

No answer, and I knock again, my heart thudding in time with the loud raps on the door. Finally I hear someone shuffle to the door, open it with the chain still drawn across. My hope dies when I see Ramon’s mother glare at me from behind a tangle of dark hair. She has a black eye.

“I’m looking for Ramon,” I say, my voice croaky. “He didn’t show up to camp today and we’ve been concerned—”

She tries to slam the door in my face. I press my palm up against it, doing my best to keep her from shutting me out even as my heart rate skitters in sudden fear. “Please—”

“Go away.” Her English is thickly accented, but I can hear the helpless rage in her voice.

From behind her I hear a man’s voice, a low growl of Spanish. The chain rattles and the door swings wide open; a surly-looking man, no more than twenty-five, glares at me and I feel my heart pound in my chest.

“I’m looking for Ramon.”

“Véte,” he growls, which I know means something like ‘get the hell out of here’.

I swallow, make sure to still meet his eye. I am terrified of this man, of this situation, and of how vulnerable I am, with this fragile life pulsing faintly within me. The surge of protectiveness is sudden and undeniable, and I want to put a hand to my belly and shield my own child in a way I wasn’t able to shield Ramon. I resist the revealing gesture, but only just.

“Is he here?” I ask, and my voice trembles.

The man’s mouth thins. He takes a step towards me, one hand now clenched into a fist. “Rajá“

I take a step back and the door slams. I swallow, my mouth dry, and my stomach cramps. Swallowing again, choking back bile, I turn back down the corridor.

I keep my head down as I hurry down the stairs, through the projects, out onto Avenue D and then across to the center. The party is over, and the other staff are mopping the floor with its scattering of crumbs and pale puddles of spilled punch.

Jim glances at me from across the room, his face caught in a frown. “Alex—”

“I need to talk to you, Jim,” I say, starting towards him, but there is something wrong because he is shaking his head as he points to me.

That’s when I feel the stickiness on my thighs I hadn’t noticed before, and when I look down I see that my shorts are covered in blood.

Chapter 13

MARTHA

As soon as my cell phone rings at work I know it’s Alex. I set her number to a different ringtone, a soothing cricket chirp because God knows I’m tense enough already.

And I’m even tenser when I answer the call, because I hear the ragged note of tears in her voice.

“Martha—”

“Alex? Alex, what’s—?”

“I’m bleeding, Martha.”

“Bleeding?” Everything in me freezes. “What? What happened—?”

“It just started all of a sudden.” She makes a choking sound, as if she’s holding back a sob. “There’s a lot of blood.”

“Where are you?” My voice is high, sharp with anxiety. With terror.

“I’m at the center.”

Way downtown. I feel icy with adrenalin and shock. “Let me call the OB,” I say, striving for calm. “I’ve met with her before. I could get you an appointment today.”

“I’ll call,” Alex says after a moment, her voice still shaky.

“Okay. You have the number? You’ll call me when you hear?” My voice is sharp again.

“Yes,” she says, subdued now. “Yes, I’ll call you.”

I spend the next twenty minutes staring at my computer screen, simply waiting. Finally the phone rings and I snatch at it. “Alex?”

“They’ll see me today,” she says quietly. “At four.”

“I’ll be there.” Too late I realize that Alex might not want me there. But I need to be there. Still I force myself to say, “Only if you want me to. If you want somebody to go to the appointment with.”

Alex is silent for a long moment and I wait, my breath held, my heart beating hard. “I’d like that,” she finally says, softly, and I try to let my breath out slowly, so she doesn’t hear my rush of relief.

I leave the office at three-thirty and run into my direct supervisor, Mark Sheehan, in the corridor. He sees me obviously on the way out and raises his eyebrows.