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Nabulungi is a lot of things when she feels the first hint of a curve along her soft abdomen, but she isn’t afraid.
It takes a little bit of reflection and some mental math before she realizes she hasn’t bled this month, nor the month before that. She gives herself a couple of days before she lets the realization fall over her completely, embracing the new reality with an unexpected sense of peace.
Looking down at the small protrusion pressing out against her dress, Naba feels close to her mother. Closer than she has felt in the eight years since her passing. According to the stories Baba told her, she had been Nabulungi’s age when she felt the first bump in her belly. Naba likes to think her mother hadn’t been afraid, either. While they didn’t have much back then, she and Baba had each other, and it was evident to anyone who listens to him talk about her that they were very much in love.
Just as she is very much in love with Arnold.
He doesn’t know yet. Naba hasn’t told him, or anyone else for that matter. There is a part of her that wants to keep her secret tucked away just a bit longer. To share in this quiet moment of connection with her mother and feel the warmth of her presence in a way she hasn’t known since she was eleven years old. For now, this is hers, and she will protect it and hold it close to her heart. And soon, she will tell him.
She isn’t sure what kind of reaction to expect, but she suspects he may not share in her fearlessness. They had been careful, but only as careful as two teenagers with little to no resources or experience could be. She is well aware that fatherhood is nowhere within the scope of his horizons, and the news will undoubtedly come as a shock. But once again, she takes comfort in knowing she feels no fear. Telling him will summon a big reaction, almost definitely, but she doesn’t have to think for a second that he will ever leave her alone in this.
Sometimes her mother feels so close these days that she can almost hear her voice.
She hears her most clearly when she visits her grave, which is more and more often as time passes. There is a large stone by the river that she and her father had carved together soon after her passing. It is surrounded by tangles of white wildflowers that have grown around it, small buds brushing up against the faded carving by her father’s hand. Nakupenda, he had written. I love you.
She traces her fingers softly over the word as her other hand rests on her stomach, and she can almost feel her mother’s embrace.
When she finally does tell Arnold, she thinks he might pass out, and she’s suddenly glad she’s chosen this spot by the river to break the news in case she needs to splash water on his face to revive him.
His first instinct is to apologize, which Naba would have found funny if not for the tears collecting in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says for the fiftieth time in a minute as his knees start to buckle. “Oh, Naba, I’m so sorry.” He sinks to the ground then, unable to hold himself upright any longer.
She sighs down at him and tells him not to be sorry. That she is not sorry, and that there is nothing to be sorry for. But he doesn’t seem to hear her as he continues his spiral into his own head.
“Oh, God,” he pants with one hand clutching his chest. The other is fanning at his face, which feels like a nearly useless gesture against the sticky heat in the air. “My dad is gonna kill me.” He pauses for a moment, a new horror falling over him as he realizes, “Oh, God. Your dad is gonna kill me.”
She does laugh then, her hand coming up to cover her mouth when he looks at her as if she suddenly has three heads. Naba sinks down next to him in the grass and places her hand softly over his, pulling it away from where it is clutched around the material of his shirt. She brings it to her belly and holds it there, waiting. Arnold looks up when he feels his palm pressed flat against the slight curve over her clothes and meets her eyes.
“It is okay,” she tells him smoothly, calmly, with a smile she hopes will speak louder than her verbal assurance. She suspects it might be working when the muscles in his hand relax under her touch, his thumb brushing over the fabric of her dress.
“My baby is in there,” he whispers, dropping his eyes to their intertwined hands. “Our baby.”
Then there is a hint of a smile among the amazed bewilderment in his eyes and Naba lets another giggle slip out.
“Yes,” she says back to him. “Our baby.”
Arnold is incredibly protective.
He watches her closely when he thinks she’s not looking and always offers his arm when she stands up or moves too quickly, even though she is barely showing through her loose-fitting clothes. She usually brushes him off and rolls her eyes, giving him a playful swat when she tells him to stop treating her like a glass doll. But sometimes, just sometimes, she gives in and lets him make these seemingly small gestures, eventually understanding that doing so allows him to feel like he is helping. In letting him take care of her in the little ways, she is taking care of him in a way that matters.
Some of the boys know, too, eventually.
Kevin is the first to find out, mostly because asking Arnold Cunningham, of all people, to keep something like this from his best friend is a big expectation. Connor is the second to find out, because, well… the same could be said about Kevin. Naba is glad they know. They are elated for her, which comes several steps after shocked and briefly, tentatively horrified, but they get there in the end.
Connor and Chris make her a cake out of crumbled-and-reassembled Poptart pieces. It’s supposed to say “congrats,” but they ran out of room, so instead it says “congrat,” singular, with something that looks more like the number 5 underneath it, but the sentiment is there. It tastes like cinnamon and is overwhelmingly sweet, which she almost finds delicious until she’s hunched over a small trash can with Connor’s hand on her back. They feel terrible afterward, but she smiles and maintains that it is one of the sweetest gifts anyone has ever given her, pregnancy sickness be damned.
Kevin is extremely cautious around her, always asking if she needs anything, if she’s feeling okay when she moves funny or makes a face, and it’s so amusing to see the boy who is always so in-control look so completely out of his element. It’s endearing and warm and she is glad to have a friend like him. Arnold tells him one day to stop trying to step up on his woman because he’s stealing his thunder, which is only funnier by the fact that Kevin is sitting in Connor’s lap when he says it.
Naba knows what a good friend Kevin has been to Arnold in private, too. In his moments of fear and doubt, which seem to grow more plentiful with each passing day, Kevin tells him he will be a good father, he’s sure of it. Naba tells him the same every chance she gets. Eventually, she thinks, maybe the two of them can convince him.
The first thing she registers is pain.
Before she even opens her eyes, she knows something is wrong. Very, very wrong. She only realizes she is crying when she feels the bed dip beside her, Arnold’s hand landing on her forehead as he rolls over.
“You’re soaking wet,” he whispers, the terror shaking all sleep from his voice. Naba responds with a sharp cry as pain wracks her midsection once again, sending her curling forward, her hands clutching desperately at her stomach.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” She can’t concentrate on Arnold’s voice, shrill and panicked in a way she has never heard as she doubles over further, a scream dying behind clenched teeth.
A rush of cool air sweeps over her as the blanket is snatched away.
The room falls completely quiet for a few seconds, and that cursed, solidifying silence is a moment that Naba will never forget.
She doesn’t have to look down, doesn’t have to open her eyes to know what Arnold has seen. She feels it pooled between her thighs and on the soaked sheets beneath her.
When Arnold speaks again, it is to tell her that he will be right back. He promises. That he is sending someone to wake Gotswana, that help was on the way. That everything would be alright.
But she knows. She knows.
For the first time in five months, Nabulungi is afraid.
A sharp ringing takes over her hearing, keeping all other sound at a distance.
Gotswana is talking, she can see his mouth moving in slow motion, but words fall on deaf ears. He doesn’t need to tell her. She already knows.
There are soft cries from beside her. Warm arms encircling her that she leans into without conscious thought. Her hands find her belly, she realizes, and the touch feels empty. She feels empty. A single tear falls down her cheek.
She doesn’t feel her mother in that moment, the one time she wishes more than anything that she did.
The boys are kind to offer their condolences, as is Kimbe and the rest of the women in the village who had cared for Naba in the absence of her mother, but she wants to keep the ceremony small and private.
So it is Naba, Arnold, and Mafala alone that make their way to the river’s edge that Sunday morning, Naba’s trembling hands clutching a stone at her belly. Her father and boyfriend stop a few paces out from the small patch of wildflowers and allow Naba to walk forward on her own. She stops for only a moment before she sinks to her knees in front of her mother’s stone, hearing the soft sniffling behind her, and runs her fingers over it as she has nearly every day for months.
She lets her eyes close, a tear slipping from each of them as she brings the smaller stone in her hands to her lips, pressing the softest kiss against the smooth surface. It hurts, almost as much as it does when she lays it down in the nest of white and green so that the edge brushes up against the larger one. She looks down at them, side by side.
She can feel her mother again suddenly, a rush of warmth flooding her veins. She takes comfort in knowing she will be holding her little one in her arms until Naba can be with them both again.