Big Girls Do Cry (12 page)

“Loraine, I don’t know what I’m going to do. My life is falling apart at the seams.” I hoped this vague answer would be enough to stop her from asking more questions. Unfortunately, as soon as I admitted it out loud to her, the pain that I’d been trying to control burst forth, and I was in tears.

In an instant, Loraine was by my side, patting me on the back to soothe me. But I couldn’t stop the tears.

She waited until my sobs had subsided a bit, and then asked, “What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?” She handed me a tissue.

“I don’t even know where to start. My sister’s lost her mind, and I think my husband hates me.” It felt good to finally get some of this off my chest. I used to be able to vent to Tammy whenever I was feeling down, but for obvious reasons, I didn’t feel like she’d be much help to me these days. And since Rashad was hurting just as much as I was, I had been trying my best not to burden him.

“Rashad? The man who sang to you in front of the entire office at our Christmas party last year? No, that man loves you.”

“That was before he found out I couldn’t have his child.” I shocked myself by how easily I’d said those words. Boss or not, I realized how much I needed a friend right now, and Loraine was offering.

Suddenly, an idea came to me. “Loraine, you know a lot of people. Do you know anyone who would be willing to have a baby for us?”

“So, that’s what this is all about?” Loraine shook her head. “You guys having trouble getting pregnant? I know a great fertility doctor. Dr. Anderson is the best in Virginia.”

“I know. We’ve already seen him.”

“Did he help?”

“He tried, but it didn’t work. That’s why I’m looking for a surrogate.”

She thought about it for a second, then said, “No, I don’t know anyone. Maybe that’s not a good idea to have a complete
stranger anyway. You know that could open you up to blackmail.”

“You think someone would do that to us?”

“Heck, yeah. Either the birth mother turns out to be shady, or she changes her mind and doesn’t want to give up the child. You hear it on the news all the time where the court rules for the surrogate to keep the baby. From what I understand, most states allow the birth mother to change her mind for a whole year after the baby’s born.”

“I actually knew all of that. Rashad and I researched pretty well before we decided to go ahead with surrogacy. That’s why we asked my best friend, Tammy. You remember her from our book club meeting, right?”

“Yeah, the one from New York.”

“Uh-huh. She and her husband already have a boy and a girl, so we weren’t worried about them wanting to keep our child. We were even willing to pay them any amount of money.”

“I take it she said no?”

I nodded sadly and wiped away a tear that was trickling down my cheek. “They said Tammy was too old to carry another child, plus they were concerned that her weight would be an issue.”

“Well, I can’t say I don’t understand how they feel,” Loraine admitted. “I never wanted to have children when I was younger, but I used to think that maybe I’d get pregnant once my career was established. Now I know for a fact I don’t want any babies. I can’t imagine how hard a pregnancy would be on my body.”

“But women are having babies in their forties all the time these days.”

“True, doctors can make it happen, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for everyone.”

All of a sudden, Loraine’s advice wasn’t helping very much. Her sympathy for my situation seemed to have turned into sympathy for Tammy. I was starting to feel stupid sitting there bawling in front of Loraine, especially since her motto was “Big girls don’t cry; they get the job done.” Only, not all of us were as strong as her and could put up with everything.

“Well, I’m only thirty-seven, and I want to have a baby now.”

I guess my snippy tone made her realize she wasn’t being very supportive, because she apologized. “I’m sorry. I know this must be terribly hard on you and Rashad.”

“We’ve got everything in life that we want—except for a baby.”

My tears had started flowing freely again. She sat quietly and waited while I got myself under control.

“Why don’t you ask your sister?”

I shook my head. “Not an option.”

“Why not? I thought you two were close. She lives in your house.”

I had also learned recently that she was jealous of me and my husband, but I couldn’t tell that to Loraine. “It’s complicated.”

“If she’s your sister and she really loves you like she says she does, she should be willing to do it. You hear about that all the time on the news, grandmothers giving birth to their own grandchildren and things like that.”

“I don’t know….”

Loraine approached the situation logically, like the businesswoman I knew her to be. “I don’t see why not. She’s living up in your house for free. This could be her way of repaying you. I’m not one to talk about family, but it would be her way of getting a job, since she doesn’t seem to be trying to find one.”

I felt a slight twinge of guilt for letting her talk about my family that way, especially since I hardly even let Rashad say anything about Isis, yet I couldn’t help but agree with her assessment of the situation. It dawned on me that maybe that was my problem: I was being so emotional about the whole darn thing. If I looked at it like Loraine was, like a problem to be solved, and took my feelings out of the equation, it kinda did make sense to ask my sister. After all, Isis was laying up on us for free, and after the stunt she had pulled with Tony, she owed me—especially since I hadn’t yet forced her to move out.

I wondered if she would be willing to have our baby. Loraine was the second person who had suggested her. I hadn’t considered
it when Tammy said it, because I was so upset, but now … I didn’t know.

Maybe it would work.

“Loraine, do you think I can go home a little early today?” I asked, my mood more hopeful than I’d been in a long time. “I need to talk to my sister about a few things.”

“Shit!” I was so damn angry. Why is it always when you don’t want to get pregnant that it happens so damn easy?

I looked down in the toilet and saw evidence that my period had just started, ending any hope that I might be carrying Tony’s baby. Ever since he came down from New York last weekend, things just seemed to be going from bad to worse. It was starting to look like I went through all that aggravation of pissing off my sister and getting kicked out of her house for absolutely nothing.

I grabbed a tampon. It wasn’t like I couldn’t get pregnant. Two years ago, Tony got me pregnant, but I wasn’t trying to have a baby by a married man back then. I was still trying to get over the fact that he had a wife, so I did what I had to do and took the abortion route. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, now I wished I’d had the baby; then I’d have Tony’s ass right where I wanted him—with me.

I heard a rap on the bathroom door. “Isis, you in there? I need to talk to you.”

It was Egypt. My heart started thundering in my chest, because I knew things were about to get even worse. Today was supposed to be my moving day. Actually, it was supposed to be last Friday, but Mr. and Mrs. Sunshine seemed to be going through their own patch of stormy days since they’d returned from New York, so they hadn’t pushed the issue. I didn’t know what was up, but neither one of them went to work at all last week. Rashad, who wasn’t much of a drinker, was putting away shots of Jack Daniel’s like an Irish sailor. Hell, he was getting so drunk I almost jumped his bones a couple of times, figuring he’d
never even remember it in the morning. Of course that didn’t happen, though, because my sister was in the house twenty-four/seven.

I knew she was depressed, because all she did was clean and cry. The more she cleaned, the more depressed she was. After the first day, the house was spic-and-span, but she just started cleaning all over again. Whatever it was between those two, there was definitely trouble in paradise.

Still, I was in no better shape today than I was a week ago, when Egypt gave me the boot. I’d been trying to get her to sit down and talk to me all week. I was hoping to talk her out of giving me the boot, but I wasn’t even sure she realized I was in the house until this morning, when she passed me on her way to work and told me she wanted me out by the time she got home.

Now here she was, home hours before I was expecting her. Egypt was the only thing standing between me being homeless or going back to live with Momma and Daddy, and this was my last chance to get her to change her mind. I opened the door and hung my head low, trying to look pitiful.

“I’m still packing.” I just hoped Egypt would have mercy on me.

“Come down to your room. We need to talk.” She wasn’t being mean, but she wasn’t being nice either, so I couldn’t read her.

When we got to my room, I sat in the chair across from my suitcase, which was lying on the bed. I was praying she wouldn’t look in it, because I hadn’t packed a thing. “What’s up?” I asked.

She had the weirdest look on her face. She didn’t look angry, like I would have expected her to. In fact, she looked like she was about to cry. Oh my God, was she going to tell me I could stay before I even started begging?

“Isis, do you love me?”

Where the hell was this coming from? Was she feeling guilty about kicking me out? ‘Cause if she was, I might as well play along.

“What kind of question is that? Of course I love you. You’re my sister. I may not act like it all the time, but you, Momma,
Daddy, and Rashad are all I got.” I knew I was laying it on a little thick, but her smile told me I was headed in the right direction. I think she wanted to forgive me. Suddenly, I felt a glimmer of hope.

“Look, I’m sorry about what happened last weekend. I showed bad judgment, and I disrespected you and your house. That was unacceptable, and I’m sorry.” Talk about kissing ass.

“I need to know something, Isis. And please don’t lie to me.”

“Okay …” I had no idea where she was going with any of this. All I knew was that I was feeling more and more confident that I wasn’t going to be packing my bags after all.

“Are you still mad at me for marrying Rashad?”

Oh yeah, she was feeling guilty all right. A little more ass-kissing and I’d be home free. “Little sister, I got over Rashad a long time ago. I consider him my brother, not my ex-boyfriend, so don’t you worry about that.” I did my best to plaster an innocent look on my face. “I hope I haven’t given you any reason to think otherwise.”

Egypt smiled at me, but she still looked sad. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that, because I need to ask you a favor. A big favor.”

This whole thing was getting weirder by the second. Somehow, the tables had turned, and she sounded like she was the one in trouble, not me. But, whatever. As long as it meant she wasn’t kicking me out, I would agree to whatever favor she needed. I mean, how bad could it be?

“Anything. Just name it.”

She took a deep breath and sighed, like whatever she was about to say wasn’t going to be easy for her. Once I heard what she had to say, I understood why. “All right, this is the deal: Me and Rashad have been trying to have a baby since I had the miscarriage, and we haven’t been able to conceive.”

“Wow, I’m sorry to hear that.” I remembered how heartbroken she’d been when she miscarried. Rashad too. He’d wanted a baby when we were together, but back then, he wasn’t getting the milk without buying this cow. It’s amazing how life can throw you a curveball, though, because if I could do it all over again, I would have been the one sleeping in that master bedroom,
and me and Rashad would have a few little rugrats running around by now.

“Well, I have a proposal for you,” Egypt continued.

I sat quietly. I had no idea where she was going with this, but I was intrigued. Maybe they needed me to vouch for them with an adoption agency or something.

“We want you to be our surrogate.”

I almost fell off my bed. “You want me to be what?”

“A surrogate.”

“A surrogate? You want me to have a baby for you?” I had to be sure we both shared the same definition of that word.

“Yes, Isis, we want you to have a baby for us.”

That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I just blurted out, “Oh, my goodness. You’re barren? You can’t have a baby?”

I regretted it as soon as I said it, because her eyes started tearing up, and her lip was trembling like she was about to cry. She was a backstabbing dirty bitch, but I still loved my baby sister.

“You want me to have a baby for you and Rashad?” I asked, trying to sound a little more sensitive this time. I really wasn’t trying to hurt my sister’s feelings, and even more importantly, I was trying to keep a roof over my head.

“Please, Isis. You don’t know how much this would mean to Rashad and me,” she said in a shaky voice.

“So, if I say yes, who’s going to be the biological father to this baby? Am I supposed to go out and find some dude off the street?”

“No, of course not. Rashad’s going to be the father.”

“Really?” Oh, this was getting freakier by the second. My head was so full of questions it felt like it was going to explode, but it didn’t take me long to start scheming.

Was she actually going to let Rashad and me make a baby the old-fashioned way? After all the months of trying to get him back in my arms, it looked like now Egypt was going to practically hand him over on a silver platter. Well, damn. If she wanted to, I sure was willing. I’d give them a baby, too, but I was going to make sure it took a lot longer than they expected before I conceived. Shit, the second Egypt walked out the door, I was going to start taking my birth control pills. Just the thought of being
able to get my swerve on with Rashad whenever I wanted—with her permission—was making my day.

But then, as if she were reading my mind, Egypt said, “We’ll have to go to my doctor and get everything set up. It takes a lot of planning to do artificial insemination. You do understand you’d have to give up the baby and all rights to it, don’t you? Rashad’s lawyers would draw up the papers.”

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to knock boots with Rashad, but then again, I wasn’t that naïve. I knew it was only wishful thinking. I didn’t actually think she’d be that stupid.