Chapter 1
If Yaya was alive, she’d say doctors have no idea, that babies come when they are good and ready. Although her wisdom is my guiding light, I’ve circled your due date on the calendar nonetheless. I’ve counted down seven months and then four, and then weeks, and now days with your grandmother, Gloria, calling every morning, warning me not to worry. “It’s not good for the baby,” she says. I tell her to be quiet, she’s the one who keeps calling, as if our relationship was built on on daily contact—exchanging trivial happenings, updates on Tía Julia’s health or maybe a storm heading toward Miami—when it’s obvious she’s only listening for anxiety in my voice.
She forgets I’m a trained actress with control over things like tone and volume and resonance, that I’m used to performing for an audience. When the nerves do take hold, writing to you has been good medicine. With your arrival right around the corner, I’ve learned to breathe through my tightening chest. Nighttime, however, is a different story. That’s when I’m hounded by the recurring dream of Doctor Hernandez placing my feet high in metal stirrups, fastening on a headlamp, and peering between my thighs. She reaches in deeper and deeper but can’t find you, can’t find anything for that matter. I wake in a sweat, pressing a hand to my stomach to make sure you’re still there.
Yaya told me the pain of childbirth is readily forgotten other- wise we’d live in a world of only children. Forgotten is not the right word. Women don’t forget anything, rather we rid ourselves of certain memories with pain being the first to go. It’s a biological adaptation to ensure the survival of our species, not to mention a key ingredient for things like forgiveness and moving on.
I haven’t told anybody, but I plan on naming you Sol after the most fiery star in the sky. I’ve written this story for you, to be read when you are a grown man, because above all else I aspire for you to be a principled man, a virtuous man, a man who is good and fair and behaves decently. I have also written it for myself, in the here and now, to get the details down before they fade any further, to clarify the line between what was real and what were dreams or memories. More than anything to dissolve the shame shrouding it all. I’ve written it because there are people who think they know what happened and while I may romanticize and be out of focus, I need my own version out in the world.
I am not seeking your approval, not yours nor any man’s. I’m only asking that you take my story as a series of choices, some smart, some not as smart. Yaya always encouraged me to gather expe- riences, and while these were seasoned with dreams and desire, taking place while the world tipped on its side, she often said painful events bring clarity. “Betsabé, life is a mysterious journey of the soul. Let it take you through meadows as well as deep valleys.”
You might be naturally inclined to heed your father’s disci- pline, but please, don’t ignore my teachings. With these words, I hope to weave a wreath of wisdom upon your head. Not cleverness nor threats of splitting babies, but true wisdom, the kind that might repair the widening chasm between people, the kind that might remind us how to compromise and reinforce the power of love.
Withhold judgment as you read, and maybe you’ll glean something. I know that sounds self-important, as if a year in my life holds the key to anything, let alone understanding. But it was quite a year and I have spent a great deal of time turning events over in my mind, making meaning and becoming stronger.
I’ve vowed to cherish these final days with you tucked into a ball, floating about inside me. My rational mind says there is no reason to worry. My body has been nothing but nurturing for the past nine months to the point where I’ve gained forty pounds and each night after dinner, you tell me you are perfectly healthy with punches and kicks to the wall of my stomach.
Your father says, “What did you expect from the grandson of an Olympic boxer?” But if you are a prize fighter, it stems from having two parents who love you. People greet me with a grin these days, saying, “Any day now,” and I picture your arrival into the spot- light of the delivery room, and my heart beats wildly with love and excitement and, I can’t lie, a tinge of fear. It is my hope you disregard the fear and carry only love with you into the world, and that this story may serve as a guide in securing a wise and discerning heart.
—
It’s not a nice, clean calendar year of which I write, but the twelve months spanning June 2019 to June 2020, beginning the day I started at First Provident. I start with this day not because my analyst position at an investment bank was a big deal (it was), but because it was the day I first laid eyes on David. I try many times throughout this telling to explain the effect he had on me. It was as if he’d cast a spell, or more accurately, as if he found me at the precise moment I was longing for a spell to be cast. Meeting him was all wrapped up in the thrill of the new job, the magic of New York, everything charged con tanta ilusión, with so much hope. I’d moved into a studio apartment with Rae days after our college graduation and when I wasn’t exploring the East Village, I was put- ting together the right outfit or practicing my commute, the best strategy for the morning rush. From riding the subway to savoring spicy mustard atop a salted pretzel, I thrived on the pulse of the city which pounded in my inner ear like the heartbeat of the universe.
It’s possible David and I crossed paths by chance just as I was inhabiting every movie and song about New York’s propulsive quality, convinced my destiny waited around the next corner, but when our lives did collide it was as if I recognized him or recog- nized something about him. That intangible something at the core of every fantasy, with the lights on Broadway as a backdrop or the snow falling in Central Park. And in every version of that dream, I was on my way to becoming glamorous and strong, a confident woman who thought nothing of darting into midtown traffic to flag down a yellow cab.
—
No taxis that first morning, however. I was just as happy to cram onto the F train at Second Avenue, transferring at Lafayette to the Six uptown. I finally felt relevant, an honest-to-god member of the adult population, having checked my bag for phone, keys, wallet before hurrying out the door to make things happen. Disembarking at Fifty-First and Lex, I paused on the stuffy underground platform to freshen my lipstick, using the same tube Rae once dubbed backstage as “my red-hot shot of confidence.” I ascended the stairs and caught sight of a corner bodega and a man dousing white plastic tubs full of tulips with a hose. It was another wonder of the city that freshly cut flowers showed up each morning on street corners of wet concrete, fresh, damp, and ready for the stampede.
My fellow pedestrians were glued to their phones or balancing trays of coffee as they waited for the walk signal, but I gripped the shoulder straps of my new leather satchel, gaped at the towering skyscrapers, letting the current of humanity carry me along until it deposited me in front of First Provident headquarters on Fifty-Second between Park and Madison…
