10
Katrina
Today was going to be a decent day. Not an awesome day, because those are rarely gifted to me. But adecentday, a day with work, but no spilled milk, of school, but no calls from the principal, of walking, since my car is still screwed, but no rain, of possibly seeing Eric, but not yelling at him.
I had grand plans to enjoy a perfectly mediocre day and fall into bed sixteen hours from now without more stress on my plate.
But, of course, my life isn’t that easy. With the wind taken from my sails and my stomach dropping with a fast whoosh, I sit on my old sofa with the phone pressed to my ear and fight back the tears that want to spill over.
“Umm…” I brush a nervous hand over my cheek. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re my closest friend, Kat. You’re the only person in the world who cares about me.”
“But you’re having another baby, Zeke… with somebody else.”
“It was just an accident,” he whines. “I don’t even know that bitch, and now she’s saying she’s pregnant, and that it’s mine. Why should I trust her?”
Probably because of your track record for knocking women up.
I wonder who he called when I told him the same news? I wonder if he called me a liar, too…
“This’ll be your fourth baby, Zeke. Four women. Seems to me you’re the common thread.” And I’m thrilled I was one of the earlier women. I was with himpre-STDs. “I hope you step up for her, help take care of that baby.”
“The only child I care about is ours! You and Mac are the only people who matter to me.”
His words don’t hurt me like they used to. I was once a young mom desperate for a family and willing to accept Zeke for who he was. Absent for a decade, and not a single hand lifted to help us, I still tried to convince myself that he had good reasons for his behavior. Perhaps he’d joined the military and was deployed for that whole time. Perhaps he’d seen the error of his ways, joined a monastery and cleaned up his act. Hell, maybe he was framed for someone else’s crime and spent that decade in prison serving someone else’s sentence.
Loneliness and a deep yearning for the family you see in all the Thanksgiving ads will do that to a young girl. The great novels tease us with perfect men and families, and encourage us to keep holding on, to fight for what we want, becauseeventuallyit’ll all work out.
But naiveté doesn’t pay the bills, and sex with your ex gets you nowhere but heartbreak hill.
I was a child when my world was torn open, but now I’m grown, and Zeke holds absolutely no power over me. Not even when he tells me he knocked someone up and is expecting a baby.Again.
My dropped stomach has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with my son. Every child Zeke creates is another brother or sister for Mac. I know it hurts him that these people float around in the universe and he doesn’t know them.
“Anyway,” he continues with a gritty voice. “She said that she’s due in December.”
“December?!” I shout. I clamp my lips shut again when I remember Mac is only twenty feet away in his bedroom getting ready for school. “Zeke, it’s October! How long have you known?”
“Couple months,” he grumbles. “I tried to tell you the other day, but that fucker got in my way.”
“That fucker was my customer and didn’t like the way you were speaking to me.”
“You fuckin’ him, Kat?” Despite the fact it’s only seven in the morning, his words slur, and his bad attitude spikes mine. “You fuckin’ that dude in the back alley between customers? Because I might have a problem with that.”
“No! And even if I were, you don’t get a say in my life.”
“I get a say in my son’s life.” Grunting as though climbing out of a recliner, I listen to him move about as the rage bubbles in my stomach. “I’ve been really fuckin’ cool with you, Kat. Letting you take control and make decisions for my son, but I’m his father, and I get a say.”
“No, you don’t,” I hiss. “You have absolutely no say in his life, Zeke. You’re not on the birth certificate. You’ve shown no effort to clean yourself up and provide a stable home for him. You’d need to have DNA testing done to prove paternity, and then take me to court and fight me for him. Before you get to spend a single second with him, you’d need to pay fourteen years of owed child support; you’d need to prove you have a home and stability. You’d need to explain where you were for his first ten years. And on top of all that, he’s fourteen, not four, so they’ll ask him who he wants to spend time with. He won’t choose you, Zeke.”
“Because you poison him!” Zeke slams a door and stomps his boots against a concrete floor. “You fuckin’ poisoned my son against me, Katrina! You don’t get to steal a man’s son! He’s my heir.”
“I didn’t poison him.” Mac’s bedroom door opens and closes, then the bathroom door does the same. “I never said a bad word about you. You made your own bed when you ditched town for the entire first decade of his life, then you come back and stumble every time you walk. You did this to yourself!”
“I want my son back!” A car door slams, and then an engine starts. “I want my son back, Katrina! I will get my son back!”
“You won’t get within twenty feet of him! You’d best go take care of the other idiots you knocked up, because you won’t get your hands on my son!”