White Diamonds (19 page)

When Kevin was gone one morning, Malika stood in front of the one small mirror in the house and inspected every inch of her body.  Her breasts were full and round, if a bit tender, but she hated the girth that was undeniable in her lower torso.  What is wrong with me?  She ate nothing that night.  Kevin was going to be late, so she didn’t have to cook for the two of them.  She lay in bed waiting for her lover, pushing her breasts together and pinching the nipples that seemed to be getting thicker.  She closed her eyes and thought of her lover’s mouth on her nipples.  Kevin loved her fuller breasts and couldn’t keep his hands off of them.  She loved it when he took them into his hands and pulled each nipple into his mouth, running his tongue around and around them until Malika was dripping with wetness down below.  She looked at her stomach and the little bulge.  It was hard and she tried to push it in, but it wouldn’t budge.

She heard the door open and pulled the blankets over her.  Kevin’s naked body was hers for the taking and he looked better than a man should.  When he entered her that night, it hurt, but she didn’t know why.  She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy what she normally could not get enough of, but it hurt, it stung, and she just wanted it to be over.  Wanting to please this man, she faked it as best she could, accepting his seed just as she had done from their first time together.  She smoothed her hands along his back as they slept, though she couldn’t erase the worry from her mind.  Am I sick?

When morning came, Malika knew something was wrong.  “Kevin, I’m sick.”

He sat up and eased out of her.  “Did you catch something from one of the children?”

Malika put her hand over her mouth and shook her head.  She scurried to the bathroom and threw up.  Kevin stood in the bathroom doorway, concerned for his woman.  “I didn’t eat last night.  I think I just got a little weak.”

“What you need is a hearty breakfast.”

Malika looked pale as she sat in the living room huddled in the blanket.  The hotcakes brought to her made her want to retch again.  Kevin knelt beside her and lifted a fork to her lips.

“Oh, Kevin, I can’t.  It makes her sick to smell it.”

He took it back to the kitchen and like a bolt of lightning, the truth hit him.  What have I done?  A cold sweat was threatening to break and he splashed water onto his face.

“Kevin, I’m going back to bed.  I don’t think I can teach today.”

At her side in an instant, he lifted her into his arms and carried her to their bed.  He wrapped warm blankets around her and stretched out beside her.

“Malika, are you with child?”

“What?”

“I should have been more careful.  I took advantage.”

She ran a hand through his thick black hair.  “No, you didn’t.”  She closed her eyes to keep the room from spinning.  She thought about his words.  She had had only one period since coming here, but pregnant?  It would have had to have happened the very first time they did it.  Girls in the dorm had claimed that, too, but she didn’t believe them.  She assumed them to be sleeping around, but now she knew it could happen.  That explained everything.  How could I have been so stupid?  “I…I might be, Kevin.  What should I do?”

He laid his hand on her naked stomach beneath the blankets, moving it slowly up and down.  “You will have my child, and you and I will raise him here.  He is a Sioux.”

Malika couldn’t imagine raising a child here on the reservation.  She knew the desolation and the fear.  She saw it on the faces of the children every day.  “But he or she will be half white, Kevin, a half breed.  That can’t be good.  If he were raised away from here…”

“He would be ostracized, bullied, shunned, Malika.  Is that what you want?”

What she wanted was for the room to stop jumping around.  “No.”

“Rest, Malika.  I will bring you dry toasted bread and hot tea.”

When he returned, Malika was asleep.  He sat with the young woman so far from her home, the woman who would be the mother of his firstborn child, and rested his head in his hands.  Am I wrong to keep this woman a prisoner?  No one should be kept against his or her will.  That was done to my people and I could never do that to anyone.  It was cruel and self serving, and if he were to do that he would not be worthy to be called a descendant of the great warrior Crazy Horse.  He left her alone and called a friend to contact the students to cancel classes for a few days.

When Malika awoke, she ate a few bites of the dry toast, and she heard Kevin talking with someone.  She didn’t recognize the voice, though the serious tone in Kevin’s voice could not be missed.  The door to the house opened, she heard footsteps, and then she heard the door close.  She called out for Kevin.  “Who was that?”

Sitting by her side, Kevin informed Malika that he was going back to Wounded Knee but would return in two days.

Malika struggled to sit up.  “Why?”

“I must, Malika.  You will stay with Grandmother.  The man you heard was a very wise man.  He will go with me.”

Too tired to object, Malika lay back down and let the tears fall from her eyes.  She was frightened.  She didn’t want him to leave her ever.

The following two days were hell for both Kevin and Malika.  She hated being without him, though she loved his grandmother.  The lady was kind and knowledgeable.  She told of her children’s births and how precious life was.  She didn’t judge, at least not in Malika’s presence, but Malika wondered what the woman really thought about all of this.

“I should have been more careful,” Malika blurted out.

The older woman sitting beside her took her hand and said, “Babies come from heaven, dear.”  She smiled the knowing smile of one who has lived for many decades, but Malika just felt confused.

When Kevin arrived at the one spot he had never revealed to anyone, his quiet place along Wounded Knee Creek, he opened the door to what was once a shed.  The wooden hut was not much larger than an outhouse, and it was here that Kevin found peace.  He had come here after his parents died and following the death of his stillborn child.  That was a long time ago.  He had been the same age that Malika was now and the woman, or girl, was not yet out of her teens.  They had not been in love, but he had wanted the child.  The young girl had become frightened and ran away one night.  She had somehow gained access to powerful drugs in one of the border towns and ended the pregnancy.  She had been very near the end of her term and the child was born dead.  Kevin thought about that night as he sat alone in the dark.  He thought he was over it, but he was not.  That was twelve years ago.  Was history repeating itself with Malika?  She was young, though not nearly as young as the girl so many years ago.  She said she loves me, but had that been in the throes of passion only?  Does she mean it and does she want the child?

Kevin looked to the heavens for answers.  An answer would come to him.  It always did if he gave it time.  He slept little over the following two days and it was not until he was bathing in the creek that an answer came to him.  He lay in the grass until the sun had dried him, and then he drove quickly back to his grandmother’s house and back to Malika.  His eyes were red from tears shed and from lack of sleep when he opened the door.

“Kevin!”  Malika ran to him and wrapped her arms around him.  As she did so, Kevin noticed the smile on his grandmother’s face.  She nodded, as if indicating to her grandson that everything would work out.  But that was her way, and Kevin loved the old woman for it.

Malika wiped the tears from her eyes and Kevin grabbed her bags.  “Let’s go home,” he said.  “Thank you, Grandmother.”  Malika promised the old woman that she would return soon.

Kevin held the young hand of his lover on the ride home, though no words were exchanged.  He carried her into the house and set her down gently in a chair.  He placed his hand on her stomach and looked into her eyes.

“I’m getting bigger,” she said, a little apologetically.

He smiled.  “I hope so.”

Malika’s emotions were on the surface and the tears flowed freely.  Maybe he is the one, but I cannot live here.  I just can’t.

“Were you okay while I was away?”

“Uh huh.  I like her…your grandmother.  She told me stories.”

“Should I be worried?”

“No.  She knows a lot of things, Kevin.  Guess that’s the reward that comes with age.”

The two of them sat in silence for a long time, staring into the eyes they had missed.

“I’m scared, Kevin.”

“Of what?”

“I have never been pregnant and the horror stories of giving birth in a hospital are nothing compared to what it would be like if I had to have the baby out here.”

The tears streamed down her face again and Kevin picked her up and held her in his lap.  She curled up in the strong arms she had missed and buried her face in his chest.

“You will give birth in a hospital in Rapid City, Malika.  We can rent a small place in the city for the last month of your pregnancy if you like.

“You would do that?”  Malika’s eyes were wide.

“I would do anything for you, Malika…anything.”

“And you won’t leave me?”

“What do you mean, leave you?”

“I guess I have known too many pregnant college girls.  Their boyfriends usually took off and the girls dropped out of school and moved back home or something.”

He pulled her away and spoke sternly and seriously.  “I’m not a college boy, Malika.  I am a grown man, a responsible man, and a proud Sioux man.”

Malika sensed that he was omitting something, but she didn’t know what.  She thought she saw something in his eyes.

“Did any of your college friends, the women, fail to have their babies?”

“You mean did they have an abortion?”

The proud warrior lowered his eyes at the word.  “Yes,” he said quietly.

“I’m sure some did, but the ones I knew had their babies.  It wasn’t easy for them, being alone, and even if they hated their boyfriends for dumping them, they said they could never imagine life now without their babies.”

He kept his eyes down and Malika couldn’t figure him out.  “Could you, Malika?”

“What?”

“Imagine life now without him growing inside of you?”

She rubbed her belly.  “Or her, you forgot to say.”  Malika smiled, and Kevin realized that Malika was not the child that his girlfriend had been all those years ago.

“Could you, Malika?”  He had to know.

She made a circle outlining the hard bump in her gut.  “I don’t think so.  The two of us have become attached to each other.”

When he looked up, Malika was smiling, but there were tears in Kevin’s eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Lack of sleep is all that is wrong.”  There were things that Malika didn’t need to know.  The past was long gone.  Malika would bear his first born.

***

Malika had had no contact with her parents since she had come to the reservation, but when the letter arrived she wasn’t surprised.  She had written to them after Lauren’s death to tell them she was okay, but she knew it would be a while before a return letter would arrive, if at all.  Sometimes she felt as if she were living in a foreign country.  Enclosed with the letter was a round trip ticket home for the holidays, but Malika did not have the energy to travel.  She was not all that big yet, but she was tired all the time.  The monthly trips to Rapid City were taxing on the young woman, but Kevin insisted that she be under the care of an obstetrician and he had already found a small house to rent the month before the baby’s arrival.  She wished she could share the news with her parents.  After all, she was carrying their first grandchild.  But she knew they would take one look at Kevin and catch the first flight back to Philadelphia.  Hers were the direct descendants of the worst traitors to the American Indians.  She and her family were direct descendants of the Mayflower travelers who had come ashore at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, learning survival from the very people they later betrayed in the worst way imaginable.  “Is it any wonder they hate me here?”  Kevin’s people had taught her family how to survive the harsh winters when they were new to America and they had taught them how to hunt and to feed off the land, only to stab them in the back once they were able to fend for themselves.

Malika had always thought that Thanksgiving in America with its Macy’s Parade and traditional football games was a day set aside to give thanks, but was it?  It seemed that somewhere along the way things had gotten twisted somehow.  Those we should have thanked and should continue to thank are living in the most desolate and poorest areas of the country.  What a way to say “thank you.”

She read the letter over and over, but she had not yet said anything about it to Kevin.  The mail had come when he was out, and she had tucked the letter away in the bottom of a dresser drawer.  She knew she had to call her parents somehow before the holidays.  There wasn’t time to write.

She lay down to take a nap and was in the middle of a fitful dream when she felt a hand on her arm.  “Malika, wake up.”  She opened her eyes and scooted toward the wall in a ball of fear.  “It’s just me, baby.  You were dreaming.”  He patted the bed.  “Come lie down.  You seem short of breath.”

Malika rested her head on the pillow.  “I feel like I have been running for days.  Kevin, I’ve been keeping something from you.”