If I Tell - By Janet Gurtler Page 0,24

red-checkered tablecloth at Mom’s bloated stomach. It poked out of her loose maternity dress. I’d thought she’d pull off pregnant better. Her normally glowing skin was blotchy. She looked puffy and uncomfortable. Her disposition wasn’t exactly radiant either.

Mom used the back of her hand to wipe sweat off her brow and then glanced at her watch for about the hundredth time. “I can’t believe Simon. He’s always late. I told him 6:30, and it’s quarter to seven already.” She glanced around as if she was about to cry.

Her moods were getting darker as her stomach got bigger. She didn’t usually complain about Simon.

I picked up a glass of water and took a sip. “He’s not that late,” I said and put my glass down.

Secretly I wished he’d leave us waiting all night long. I envisioned him disappearing into thin air, like one of those men who go out one night to buy a pack of cigarettes and never return. Too bad Simon didn’t smoke.

“What would you do if Simon didn’t want the baby?” I asked.

“What?” her eyes flashed. “What are you talking about? Did he say something to you?”

A waiter walked by carrying a huge tray of drinks, and my stomach rolled in protest.

“Of course not. I haven’t talked to him about it. No, I just meant, you know, what if you ended up bringing up this baby by yourself?”

“This isn’t the same. Your father wanted nothing to do with you.” The wrinkles in her forehead deepened. No Botox with a baby on the way.

I leaned farther back in my chair, putting more distance between us. I changed my mind, wishing Simon would appear. And soon.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that Michael didn’t want a baby. We were so young. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Uh. It had everything to do with me.” I picked up my water glass, sucked up a couple of ice cubes, and crunched them, chewing rudely. How could she think it had nothing to do with me?

“Michael was the same age as you are now, for God’s sake. He had plans. College. Football. We weren’t even serious. I was the one who chose to have you. I knew I was on my own.” She glanced around the restaurant. “And Grandma and Grandpa wanted to keep you so badly too. They told me they would raise you. They did so much better than I could have. But this is different. I’m older now. Simon wants our baby. He’ll be there for this baby.” She leaned back in her chair with her hands folded protectively over her stomach.

“Unlike my ‘father.’” I had an urge to put my head down on the table and close my eyes. I tried not to think about him much. Daddy. Now I’d thought about him twice in one day.

“It’s complicated,” Mom said.

“Not really.”

“He did set you up a trust fund. I didn’t ask him to do that. He did it on his own. He gave you a secure future.”

Yeah, a few years after he married his college sweetheart, the Sperminator must have gotten a dose of the guilts or something. He’d dumped money in an account for me, the one and only time he’d ever acknowledged his part in my existence. All he’d asked for in a letter written to my mom was that I not contact him. Isn’t that what they called hush money?

“So I should be grateful? He paid me off so he doesn’t ever have to advertise his half-white daughter. Or the blond he knocked up. Mighty big of him, I’d say.”

I’d googled him last year in a moment of weakness. He was some sort of business guru now. Used his football scholarship well, apparently, after he’d blown out his knee his final year. He owned property all over the place. The black woman he’d married, his college sweetheart, ran her own real-estate business. They’d had two little girls. A picture of the couple appeared on the home page of his website. Tall, dark, and beautiful. Happy and perfect. Smiling. His profile said they met at college. She’d been in the same year as him and had majored in business. They’d graduated together. Married and had babies right on schedule.

I wondered if she even knew I existed, his half-mocha daughter. I wondered if his kids knew they had a half sister. Half blood. Half sister. Half white. I wondered if they’d care someday.

Mom sighed, and the waiter hovered closer to our table, not