Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,23

moment I wished more than I ever have to be mobile & to be able to take the stairs fleet as a deer.

Instead I stood at the bottom of them and said to her “O Yolanda! Don’t cry . . .”

It had been a long time since I had seen any woman cry. Most recently it was probably Marty. & before that, Charlene. Before Charlene, my mother, constantly, unstoppably.

“O come down here,” I said uselessly, and she shook her head against her knees.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “A glass of milk?”

The pounding stopped and outside we heard JBL start his Vespa and zoom away up Fifth Street.

Finally she hiccupped & lifted her head. “I’ll take milk,” she said.

“Well you have to come down here, then,” I said coaxingly (tho I very much would have liked to bring it up to her, bring her a tray of milk and cookies as someone once did for me).

She didn’t move.

“When I come back you’ll be sitting on that couch,” I said, more as a question than a command.

I went into the kitchen and tried to ask myself what would make a girl like Yolanda feel better. I decided that besides milk she would enjoy Pop’ems. To make them look nicer I put a few on a floral plate & then I put a few into my mouth as well.

What else, I thought.

I made her a PB&J & put it all onto a tray. & then, feeling the tray looked lackluster & perhaps that everything on it was too similar in consistency, I opened my refrigerator and put an apple onto the tray as well.

Then I backed out of the kitchen through the swinging door, carrying the tray as carefully as I could, its contents rattling frighteningly as I lumbered along.

Surprisingly, Yolanda had followed my instructions and was sitting on the sofa in the living room. She looked very tiny. For a moment we were silent & it afforded me the opportunity to observe her openly as I never have. Her back is straight & her hair is neat, parted on the side and pulled back so tightly that on anyone else it would seem severe. But nothing is severe about Yolanda. She looks proper. Her face is square, her lips are full & almost completely lacking a dip in the topmost part of them. She wears little makeup. She has one small mole high on her right cheekbone, which makes her look glamorous and starry eyed, as if it were a jewel she applied for dramatic effect. Her eyelashes are long & full. Her earrings are plain small silver hoops that cling to her tiny ears.

She lifted the glass of milk & drained it completely.

She looked at me plaintively & I did not know what to say to her to comfort her.

“Now,” I said, “now—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” said Yolanda.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you quite certain you’re all right?”

This made her cry again, and she shook her head and said “No, no, no.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her cardigan & if I had not been so drained I would have certainly gotten her tissues.

I wanted to get up and sit next to her on the couch & put a gentle hand on her back as someone once did when I was young, but she seemed to me like a small frightened animal and I did not want to frighten her further. I stayed where I was.

“Now Yolanda,” I said, “what is the matter.”

“I have his baby,” she said.

“I’m sorry? I don’t understand,” I said, and Yolanda made a tsk noise and threw her hands into the air.

“His baby,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

“Junior’s?” I asked, incredulously.

“How do you know his name?” she said.

To dodge this I asked her how far along she was.

“Almost five months,” she said.

I do not know much about pregnancies but I would have thought the girl would be larger. It is true that her stiff oversized uniform hides her, for the most part, and her cardigans do as well, but even when I looked at her belly I could barely see anything at all.

“And you aren’t happy about it, I suppose?”

At this she snapped her head up and looked at me with such vitriol that I twitched.

“Of course I am,” she said.

Silence.

Finally I gathered enough courage to venture, “Then

what . . . ?”

“I had to break up with him,” she said.

“Why?”

“He’s not really good enough,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like