A Promise From My Heart

36.

"Yusuf,"

My name deserted her trembling lips. Her voice swept across the quiet atmosphere, slicing the tension that had doubled the past hour and disappeared into nothingness. The unintentional pause that followed after saying my name jumbled my nerves. My seeking eyes met hers with a silent plead that encouraged her to speak.

The pregnancy test kit quaked to the tremors in her fingers that held it. I hoped, prayed and pled it would be negative. The last two kits had been positive. So what gives us the guarantee that this one would be the negative we hoped for?

"It's positive again." Despair crumbled her face as she broke into a loud wail. The pregnancy test kit fell from her hand the same time she went down on her knees.

Those few words reeled my feet back. My blood ran cold, colour draining from my face while I sat down to prevent my shaky legs from giving up beneath me. My mind spun and for a minute, I could not think or feel. Silence echoed within me. Silence caused by sudden fear.

How? When? How did this happen? Where did we make a mistake? We took every step required to prevent a pregnancy because of many reasons known to us yet this happened. My heart palpitated. I lowered my head to my damp palms at the vibration that oscillated through my head.

This is going to change almost everything. Can we afford having a child now? I was not sure. My finances the past months had not been viewed with the thought of having a kid. It was just my wife and I with my other responsibilities like my father and younger siblings. We were not even ready for a kid not after what happened to the first pregnancy. Chai! Chineke!

I lifted my head from my palms to lie down on the bed, hands over my head. Everything was so overwhelming and very difficult to process. I laid there, my head spinning as I watched my life change before me, Amatullah's cries stuffing the room.

My productivity at work was poor. I depreciated the little to no work I had on my table and around the office. All I needed to do was review a couple of files and edit them. It gave room for more arduous thoughts to slip into my mind. There was no way to push away the pregnancy soliloquizing for later.

Do I even know how serious this is? I am going to be a father, be responsible for someone who will be dependent on me for a very long time. I have them to think about many times whenever I want to do something. Would I be a great father? Would I love and sacrifice a lot for my kid as much as my father did? My father is everything anyone would ask for as a father. I am grateful to Allah for giving me a man who gave me a good story about fatherhood to talk about.

Many friends over the years had bad fathers which had a negative impact on them from childhood into their adulthood. Idris is a perfect example. His father physically abused their mother for as long as he could remember until the day he stood up against him at fifteen. Obinna's father was not even there for them. He was physically present but emotionally, financially and in many other ways absent. When I speak about my father I have nothing else but good to say. Just like my mother, he had contributed equally to my upbringing.

I wanted my child to speak well of me, have their heart burst with love and admiration when they remember me, lips smile as they tell tales about me. The last thing I wanted was to be a source of sorrow and pain for my child. I do not wish for the resentment I see in Idris's and Obinna's eyes when they speak of their fathers. There's more to fatherhood than fertilizing the egg. Anxiety zinged through me. I do not want to be a bad father.

I expelled air which deflated the tension in my shoulders. But there was more to think about. Loss. Our first pregnancy had ended in catastrophe. What if what happened to the first pregnancy happens again? That I cannot bear. The pounding at the back of my head intensified. I do not think I am ready for this. There was no plan, no mental preparation like the first pregnancy. We planned and wanted it so we worked towards it and when it came, it was all joy, light and laughter that ended in tragedy.