By Justis Ward
The head of our daughter crowns, pressing out into the white-walled hospital room. I scream. Something guttural. Something animal. And my strong-as-mahogany husband grips my hand, his fingertips digging into my palm, breaking through my concrete pretense. “Almost there,” says the white coat. “Just a little more.” According to him, this is the worst part. But he’s wrong.
Her shoulders rip me open, though I don’t feel it. I only feel him, my husband, and his strong brown fingers holding mine. And before I know it, our daughter is with us. Weak, wishful, wanting. The white coat places her on my chest. She burrows into me, searching for warmth, but my bosom is cold and wet. She wails. I wait. My husband just stands there. The way he always does. Because he is mahogany.
Meconium and vernix streak across our daughter’s wrinkled skin like cheap paint. Black and white, tar and wax, my husband and me. A nurse offers to wash her. Yes. No. My husband. Me. The white coat gets called out of the room, and the nurse looks… uncomfortable. Then, my husband sees her, our daughter. Her pale skin, her blue-as-ocean eyes, her hair the color and texture of duckling fluff. He sees her, and his strong brown fingers go slack. Even then, he is mahogany. Strong. Stoic. Steadfast. So, I don’t expect him to crumble, to fall, to crack his knees on the white tile floor, to do anything but stand there. Because that’s what he has always done. And maybe he would have, if only I had held him up. But I didn’t. And I never have.
So he falls, crashing through our home, dividing his side from mine, fifty-fifty, while his questions puddle on the tile beneath him. And our daughter stares blankly at the gaping hole between us, where the answers to his questions live and where the truth of her life hides. She can see them. I’m sure of it. And he can, too. But strangely, I can’t. So, I’m left with only maybes. Maybe he’ll come back. Maybe he was never mahogany to begin with. Or maybe I simply deserve this. Either way, he now knows our daughter isn’t his. And he gets up. And he walks out.
Open The Gate by Serge Lecomte
About the Author
Justis Ward is a Georgia native whose writing, more often than not, speaks to the agonizing beauty of suffering. He has work forthcoming in Lullwater Review and Past Ten. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Lindenwood University and hopes to teach at the collegiate level following his graduation.
About the Artist
Serge Lecomte was born in Belgium in 1946. He came to the United States where he spent his teens in South Philadelphia and later Brooklyn. After graduating from Tilden H. S., he joined the Medical Corps in the Air Force. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Russian Literature with a minor in French Literature. He worked as a Green Beret language instructor at Fort Bragg, NC from 1975-78. In 1988 he received a B.A. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Spanish Literature. He worked as a language teacher at the University of Alaska from 1978 to 1997.