Years of Concealing

“I’ll eat you! Do you know why? Cause you’re too chubby!” Spoken like a retarded mother would, playing with her kid’s kiddish charm. Her curls weighed loose on her backless summer dress she wore that day. Her nose crinkled with a face splitting grin every time Joan, my nephew who had just turned two, was making happy sounds. Sounds that apparently carried the appreciation to the compliment Emma just made him; softly stroking his cheeks that fluff up and down with a curve of a open mouthed smile and a peek of his new tooth. Emma shifted him into her lap more playfully now, “I’ll eat your hands too!” A soft bite at the peak of his round little fingers. More happy sounds. I sipped into my glass of wine, lingering at the corner before the kitchen stew, so I could get a clear view of Emma on the couch, so to enjoy her unusual talks with a baby.

“What’s her name, again? That girl?” My sister, clearing the mess of the after party took my vague attention I was giving to…

“Emma.” I sipped into my wine glass again, without taking my eyes off the spot, just to avoid conversation. When it came to girls, my sister stood always as a trouble.

“I like her! Is she-“ Before she could raise an eye brow I cut to the phrase.

“We’re just friends.”

“And that’s why you need something to drink, bro.” She pointed out the empty glass I was holding which I might have been sipping absent minded, I didn’t have an idea for how long. My sister burst into laughing, almost dropping wine while outpouring my glass, I flushed. Emma looked toward us, with a smile glued to her face, finally broke out of the bubble she and my nephew had been in from the past couple of minutes. I distracted myself with the wine glass and got busy cleaning with my sister. There were no reason to shy around, because it was me who invited her to that party and it was me the whole time pretending to ignore her.

“Aww I think he likes you!”

I felt an utter shock and weak in my knees right when I heard my sister. I looked at my sister quizzically, who smirked and as to my surprise, made her way to the couch. Oh so she meant him. Joan, my nephew. I sighed a relief.

Emma gave her a polite smile and handed Joan to her mother. I no longer lingered myself at the corner.

“Hey, if you don’t mind, Emma? Can I ask you a favor?” Sister drove in beside her on the couch, gently patting Joan on his back.

As it turned out, she asked her to babysit Joan during the weekend. Which was truly irrelevant. She could’ve asked me because after all I was the kid’s uncle.

“Can you believe it? A while ago I was just messing with the kid, telling I’d eat’em. And she trusts me to be his babysitter!” Emma grabbed the bottle of wine I had brought myself in the car and took a mouthful. Which I found, slightly arrogant but effortlessly attractive.

“Why, you can still say no. She wouldn’t mind.” I gave her a friendly assumption.

She spilled a little wine on her dress. I took a moment gaze at her open thighs while she was going for another gulp.

“Even you think I’m not child-friendly!” She made it sound more like a joke. Almost everyone in our class used to refer her as Shark and an unbreakable spirit, the feisty one, that never melted. Maybe because she was adventurous and because her beauty and catlike behavior fooled them into believing that she might not have a heart. I on the other hand, found hard to believe that day, that she hadn’t. For I had the honor to see the other part of her, a part of her that I never before thought she possessed.

“No I meant, if you don’t want to…” I tilted my head to one side trying my best not to offend her.

“I’d love to. You nephew is cute, Jensen. I already can’t wait to see him again.” Emma  stroked lightly my left knee and I could hardly keep my eyes on the road as wind blew her dark brown hair. I still remember how I was fighting an urge to kiss that moist lip of hers, thinking maybe I would kiss her, right after I’d drop her at her house. But I didn’t. That day, I hadn’t had the courage. Because she wasn’t mine.

Today, she is.

 But for a very short amount of time. I have her now, the way I have never imagined myself I would, by my side. At the age of 26, young to have been married for six years, sweet six years I wonder, how flawlessly passed by. We loved each-other. We did, as all married couples would do, we loved each-other despite the collisions, despite the time we thought this marriage wouldn’t work. There were times I made up my mind about separation but It always stayed, as a thought. We had a gap, she had apathy, I had my egotistical issues. But we survived six years of it, until one night, when she came to me, almost unpredictably shutting my laptop close to focus on her. And I did. I focused on every word she uttered. I took an action on it afterwards. That night, what she said to me was- “Let’s make a baby.”

And now. She’s here. After her miscarriage and after diagnosed leukemia. She's here. Lying in the hospital bed, the ventilator humming. Her pipe wretched cold hand on mine. And I say to her those words she had never craved to hear me out, like all the girls in the planet would melt for. I say to her those phrases, that I hadn’t had the strength to say when I loved her more passionately than now. When she can't hear me, when she can't breathe on her own.

“I love you Emma.” I untangle my hands from the coldness and fierce of the hand that used to feel warm.

“Are you ready?”

I nod in response to the nurse who is about to pull the cord out and gradually take her to the vagueness where she has found a place for her soul. To rest. In peace and quiet.