Chapter 3

(Pov Nadia)

Three weeks passed and then the nausea came every morning without fail, to a point I started waking up every ten minutes before it hit and just walking to the bathroom and waiting for it on my knees. 

At first, I told myself it was stress. 

I had read enough to know that stress could do this and disrupt everything and I told myself that and I believed it because I needed to believe it.

Then, on Thursday, the worst happened. I bought the test on a Thursday afternoon after I visited the nearest hospital and I folded the receipt, put it in my pocket and walked home without looking at anyone.

I went straight to the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the edge of the bathtub for a long time.

“You already know,” a voice in the back of my mind said quietly. “You've known for at least two weeks. You've just been deciding not to know.”

I picked it up, my whole world turning right before my eyes. I sat very still on the edge of that bathtub for a long time.

I was just twenty years old, with no job, no scholarship with only forty-two dollars in my account and my mother who had barely spoken to me in weeks. And now this….

I pressed both hands over my face. I didn't have the energy left for tears. I just sat there in the dark behind my own palms, breathed and tried to locate a single clear thought inside the noise.

“What should I do now?”

:

Two days later, my mother found me two mornings later.

For the past weeks all of these have been happening, I had been careful about the timing. Careful about closing the bathroom door, running the tap to cover the sound, but I had forgotten about the gap at the bottom of the door.

That morning, my mother had been awake earlier than usual, and she was standing in the hallway when I came out of the bathroom with my eyes red and my hand still pressed flat against my stomach.

She looked at me for a long moment without saying anything. Nobody needed to tell her what was going on, because she is a mother as well.

Then she said, "Nadia, for how long?"*

I looked up and saw her standing in front of me. "Mom?"

"I said for how long, Nadia?"*

I didn't answer her. I tried to move past her toward the bedroom but she stepped sideways and blocked the hallway, and I looked up at her face and saw suspicion all over her face.

"You're pregnant Nadia?" she said with affirmation.

I couldn't speak, I was still wondering how on earth she knew and then, my silence confirmed it.

She put one hand on the wall beside her and stood there for a moment with her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell once, slowly. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me with an expression that almost frightened me.

"Who is the father?" "Mom, please let me…." "Who is the father of that child, Nadia?"

I pressed my lips together. I knew the moment I said his name what would happen. I could already see it, the way her face would change, and the words that would follow. I couldn't answer her straight because I knew what happened to fragile things when you set them down in front of people who were already angry.

"I'm not asking you again," she said. "Mom, it doesn't matter right now who…."

"It matters to me." She stepped closer. "It matters because you are standing in my house, eating my food, sleeping under my roof, and you are pregnant. And I am your mother. And I am asking you to tell me who did this to you."

"Nobody did anything to me mother," My voice cracked in agony and then suddenly, the hallway went silent.

"Was it the De Montclair boy?" Her voice dropped in bitterness. "After everything I told you. After everything I said when you first started that job. Was it him?"

I looked at the wall and before I could think of the right lie to give her, she landed a hot slap on my cheeks that my head turned with it and I stood there for a second with my hand going up to my face before I could stop it.

My mother had never hit me before. "You have disgraced this family," she said. Her voice was shaking now, which was almost worse than the slap, because it meant she couldn't hold herself anymkre either. 

“You have disgraced yourself, thrown away your future, your education, everything, for what? For a man who hasn't called you once? For a man whose mother threw you out in the street like rubbish? And you're standing here with his child inside you and you won't even say his name?"

"Mother." I wept bitterly in front of her.

"Now get out!" She said as I looked at her in confusion wondering if she knew the weight of what she just said.

"What?"

"I said get out of my house." She was breathing fast now, her arms tight at her sides. "I will not have this bastard in my home. I will not have this shame under my roof. Pack your things and get out."

"Mother, please." My tears rolled uncontrollably as I took a step toward her and reached for her arm. "Please, I have nowhere to go. I don't have any money, I don't have…. please. I'm your daughter. I’ve made a mistake, I know I made a mistake, but please, I cannot go out there right now. I have nowhere… "

She removed my hand from her arm, stepped back, and without remorse she turned around and walked into her bedroom, closing the door right in front of me.

I stood there in the hallway alone.

My legs felt disconnected from the rest of me as I walked into the shared bedroom, pulled my duffel bag from under the bed. Jade wasn't home, she was at school, and she wouldn't even know I was gone until the afternoon and I thought about that as I folded my things and placed them in the bag. I thought about Jade's face and I had to stop twice and press my knuckles against my mouth until I could keep my hands steady enough to keep packing.

I packed slowly, not because I was stalling, but because some part of me understood that this was it.

That once I picked up this bag and walked out that door I was stepping into something I didn't have a plan for. 

And Leandro's phone is still switched off.

I zipped the bag, sat on the edge of the bed with it between my feet and my hands on my knees and I looked around the small room, the water stain on the ceiling above Jade's bed, the strip of photos she had tacked to the wall, the old alarm clock on the dresser that ran three minutes fast and I memorized all of it because I didn't know when I would see it again.

And then, my phone buzzed, I looked down at it automatically, my heart lurched. I felt it was Leandro, but it wasn't Leandro.

The number on the screen was long and formatted with an area code I recognized immediately. I had called this number so many times over the past two years that the sequence of digits had become something I could dial from memory. It was the Ivy League admissions office.

My hand was trembling when I pressed accept.

"Hello? May I speak with Nadia Voss?" The receptionist spoke. "Y… yes. This is Nadia."

"Miss Voss, good morning. This is Patricia Anand calling from the Financial Aid and Scholarships office. I'm calling regarding your scholarship status."

My whole body shook in fear as she continued. "We received a formal notification this week from the De Montclair Foundation that they will be withdrawing their scholarship sponsorship immediately. As you may be aware, your financial aid package was contingent on their continued sponsorship, and without it…. "

"Wait."  "Wait, please. They withdrew… the Foundation withdrew it?"

"I'm afraid so, Miss Voss. The communication we received cited a breach of conduct as grounds for termination. I want to be transparent with you because your academic record here has been strong. We have looked at whether there are alternative funding avenues we could explore, but your original offer was structured specifically around the De Montclair sponsorship, and without that component, we are unable to honour the full financial aid package."

I heard the rest of what she said. I know she kept talking. She said something about appeals processes and alternative applications and hardship funds that would not cover the full amount. 

I heard all of it. But my brain stopped working after the words ‘breach of conduct.’

They had not just fired me. They had reached forward into my future and closed every door they could find.

"Hello, Miss Voss? Are you still there?"*

I couldn't answer as my world became dark in front of me. I couldn't think straight.

I sat on the edge of the bed in my mother's apartment with my duffel bag between my feet and my packed life beside me and my phone in my lap. The bedroom was very quiet. Through the wall I could hear the faint sound of the television in my mother's room, some afternoon programme. I looked at my phone screen and I thought, I wish this day had never happened.

Not just today, but all of it. The day I first put on that uniform and started working as a maid under Montclair’s family.

I thought about his face. The way he used to look at me when he thought no one was watching. The way he said my name, not like an employer, but the way someone says a name they have been trying not to say and finally stopped resisting.

Yes, he doesn't deserve my heart again, but I missed him. I sat there in the quiet with everything I had built dismantled around me and I missed him the way you miss something you understand, but never getting back.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, picked up my bag, stood up,

….and I walked out.