1 The way we talk

I think about love when it comes back around again but only for a moment because once I dissect it, I find the horrid that hides between the moments right before goodbye. Kat, a beautiful, blessed woman with a square face – chin just potent enough that from the side she still looks like Heaven. And I never compare the women I date to Heaven, not only because it may be an insult to God but because I can't quite figure out what it means. All I know is that it feels nice. This love is calm which I imagine Heaven feels like. It's peaceful, and we are okay sitting in whatever we feel since it too shall pass. And because, when she goes it immediately feels like what I think Hell will feel like – a mistake – almost, like I know something should have been done different before getting to this.

Back to Kat. She left on a Friday, after the argument about babies. We'd been talking about it for a while – questions arouse not only from her but from family about "where are y'all going to get a baby". It became a taxing discussion involving money and love and how to square it away – divide it into sections and find out what they really mean. The money was not about how expensive a baby would be for us though, we could do it; but there was talk about from where. Kat wanted to adopt. I wanted her to have our child, but she wouldn't understand why. During the beginning of our relationship we talked about how each of us would carry a baby at some point – each other's. It would procure our best qualities. And the worst since I suppose that's how a human grows. I didn't want to raise anyone else's child, so when I explained this to my sister, Sweetie, she immediately knew what I meant when I said it. But our mother was taken aback by the conversation. She couldn't quite understand why I would say such a thing considering how Sweetie became my sister.

"Hey weirdo," Is how she greets me on the phone.

"Mother."

"Sweets told me y'all talking 'bout a baby again," she said. I could hear in this moment she walked into the den. Probably going outside since she claims that's where she hears the best, free of the noise that permeates the house during the evening. We talk about how I've been, considering how we left things three months ago. I love this dance we do between each other; it reminds me of home because some fifteen years outside of her house – we are still the same people. She asked if I was willing to talk about everything now. "No, Ma. I'm fine. I can assure you."

"Well, Holland, I'm just trying to talk to you. This is why we don't talk like we use to because you get on the phone and start talking crazy. I just want to have a conversation with ya'."

"Mother, I am fine. I'm doing well. So is Kat. We are talking right now, go on," Mother, please.

"I spoke with Katherine briefly just the other day. She does sound well so I'm happy to hear you think so too."

"So, on to the baby business, Mama to what we are truly talking about. I'm about to be heading to work. Let's about wrap this up I don't want to be late again," I place the phone on speaker and toss it towards the couch while I move about the room looking for my keys. Much like our conversations back and forth nowadays, I forget what I be doing until the urgency presents itself in my mother's voice.

"Katherine was a bit frightened, heard it in her voice when she called. She sounded just so sad because you was talking like you don't support adoption?"

"Never said that."

"She said, you don't want to raise a baby that ain't yours? Bug, now I know you ain't say such a thing, did you?"

I race across the room, nearly falling over the coffee table, and pick up the phone. I haven't talked to my mother in six months. If my opinions don't align with hers, she immediately thinks I am in the wrong. So, I do this in defense of myself – almost falling through the glass because it's cheap, we brought it at a yard sale back when we first started dating.

"You and Katherine are mistaken. I did not mean it that way."

"I…"

"I only mean that I want our babies to be of us, you know. I didn't think that made me such a bad person?"

"No, Holland, I do not know." I do not know what the problem is with you. Oh, and Honey, a baby between you two will never be of you.

"Mother, I am about to be late for work. I need to go now." I warned her, as I heard her exhale loudly into the phone.

"I just think that maybe this will be good for you to. To have someone outside of you, could center y'all that's all."

"What does that mean, Ma?" I asked. I sat on the arm of the couch taking the phone off speaker.

"Oh, Holland, stop trying to make something out of nothing. All I'm saying is that I hope you are considering other's feelings on this," she says throwing something across the yard – or maybe something falls because I can hear it land with a loud splash.

"Mother, I hear you. I've heard Katherine. I promise, we are working on it --"

"Did you pray about it at least since you won't listen to me or your sister?"

"Please don't yell, mother, I hear you just fine…Besides I'm sure God hears this conversation. He knows."

"Do not sit on this phone and joke about God. I raised you better than that now."

"I am not – mother – okay, really now I'm going to be late."

The talk ends there. That was the day I quit my job altogether after giving it one last thought. When Kat got home, I heard her foot stops receding upstairs, and I just waited. Legs crossed on the couch where my mother had left me. A couple minutes after that phone call, our message machine played on the loudspeaker Sweetie's voice. She heard I was talking to Ma and wanted to see how I was doing. I decided to stay here, to see her walk in the door and not realize I am home. Once she returns back downstairs, goes into the kitchen, I watch as she moves around it, delicately and without hesitation. She looks like poetry – moves her hands swiftly across the countertop – her fresh cut hair pinned up with too many black bobby pins. From her neck down, she is all tattoos. We talk about them every now and again, because she wants to know when we will get matching ones. I think she is ready to cover the small bare skin she has floating up her arms, cascading down her left leg, and a blank spot (a gapping hole) almost in the crook of her neck.

"Renada will have a hemorrhage if I came to her house with a tattoo," I say in defense of myself. She would, but also, I don't think I can take the pain. I don't know how to explain that to her without it being a constant reminder that I'm not the risk-taker she is.

"If we get it in the right place, she will never know."

"I think I'd tell her or Sweetie anyway."

"You gotta stop that," she says leaving the room to stand in front of the bathroom mirror. It was late in the night, so I hate when we get to talking like this before bed. I already know where this is goes because we've talked about it before. She musters up the nerve to psychoanalysis my life; putting to use her two degrees. She starts with mother since that where she believes my problem lies. The first rule to recovery, Sprinkles, is admitting you have a problem. The discussion begins here and stops all the same spots once we start it.

"Sweetie will for sure tell her anything I say, then here she comes. Then she wants to talk about how you influence my life and how I should maintain control over this because it can only lead me astray or whatever."

"Well, sleep on it. We can talk about it later," she kissed my cheek here and started on her nightly routine of case studies after flipping the bathroom switch and going into her office.

It's a miracle Kat and I have been together so long. Even though, our marriage is legal now, we've not got around to going down to the courthouse to make it official. Every now and again, Kat will bring it up – talk about how nice it would be for us to have a wedding with all our family there. "I think we should just focus on kids right now, babe" I said.

Kat turned from the sink, washing her hand on the dish towel and then on my shoulders: "First, relax." So, I breathed.

"Holland Gale Robinson, I love you. We can have a wedding. We can have kids. We can have kids at the wedding," she said.

"Stop," I said.

"Holland," she stepped back from me, "What is this? What are we doing?"

"What?"

"You're acting nonsensical. Honestly, you are scaring me –"

"Oh God, you are just like my mother. I guess that's why you two stay on the phone all the time. Talking about how crazy and inconsiderate Holland is, how much I hate myself and I hate kids and don't want fucking kids."

"Please, relax…okay," She turned leaned against the door frame.

"I don't want their kids…I want ours. Your kids, Katherine."

"You sound crazy."

"Why? Because I want our kids to be of our love? Is that bad?"

"I don't know what that means," she snapped, turning back to me.

"It means that we don't know what to expect with other people's kids. We know what to expect with us."

"You sound like a child, Holland, I can't believe you would say such a thing."

"Ohmygosh, you and my mother belong together."

"Like what the hell does that even mean? We wouldn't even know what to expect with our own damn kids. My family has some kind-of hero complex or some weird shit that makes me think I can save anybody," she said.

"Oh, so you think I need saving, Katherine."

"—and you and your family, God, help us."

"Like your fucking family is Heaven-sent, do not play with me."

"Calm down," she said.

"Katherine, you calm down."