When his mother died, the call came in the middle of a Tuesday. By evening my husband was sitting at our kitchen table with his hands braced on either side like the wood might buckle. “If we don’t take Sariyah,” he said, “they’ll send her to foster care.”
I was seven weeks from my due date. The ultrasound photo was crooked on the fridge, tiny socks drying on the radiator. I heard my own voice say, “It’s too much to ask. I’m not ready. We’re about to start our own family.” And then he answered, not angry, not pleading—just certain: “You will.”
The certainty chilled me more than a shout would have. It sounded like a fact already written somewhere I hadn’t agreed to sign.
Sariyah arrived two days later with a caseworker and a suitcase that looked like it belonged to an airline pilot. She was six, with big, watchful eyes and posture that belonged on a much older person. She sat on the edge of the couch, hands folded, spine straight. When my husband said we’d painted her room yellow—“like you liked at your mom’s”—she nodded and said, “Thank you,” as if we were strangers handing her a menu.
I smiled and made spaghetti and then locked myself in the bathroom and cried quietly into a towel. Shame burned behind my ribs. She didn’t cry. I did.
The first weeks were an uneasy choreography. She asked permission for everything. “May I take this book?” “May I put my shoes here?” If I raised my voice to call to my husband in the next room, she flinched. Once I dropped a pan and she jumped like she’d been struck. I braided her hair and made pancakes shaped like stars and bought her a backpack with her favorite cartoon, and she said “thank you” every single time without ever smiling with her whole face.
“Does she talk about it?” I asked my husband at night, whispering like the house might eavesdrop.
“She says she misses Mom,” he said. “Then she stops.”
We gave her space, which felt like doing nothing in a really polite way.
Three weeks early, my water broke on a Sunday morning while Sariyah watched a nature show on the rug. She froze, eyes wide. I grabbed her hand. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, breathless. “Baby just wants to meet us now.”
She sat in the hospital waiting room with a coloring book while they wheeled me through double doors. Leina arrived fast and furious, small but perfectly loud. When they placed her on my chest, love crashed into me so hard it shook. I thought that feeling would fix everything.
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