Fragile Expectations

The human mind is terrifyingly resilient and strong, It can divide itself, centralizing down the middle when survival demands for it.

In the first half of my mind, I am just eighteen years old sitting in the third row of a crowded stuffy lecture hall, where the ceiling fans moved in slow motion, humming slowly. The lecturer’s voice rises and falls while he was drawing diagrams on the board about laws and structures that feel completely different from my reality. In this half of my mind, I am a good daughter the girl whose parents call every Sunday evening after church, making sure she is fine and alright. Their voices are filled with prayers and reminders of how much they are sacrificing, naira by naira to make sure my tuition is paid on time. In this life my biggest worry should be the up coming exams and if my pocket money will be able to sustain me until the end of the month.

But in the second half of my mind, the half that feels so heavy and completely empty, so drained from the numb pain just right at my lower stomach under my waistband.

I sat through the entire two hour lecture with my hands tightly holding onto my lap, forcing my fingers and hands not to drift down to my lower stomach. The skin around there felt hyper sensitive, different from the usual, as if it were broadcasting a secret to the entire class. Just three hours ago, I was standing in the cramped up privacy of the hostel bathroom, staring at a cheap plastic strip balanced on the edge of the sink, it showed two lines. The line were not even perfectly straight, just two faint, pink marks that instantly rewrote my entire identity, my life.

When the bell finally rang, signaling the end of the class, the sudden noise around me was quite deafening and it brought me back to my reality. Students scraped their plastic chairs against the concrete floor, laughing, complaining about the heat, planning their afternoons and rest.

"Are you coming to the cafeteria?" my friend asked, while slinging her leather bag over her shoulder. She was looking at me, she was focused on her phone, her thumb flying across the screen as she smiled at a text. "They said the jollof rice is fresh today."

I looked at her, and for a terrifying second, I felt like I was looking across a vast, unbridgeable canyon, it felt like I couldn't reach to her. Just yesterday, we were complaining about the same things. Today, she belonged to the world of the living, and I was trapped in a ghost like story.

"No," I said, my voice sounding thin and dry, like paper been rub against each other. I forced my lips to curl into a practiced, empty smile. "My stomach is acting up a bit, I think I will just head back to the hostel and lie down."

"Oh, swallow some water. See you later," she said casually, already turning away to join a group walking down the corridor.

I watched her back disappear into the crowd. The moment I stopped seeing her, I felt a cold wave of isolation hit me right there in the doorway. It was at that perticular time I realized that a secret doesn't just lock things in, it locks everyone else out of it.

I met him behind the old faculty building, where the uncompleted concrete walls were overgrown with tall, dry grasses. It was a place students usually avoided during the day time because of the heat since it had no shelter, which made it the only option and safe place left for us to meet.

He was already there leaned against a pillar, kicking a small stone with the toe of his shoes. He looked so young and for a moment I knew it was over for me. The moment he turned and saw me walking toward him, the expression on his face made my heart drop. He didn't look like a man about to become a father, he looked like a boy who had just been caught doing something terribly wrong, waiting for the punishment to be fall him.

Without a word, he reached out and took my hand. His hands were damp and cold, they were also trembling slightly. We stood there in the shadow of the concrete, the heavy afternoon sun beating down on the dirt around us.

"Did you... did you check it again?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly on the last word.

"I took two test already," I whispered, looking down at our joined hands. "And they are both the same. It’s real, I am pregnant."

He let out a long ragged breath, letting his shoulders sag. He looked up at the sky, his eyes blinking rapidly against the glare. "Okay. Okay. We... we have to think on what to do. What do we do?"

"I don't know," I said, the panic finally breaking through the wall I had built all morning. A tear slipped down my cheek, hot and fast. "My parents, if they find out... it will kill them. You know how my dad is, his expectations on me high, it will kill him. If I bring a pregnancy home, I become the family shame. Everything they have spent on me, all the sacrifices... it will just turn to ash."

He squeezed my hand tightly, pulling me a step closer. "Hey, listen to me. I am here. I am not running away. If... if you want to keep it, we can keep it. I can find a way. We can get married eventually. I love you."

The words I love you usually felt like a warm blanket, but today they felt like a heavy weight. I looked at him. He was twenty, a student just like me. Every month, he waited for his parents to send him pocket money just to buy handouts and pay for electricity in his off-campus room. He was not settled nor was he ready to start up a family. He had no job, no savings, no roof of his own to put over a child's head.

"And give birth to what?" I asked, my voice shaking with a fierce, protective sorrow. "Then I become a baby mama, that’s what everyone will call me. Before I even have a degree, before I can even feed myself, I will be bound to a life of whispers. And what about the baby? I always swore to myself that if I brought a child into this world, it would be the right way. A white dress, a proper home, a stable life where no one could ever look down on them. If I have this child now, outside of wedlock, they will spend their whole life carrying the weight of my mistake. The neighborhood will judge them before they can even speak. I can't do that to my baby."

He looked away, his jaw tightening. He knew I was right. The romance of "finding a way" died quickly under the brutal math of our reality.

"And my education," I continued, the words spilling out like a confession. "Will my parents keep paying? If they find out, they might just wash their hands of me. Then what? I have nothing to offer a child. Literally nothing."

He swallowed hard, his eyes turning back to me, full of a quiet, defeated sadness. "So... you don't want to keep it?"

"I can't," I choked out, the admission tearing through my chest. "I really can't."

He stayed silent for a long time, the only sound between us being the distant noise of cars on the main campus road. Finally, he nodded slowly. "Okay. If that is what you want, then we have to do it and I support you. We do it quietly, no one else needs to know, it will just be you and me. We will find a way to handle it."

Sitting together on the low concrete ledge, we began to whisper about things we knew absolutely nothing about. We talked about clinics, about options, about money we didn't have, all while the rest of the university carried on around us, completely unaware that under the bright afternoon sun, two kids were quietly deciding how to erase a life to save their own.