19. Rough?

Halfway through the ninth month of their marriage, Abubakar’s determination to get get her pregnant had become all-consuming. She half suspected he would most probably hurt her if he knew she was still secretly taking birth control pills, so she hid them in one of her purses shoved back in a corner of their closet.

Convinced that the problem was her, it couldn’t possibly be him; Abubakar sent her to the doctor. She cried in the doctor’s office for an hour, telling him she felt anxious and miserable and had no idea why, and came home with a prescription for antidepressants.

“You can’t take that crap,” Abubakar said, crumpling the slip of paper and tossing it into the trash. “It might be bad for the baby.”

Their nonexistent baby. She thought guiltily of the pill she took every morning, a secret act that had become her last desperate bid for autonomy. It was difficult on the wee