By Foxy

"Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God..." I was breathing very hard and the pressure in my chest would not go away. All three sticks indicated I was pregnant.

"All three!" I wondered. There was no room for doubt.

"So I’m well and truly pregnant".

"And well and truly f%&*d…in more ways than one". Sheila, my roommate, would have enjoyed the joke on a normal day, but today wasn’t one of those.

"Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God". I was shaking them, rubbing my eyes with the other hand and peering even closer, as if the results could change.

Meanwhile, Sheila was calling through the bathroom door. She needed to shower and go to work. I still wasn’t ready to come out. All my sleep had gone straight out of the window; one couldn’t tell I’d not slept in 24 hours. Not a wink.

"What does it show?" she asked, her voice muffled through the door.

"I took three, they are all positive," I paused, waiting for the word to sink in.

"Ok, so what do you want to do now," she asked pensively.

"I have to see the father".

I got out of the bathroom and put on the new jeans I bought with Aisha in Mombasa — the only pair that fitted me well, and left for Thika Road, not knowing how soon I’d get there. I found him leaving the house. Lucky for me, he was on the mid-morning shift.

"What’s wrong?" So it was written on my face. It was that bad.

"I think I’m pregnant". No formality, no courtesy, no preliminaries.

"Are you sure?" I showed him the sticks. I had carried my handbag in one hand, and the sticks in the other, all the way to Thika Road, checking them intermittently during the trip.

"Who’s is it?"

I looked at him in wonder. What manner of a fool had I gotten myself entangled with?

"Yours of course!"

He was opening the door to go back inside the house.

"Kwani who else did I sleep with?"

"He was quiet, balancing his laptop bag on his knees, his face inscrutable. I decided to invite myself to a seat.

"Are you sure it’s not that guy’s?"

That guy was Skywalker, the one who mixed me a one-night kamutee that willed me into sexual compliance. The thought stopped me midway, my behind hung precariously for a while before decisively sitting on the sofa.

"No, it can’t be, they cleaned me up after the incident".

I was calm, but a far worse fear began to grow in my chest. What if I’m pregnant with a rapist’s baby? What if I went for treatment too late, or the hospital missed that one determined little sperm, which swam its way up my fallopian tubes? Now what’s this! And to think Skywalker used a condom to do his damage, and me and my boyfriend did as well. How can I tell for sure? Why hadn’t the thought occurred to me sooner? The time I finally gave my boyfie, was just after Skywalker had his run with me.

"Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God," I said. "I’m in deep sh*t"