Page 54 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
He kissed the top of my head and said, “You will be. I know it.”
That afternoon, when I took Hazel to the pediatrician, I stopped by the OBGYN and asked them to put in an IUD. Drastic? Maybe. But I couldn’t risk taking birth control pills; Parker might find them, then where would that land me? An IUD, on the other hand, would be invisible to him, and I could have it removed at any time. Once I was ready. When would I be ready? I looked down at Hazel, gurgling in my arms, and kissed her downy forehead. I would be ready one day. Just not today.
• • •
Here’s another piece of irony: in the end, what ended my time with Hazel was me encouraging Iris to go back to work. I know, it sounds ridiculous. But here’s how it happened.
During that time, smartphones were becoming more common. Apple had released the iPhone 3G, and phone apps were only starting to become all the rage. Iris had seen this coming a long time ago and familiarized herself with the ins and outs of building phone apps. The company she had worked for back in California specialized in apps, and once she felt herself competent enough to form a team to build apps, she moved back to Indonesia. She was in the process of forming her own team when she met Erik, and she included him in her dream. They’d just started phase one of development when he started hitting her.
By the time Iris went back to work, her team had largelydissolved. Only two programmers remained, and it was really only because they couldn’t find a job elsewhere. Iris wasn’t discouraged. She told me she had plenty of ideas for phone apps, and it was easy to find programmers in Jakarta, a city teeming with a growing middle class. She quickly got together a new team, and they got to work right away, developing a shopping app much like Amazon. It was a huge undertaking, especially considering the fact that online shopping wasn’t even really a thing back then, in Indonesia. But they got the prototype up and running, and before they released it into the marketplace, they started looking around for investors.
During this time, Iris would come home jittery with nerves and excitement, and her energy would bleed over into Hazel, and she’d get restless and writhe and fuss. Iris would hold her tight, breathing in the sweet baby smell of her while she twisted and struggled in Iris’s arms. Then Iris would frown up at me and say, “Why’s she so fussy?”
“She can sense you’re nervous about something,” I said. I never took Hazel out of my sister’s arms. I was always aware that Hazel was hers, not mine. It didn’t mean I didn’t want to take Hazel. My whole body was aching to pull her away and soothe her, but I reminded myself to stay put, to know my place.
Iris handed her to me, and both Hazel and I went slack with relief. “Well, she’s right,” Iris said. “I am nervous as hell, because—god, this shopping app is good, Mags, I know it. I can feel it’s exactly what Jakarta needs. Our very own Amazon, can you imagine?”
“Why not release it into the app store now if it’s good to go?”
“Because the bottleneck of every business isn’t the product, it’s the marketing. Without marketing, no one will know thisapp even exists. And we need serious money to market it properly. If we go out too early, copycats will just swoop in and create their own version and put it out there.”
“Yikes.” I was distracted by Hazel, who was pulling my hair and putting it in her mouth. “That does sound stressful.”
“Yeah. I met with a few investors when I first moved back, and they were really keen to hear what I came up with. We met with a couple of them earlier today, and now we’re just waiting to hear back.” Iris gave me a terrified grin and glanced down at her phone.
Her phone didn’t ring that day. Nor did it ring the next day, nor the next. When she finally mustered the courage to call up the investors three days after the meeting, she was told they weren’t interested. Over the next couple of weeks, Iris continued setting up meetings with more investors. Nothing came from them. In fact, most of the meetings didn’t even end up happening. By then, Iris was coming home as dejected as I’d ever seen her. Only the sight of Hazel cheered her up, and even then, only a little bit. She’d hold Hazel and close her eyes while burying her face in Hazel’s hair, looking utterly defeated. Hazel would squirm and try to escape, and Iris would hand her to me without much of a fight. I’d never seen Iris so ready to give up before. It wasn’t like her at all. I hated it.
“It’s over,” she said, later that night after I’d put Hazel to bed. It was a Friday night, so Parker was out with his friends. I opened a bottle of red wine and poured Iris a generous glass. “My last investor canceled today’s meeting. There’s no one left.”
“Oh, Iris. Did they say why?”
She took a long swallow of her wine before answering. “They mentioned that it sounded too risky of an investment.”
“Isn’t that true of most apps?”
“Yeah.” She studied her glass of wine, running her finger along the rim. Then she looked up suddenly. “Wait, no. That’s not true. Actually, what they said was ‘You seem too big of a risk to invest in.’ Oh my god, Mags! Do you think they meant me and not the app?”
“What?” I laughed. “Of course not, why would they mean you? They know nothing about you.”
Iris had already gotten up and was pacing around. “When I met with the other investor on Wednesday, I had this feeling—I thought I was imagining it but, Mags, the way this guy looked at me…I swear he was sneering a little. I thought it was because he thought the app wasn’t as polished as he’d hoped, but I believe in our app. It’s as good as anything on the US markets. It couldn’t have been the app. Oh my god. It’s me!”
“Slow down, Iris,” I said. “You’re being paranoid. There’s no reason why—”
“Yes, there is,” Iris said. Her eyes hardened. “Erik.”
I stopped short. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t…” My voice trailed away as reality sank in. Why wouldn’t he? Why was my first instinct to assume the best in everyone, even the asshole who’d beaten up my sister? If he was capable of hurting her like that, why wouldn’t he be capable of hurting her in other ways? “But you said he didn’t fight the divorce, right?”
Iris snorted. “What do you think?”
The back of my neck ran cold. “But you said…” I hated how much I sounded like a little kid in that moment.
“I didn’t want you to worry.” Iris gazed down at her wineglass. “But—ah, no—well, actually, it’s not going through. Because Erik refused to get a divorce. So we’re technically just separated right now.”
“What?” I gaped at her. All thoughts screamed out of my head, then rushed back in, making me dizzy. What the hell does anything even mean anymore?
“I consulted with a lawyer, who told me if Erik had the funds—which he does—he could turn this really ugly, and not only that, he could take Hazel away from me. So it’s best to do as he wants for now and stay legally married but separated.”
“Is there nothing we can do? Like, what about the fact that he was hitting you? Surely that counts for something! We even have photos. We could threaten to leak them.”
