Tomorrow

After the final throes of the relationship—the aimless arguments about the future, the listless waiting for his circular non–decision making, the studying of feminist tracts to recondition herself—she did not come away with nothing. She came away with a baby, which was still forming. It had been a surprise; she'd thought herself past childbearing age. That, and her IUD, which had become so deeply embedded in her uterine lining that only the uninsured process of surgical extraction could remove it, had created a false narrative of childlessness. She had not counted on the device to actually expire.

Because she was estranged from her body, she did not confirm the pregnancy until it became too risky to reverse anything. A boy. She notified the father. In light of their breakup, it was up to her, he emphasized, what she wanted to do. She didn't know, she barely had time to think. "Well, you need some time to think. Treat yourself to a weekend away. When was the last time you left DC?" he'd asked, and she realized that it had been eleven years. On impulse, she bought a flight to Miami.

She used up some vacation days and ate imitation crabmeat by the sea. The tides ebbed and flowed. The baby moved in concert with them. She knew she would keep it. This realization was not met with celebratory feeling so much as obsessive accounting of her financial health. Could she even afford a baby? These were the liquefiable assets at hand: a drawerful of family jewelry, a 401(k), an IRA, and a one-bedroom condo purchased with inheritance money after her parents' passing.

At the beach, a floating island of trash washed ashore, the frothing waves spewing plastic debris, bottles, tampon applicators, dental floss across the sand. The beachgoers gathered up their personal items and scattered, complaining about how long it would take the park staff to clean up. She took her towel and retreated to the hotel.

This was a different, if not an inevitable, time. The US was no longer number one. The "recyclable" waste of other nations was shipped here instead. Migrants no longer rushed its borders. Countries had begun programs of de-Americanizing, severing ties with US companies and businesses, and levying fines and taxes in trade. Its most significant cultural artifacts, including the Constitution, the Declaration, were on loan to foreign museums, displayed in clumsily curated exhibitions that lumped them with British curios.

The question of how to raise a child in this time and place.

If the baby's father were here, he would have said, "Is this a local issue or a global issue?" A local issue, according to his definition, was a contained problem with an identifiable solution. A global issue was a problem created by a complex, undefined causal network, and therefore had no definitive solution. For that reason, a global issue was not worth worrying about. "If you just ask yourself, Local or global?, half your problems will disappear." Was it a wilted salad or was it climate change? Was it a poorly developed war movie or was it our colonial mindset?

It was unfortunate that during her only vacation in years, she continued to think about him. She wished he would contact her; her grief was such that she looked for him in dreams. Was this local or global?

In the hotel lobby, the speakers played a languid folk song covered by Nina Simone, "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair." The music flowed over her. Yes, I love the ground on where he goes. And still I hope… Only then did she realize she had always misheard the lyrics as "Black is the color of my true love's heart."

It was in the bathroom of her hotel room that, while undressing, she made a puzzling discovery. Removing the oversized T-shirt that covered her bathing suit, she noticed a protrusion between her legs. She...