Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 11 No. 1 | Spring 1988 (Twin Cities/Minneapolis-St. Paul /// Issue 5 of 7 /// Master# 46 of 73

recliner, and they push me back, but' now I am screaming. I see faces all around me. “Help me!” I cry, through the contractions. I start to shake violently, and they ask me where it hurts. “ Here,” I say, “and here, and here”—I point to my whole trunk. Already, I am aware that they don’t like people in day-surgery recovery to scream out in pain. I know they want me to be quiet. My husband holds my head and my hand. “Just relax.” I hear him say. Right. Now the nurses are telling me to breathe, and I am breathing. I will do anything for this pain to go away. I see a pretty face close to mine, a nurse who says, “ Breathe in through your nose, and purse your lips and blow out, now in through your nose, and out through your mouth....” She continues this mantra and I succumb to her hypnotic commands. There is no one else in the world but her and me at that moment. Soon they give me two white pills, but I know they won’t reach the pain for a while so I breathe with my nurse. My husband’s face flashes through a herd of faces that move in and out of my line of vision. He is scared. I feel a tug of pity for him and then a collapse. “Please,” I say to the breathing nurse, “send my husband out for coffee.” He goes, but not without a look of yearning in my direction. I know he is feeling powerless but I can’t bear to watch him watch me. The shivers are racking. The nurse explains. “You had a uterine contraction, just like in labor. But you spooked yourself and made it worse. You may have another, but we will breathe through it together, Okay?” We? Right. But she is right. Iwas finally able to void. When the big pain is over, I go home. Days go by, marked only by how many pain pills Ididn’t have to take. I move like an old woman. And after I finally manage to work a whole day, I fall exhausted into my bed. I love my heating pad more than my husband. I don’t want to touch, hug, or hold hands. I want to be left entirely alone and I don’t feel an ounce of remorse. Next Appointment: The Results. The doctor tells me, “Well, Mrs. Hinton, you have three problems, any of which one would be enough to make you infertile. You have hostile cervical mucus,” I think, Why do I suddenly feel defensive? “You have a silent bacterial infection, called ureaplasma. It’s frequently carried by men—” I look at my husband incredulously, Is this where you tell me you had an affair? and is generated intestinally.” I breathe a sigh of relief. The doctor continues, “It’s symptomless, which is why it goes undetected. It doesn’t seem to have any effect on men. But unfortunately, it causes infertility in women. Great, biological misogyny.... “And then, you had a great deal of endometriosis.” I hear the words, a great deal and something inside of me breaks. How could I have had this disease and not known? I was sterile all these months—who knows how long? This entire year of trying to get pregnant, and the joke was on me. “You’ve got to see the video we did of the surgery.” The doctor is very proud as he switches on the office VCR. The first images are shiny and tomato-red. “Now, here we are in your abdominal cavity... see the yellow light there, watch it now, it’ll turn that site, the endometrial site, black in a second —see, you can even see smoke.” He laughs । feel nauseous, appalled, and I turn my neac away to find myself face to face with another madonna and child picture. The nurse bursts in. She’s dilated to eight, Dr. Black, you better get over there now!” “Sorry, gotta go to deliver a baby.” He stands up, still watching his work, and continues, “Just watch this, it’s marvelous, isn’t it? I’m positive Ican get you pregnant now.” Wonderful, sex with my gynecologist and my husband. In that order. Hurriedly, he explains about ejaculate samples, spinning semen, isolating sperm, and insemination. This is supposed to be reassurance to me. His voice sounds far away. Then he rushes off, and I watch the video, the red, the black, the smoke until I can’t stand it any more. The doctor pops his head back in. “Oh, by the way, you have to get pregnant right away, within the next six months, or the endometriosis will come back. Bye.” Before I can get over being stunned by the disease, I feel panic, urgency, the way I always feel about deadlines. I’ve never missed one yet, but I had control over those. The primal woman in me is deeply offended at the idea of medical intervention. If any magic is worked on a womb, it should be on an altar, not on a gurney. I am no longer positive I even want a child now. That night, I talk long distance with my friend Malka in Boston. “I thought getting pregnant would be a little more romantic. I mean, if they inseminate me, it’ll be without even having sex.” Malka says, “Then we’ll have to rename you Mary and you’ll have a lot of people praying to you. Who needs that.” I almost smile. She continues, “Can this doctor make you pregnant?” “That’s what he says. I hear he’s the best.” “So? Gadget pregnant. You can have sex any time.” ' I hang up, comforted by her simple logic. The moon rises full tonight and it is peeking through the pine trees in my backyard. It is very late. Blue light illuminates the room and I can see as if there was a light on. I can’t sleep and I can’t cry so I sit, the cat curled in my sterile lap, content. We think together. Or maybe she isn’t thinking at all. After all, I had her tubes tied and she doesn’t seem the worse for it. She is a whole cat. She plays and preens and purrs with the confidence of one who needs no purpose to exist. She is not inadequate just because she’s kitten less—it really doesn’t matter to her. But it matters to me, and finally I cry. I mourn my unborn children, but I can’t give up yet. By now, we both dread sex. I remember the way we used to flirt, the anticipation while we showered to be sweet for each other. The music, the dance, the lingering. How long has it been? We’ve lost each other. Now sex means charts and thermometers before I move from the bed. Now it means examining ^the fluids I used to wipe away. It’s pH sticks and stopwatches, little vials and color charts. Now it’s resentment when he works late on the day after my “LH surge” for fear that we missed the egg. I remember back to our first Valentine’s Day. I sent a card and a rose. But no rose came for me. I was crushed. He said, “ Look, I resent having to feel romantic when the calendar says to.” Now I understand. We both understand. Making babies has become performance on command. And in bed, we both get the feeling we’re being watched. The Insemination. “ T can’t do it in the doctor’s office.” Now, my I husband is offended. We sit in the waiting room. I understand more than he knows, but I have no sympathy for him right now. I have had my LH surge, and we have to do this today, I am adamant. The nurse comes around the corner, and hands him a Penthouse magazine and a pimiento jar. She points to the men’s room and leaves. He looks at me, like a child. “I know I can’t do it in there.” “Try,” I say gently, “please.” He disappears and is gone a long time. When he emerges, he is angry. He grabs his coat and walks out the door. I get the feeling I’ve just asked him to do something kinky. I follow with my guilt tailing me. The nurse calls after me flippantly, “Don’t worry, there’s always next month.” We are quiet all the way home. I’ve been turned into a beggar in all this—the desperate woman, to him, and all the people who know. I am pitiful, ashamed. And panicked. The first of the six months has gone by. The Second Try. At home, we successfully do what my doctor has called, “gathering ejaculate.” I put the sample in my bra to keep it warm, and we drive, fast, back to the clinic, knowing we have only half an hour until the sample is dead. In the office, they quickly take the jar and place it in a spinner, where the semen and the sperm will be separated and, as the doctor puts it, put into a neutral fluid so my cervix doesn’t feel so “ hostile’ By now, I can’t blame my cervix for how it feels. Then I am on the table again, with no clothes from the waist down. The white sheet covers me. My husband reads Sports Illustrated, and the doctor comes in. “Ok, you’re going to feel a little cramp again, but nothing like you’ve felt before.” He busies himself between my legs, where I can’t see him. I remember that line in the Wizard of Oz, Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! My husband is reading still. A cold hand touches me with a cold instrument and a small, long tube. I feel the cramp. The doctor stands up. “Ok, just lay there for fifteen minutes or so.” “That’s it?” I ask. “That’s it.” Fourteen days later, I bleed. For a full day it’s not only blood but tears that won’t stop. My doctor says I should see a therapist. I hate +iim. Why doesn’t anyone else think this is all crazy? The Depression. 6^X7 ou’re trying too hard,” my friends say. “Give W up, and you’ll get pregnant.” I resent advice. JL |’m obsessed. How can I give up? Do I pretend to? My friends’ glib advice grates against my frail ego. “Start adoption procedures, that’s sure to get you pregnant.” r “Just forget it and it’ll happen.” “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be a mother.” Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps I would * have been a bad mother. Maybe the gods knew and saved us the agony. I stop taking my temperature, stop the charts, but the calendar still haunts me. My world narrows. I look to my husband’s children, hoping for a glimpse of motherhood. But they are not mine, and they let me know this, by referring to me as their father’s wife. Ichange my attitude from being chiId- /ess to being child-free. Who wants a squalling baby? Who wants to be reduced to picking up toys and wiping asses? What self-respecting woman would allow herself to give up her profession, even for a while, in such a competitive world? I know this is all bullshit, which depresses me even more. My husband courts me more. I hate him sometimes for it, I love him for it. I cannot face another period, another failure, another hope let down. “We tried for seven years....” I have heard women say. We’ve only tried for a year and a half, and I’m too weak to go on. I won’t talk to anyone. I won’t speak my feelings. There are so many and there are none. I get numb. Then the day comes, I don’t know when exactly, when defeat replaces hope. This is the ultimate powerlessness. I move through my days, looking for something to commit to. Throw myself into my writing. It’s better, I tell myself. A woman writer shouldn’t have children. We’re already too busy creating. Like the teammate who rebounds for the fallen player, my husband quietly becomes inspired. He plots and plans and makes love to me. I see him counting the days in his calendar, circling dates, pen in mouth. Single-handedly, he returns our sex life to normal. He doesn’t mention children. I think it’s sweet, but I’m certain there will come a day when he’ll give it up too. I hate to tell other women who have felt like me that giving up was the key. I really don't know ifit was. Or if the medical maniacs were successful. Or if the godsfinally smiled down on us. The clinic called me in October, when my period had not come. “Mrs. Hinton, you’re positive.” I heard the words but not the meaning. “Excuse me? Does that mean I’m pregnant?” “Congratulations.” I dialed my husband’s office. ‘‘Jim, ’’I said carefully, ' ‘do you still want to be a father again?" Long silence. ‘'Hellloooooo???” “Yes, yes, of course!” “Well, remember that night, when I ’d just come home fro m .. . . ” A great howl came over the line. ‘‘I knew it! This time, I was aiming!” Our baby is due in June. Stephanie Ericsson has made a living as a screenwriter for film and television in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. She has been an advertising copywriter and is the author of two books for Hazelton Publications, Shamefaced and Women of Alcoholics Anonymous: Recovering Together. Ms. Ericsson is now working on her first novel and an anthology of short stories. A native of San Francisco, she is now nesting in St. Paul. Gabriele Ellertson admires the epitaph on Degas’ headstone— Here lies a man who loved drawing greatly. 26 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1989

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