He flips through the pages until he reaches the last one. “Everything is set. It just needs your signature here and here”—he points to two flagged spaces—“and I’ll get my attorney to start the process.”
A process. In India, children are born for many reasons. In the villages, it is for labor. Boys outweigh girls in importance. Boys are able to help in the family’s business, whether it is farming or shop keeping. No one judges the family when the boys begin working at a young age. Girls, however, present a liability. Dowries must be saved for each daughter born. A payment to the boy’s family for accepting their daughter in marriage.
“A child is not a process.” Sweat starts to trickle down my spine. “Not a decision to be made lightly.” Images of my father holding me beckon. His love unconditional, constant. “We have to discuss this, think about it.”
“I agree.” He throws the papers down on the table. A deep swallow. A sheen of wetness covers his eyes. “I thought that’s what we had been doing. All these years, when we talked about having a baby. Decorating the nursery. Believing you when you told me the fertility specialist said it would happen.”
“It will. There’s just a lot of stress right now.” Something is wrong. I rack my brain for the answer, search for the words he wants to hear. “With my father, Sonya coming home.” I reach for him but he steps back. “I just need time.”
“Is that why you’re on birth control?” From the table drawer, where the adoption papers are, he pulls out a sheet of paper. My heart starts to race. I scan it quickly when he hands it to me. A letter from my doctor. I am past the date to replace my IUD. The coil I had inserted years ago to prevent a pregnancy. Since the day I vowed to love and honor Eric till death do us part. “For time?”
Some moments in your life you wish never happened; you would do anything to take them back. They make you realize you are not all-powerful. That there is a force stronger than you at work. In those moments, you fall to your knees and abdicate all sense of power. Offer your hand and ask for help. If you are lucky, you will feel the touch of something or someone to help you rise. If not, you stay kneeling, left all alone.
“When did you get this?” he asks. There is no use denying the facts. With all the stress of the last few weeks, the appointment slipped my mind. I have always kept it before, never missed a date. Being diligent, I was sure he would never learn my secret.
I start to count. One, two. In my head I race, wanting to reach eight. My lucky number. It has been years since the need has arisen. I had almost forgotten about my escape. One where reality shifts until returning to one I can live with. Where I am happy and safe.
“You lied to me.” He waits for an answer. Offers me the courtesy of a chance to explain my betrayal. “You made a fool of me.”
“No.” His pain crowds the room, inching over me until I can’t breathe. He’s told me the stories—growing up alone in an orphanage, yearning for a family to love. I knew his pain but dismissed it without reason. Now, he’s demanding to know why. Words race through my head as I search for the exact ones that will end this nightmare. But even as I dismiss one excuse after another, I know there is no justification that he will accept. “It was not about you.” Three.
“Then who?”
He stares at me as though we have just met. I am desperate to remind him I am the woman he married, the one he loved above all else. We wrote our own vows. He told everyone who came to bear witness that I was the most important person in his life. That I was his dream come true.
“Being a mother, I don’t know, it just . . .” I went to my doctor a month before our wedding to get the IUD implanted. It guaranteed I would never bear a child, though all the while Eric yearned desperately for one. “My family,” I try again, the only explanation I have. Four.