Women have symptoms all the time. Medical science doesn’t know everything. Stay strong Ava2WW!!!!!! BellasMOM
Ava closed the laptop. She wouldn’t read any more tonight but wanted a diversion that wasn’t reality TV or game shows from thirty years ago, which depressed and demoralized her. The house was quiet with Henry gone and her mother in her own apartment. Henry said he would be at his father’s, but Ava wasn’t sure how much she believed him. She believed in her father-in-law’s need and in the chaos of his house, the filthy rooms he maneuvered poorly in with his pitiful walker, his pill bottles lined up on the television table like an audience. He and Henry were the only ones left from their immediate family, except for Sean, and he was in jail. What Ava doubted was that Henry spent more than a few minutes in the cave of that depressing house with a man he hardly knew. He was escaping from her plain and simple.
A sensation, an ache bubbled up in Ava’s stomach and into her chest to finally pop in her mouth. Henry had another woman. Flashes of him close to her, his hand on her hip, the liquid movements of his torso inching toward the woman’s chest. Ava could see it plain. The woman she did not know. Henry had little game, but he didn’t need any. So many women saw him and figured they’d make up whatever lack he had, get back with the Lord later, or not. How many of them had made this calculation, Ava couldn’t be sure. Henry wouldn’t give her the number. Ava suspected that he wasn’t sure himself. There are secrets in a relationship that probably should remain secret. Little lies of omission, artful (or not) evasions that reminded you that you woke up with a stranger, even if you think you know him down to the bone. Every once in a while you get reminded how truly impossible it is to know another person, even if you love that person, even if you live with him for years, for decades. The paradox of love was how you manage to feel it with so little information. But you negotiate in this life for the best deal you can get. When Ava and Henry first married Ava had convinced herself that she was happy. Henry’s remoteness, his moods were in stark relief when only the two of them maneuvered together in their first apartment. Ava said nothing to anyone, though her mother and her aunt were not fooled. She thought for years she could deal. That’s the key to marriage. Learn to deal. Play the game right and you might even end up reasonably happy. And, good news, if you can manage the machinations and intrigue of a functional marriage you have all the tools you need to rule the world.
Ava willed the thoughts of Henry with another woman away as she had become accustomed to doing in the past few years. She didn’t have time to think about what Henry did. The past few years had been hard on both of them. That alone should have produced some compassion in Ava for Henry, for his hurt and frustration about what had happened to them. The fact that she felt nothing for Henry’s pain surprised and shamed her.
She would try to sleep. She turned off the light at the bedside table and closed her eyes. Sleep, sleep. Go to sleep, she hummed to herself. But she wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon. When she was a child she loved listening to the women her mother knew, relatives or women from one of the churches her mother tried. Most of them were very young like her mother, in their twenties and thirties, black women who had had enough hard life already and said another baby meant a tether to the meanness of too little. The women talked in kitchens, shabby living rooms, public parks and backyards, and plotted about how to avoid the pregnancy, how to end it (with a potion or an accident that was sure-fire), and if all else failed finally how to endure it. This talk was not about their children—they were another issue altogether. The idea of their children was divorced in their minds from the pregnancies. Maybe you have to be there, to live there, to struggle there to understand it. But most of them loved their children or at least tried to. Ava remembered them speaking in code to keep their intentions from the kids playing in their midst. Ava was convinced that children were a burden, a worry, the last nail in the coffin. Like her grandmother Mabe said enough times, “Children ruin your life.”
She reached for the laptop in the dark.
I AM GOING CRAZY, everyone. When I was in high school and college just about everybody I knew had a pregnancy scare. I felt so smart and superior because I never had to go through all of that. I didn’t have sex in high school and only a few times in my college. I thought I had it all figured out. Did you all have pregnancy scares back in the day? I never did. Not even one time. Not ever. Not even when I got married and not as careful as I could have been. I thought because I was a good girl or just careful or lucky, but now I think I might have been INFERTILE. I haven’t even been able to think like this until lately. Maybe what I thought was luck back then was a curse I’m feeling now. Has anyone else felt like that? Ava2WW
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I had a scare or two, but that doesn’t matter. You didn’t really have a sex life just a few experiences and you were just careful back then. That’s all! We are all learning that this whole baby making thing is a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. So many things have to go right. Who knew? I used to think that I could get pregnant anytime. This is embarrassing, but I didn’t really know about ovulation. I really didn’t. I soon found out that a lot of women don’t know. I told my mother I missed my ovulation window when I was trying the first time and she said try again in a few days. In a few days! She didn’t know about ovulation and she has four girls. I don’t know how anyone ever gets pregnant with so little information. LOL! Now that we know better, we just have to adjust. You are going to get pregnant and have your baby. YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT. You have to be strong. Your little one needs you to be strong. Don’t give up, honey. I know you hurt. BellasMom
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Oh, Ava I cried when I read your post. We have all been there. Try not to worry. Babies come when they get ready. I don’t mean to sound magical, but I think our bodies have to be ready. There’s so much we don’t really understand. Don’t keep your feelings to yourself. Keep writing us. We will help. We are the only ones who really know how you feel. Baby Luv Jon
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Sylvia picked up the phone and put it back down again on the kitchen table. He would want to know about JJ. He would want to talk about that.
“Devon,” she said, but the line was quiet on the other side.
“Can you hear me, Devon? Are you there?” Sylvia put the phone back on her chest. He was not going to speak.
“Mama.”
Sylvia fumbled the phone, getting it to her ear. “Devon, Devon. Thank God. Can you talk right now? Can you talk to me?”