I told you so.
I weep and pull at my hair, enjoying the pain. I rail at the unfairness, hating myself, wanting to do violence. I want to shove my fist inside myself and stop the flow of blood. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I hiccup and sob, letting my sodden skirt drip onto my socked feet.
I hear a creak and glance up. Leo is watching me through a narrow gap in the door. I quickly grab a towel and try to cover myself, but he has pushed his way inside.
“What’s that?” he asks, pointing at my stomach.
“It’s where babies come from.”
“My mummy doesn’t have one of those.”
“Her baby is coming from somewhere else.”
I glance at the mirror and see a sad, half-naked clown wearing a ridiculous-looking silicone belly that is wrapped around my back. What a wretch I am. What a pathetic, pitiable excuse for a human being. I am a joke. I am an echo. I am a failure.
The creature is right. What is the point of a barren woman?
Leo reaches out and touches the prosthetic. “Do you have a baby in there?”
“That’s right.”
“How did he get in there?”
“God put him there.”
Leo frowns.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“My daddy put a baby in Mummy’s tummy,” says Leo. “Did he put a baby in you too?”
I shake my head, wiping my eyes. “Go back to the TV.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“I won’t be long.”
When he’s gone, I wash my thighs and take a tampon from the bathroom cabinet. I dress in fresh clothes, moving slowly, like an accident victim, testing for bruises or broken bones.
I fetch Leo a drink of milk and join him on the sofa. He puts his hand on my belly, still curious.
The boy knows.
He’s done nothing wrong.
He could tell someone.
Nobody will believe him.
Foolish girl.
Jules arrives home at midday, shaking out her umbrella. “It’s horrible out there,” she says, giving Leo a hug.
“Was everything all right at the doctor’s?”
“Fine.”
She turns to Leo. “What do you say?”
The little boy looks at me shyly. “Thank you for looking after me, Auntie Agatha.”
“Any time,” I reply.
I hear them climbing the stairs, unlocking the door, Leo running across the sitting room. Jules goes to the bathroom. The toilet flushes. The cistern refills. Water sighs and gurgles down pipes in the walls. I envy Jules, feeling her baby grow inside her, listening to the heartbeat, watching the scans.
I am not impetuous or impulsive by nature, nor am I a monster, but there are nights when I have lain awake, staring at the ceiling, contemplating how to drug my best friend and cut the baby from her womb.
I would not do it. I could not do it. But I want to do it.
I feel claustrophobic. I cannot breathe. Shrugging on my coat, I go downstairs, raising my hood against the spitting rain. My uterus cramps. My heart aches. My body is mocking me. The creature cackles.
I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.
I sing to myself, drowning out the voice, and keep walking, past the shops in the King’s Road and Sloane Square, north towards Kensington and Marble Arch. London has an ominous gravity that makes every step seem heavier, like I’m climbing to the gallows.
At an intersection I spy a line of preschoolers in matching raincoats, lined up two by two, holding hands, waiting for the lights to change. Their teacher chaperones stand in front and behind. I think of Elijah, my baby brother—my first loss.
At Kingdom Hall I learned that envy is one of the seven deadly sins, but I am guilty of it on a daily basis. I envy the good-looking, the wealthy, the happy, the successful, the connected, and the married. But more than anything else, I envy the new mothers. I follow them into shops. I watch them in parks. I gaze longingly into their prams.
My biological clock is broken and cannot be fixed. Twelve fertility clinics turned me away over the past four years. I’ve had my turn, they said. One specialist at Hammersmith Hospital told me not to give up hope. I wanted to slap him and yell, Hope? Hope doesn’t make you pregnant. Hope whispers, “One more time,” but still disappoints. “Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper,” my grandmother used to say.
A psychotherapist said my desire for a baby was some sort of metaphor for something else missing in my life.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The birth is metaphorical. There is something that wants to be born that is not really a baby.”
“Not a baby.”
“Yes.”
This is bullshit, I thought. A baby isn’t a metaphor. A baby is my reason for being born a woman. Why else was I given a womb and made to bleed every month? Why else do I feel so empty inside? Why else do I mourn the babies I’ve lost and the one I surrendered?
People who have children seem to regard infertility as being an outdated condition, like smallpox or the plague. They think it was cured long ago by IVF and surrogacy and that anyone settling for childlessness is weak-willed and ignoble. They’re wrong. Science offers no safety net. Only one in four fertility treatments results in a live birth, and once a woman reaches thirty-five the odds get even worse.
I have blown those odds. I have tricked boyfriends, fucked strangers, stolen sperm, and undergone five rounds of IVF, but still my womb refuses to grow a mini-me. I have advertised for donor eggs, investigated adoption, and given up on international surrogacy because I could never afford the fees being asked by brokers, lawyers, and surrogates.
I have tried to avoid baby showers, children’s birthday parties, playgrounds, and school gates. It’s not that seeing babies and children makes me unhappy. I love watching them. What makes me sad is listening to mothers sitting around, swapping stories, complaining about their sleepless nights, or teething troubles, or the expenses, or the germs, or the tantrums. How dare they complain? They are blessed. Chosen. Lucky.
My desire for a child is like a missing piece that cannot be substituted or replaced. It hurts, this hollow feeling, this empty womb; this baby-sized hole inside me. I feel it when I glimpse a baby, or read a magazine, or watch TV. I want a happy marriage, a house, and a dog, but I will forgo all of these for the chance to have and hold a child, to love, to cherish, to own, to raise, to belong.
It’s midafternoon and the light is already fading. Somehow I have reached the river near Westminster with no recollection of what roads I took or what corners I turned. Big Ben strikes the hour. Sitting on a painted wooden bench with a cast-iron base, I can smell the dampness on me. Light rain is still falling. A church bell rings. A bus passes. A jackhammer shudders. Gulls wheel above my head. London has no time for silence. It does not reflect upon its past.