Motherhood_A Novel

by Sheila Heti

  He has a friend who, with her husband of thirteen years, was trying to get pregnant. They tried everything, multiple rounds of IVF. Nothing worked. Then the friend had a one-night stand. From this, she became pregnant. She told her husband, and he said he would accept the child as his own, on one condition: the child would never know that some other man was the biological father. The woman could not agree to this, so the couple split up. Now it is very difficult for her, he said, raising the child alone.

  I went to smoke outside the restaurant, and began to talk to a man who offered me a light. He asked me where I was from, and I told him. Then he began talking to me about a gay friend of his in New York: both men in the couple were lawyers. Now they had two children from the womb of one woman, and the eggs of another (asking me, in a heavy accent, Is this the correct word—egg?). The women weren’t in the lives of the kids, because the men are lawyers, and they wrote up very strict contracts, he said. It had cost his friends a lot of money, particularly to the woman with the womb. She was always saying, Oh my back aches, oh I need this, oh I need that. I felt sorry for the woman, who was being portrayed in this way. I kept saying, She must be poor—because who else rents out their womb twice? Who else would find the ordeal worth it, never to see the children again? Although I have heard that some women like being pregnant, and want to help out those who can’t have kids.

  The only reason he was telling me all this was because he learned I was from Toronto—just like his gay lawyer friend. He made sure to add that the children were very adorable and sweet.

  *

  I had such a nice time the next day, pacing in the sunlight before my 4:30 lecture, realizing how much writing has given me, and feeling so lucky that this passion was mine—right there, in the center of my life. And you are never lonely while writing, I thought, it’s impossible to be—categorically impossible—because writing is a relationship. You’re in a relationship with some force that is more mysterious than yourself. As for me, I suppose it has been the central relationship of my life.

  I began thinking about fashion models—these women who, because of their beauty, get to travel the world, and are paid well, and can meet whoever they want, and attract desirable men. I can get some of the same things, too, and I’m not even beautiful, but I can lay my hand on beauty.

  *

  I showered again this morning with the little hand-held shower, crouching in the tub. At first I found it frustrating, it seemed impossible to get truly clean, but after only three mornings of washing this way, it already feels sensual.

  *

  Last night, smoking on the balcony of the hotel, on the final night of the festival, this other writer, Adam, said he thought all my questioning about whether to have children would finally lead me to having a child. When I asked why, he said, You’re going to be too curious not to. He and his wife had two kids. Because I was stoned, I believed what he said. We had just done a panel together, and I wanted to tell him—but I didn’t because someone in uniform yelled up at us and told us we weren’t allowed to smoke on the balcony—I wanted to tell him that so far, it was having the reverse effect. I could see that it was being taken care of—motherhood. Other people were doing it, so it didn’t have to be done by me.

  An old woman who was working at the signing table had come up to me after our panel. She was chubby and appealing, with a nice smile and white hair. I had spoken a bit on stage about my deliberations, and she wanted to tell me that she had a daughter who was thirty-five, and that her daughter had once been like me, not knowing whether she wanted to have children or not. Then her daughter got married, and because her son-in-law wanted kids sixty percent, they had them, and now she loves being a mother. She said her daughter is a wonderful mother. Her eyes lit up when she told me that her daughter had given her a grandchild, and often once you jump into something, you’re happy to have done it.

  Adam had overheard our conversation, and as we entered his hotel room from the balcony, he expressed disgust that this woman would come up and tell me what she thought I should do with my life. Yet he wasn’t at all surprised. It’s like with abortion, he said. People think they own your body; they think they can tell you what to do with your body. Men want to control women’s bodies by forbidding them from abortions, while women try to control other women’s bodies by pressuring them to have kids. It seemed so strange and true, and I realized they were both working towards the same end: children. One side spoke from the point of view of the imagined desire of the fetus to live, while the other spoke from the point of view of the imagined joy and fulfilment of the woman, but they both reached the same end.

  *

  The young Frenchman who drove me to Charles de Gaulle airport this morning said he thought true art was invisible. Yet he was encouraging his friends in his mini art collective to make objects that could be sold, because it’s hard to make a living as an artist, he said, if you don’t make things; if all you do is create contexts.

  Sitting in the back seat of his car, I wondered if not having children was more like creating a context, while having a baby was more like making a thing. As with an artist who makes objects to sell, it’s easy to reward someone for having a child—the meaning of their life is so apparent in its solidness and worth. The course of their future is so clear. To have a child is like being a city with a mountain in the middle. Everyone sees the mountain. Everyone in the city is proud of the mountain. The city is built around it. A mountain, like a child, displays something real about the value of that town.

  In a life in which there is no child, no one knows anything about your life’s meaning. They might suspect it doesn’t have one—no centre it is built around. Your life’s value is invisible, like the contexts of that young driver’s friends.

  How wonderful to tread an invisible path, where what matters most can hardly be seen.

  I bought Miles his favorite cologne at the airport in Amsterdam, but I think it was a mistake. This tour was so expensive. These tours always are. I smell too strongly of perfume now, from standing in the perfume store, and spilling some on my coat. I’m going to go to the washroom now to try and wash it off. I can’t stand sitting here in this cloud of fumes, this assault of vanilla and fruit.

  I am writing this on a plastic bench, waiting for my delayed flight home.

  HOME

  There is a part of me that isn’t taking any of this writing seriously because there’s a man in the next room, sleeping. Something about him being there suspends me above all this writing. Because I’m getting something from him, I don’t feel like searching for answers. Did my words protect me before, whereas I have no need of their protection now? Were they how I comforted myself before, while I have less need of their comfort now? Do I no longer need to structure the chaos, for love not only structures it, but gives meaning to everything?

  Since returning home, I have been feeling that urge—that longing for a holy completeness in the form of a child. Do some women feel this way all the time, carrying a conviction so deep that nothing and no man can shake it? Is that how it is for these women whose bodies strive towards babies—that in their manoeuvrings with men, they feel they are following the highest bidding; the men not useful in themselves, but mainly as a route to something else?

  Sometimes I feel it would be so easy to have Miles’s baby—his flesh inside mine, his skin so nicely scented, so clean, so smooth; that brain, that heart, mixed with mine. When I described this to Erica, she said, You’re not describing wanting his child in you. You’re describing wanting his cock.

  I saw it was true: when I imagine being pregnant, it’s more like the feeling of something lodged inside me—so big, so deep, and feeling so good. I suppose it wouldn’t be like that. Then do I really want a child, or do I just want more of him? A child is not more of him. A child is not your boyfriend. When the child grows up and has sex with other people, they are especially not yours then.

  *

  Last night, I had a really intense dream tel
ling me that my (future) baby had begun his descent to the earth: I saw that it had been given a soul or had chosen a soul and was still very high up and far away, and that this process had begun seven months ago—I mean that seven months ago it had connected to my heart, as if a baby is born first, far in advance, in the mother’s heart. The vision was about to end when I desperately rushed to whatever oracle was making it clear, and asked if it was not too late to choose the path along which having this baby was possible. I was reassured that it was not.

  *

  I think I do want a child with Miles. My heart kind of leaps at the thought in a happy way, and it makes me feel light to think about it. I always want it most strongly as I lie in bed beside him. Then perhaps I should talk to him about it. But what would I say? Part of me feels I’m not a real enough woman to pull it off—the making of a child. Other women can pull it off, but I could not. I don’t have the energy for all that talking. I would feel like a virgin who doesn’t know how to place her hands, or how to place her words. Maybe it’s because I don’t really feel the desire. Or maybe just because.

  I think I don’t want to seem ordinary in Miles’s eyes; I would rather not have a child than appear that way. Or maybe I can’t say it because I don’t want to lose face, not after saying so often that it’s what I don’t want. Do I not want to be seen as having changed my mind, or for him to think I’m ridiculous, which he certainly would if I suddenly brought it up? Maybe I would rather leave him than say it.

  *

  Whenever we have sex lately, I fantasize about Miles coming in me, as though he wants to make a baby, and I’m turned on by the idea that he wants to—more turned on by that than any other fantasy. I used to want to be sexually dominated by him, but lately I don’t. If I had a baby, I’d be dominated by the needs of the baby. I don’t fantasize about being dominated by the needs of a baby. Yet I still imagine him coming in me.

  Perhaps my body is demanding a child of me, and my rational mind is trying to make sense of it. It seems to be amping up its demands, not only on me, but on all the women I know, who are in some crazy heat, wanting to fuck whichever man. Three women I know have left their partners, each in a sudden way, and each for a new man, who they are now either married to or are trying to get pregnant by, as if some part of their bodies suddenly switched on, and pointed at a more real and compelling future.

  Does the lizard brain trick the body into singing its ancient song? Of course, you are more than the parts you recognize as you. Perhaps those other parts were quieter in the past, or did their work without being noticed, while now you can see their elbows, their toes sticking out, pulling on the strings of your life. But those same creatures were always there, pulling on the strings of your life. Will you one day feel about the mothering instinct the same way you now feel about the sex instinct, which also suddenly turned on? Like that other passage, you’ll resist it, but in retrospect, it took you. You didn’t make a choice to go in that direction. Life—nature—pulled your strings. That is why you have no regrets about those years. And where did it land you? In a more interesting place. It resulted in a more interesting time. Is your body now pulling you towards motherhood, in the same way?

  Discussing all this with Teresa, she said she had to tie herself to her bedposts in her late thirties in order not to go down into the street and grab the first decent-looking fellow she saw, and impregnate herself there. She did everything she could to resist her body’s urgings, and now she is glad she did.

  *

  When I think about what I really want, it is a girlfriend for me and Miles. I want a girlfriend around to balance out the masculine he brings, with something more feminine, so our home is more balanced, and my life is, too; so I don’t ask him for things he cannot give—the kind of companionship I can only have with a woman. I want a girlfriend and a boyfriend both. I want a woman for us more than I want a baby. I think it would make everything easier, sweeter, more truthful, and more right.

  The one time Miles and I had a threesome with a female friend, I felt, This is heaven, this is everything I have ever wanted in my life. This satisfies every last part of me.

  I had a dream last night that Miles was kissing another woman on a park bench. He seemed to think there was nothing wrong with the way he was kissing this woman’s hair, or how they touched tongues. It was clear how much she wanted him. Angrily, I walked away—as if to throw out some garbage—then I walked back. I told him that if he was going to carry on like this, I didn’t want him at all.

  I woke up crying. When Miles saw me, he got upset and said I shouldn’t be crying on account of my dreams. He said he would be ashamed if his nightmares led him to wake up crying. But the dreams play on real feelings in me!—feelings of being abandoned. Then I get sad and cry, which makes him in fact abandon me.

  I am a blight on my own life. How can I stop being a blight on my life? It is not right to be a blight on the bounty of life. It’s not right to always be sitting here, crying. Outrun your tears—that’s all you can do. Outrun your tears like an athlete every day. Outrun your tears like someone with faith. Okay, I will outrun my tears and win.

  *

  I smoked some pot to get rid of the tears. It’s a week before my period begins. Days ten and six and five and one before my period comes are the worst. The rest of the days aren’t so good, either.

  When I am high, terror replaces the tears. Is that what the tears are masking? Terror that a month has passed without me getting pregnant? Is that what PMS is—some primal fear, maybe of death, or of not having reproduced? Or anger at Miles for not getting me pregnant, just wanting to push him out of the house and out of my life and find a man who will? I felt happier before I was high, although I wanted to cry. Now I’m paranoid, but not as teary. Which is better? It was better before.

  *

  What to make of God’s two faces, the all-accepting and loving New Testament Ovulating God, and the vindictive and rageful Old Testament PMS God? How to reconcile these two within my own body?

  To try and understand my moods: my two weeks of unhappiness—PMS, the luteal phase. Then a few days of bleeding. Then a week of mild newness—the follicular phase—when my body is preparing for new life, and ideas come to me easily. Then a few days of ovulating—those days of sparkling joy, when my body most wants to fuck, and nothing in my life feels off.

  Maybe if I can predict this cycle, I won’t have to take my moods as personally, or do such elaborate contortions to escape them, but can see them for what they are: part of nature, like clouds are part of the sky. Maybe my moods are evidence of how a human is part of time, or is bound to time, or is time. The female body, in particular, expresses time and is close to time. When the blood comes out, another month has passed. Erica said, Actually, I think ‘the soul of time’ is a pretty accurate way of describing PMS. It’s not just a metaphor. It IS the soul of time. That’s why it’s so unpleasant.

  PMS

  This morning, Miles implied that I was not someone a man could build a life with or rely upon. I don’t think I’ve done anything to signal this, but it’s true that whatever you are inside, other people will see. There’s no hiding yourself from other people. What’s the point in acting sweet and accommodating to others when I’m a stranger to myself? What’s the good in pointing morning smiles at Miles, or trying to get smiles from him in the morning, when I feel such a blackness in my chest?

  Tears and more tears this morning. Not actually crying, but the feeling of wanting to cry. Confusion, neglect. Miles abruptly leaving the room, my feelings trailing off into nowhere, no safe home for my feelings inside him. He walks away before I’ve even begun.

  *

  Are my qualities of deceitfulness—which he pointed out I had, which he said all women have—part of the biological imperative? That in order to breed and raise children, morality has not to matter? The only thing that matters is the life of the child, while all other values are relative? Is that how my brain has developed over millennia? If
I choose now—decide it, wasting no more time—not to have children, can I set myself on a course of reforming my mind, making myself unable to lie or deceive, as if the world of living people, and just these living bonds, matter most of all—having the same kind of accountability as an accountable man? Just as a man might try to rid himself of all entitlement, violence, and need to dominate, could I eliminate from myself my desire to gossip, my petty interest in other lives—especially the darkest parts of the lives of all my female friends—and instead take responsibility for my actions and words, having decided that I won’t ever meet a future with children, and all the joys and gratifications of that? To make myself over—use my brain and be unrelenting—and pull myself out of my cloud, rather than remain in it like someone prepared to mould her morality in such a way that its highest purpose is to secure a good life for her child—with all the lies the body tells the mind, and all the tricks it plays. To make sure my body plays no more tricks, and for nothing to be said by me that isn’t true. To become like that, I will have to work harder, endure and cause pain—not masochistically torture myself or dwell on my failures or brood miserably over a future that might not come, but will the future I most want. I’ll have to remove my feminine self-doubt, which exists out of politeness; remove my second-guessing, that utter waste of time; work harder; think harder—all the violence I will have to do to my own softness, which has always been such a comfort! I shudder to think of how I have let myself fall into the deepest sleep, like a fairy-tale princess, wasting her life in dreams. And the sleep will continue if I don’t wake up, shake myself and not lie to anyone anymore. I will have to become one of the straight ones, one of the unflinching, who suffer the consequences of whatever they say and do. This fog of sleepiness that is my femininity, which has often threatened to drown me—it has to be guarded against, for it has so much power. It wants me to lose myself in childrearing, to the exclusion of so much—tempting me with those simple joys and those private little accomplishments.