by Sheila Heti
*
Maybe I feel betrayed by the woman inside of me who can’t bring herself to do this thing. Or maybe I feel betrayed by my mother, for not devoting herself to me and creating whatever loving memories must be created in a child to make her want to repeat the process again. Or maybe it’s a part of me that goes deeper than that—my lifelong desire to leave my family and never be part of a new one. I did not grow up imagining that after leaving my family of origin, I would go off and make my own. I figured you grew up and out of your own family, more and more each year; that you increasingly tried to win your independence—your freedom and solitude in this world.
All my life, whenever I pictured having children, I never considered the pleasures and joys it would bring. All I could ever see was the suffering—the terrible pain of having a child, and worrying about it, and loving it.
I remember how last summer on the beach, Miles’s daughter and I walked together along the shore. I had determined that I would discuss with her why her father and I probably weren’t going to have a child together, since earlier on the trip she had asked me about it, and I didn’t know what to say. As we walked along the sand with our towels wrapped about us, I said that even that when I was her age, I had never dreamed of being a mother. Even as a young girl, it was something I had not wanted to do. I wanted to have boyfriends, and make art, and have interesting conversations and friends. Then the most honest words pushed themselves from my lips: I wanted to be free. She thought about this for a moment, and then said, That sounds pretty good, too.
*
Last night, I dreamed that Miles and I had a little boy. He was three or four years old. Very sweet and nice, ordinary little boy. I was carrying him around like a child carries a cat, against the front of my body, legs dangling. Then I put him down and looked at him, and he looked a little like Miles, with Miles’s eyes. It was a very calm and ordinary thing.
*
Should I have a child with Miles?
no
Should I have a child at all?
yes
So then I should leave Miles?
no
Should I have an affair with another man while I’m with Miles, and raise the child as Miles’s own, deceiving him about the provenance of that child?
yes
I don’t think that’s a good idea. Are you saying I shouldn’t have a child with Miles because it would be too stressful on the relationship, and on each of us, individually?
yes
Then should I have Miles’s child but raise it with another man?
yes
Should I get pregnant this year?
no
Next year?
yes
How old will the child be when we separate? One?
no
Two?
yes
And how old will the child be when I find another man? Three?
no
Four?
no
Five?
no
Six?
yes
And will those four years be a big pain in the ass?
no
Will they be kind of a joy?
no
Will they be like any other years?
yes
Will I love the child more than anything?
yes
Will the child be a girl?
no
An attractive child?
no
A plain child?
no
A drop-dead gorgeous child?
yes
Is any of the above true?
no
Is there any use in any of this, if none of it is true?
no
Even if you said yes, it wouldn’t matter. You don’t mean anything to me. You don’t know the future, and you don’t know my life, or what city I should be in, or what I should be doing, or if I should have a child with Miles or not. You are complete randomness, without meaning, and you are not showing me the way. That can only be determined by mining my own heart, and looking at the world around me; thinking deeper and more clearly, and not being so insecure that I should need you to tell me what’s what. And yet, you have shown me some good things.
yes
But that is just me picking up the good in all the nothing you have shown me. Life involves making a decision so the spirits can rush in. But a decision takes knowledge and faith, which I lack. And yet: I do like the idea of having a drop-dead gorgeous child with Miles.
Nearing home after finishing some errands, I ran into Nicola, who I hadn’t seen since grade school. We recognized each other, and stopped to catch up on the sidewalk. She has four children, and is trying to return to the working world, and she congratulated me on the success of my latest book. I said apologetically, Well, writing is the only thing I do. I don’t cook or do laundry, exercise or go out much. I just sit in my bed and write. I said that I feel like a weak and pale child compared to everyone else.
I believe I want to have adventures, or to breathe in the day, but that would leave less time for writing. When I was younger, writing felt like more than enough, but now I feel like a drug addict, like I’m missing out on life. Not having a child allows a slip into sludginess, into the decadence of doing nothing but sitting before a computer, typing out words. I feel like a draft dodger from the army in which so many of my friends are serving—just lolling about in the country they are making, cowering at home, a coward.
When Nicola learned I was thinking about having a child, she said, You should go and spend some time with people who do have children, watch them and see what it’s like. I thought, I don’t even want to spend one second doing that.
*
In my dream last night, I looked down and my breasts seemed to be the soggy breasts of an old woman. Then I realized they were not soggy breasts, but two flaccid penises. When I emailed Teresa about the dream, she replied, Breasts are what give life, while phalluses represent a creative or generative power—generating works of culture or art.
After getting off the phone, I remembered my first weekend with Miles, in the room he was renting in the small town where he was attending law school. We were on the floor by the fireplace, and we didn’t yet know that we were together yet. I was talking about disappointing ex-boyfriends, and he said, If you ever need someone to be strong for you … and I saw his body solidly there, offering itself to me.
*
The next day, I went over to Nicola’s house and her baby was there. A Christmas tree stood in the corner of the living room, hung with ornaments and tinsel, pine needles all around. She asked me to go and sit with the baby—who she plopped on my stomach as I lay down on the carpet. Then she went into the kitchen and finished washing up dishes. I watched the baby as best I could, but I felt edgy—I didn’t want to be there. There were other things I wanted to do. I played with her toys before her ten-month-old eyes. Then I thought I should hold her, and I held her facing away from me, so she could see the world.
When Nicola was done with the dishes, she returned to me and her baby, and held the baby facing her body, and the baby seemed happy, turned into that warmth. I was relieved that Nicola had come, so that we could leave soon and talk. Realizing how much I wanted to get away, I felt bad towards her child, and guilty.
What had I been so anxious to go and do? What is a woman—who is not a mother—doing that is more important than mothering? Is it possible to even say such a thing—that there is anything more important for a woman to do than mother? I know a woman who refuses to mother, refuses to do the most important thing, and therefore becomes the least important woman. Yet the mothers aren’t important, either. None of us are important.
*
Over the next few weeks, I started feeling bad around Nicola, both better than her and ashamed. Why do I think it could matter to Nicola if I don’t have kids? Living one way is not a criticism of every other way of living. Is that the threat of the woman without kids? Yet the woman without kids is n
ot saying that no woman should have kids, or that you—woman with a stroller—have made the wrong choice. Her decision about her life is no statement about yours. One person’s life is not a political or general statement about how all lives should be. Other lives should be able to exist alongside our own without any threat or judgment at all.
*
How stupid! How could I have been so wrong about myself for so long—imagined I could have what Nicola has; a marriage, a house and children. The mistake was taking myself as someone for whom all the riches in the world were waiting, when only one is—writing this now. Whatever I have achieved is a grand prize, and more than I had a right to expect. When did I start thinking of writing as the path to a bourgeois life? That it could get me there and keep me there? When did I become so greedy? When did I start thinking that all the riches should be mine? To be a thirty-eight-year-old woman and want to be respectable in all the ways Nicola is. I went shopping with her on Dundas Street, and we bought some small, pretty things. She encouraged me to buy even more—a glass flask, a white candle. For about a month, our friendship made me feel normal, as if I was like her—on her path, fantasizing about a family. But standing inside her house as her three boys raced around, I realized that my fantasies were misplaced—they wormed inside me like a disease. I mistook someone else’s life for what could be my own. But you cannot take a misunderstanding, and try to build a life on it. You cannot build a life on the misperception that you are someone who could have it all—if only you kept to the path. Even if you could have some of those comforts, for some of the time—convince someone to marry you, or have a child with you—it would be a mistake, a life built on a misunderstanding of who you are inside. You are not someone who could steer the ship of a house and a marriage and children, the way that Nicola can. Look at her life like a beautiful ocean liner, a grand old steam liner passing by—see that life as it waves at you from the deck. Those promises and pleasures were never meant to be yours. You had a great time imagining they could be, working yourself up into a real lather: Should I? Should I? Should I choose it? Should I? But the real question is, Could you? No, you could not. It was just a fantasy, and the most common one in the world. Women will always tell you of how they have done it so easily. But you know what you should be grateful for: following this tiniest thread of freedom, which is to write. That is all you ever truly wanted, so don’t vainly throw it away. Don’t throw it away chasing even more riches—more than what you’re owed. You are owed nothing, and what you do have—this expanse of freedom—do not gamble it away. A life of a house and marriage and children is no better than what you have now. Or perhaps it is better—far, far better. But your place is not there. It is here. Don’t go looking for more than your share; do not want what a woman wants. You are not a woman who wears a diamond ring—the sort of woman, like Nicola, who gets what she wants from a man. For a month you thought you could be. That is why you were so anxious. Could it be me? you asked yourself. Could it? Could it? No. If you had a child, you’d leave it. If you had a marriage, you’d leave it. You left your marriage. You left your house. Those things were not for you. Nicola said, You guys should have kids! But she was fooled by your young-enough body, your sweetness and your smiles. The world is less perceptive than you give it credit for. The world is fairly stupid, and it’s stupid about you, too. Be grateful for Miles, and this apartment right here, and being able to write, which is the one thing you asked for, and should continue to be. Just because you get one thing, doesn’t mean you get it all. One thing is not the beginning of all.
*
That night, I dreamed I was walking across a small stage before a large audience, in a makeshift graduation gown, to receive a diploma and flowers. As I walked back across the stage with tears in my eyes, my feelings started to overwhelm me. I made myself really look at the audience—look into their faces. Mostly I knew no one, and I realized that no one was paying attention to me. I thought in my head that it was silly to get so emotional about a rite of passage of the middle class.
BLEEDING
I was giving a reading in a church, in a village on a lake. Walking through one of its pretty neighbourhoods, I passed a little house that had, on its front lawn, a handmade wooden sign with shooting stars, a moon, and the palm of a hand. When I knocked, a middle-aged woman came to the door. She was wearing a pink sweater, and her hair was short and fair. She led me to a card table she had set up by the front window. I sat in a wooden chair across from her, and she draped a dark blue velvet fabric over the table.
I’ve never done a reading on this cloth before, but I don’t like a slippery surface when I do a reading, and this helps.
She dealt the cards. Okay, what’s going on in your life? What’s good and what’s not good? What’s working and not working? Once you figure that one out, it’s a huge tool.
Before I could answer, she got up and went to the couch and retrieved her blue-framed glasses. Putting them on as she returned, she said, Sorry, these new cards are very dramatic. I need to wear my glasses to see them.
When she returned, I answered her question: I feel sort of sad and stressed out, kind of confused and depressed a little bit, like I can’t get started or something. And I feel like there’s a new phase of life I cannot reach—I feel sort of stuck in the old one. And my brain feels a little bit stuck. And then I’m finding that emotionally things are hard for me with my boyfriend, and I’m never quite sure how much of the problem is him and how much of it is just me.
She said, Oh, that’s a good one. Once you figure that one out, it’s a huge tool.
*
Protective shield! Sorry!—I feel no protective shield with you. Very often I sit down with people and I’ll feel nothing, and I’ll say to the person, Your protective shield—do you think it’s made out of brick or curtain? Is it Plexiglas? Could you close your eyes and visualize taking it down, please? Once they do that, I can do the reading, because I can’t read through the protective shield. But you don’t have one, which either means you’re psychic yourself, or you don’t have a boundary.
Now, this first card is the Three of Wands. You’ve walked to the end of something, and you think there’s nowhere to go. But I think this end is self-imposed. Perhaps this card is saying you’ve walked to the end of the real world—the concrete. See? The woman’s standing on concrete? And if you look—you see how there’s a point at the end?—like a sewing machine point, almost? It leads down to a spot in the river. There’s something in you that knows how to keep walking, but something’s stopping you. And what’s stopping you is … grief. I don’t know what the grief is. But it has nothing to do with your boyfriend. It’s there from before you ever met him, and it’s a quiet grief. You don’t feel it every day, but it’s there all the time. It may be that you’re porous and the grief isn’t yours. Does your mother have a grief?
Yes.
Well, it might be that you were born with your mother’s grief, like it got implanted in you as an energy ball. I feel a really strong energy from you, and it’s like, whatever that energy is, you’re a baby growing inside your mother’s body, and your mother has this ball of grief or sorrow or negativity, and then it goes into your body, and you’re born, and you’re walking around with your mother’s grief and sorrow, and you don’t even know it! But it’s gnawing at you.
There’s a way of saying, Could you please send that ball of pain back where it belongs, if it isn’t mine? Like actually say, I’m sending this back now. And please send it back in the most healed and loving form it can go. But I don’t want it, it’s not welcome, and it’s not helping me. So there we have it. I think that’s what’s causing your road to end …
The next card is the Ten of Swords—the most painful card in the deck. There’s something … chunks of you … are falling down. But look! Strangely, the bleeding is going up, not down. It’s not coming out of your vagina or going down your legs. It’s going up! Why is the bleeding going up? Softening your brain? This is a hard one …
I have to feel the card.
*
As she felt the card, her eyes closed. I thought, Maybe blood that goes down is period blood. It softens the lining of the uterus. And bleeding that goes up is thinking blood. It softens the lining of the brain. When I was thirteen, the year before I first got my period, I often woke in the middle of the night and felt a tickle of blood at the back of my throat, just as it was beginning to drip down. I would rush to the toilet, head tilted back, and push a wad of toilet paper to my nose as it grew wet and red, replacing it, and replacing it, sitting on the toilet through the long night, endless hours of thinking nothing at all.
*
Okay, I’ve got something in my mouth. Has it got to do with your voice? Were you able to ask for what you needed from your mother, as a little girl?
I don’t think so.
What about what you ate as a girl?
Cheddar cheese and chicken soup?
Pardon me. I’m not understanding. Maybe I need to look in the crystal ball now. Okay, hold on. Turning on the ball … I’m slow at this because it’s new, so it might take a minute … Okay, now I see it! Something’s dangling, and it is making me feel a little bit sick. You’re sitting in front of a computer … what does that have to do with it?
That’s what I do all the time.
Pornography?
No. I think it’s just writing.
Is there something about your back being to the room when your boyfriend’s there, and you’re sitting at the computer?
Well, we did argue the other day, and I was at the computer and he was standing behind me.
