The Untelling

by Tayari Jones

  “So you just left me there with her?”

  “I had to save myself,” she said.

  “You just left me.”

  “I had to.”

  “I hate you,” I whispered.

  “No, you don’t.”

  Hermione was right in calling my bluff. I didn’t hate her. Could I blame her, really? Would I have done the same thing if I had been her, offered a get-out-of-jail-free card from a most unlikely source?

  “You still didn’t tell me what you are going to do about Dwayne.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I am sort of hoping that things will work themselves out.”

  “Well,” Hermione said, “you better hope this doctor is as good as everyone says she is.”

  We rode to Willow Street making easy, meaningless conversation about the personal lives of celebrities. I didn’t share Hermione’s breadth of knowledge on the subject, but I did my best to keep up with her. Mostly I smiled, pretending to be emotionally invested in the lives of the stars.

  When we pulled up into the driveway, she looked at me and said, “Ready, Freddy?”

  I smiled. This was what she’d say when we were kids after school. She’d say, “Ready, Freddy?” just before we’d open the front door and see what Mama had in store for us.

  “Ready,” I said.

  “Okay.” Hermione honked the horn twice. I climbed into the backseat, sitting on a blanket of crushed Goldfish crackers.

  Mama bounded out of the house in an excellent mood, lipsticked and smiling. She was well dressed as always, in a smart linen pantsuit. Lilac.

  “It seems like Dwayne should be here with us,” Mama said over her shoulder as Hermione merged onto I-85. “If he’s going to be your husband, he should be involved with this.”

  I was in the backseat, beside Little Link’s empty car seat. My mouth tasted burned from the cigarette in the park. I sifted through the debris for gum or a mint.

  “Well, this is just a consultation,” Hermione said. “There’s plenty of time for him to get involved.”

  “I told you that the doctor is a black lady, right?” Mama said, talking loud over the air rushing in the windows. “She’s supposed to be the best.”

  “That’s good,” said Hermione.

  “Well, she’s got to be better than that old man you went to at first.”

  I didn’t appreciate her potshot at Dr. Blackwelder. He was a nice enough man and I appreciated his empathy. But Mama was probably right. Dr. Blackwelder was seventy if he was a day. Although he’d had decades of experience, I questioned his mastery of the latest technology.

  Still, it had seemed disloyal to ask him for my records.

  “Getting a second opinion, are you?”

  “My mother’s making me.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Emory,” I mumbled.

  He brightened. “Emory? Oh, yes. That’s a fine idea. They really know what they’re doing out there. Pricey, though.” He looked at me through his oval spectacles.

  “Dr. Blackwelder, why is this happening to me?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest; his yellow-dotted bow tie bobbed as he spoke. “The human body is so delicate. When anything goes wrong, hormones, enzymes, just the slightest thing, everything starts to malfunction. Ariadne, the miracle is that people are able to live at all.”

  As I was leaving, he had taken my hand and spoken quietly. I worried that he would cry. “Come back after they’ve had a look at you. Come back here and tell me some good news.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Good,” he said before releasing me. “Chin up, young lady. Don’t count yourself out just yet.”

  Regular people’s lives are different than rich people’s lives. This is something that everyone knows, either from watching TV or just from plain common sense. People who have things have things, and people who don’t, don’t. But short visits to the other side really let a person see what this means in a daily sort of way.

  Reproductive endocrinology must pay pretty well; the doctor’s office was well appointed, to say the least. It wasn’t so extravagant that the nurses offered you cappuccino or anything like that, but it was nice. Paintings hung on the wall, the real thing, not just framed prints. The whole place smelled sweet like a high-end gift shop.

  Mama, Hermoine, and I sank into comfortable chairs in the waiting room, where a white couple sat, heads bent over a shiny brochure. The woman was about Hermione’s size, but she didn’t carry it as well. Where Hermione favored close-fitting V-necks, the woman in the waiting room wore a beige cotton tunic, expensive but shapeless, and a faded pair of leggings. Red acne dotted her forehead. Her husband, thin and rangy, seemed to be taking better care of himself. His chinos and polo shirt looked pert and fresh from the dry cleaners.

  A framed poster on the wall asked “What is infertility?”

  “This is nice,” Mama said.

  “Nicer than my house,” I said.

  The couple looked over at us and the woman gave an uneasy smile, a look people give you when they think they are better than you are, but are too nice to show it. My mother gave Hermione a stern look, warning her to keep quiet. Had the rich couple not been within earshot, Mama would have said, Hermione. Don’t act like you have never been anywhere before. This is not what Dr. King died for.

  Hermione caught the glance and then picked up a magazine, Fit Pregnancy. A pregnant supermodel on the cover was credited with saying, “I love my new curves.” Hermione rolled her eyes and put the magazine down. “When I was pregnant, I looked pregnant.”

  The couple looked over at us now, with interest and maybe even a touch of envy. I am sure that they thought that my sister was the patient, the one who had been given some sort of miracle cure. Hermione jiggled her key chain with the photo of Link frowning in a small plastic frame.

  I picked up a copy of Managing Menopause and Mama gently slid it out of my hands, handing me Modern Motherhood.

  As it turned out, Dr. Ruby Morrison gave us no reason to doubt her knowledge of all the latest technologies, but she didn’t give us much reason to like her either. Tallish and blade thin, she was about the same age as my mother but smaller. Mama prides herself on wearing the same size eight she wore as a bride, but Dr. Morrison was a six. Her black pantsuit pinched in at the waist.

  When she walked into the examination room, she seemed a little taken aback to see so many of us wedged onto the love seat.

  “Oh!” she said before acknowledging us with a nod each. “Which of you is Ariadne?”

  I raised my hand.

  Dr. Morrison nodded. “And these are your . . . friends?”

  “I’m her mother, Mrs. Eloise Jackson.”

  “They’re here for moral support,” I said.

  “That’s fine,” said the doctor, easing her slim self past us to a small desk. She pressed a few keys on her computer and frowned. Mama stared at the doctor, taking in her hair—cornrows that fed an austere French twist down the back of her head. Even her braids were thin. I saw Mama scrutinize the doctor’s jewelry, a chunky amber pendant and matching earrings. No wedding ring on the fingers moving rapidly over the keyboard.

  It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what was so offensive about Dr. Morrison. It wasn’t simply the matter of her physique. We’d seen narrow women before. There was something in her manner that seemed a little superior. When she took my hand, it was as though she wore rubber gloves.

  “Where are you from?” Mama asked with suspicious eyes.

  “Johns Hopkins,” Dr. Morrison said without looking up.

  “No, where are you from?”

  “Detroit, Michigan.”

  “Oh Jesus,” my mother said.

  I saw the remark register with Dr. Morrison, but she ignored it, opening a drawer and producing a paper robe. She handed it to me and left the room.

  “It’s hot in here,” Hermione said.

  “I don’t care for that woman,” my mother said. “Did you hear how s
he talked to me?”

  “I didn’t notice anything,” Hermione said.

  But I knew what my mother was talking about. Dr. Morrison spoke with the same quiet condescension as bill collectors, the way they call you ma’am but don’t mean it.

  I looked at the paper robe in my hand and stood up. I’ve never liked undressing in front of anyone. Maybe I was still traumatized by my “precocious puberty.” Even with Dwayne I was shy. He’d step out of the shower in his full glory, walk across the bedroom, go to the kitchen for a beer. He’d stand in the yellow light of the refrigerator, naked and dripping wet. When I showered, I emerged wearing a robe, maybe something sexy and revealing, but I preferred to have fabric covering me if the lights were on.

  I stood before the examining table and unhooked my belt, and pulled it from around my waist.

  “It’s cold in here,” I said.

  “I haven’t been cold in years,” said Mama.

  “Do you want us to give you some privacy?” Hermione asked.

  I gave my sister a grateful smile.

  Mama pulled her fingers through her short hair. “We’re all ladies here. She doesn’t have anything we haven’t seen before.”

  “I guess,” Hermione said.

  I unfastened my skirt and slid it over my hips and took off my blouse. I tried to move quickly, pulling my panties over my thighs in a blur, unhooking the bra in an embarrassed flurry of motion. Hermione looked away, but I felt my mother’s appraising eyes. Mama, I knew, thought I was a little too heavy. My stomach sagged at the navel. On my back there was a little fold of fat where my bra fastened. I wiggled into the stiff paper gown and sat goosefleshed and shivering at the edge of the table.

  Dr. Morrison returned with some sort of computer and a rolling cart. Mama and Hermione pressed their legs aside as Dr. Morrison shoved the cart to the table where I waited.

  “It’s a portable ultrasound,” she explained with that quiet condescension of hers. “We’ll insert the wand into the vagina and get a better look at your reproductive organs.”

  She held the wand and turned it a couple of times like she was trying to sell it to us.

  She stood aside as I scooted to the edge of the table and spread my legs until my feet touched the stirrups. Thankfully Mama and Hermione could only see my profile.

  “Scoot up a little more,” the doctor said. “Put your bottom at the very edge of the table.”

  I moved forward, hoping that I wouldn’t fall off.

  “Good,” she said. “Right there.” She slathered the wand with clear jelly. “I’m going to insert now. There’ll be some pressure.”

  I closed my eyes and battled the urge to cry out. The procedure didn’t hurt exactly, but the wand inside me was hard and cold. Dr. Morrison maneuvered it like a joystick, grunting at the images on the computer monitor.

  “Doesn’t look good,” she said, pulling the wand sharply to the right.

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me, Mama, or Hermione. She spoke in a voice as bland as egg white, like her words would be of no particular interest to anyone present.

  I rose up on my elbows, hoping to see the monitor, but a sharp pain forced me back onto the paper-draped table to recover.

  Mama said, “What doesn’t look good?”

  “See,” Dr. Morrison said, wiggling the wand to the left. “The ovaries are very shrunken. Atrophied.” The wand banged against my cervix, but I didn’t flinch. Breathe and you will know peace. I took my air in small mouthfuls, drying out my tongue and lips.

  “I don’t see anything,” Mama snapped.

  Over my knees I studied my left foot. The knuckles of my toes were gray and dry, but my nails were pretty, sparkling with bronze polish. I noticed what looked to be the beginnings of a bunion.

  Hermione said, “Maybe if you could just explain things to us.”

  Dr. Morrison touched the monitor. “Her ovary is here, but we can barely see it. Afollicular.”

  “Speak English,” Mama said.

  I could tell from Mama’s tone that she had turned a corner. She spoke quietly now, with a little pause between each word, as if she were struggling to restrain herself.

  “Mama,” Hermione said, “we’re here to help Aria. Please behave.”

  Mama said, “Her name is Ariadne.”

  I was glad that Mama didn’t listen to Hermione. I wanted her to misbehave. I’d seen Mama unleash her fury on strangers before. She’d been evicted from Rich’s at Cumberland after slapping the rouge off a saleswoman who demanded ID before taking her credit card. I had been seventeen and ashamed—thrown out with her, although I hadn’t struck anyone. My sympathy had been with the racist salesclerk. When we left, my mother’s handprint stained the clerk’s powdered cheek like a birthmark. But this time I wanted Mama to act up, to overreact, to be violent and a little crazy. I’d seen her erupt dozens of times, but never had she rained fire on my behalf.

  The doctor remained calm, even when Mama rose from the leather couch and studied the computer screen from over her shoulder.

  “Her ovaries have stopped functioning,” Dr. Morrison said.

  “We knew that when we came here. I didn’t drive across town for you to tell me something I already knew. We came here to ask you what we can do about it. I’ve got money,” she added. “So tell me what is possible, not just what you think I can afford.”

  “Can you take the wand out?” I asked.

  “And maybe turn on the light,” echoed Hermione.

  “Of course,” Dr. Morrison said, and did both. I took my feet off the stirrups. Sitting up, I let my bare feet hang from the side of the table and pressed my knees together as the sticky lubricant wet my thighs.

  Mama looked fierce and dangerous with the polished nail of her index finger inches from Dr. Morrison’s nose. “I know your kind. I grew up with girls like you.”

  “Mama,” Hermione said in a voice clear and firm. “Calm down; you’re going to get us thrown out of here. Sit down.” She patted the space beside her on the couch.

  Dr. Morrison was scared. You couldn’t see the fear in her face, which remained fixed in her careful half-smile, but her fingers fluttered in her nervousness. I wasn’t sure what would happen if Mama were to hit the doctor, but I was excited by the idea.

  “Mama, sit down,” Hermione said again. “Dr. King didn’t die for you to come in here and fight with the doctor. Come on now.”

  Hermione patted the couch and Mama sat down. I marveled at Hermione, who wouldn’t look my way. Closing my eyes, I wished my sister had been there all those years when I needed someone to put oil on the water, to extinguish my mother’s wrath.

  Mama breathed a couple of heaving breaths and unzipped her jacket before Dr. Morrison retreated to her dainty oak desk. She crossed her legs in her smart pantsuit and then, as her shoe swung away from her slender heel, said, “Aria is infertile. She has no genetic material.”

  Hermione said, “Well, aren’t there options? Can’t she freeze the eggs she has left?”

  Mama said, “What about that?”

  Dr. Morrison shook her head. “It doesn’t quite work like that. We can’t freeze ova. We can only freeze embryos.”

  Mama said, “I know I have heard of women having their eggs harvested. Career types.”

  “That’s purely science fiction.”

  “You know what,” Mama said. “I don’t like your attitude.”

  “I’m engaged,” I said. Everyone turned and looked at me as if a pet turtle had suddenly spoken. “Could my fiancé and I make some embryos and freeze them?”

  Dr. Morrison spoke to all of us in a voice like a gavel. “Ariadne, you are afollicular. There are no ova to fertilize.”

  This pronouncement was so grave and so absolute. Everyone stopped talking and I put my fingers in my mouth. “Why is this happening to me?”

  Dr. Morrison shook a chiding finger at me. “Now, don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. Your heart is fine. You have two perfect lungs.”

  “Is
that enough for you?” Mama was on her feet again in the crowded examining room. “Dr. Morrison, I asked you a question.”

  “What exactly do you want to know?” The doctor spoke evenly, but her eyes were skittish, darting to the shut door and back again.

  “I want to know if you get up every morning content because you have two lungs. Two perfect lungs. Why should Ariadne have to be grateful for things everyone else gets to take for granted?”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Dr. Morrison.

  “When I lost my husband and my youngest daughter, people kept telling me what I needed to be grateful for. How I needed to be satisfied with what I had left. Who are you to tell us what we should be grateful for, what should make us content?”

  Dr. Morrison waited until Mama sat back down. “I apologize if I have offended you.” She paused. Her boundaries were clear and firm. This was not personal. This was just her job. “What I really want to help Ariadne with is hormone replacement. When the ovaries stop producing estrogen, there are two major results: bone loss and thickening of the arteries, heart disease.”

  “I know all about hormone replacement,” my mother snapped. “I’m fifty-three years old.”

  Now Dr. Morrison turned to me. “You’ve lost a lot of bone. You have osteopenia. It’s not as bad as osteoporosis, but it’s still serious.”

  “We didn’t come to talk just about that. My daughter is just twenty-five. She is engaged to be married. We want to talk about fertility.” She read from Dr. Morrison’s card. “You are a reproductive endocrinologist, right?”

  Dr. Morrison looked at me and said, “Is this what you want to talk about?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I looked at Hermione, to see if she was planning another intervention, but she studied her leather sandals.

  “This is something that I usually prefer to discuss with a woman and her partner. Maybe the two of you would like to make an appointment?”

  “You can just tell me now,” I said. “I’ll tell Dwayne whatever I find out.”

  “There’s always the slim possibility that you could conceive naturally—sometimes the ovaries release one last egg—but the odds against it are even greater than the odds of early menopause. I have a colleague whose FSH was higher than yours and she managed to have a child. But as I said, it is rare. There are fertility treatments, but they are expensive and virtually ineffective for someone in your condition.”