by RM Johnson
The woman gave him some personal information.
“Yes, that is our address. Tomorrow, with Dr. Michaels. Yes, I’ll be sure and tell her. Thank you,” Nate said, hanging up the phone. He grabbed a pen and scrap of paper, and wrote down the information he was just given.
He waited till Monica got off work, until she walked in the door. She appeared startled, finding him there, standing by the sofa.
“Sweetheart,” Monica said a bit shaken, “I didn’t think you’d—”
“Who is Dr. Michaels?”
“Dr. who? What are you talking about?” Monica said, acting as though she had no idea.
“Dr. Michaels,” Nate said, walking toward her, the slip of paper in his hand. “At the Ravenswood Fertility Clinic. Someone from there called today, wanted to confirm your appointment for tomorrow at nine A.M.,” Nate said, holding out the paper for her to take.
Monica took it, looked at it as though the information there meant nothing to her.
“Tell me why, if you just had a miscarriage, would you be making an appointment to see a fertility specialist?”
Monica tried to continue like she didn’t know what he was talking about, but Nate would not allow that.
“Fine,” he said, walking to the phone, picking it up, putting it to his ear. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll call and find out from them.”
Monica stood there, watching him as though he was bluffing.
“The number for the Ravenswood Fertility Clinic, please,” Nate said, after reaching information.
Still Monica said nothing.
“Thank you,” Nate said, jotting a number down on the pad next to the phone.
He looked over at his wife as he dialed the number for the clinic.
“Yes,” he said. “May I speak with a Dr. Michaels, please?”
“Okay!” Monica finally said as she ran toward him, pulling the phone from his ear.
Tears ran down her face as Monica admitted that she did really fall, but she didn’t have a miscarriage. The doctor told her that she was never really pregnant. She said that she would never have children, that she could never get pregnant again.
Monica was sobbing so much that Nate could barely make out what she was saying.
He felt as though he wanted to put his arms around her, comfort her, but he was far too angry because of the lies she had told him.
She smeared the tears from her face, looking up sadly at her husband.
“I knew she wasn’t right. She couldn’t have been. I felt our baby inside me. I had to get a second opinion, and I didn’t want to tell you anything until I knew the truth. That’s why I lied to you,” Monica said, tears still streaming down her face as she reached out to Nate. “I’m so sorry. I just needed to know the truth.”
Nate leaned away from her attempts to hug him. He was infuriated. He looked down at his wife angrily. “We’ll go to your appointment tomorrow, and then we’ll find out,” he said, before walking away from her.
They had spent practically the entire day there, Nate waiting outside the lab, outside one doctor’s office after another, as tests were run on his wife.
At the end of the day, both he and Monica sat in Dr. Michaels’s office. Nate had not spoken a word to his wife since they had arrived at the clinic early that morning, outside of informing her that he was going to the rest room, the vending machines, or that he was stepping outside to make a call to his office.
Now, as they sat in the cold, quiet doctor’s office, there was a heavy silence. He looked at his wife sitting beside him, and she looked on the verge of tears, as she had looked all day.
“Are you all right?” Nate had to force himself to ask.
Monica turned to him, looking grateful that he had spoken to her, and she was about to answer when the office door swung open and Dr. Michaels stepped in.
“What your doctor told you about your condition is correct, Mrs. Kenny,” he said, sadly.
Nate heard his wife gasp, then moan painfully as if the man had physically assaulted her.
“Tell me exactly what it all means. Explain it to me,” Nate said, hoping it wasn’t as bad as Monica had told him.
“A woman is born with a finite number of eggs,” Dr. Michaels said, “which are stored in the ovaries. The ovaries also produce the hormones estrogen and progesterone, which regulate menstruation and ovulation. Menopause occurs when the ovaries are totally depleted of eggs and no amount of stimulation from the regulating hormones can force them to work. When this happens to women before the age of forty, it is called premature menopause. Unfortunately, the prognosis is the same. Women can no longer produce eggs, so they can no longer become pregnant.”
“Then what about other methods? Isn’t there any other way that—”
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Michaels said. “Without the eggs…”
Nate heard Monica crying now, beside him.
“How could this be?” Nate questioned. “How could she just have gone through this, without any notice, without any symptoms?”
“There may have been. Insomnia, hot flashes, and mood swings. What alarms most women is the absence of their period, but since you were trying to conceive, and she thought she was pregnant, your wife mistook the symptoms as symptoms related to her pregnancy. It’s a mistake that commonly occurs, and even though this runs in her family, it affected her mother and sister much later. So there was no way that—”
“What did you say?” Nate said, stopping the doctor before he could finish.
Nate saw his wife look up at Dr. Michaels as if to scold him for what he had said.
“Dr. Michaels, what did you just say about my wife’s sister and mother?”
The doctor paused, looked at Monica as if trying to apologize, say that he didn’t know that was supposed to be private information, then he hesitantly continued.
“Your wife informed me that her sister and mother both had gone through premature menopause.”
“But my mother was forty. My sister was forty-three!” Monica said, turning to Nate. “I’m thirty-one years old. This was not supposed to happen to me this early.”
Nate turned away from his wife, faced the doctor, feeling an extreme anger start to build within him.
“So you’re telling me that two or three years ago, we could’ve gotten pregnant? That we would’ve been fine as long as we had done it before this happened?”
Dr. Michaels looked regretfully at Monica. “That’s correct, Mr. Kenny,” the doctor finally said.
And there it was, Nate thought, stepping away from the nursery’s glass. His wife had not only lied to him about miscarrying their child, but withheld the fact that she knew she ran the risk of not being able to have children after a certain age.
What enraged Nate more than anything was knowing that she made him wait. She said she hadn’t expected it to happen that early, and was even hoping that it wouldn’t happen at all. But that was no excuse, Nate knew. He wanted children. He had told her that from the very start, and now she was the only reason why he could never have what he’d always wanted.
5
Lewis Waters was angry as he walked down the street toward the Ida B. Wells Housing Project, where he lived with his girlfriend in her apartment.
His anger was apparent on his face, in the hard steps he took, in the way he clenched his fists at his sides. He had been at the barbershop all morning without cutting a single head. He didn’t want to sit around a moment longer wasting his time, so he just left.
Lewis walked up to the door of the street-level apartment and sank his key in, and walked into the run-down apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Selena.
The place was a mess as it had always been. Not dirty with trash, but run-down with wear, cluttered with dirty, dilapidated furniture. Bedsheets hung over the windows because curtains cost too much. Iron bars were affixed to the outside of the windows, for fear that if Lewis or Selena could afford something nice, it would be stolen the same day by any of their so-called neighbors
.
He hated this place, but it was better than nothing. That’s what he had when he had met his girlfriend. Lewis was twenty-five years old, felt as though he had been fired from or quit more jobs than he had actually worked, and had nothing to show for it.
He had met Selena on the street, thought she was cute, ran the usual line on her, and a week later found himself in her bed. He asked if he could stay the night, which turned into several nights, and then the few belongings he owned were permanently thrown in her hallway closet.
It was a transition point, Lewis told himself. It was somewhere to crash, until he was able to get back on his feet again. He had no idea he would still be with Selena after two years.
Lewis walked across the soiled carpet of the one-bedroom apartment, throwing his bag of haircutting supplies in the direction of the sofa that he had rescued off the curb a few months ago.
The place was quiet, which surprised Lewis, considering it was only noon. Selena wouldn’t be at work, because she had no job, and he knew she wouldn’t be out, because her favorite show, Judge Joe Brown, came on at that time.
Lewis stepped in front of the closed bedroom door, listened for the TV, then carefully pushed the door open.
Selena was there as Lewis had expected, but she was asleep, stretched out on the mattress that lay across the small bedroom floor.
He walked around the mattress to the corner of the room, where there was a baby crib.
Lewis reached down into the crib and stroked his nine-month-old daughter’s back.
She was soundly sleeping, so he was careful not to wake her as he made his way back around the mattress and lowered himself to the edge of it, beside Selena.
The AC was broken, and it was a hot day outside, but when he looked down at Selena and saw that only a bra and panties covered her dark skin, he wondered why she was sweating like she was.
Lewis quickly scanned the area around the bed, looking for what he hoped he wouldn’t find, then jumped when he heard Selena say, “Hey. What you doin’ back here so early?”
“Nobody wanted a cut. Why you sleep? Judge Joe Brown is coming on. The TV broke again?”
“Uh-uh. I was tired,” Selena said, rolling onto her back.
“It’s late. Why you sleepy? We went to bed early last night.”
“Because I just am.”
“And why you sweating like that?” Lewis reached out, wiped a hand across Selena’s forehead, and pulled back a sweat-covered palm. “You sweating like crazy.”
Selena sat up, suspicion in her eyes. “Why you asking me this stuff?”
“Just because.”
“Because what?”
“If there’s something that you need to tell me, Selena, then why don’t you just come out with it?”
“I don’t believe you,” Selena said, whipping the sheet off her legs and jumping out of bed. “You just gonna assume that I’m…” She marched around the mattress, placing her thin frame in front of him. “What are you trying to say?”
“You sweating like crazy. I know the AC is broke, but you sweating like crazy.”
“Say what you have to say.”
Lewis lowered his eyes, knowing that Selena would be upset about being asked this, but he had to know. “You using again?”
Selena shook her head, disappointment on her face, then simply turned, went to her dresser, and started pulling clothes out. She stuck her legs into a pair of worn jeans, slid them up, then pulled a T-shirt over her head.
“Where are you going?” Lewis said, still sitting on the mattress.
Selena did not answer, just swung open the closet door, sunk her feet into a pair of slip-ons, and headed out the bedroom door.
Lewis got up quickly from the mattress, followed behind her.
“Where are you going?” he asked again.
She did not stop, nor did she acknowledge him.
“Selena!” Lewis yelled, just as she was turning the front-doorknob. She stopped, slowly turned, and looked over her shoulder, appearing more hurt than moments ago.
“I care about you, Selena. But I got to know.”
“If you really cared, you wouldn’t be asking me no shit like that. You should know that I ain’t ever gonna start using again. You should know that!” Selena opened the door, hurried out, then slammed it hard behind her. The walls shook, a picture fell to the floor, the glass in its frame shattering.
Lewis heard his daughter start to cry in the bedroom.
“Damn!” Lewis said, running into the room, lifting Layla out of her crib, and sitting with her on the mattress.
Maybe he shouldn’t have asked, he thought, rocking his baby in his arms, trying to put her back to sleep. But just like he told her, he had to know, and just because she said he should’ve known the answer, that didn’t mean that he did.
He couldn’t trust himself just to know, because he could remember how he had initially found out that she was using.
He was in barber school at the time, had just walked in from school when he saw Selena, her head in her hands, sitting on the sofa. He asked her what was wrong.
“I’m telling you this, not because you got a say in it, but because you should know. I’m pregnant.”
Lewis felt his heart skip. “What do you mean, pregnant? We use something. We always use something.”
“Maybe it broke. But ain’t nothing to worry about, because I’m going to the clinic tomorrow and get it taken care of.”
“Taken care of?”
“I’m gettin’ a abortion. So everything is cool.”
Lewis stopped his brain from racing for a moment. He wasn’t sure he wanted a kid just then, but it was there already, probably growing inside her as they spoke. It was too late to change their minds.
“Hold it. I ain’t say I wanted you to get rid of it,” Lewis said.
“Lewis. We can barely afford to live here ourselves. How we gonna provide for a child?”
Lewis was quiet. He had no answers. Selena stood up, walked around him, and headed for the bedroom, seeming to take his silence as him agreeing with her.
The following morning Lewis quickly followed behind Selena as she marched toward the clinic.
Later, he sat in the exam room with her, wringing his hands, angrily staring at the floor, searching for the right words to say to save their baby.
When the doctor returned to the office after having examined Selena, he pulled up a stool, sat down before both of them, a grim expression on his face.
“I’m sorry, but there’s a tough decision you’re going to have to make.”
“I told you already. I want the abortion,” Selena said.
“I’m aware of that. But if you do, the chances of you getting pregnant again aren’t good.”
“What! Why not?” Selena said.
“This would make your sixth abortion. I told you last time you were here you ran the risk of not being able to have children if we performed this procedure again.”
Selena cried all the way home from the clinic, Lewis walking behind her again, trying to comfort her as they went. She just shrugged off his attempts.
Selena made the decision to keep the child, but Lewis knew it wasn’t because she loved it, but because she had no choice.
She’d had five abortions in the past, five abortions that Lewis knew nothing about, but as time continued on, he realized there was a lot more he didn’t know.
A week later, Selena seemed to have come down with something terrible. She was sweating in the bed next to him, and shaking so bad from cold that he could not give her enough blankets.
He tried giving her every type of medication they had in the cabinet, but she would not take them.
“Come on,” Lewis said, peeling back the blankets, preparing to scoop her up out of bed and carry her with him.
“What are you doing?” she said, her voice sounding increasingly weaker.
“I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Lew
is said, sliding his arms under her neck and legs, ready to lift her.
“No!” she said, fighting with what little strength she had left.
“Why not!”
“Because I ain’t sick!”
“You ain’t sick!” Lewis said, pressing his hand to the side of her face. “You burning up. We gotta—”
“I’m fiending, okay?” Selena blurted out.
Lewis didn’t know what she was talking about, looked at her as though she might be hallucinating. “I don’t know what you saying to me.”
Selena curled into a ball on the bed, wrapped her arms around her, shivering. “I ain’t getting my baby sick. She ain’t gonna be addicted to heroin just because I am.”
Lewis stood there, his mouth open, because that was the first he had heard of any of this.
He couldn’t believe it. The woman was on drugs. Not alcohol, not a little weed every now and then, but motherfucking heroin, and how in the hell didn’t he know that!
Selena said she wanted to quit, said that’s what she was doing at that moment. Lewis said he would take her to a clinic, get her on a program, but she refused.
“I ain’t getting on no list, have them giving me more drugs to get me off of this one. I’m quitting my way.”
“Selena, maybe—”
“Are you gonna help me, or not?” she yelled, seeming to expend the last little bit of energy she had left. She looked up at Lewis, her face wet with sweat, her eyes red, her body still trembling.
“Yeah,” he said, feeling defeated. “I’ll help you.”
Help consisted of three days of Selena locked in her bedroom, kicking at the door, crying, screaming, and cursing him for doing what he was doing to her, but she had gotten over it.
It was something that he never wanted to go through in his life again, and she said the same, and that was why, when he walked in today, and saw Selena sweating like that, he needed to know if she had gotten back to using again.
She had told him, back then, that she was going through some really rough times, and that was what got her started, looking for something to help her cope.
