by JT Lawrence
When they died, quite mysteriously, together in their bed one night after dinner, the prince was called to his royal duty, and after the coronation ceremony, King Henry and Queen Cinder took their thrones. This seemed like a Happily Ever After, but with the late royals rolling in their graves, Cinder lost her happiness. Her new husband, without the guidance of his parents, did what he pleased, including hunting wild birds and foxes with his footman and cutting down magnificent oak trees to extend the kingdom. Suffragette told Cinder of all the homeless squirrels and hapless mice losing their shelter to the King’s zealous ambition. When Cinder told her husband it made her unhappy, he replied with “You are a jewel. You’re too beautiful to worry about things like this.”
He wanted Cinder to mind her manners and her dress, and to focus on her wifely duties, especially those involved in producing an heir. Cinder couldn’t help remembering her promise to the ghostly woman in white who had made her the ice slippers, and she watched in disdain as the new king grew fat and beet-cheeked from his excesses.
“I’m building a wall,” growled the king one night at dinner, his lips and teeth black from too much merlot.
“A wall?” asked Cinder. “Whatever for?”
“To keep the gypsies out,” he replied.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” said Cinder. “The castle grounds are wonderful as they are, and the gypsies are good people.”
“You don’t understand these things,” said the king. “It is not a woman’s worry.”
“Indeed, it is my worry,” said Cinder. “You have already cut down centuries of trees, and I cry for the foxes.”
The king laughed. “Your tears, though salty, are wasted. You will come hunting with me tomorrow and see what sport it is.”
“No,” said Cinder. “I shall not.”
“You shall,” said the king, and left the dining room with the words hanging in the air like angry butterflies.
“Oh, Suffragette,” whispered Cinder to the rat in her pocket. “Whatever shall I do?”
The dream dove appeared at the window, tapping in morse code on the glazing.
The next morning was cold, and Cinder's breath plumed from her mouth like the memory of the pipe-smoke of the white-robed ghost woman. Cinder dressed in her jodhpurs and boots, ready to ride with the king. The footman gave her a weapon: a smart, oil-black rifle. Cinder hung it snugly across her chest instead of the baby she was supposed to be cradling; the heir she had not yet conceived despite the king's best efforts. The king arrived and was happy to see his queen. Once they were both in the saddle, he leant over and tapped her knee in approval, and it felt to Cinder like a hornet sting.
They rode out to the soundtrack of bugles and bullets, and Cinder loved the feeling of the nimble horse galloping beneath her, and the chilled morning wind in her hair. The king shot five pheasants before Cinder had once discharged her rifle. The king and queen were alone in the dark wood together when they spotted a fox.
“Now’s your chance,” he whispered, pointing at the red-breasted animal.
Cinder shook her head. The horse beneath her trembled.
“Shoot it!” he hissed.
Cinder raised the rifle and watched the creature through her scope. It was a beautiful maroon vixen with inky eyes.
“Shoot it!” the king fizzed, and when Cinder wouldn’t, he lost patience and raised his own rifle, firing it before the queen could alert the animal. The crack of the king’s gun was like a hard slap on Cinder’s cheek, reminding her of how Lady Tremaine used to strike her. Cinder dismounted and ran towards the fox, picking up the leaking vulpine corpse.
The dream dove cooed, and the ghost woman in white robes appeared in the forest. It was only then that Cinder realised the woman was the ghost of her late mother.
You know what to do.
There was only one way Cinder could stop the destruction of the land by the king; stop the cruel hunting and the building of the wall. Stop the felling of trees, and plant more instead. The only way it would happen is if she ruled over the kingdom, not as a pretty ornament, a jewel accessory, but as the sole sovereign. The dead fox in her hands painted them red. She gently wound the vixen’s body over her shoulders—a bloody shawl she’d always wear to remind herself of this moment—raised her rifle and shot the king in the heart. He gasped and slumped over, and his spooked horse galloped away, never to be seen again. Queen Cinder tightened the fox shawl around her neck and began walking back to her castle.
4
The Fertility Cave
Author’s Note:
This is an adapted excerpt of ‘The Underachieving Ovary’ — a (very!) personal memoir I wrote about my struggle to conceive.
UNZIPPED
It’s been ten months since I binned the blister pack that used to contain my contraceptive pill. My gynaecologist, who I call the BFG, wants me to go for some tests.
‘So, about your devil womb,' the Big Friendly Giant said in his Dutch accent (but not in so many words), "it's freaky, and we're going to need to check it out.” Okay, he didn't really say that.
‘Because you have a scary-as-hell double-horn, we need to make sure you don’t have weirdo double-anything-else, you organ-doppelgänger.’
He didn’t say that either, but you get the idea.
The bicornuate uterus scenario is a congenital thing: it happens while you are a developing foetus. Usually when you need two of something (like lungs) your cells form things that split et voila! One becomes two. Sometimes it works the other way around, and two things will merge to create one. As with any stage of development, if there is some kind of genetic accident or a biological glitch, things can go wrong. In my case, the BFG says that the pair of things meant to knit together to form my uterus only got 60% of the job done, hence the top of my uterus being … un-knitted. Only halfway zipped. The case being such, who knows what else was melded / not melded enough / doubled up like cheap gin on a discount cruise? We’ll need to have a proper look-see.
THEY TIE HER DOWN
That was the worst experience ever.
It was like being in a medically-themed horror movie. You know the ones. Rusty equipment, maniacal doctors, needles the size of toothpicks. It was terrifying.
Picture this: Open on young, fresh-faced girl (in jeans and a cheap and cheerful cereal-themed shirt from Thailand) showing up at a nice-enough hospital. Waiting and waiting and filling out reams of medical forms, while thinking of the work she is missing: she runs her own business and every lost hour counts. She thinks of the emails bottlenecking in her inbox, the deliverymen of urgent orders ringing the doorbell of her empty house. She is then presented with the estimated costs of the procedures she is to undergo and almost faints. She doesn't know if her medical aid will cover it. Medical aids are assholes when it comes to that, even though infertility is a disease recognised by the WHO.
Eventually, she is given a backless hospital gown the colour of well-chewed gum and told to strip. She isn't allowed to wear undies or her engagement ring. She's taken to a room where she lies on a cold stainless steel table, next to a tray holding a giant syringe on a hospital-blue napkin. Above her is a vast X-ray machine that looks a hundred years old. Despite the metal table leaching the warmth from her back and making it ache, she starts perspiring. They tie her down.
‘The restraints are so that you don’t move while the machine is taking pictures,’ says the smiley young nurse.
The radiologist walks in, wearing a curt expression and her customary radiation-proof armour.
‘We're going to inject you with iodine,' she says as if that is a perfectly polite thing to do. ‘The X-ray will pick up the iodine in your bloodstream and show us its passage – show us your renal system – to see if there is a problem there.'
The BFG had explained that the biggest concern is that I have either only one kidney or two sets of two. Four kidneys, I reckoned, was a bonus. No wonder I could keep up drinking beer with the boys. Four kidneys! Maybe I could sell some to pay for th
is X-ray. One kidney, on the other hand, would not be so lucky. How funny that I just assumed that I had two to begin with. Brainwashed by biology lessons. How many do I really have? Bets, anyone? It could be like a game if this room weren't so damn scary.
After the iodine is pushed into the sweat-soaked girl's body, the horror film takes on a comedic slant, as all good/bad horror movies do. To work the ancient machine, the nurse has to run from one side of the room to the other, dragging the bulky ceiling-mounted contraption along with her while it shudders on its rails, threatening to fall off and crush all three of the people beneath it. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! it goes on every passage. Underneath the banging is a whirring, a clicking, as the X-ray film is exposed.
‘Again,’ says the radiologist. Again, again, again. Banging and clicking and whirring until the nurse is out of breath from running and dragging and still the radiologist wants more, adjusting my pose in between.
‘Again,’ she says, relentless, some kind of insane perfectionist.
‘These pictures aren't for the fucking World Press Photo awards,' the patient doesn't say out loud. She looks at the other women in the room, protected by their heavy aprons. Thinks that this massive dose of radiation can't be good for her organs, either. What does a radiologist know about fertility? And with fertility at stake, who cares, anyway, about an extra kidney either way? She imagines the rays bombarding her ovaries, zapping her eggs by the thousands. Microwaving her babymaker. Wouldn't it be terrible, she thinks, if the very first procedure she undergoes to get pregnant actually renders her forever infertile? She sweats some more.
MIKE JUNIOR
We call our unborn (or, more correctly, un-conceived) baby ‘Mike Jnr’. It’s shorthand for our (nowadays brittle) dream of having a baby. It helps to have a name. It makes him seem more real, less of a fantasy. It also helps in writing email updates to friends and family — keeps it light. Subject: ‘Update on Mike Jnr!’ instead of: ‘Feeling poor, sad and hopeless. Send schedule 16 painkillers.’
I've always written my goals in the sand. Before I started my business, when I was ‘stuck' in advertising, I used to write ‘Pulp Books' in the wet sea sand. Before that, it was ‘Mike'. Now I write ‘Mike Jnr' at every opportunity I get. It's my way of committing it to the universe, making the wish more tangible. Mike calls it ‘collapsing the possibility'.
It’s been 18 months of writing it in the sand, and now I am less particular about where I scribble his name: steamed up mirrors, books, chalkboards, paper notes that get buried in the garden. I commit it over and over again to the earth. It may seem silly, but I feel that it has a certain power.
THE FERTILITY CAVE
Mandie and Avish weren't sure what to get me for my birthday. They knew all I wanted was a baby, so they got creative. (No, they didn't kidnap a newborn, although they assure me that they did consider it.)
Instead, they organised and sponsored a weekend away in Clarens for Mike and I. A weekend dedicated to conceiving. Not (necessarily) a dirty weekend, but to visit the fertility cave there. How they even knew about the cave, I can't guess. Mandie is on every contraceptive known to man and mammal. She was conceived while her mother was on the pill, so she takes no chances. While she is really good with babies, if you ask her if she wants one she slaps you with a glare that would freeze lava.
So last night we packed our bags and headed out to the Free State. I would never say no to a weekend away, and Clarens is so beautiful with its golden mountains, but I don’t hold much hope for a miracle from some dirty cave that (I’m guessing) someone once thought looked like a giant vagina.
But we have gone from ‘Not Trying' to ‘Trying Absolutely Everything', and if that includes a punani grotto, then I'm in. My only objective this weekend is to have fun, and an open mind.
…
The pilgrimage didn't start well. It's not that the cave isn't well signposted, it's not signposted AT ALL. We drove around with no clue where we were going, and I couldn't help feeling that it was a cruel and apt metaphor for our fertility journey so far.
At first, I couldn't bear to ask someone. I was sure no one would know, anyway. But we were about to give up, and I couldn't go back to Jo'burg without having visited the cave. The first few people regarded us with confusion, and vague suspicion, (Fertili-what-what?) But eventually someone knew what we were talking about and pointed us in the right direction.
We finally found a little sand road that we had missed the first 23 times we had driven past. We picked up some pedestrians who we bribed to show us the way. I was worried they may be axe-murderers, leading us to a dead-end to rob us of our meagre possessions. The trip included going through a gate that warned you to not enter. We were, like, ‘Are you sure this is right?' and the guys were like, ‘Yes!' and we were, like, ‘We are so going to get axed.'
We pulled into a makeshift parking lot in the middle of a huge herd of sheep. There were two or three cars, but not a cave or another person in sight. We watched the sheep for a while, not sure what to do, when we saw people walk past us, making their way up the hill. That’s when we realised that we would be working hard for our little bit of fertility magic: we had to hike to get to the cave.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Perhaps something like the virility cave we saw in Thailand: a short, easy walk on a beach and voila! a huge cavern full of phallic symbols. You giggle and admire them while someone chops open a coconut cocktail for you.
The hike was long and steep, and we weren’t dressed for it, so we were hot and a bit grumpy on our way up. I was surprised at how many people were also walking the path. They were dressed in church gear and carried staffs, so we guessed the caves held more enchantment than just of the fertility variety.
Eventually, we reached the top and hopscotched over a river to get to the cave, and it was as though we had crossed into another world. It wasn't as much a cave as it was a hobbit warren. Built into the recesses were tiny interconnected dwellings with small hobbit-sized doors (I kept my eyes peeled for hobbits, but no such luck). Instead, ordinary-looking humans were walking around, among goats, dogs, cats and chickens. The closest thing I could find to a hobbit was a sweet little boy, about 3 years old, with an easy smile and dusty feet. He followed us, pointing things out. He let me pick him up and carry him while we explored. His parents didn't seem to be around, and I briefly considered taking him home with us, day-dreamed about looking after him. Then I remembered that kidnapping was illegal. If getting pregnant outside jail was this tricky, the chances of it happening while locked up might be even trickier. It would take a lot of planning to get Mike to pay a conjugal visit at precisely the right time of the month.
‘Warden, please, I have to see my husband right now. Like, right now. In the next hour at the latest.’
(I facepalm myself for not thinking ahead and ordering KFC for her lunch today).
‘Er, no. Get back to pulling out those blackjacks.’
‘You don’t understand. It’s my window. (Whispers:) My ovulation window.’
(Warden slaps some sense into me.)
‘Blackjacks!’
The hobbit houses were immaculate and swept to within an inch of their lives. This wasn't some kind of (inconvenient) place to squat; it was clearly revered as some kind of holy place. There was a shrine, oily with years of molten wax, where we said a quick Hail-Mary or some-such. I’ve never been good with religion or bowing to man-made edifices, but I was wearing my Open Mind. After looking around in fascination and petting the odd smelly goat, we were shown to the Fertility Lady’s place. She made us wait outside while she did what I guessed was some preparatory voodoo.
When she was ready for us, she called us in. We’re not the shortest couple: we had to make ourselves hobbit-sized by folding ourselves in half and crawling in. It was clearly a place of miracles: the fact that we all fitted into such a tiny space was a special kind of sorcery.
The interior was dim, cramped, and completely pimped. An array of fertility icons gleamed
in the candlelight. The lady started off by chanting and dusting me (with what I guess was a feather duster with special powers and not a regular one from the local Shoprite/Checkers) and singing a bit. Then she put her hands on my stomach and pressed quite hard. Mike and I couldn't look at each other, afraid to offend her by laughing. She picked up a silver-framed picture of a (white) mother nursing a baby. I wondered if only white people came to ask her for help. She cradled the frame like an infant, rocking it, and kissed it, then passed it to me to do the same, making kissy noises. I cradled it, and it made me feel like I was a child again, playing in a (uniquely eccentric) friend's dollhouse.
Next came the really fun part: She produced an old, scratched plastic bottle (Sprite? Stoney?) filled with dirty water. Mike looked worried, but I wasn't nervous. I thought she might sprinkle it around us, like holy water. Holy Fertility Cave Water. But it turned out that Mike had good reason to be twitchy. She poured some out into an enamel mug and passed it to me, motioning for me to drink it. I thanked her and pretended to take a sip, making sure my lips weren't anywhere near the filthy stuff, but she had clearly seen this trick before and got really bossy about me drinking it all. I looked for somewhere I could tip it out, but the place was so tiny, and she was staring right at me so there was no way I wouldn't be busted. At her insistence, I took a sip (I know! Hepatitis C. Cholera. There would be no getting pregnant now. But what choice did I have?). It was ice cold and tasted of sand and candle wax. I shudder to think of where it came from and was sure that I'd be rolling around in agony with some kind of vicious stomach bug that night. I was suddenly convinced that this woman wanted me to puke all my evil infertile guts out. And I had fallen for it! Dammit!
