No One Is Coming to Save Us

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  Ava closed the computer and put some clothes in to wash in the basement. In the morning she would have to remember to put them in the dryer or she’d come back (not for the first time) to them half dry and mildewed, her attempt at industry having backfired and giving her more work to do. When they’d first moved into the house she was a kid and afraid to go to the basement alone. She still didn’t love this dimly lit, dirty part of the house, with so many hidden nooks, but it interested her. No wonder they made horror movies about damp basements where the disgraced items of everyday life moldered, not in the bowels, though she could see that metaphor easily, but in the ovaries waiting to reemerge damp and changed. Would anyone but an infertile woman think that? She laughed out loud. She could still laugh about it. Now that had to be progress, right?

  She came back up the stairs to the kitchen and clicked back onto the site.

  Dear Ava2WW, My first and second IUI didn’t work either, but hang in there. My third gave me little Jon, I’ve attached his picture. He’s three now. It can happen! Don’t give up. Some of us need a little help. Hang in there!Baby Luv Jon

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  Hello Ava2WW. I’ve been where you are. My angels came close together, four of them. I know what you feel, even if I can’t put it in words. Sucky club, right? You didn’t say how old you are. I’m 43 and have been TTC (that’s trying to conceive) for about eleven years give or take. If you have to stay with us, you will learn the lingo, that’s for sure. I’ve been TTC for a good part of my adult life. SUUUUUCCCCKKKKSSSSS! I’ve tried it all: injectables, Clomid, progesterone, IVF (five times!—they won’t do it anymore for me) IUI too many times to count. You name it, I know it. Sorry, I don’t mean to be a wet blanket. Maybe God will give you your bundle of love. He’s stingy with them though. Just kidding. Don’t mean to rain on your parade. MOM 2 B

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  Thanks for the encouragement everyone. I know how you feel MOM 2 B, believe me. I AM SO TIRED OF HEARING PEOPLE’S SUCCESS STORIES! LOL. They don’t help me. I’m a terrible person. I feel like one. Somebody at work actually said to me that I should be glad I can at least get pregnant. Can you believe that? Like getting pregnant is the goal. She has two kids and thinks infertility is all in your head. I am trying hard not to hate those people. If somebody else tells me to relax I’m going to start screaming. That will prove I’m relaxed, right! Has it ever helped anybody in any situation to hear that! Enough ranting. LOL! My ears won’t pop. Is that crazy? I’ve been to the bathroom a hundred times today. The gas. Impressive, but EMBARRASSING. Is this in my head? ☺ Hormones? I made the appointment for a blood test. If I can wait that long. I have a whole bathroom vanity full of pregnancy tests. I cannot even tell you how many freakin pregnancy tests I’ve bought! Gotta laugh so I won’t cry ☺ I do have a practical question. I was on Gonal-f with the trigger shot and progesterone after. I hate it! I am thick-headed and stupid and so fat. Thank god I’m usually trim or I’d be completely round. My face is even fat. I stopped counting the chins! Does anyone have any good experience with this combo? AVA2WW

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  My third pregnancy was on GF and the works. I got pregnant but my little one wasn’t in me long enough to feel her move. I always thought she was a girl, though it was all over too early to really know. Your fate might be better than mine, Ava! Look at what you ate Ava2WW. That’s what’s causing the gas. YOU CANNOT HAVE SYMPTOMS THIS EARLY. I don’t mean to be mean, but any weird thing you are feeling is just because you are in tune with your body and noticing everything. Please don’t go off the deep end. We are all enabling each other in our crazy. I want this as much as anyone, but it is not good to fool ourselves, is it? Can anyone hear me? Am I talking to myself? MOM 2 B

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  Dear MOM 2 B, Please try to be positive. This site is for us to encourage each other. We are all hurting. Can you understand that? I’m trying to conceive another bundle. Any tips would be appreciated. BellasMOM

  * * *

  After 8 months of drugs I now have one, count them one mature follicle and a late one at that, that doesn’t get around to producing until day 19 of my cycle. My husband is tired. “We are enough” he says, but I see the way he looks at me. I can read his face. I’ve known him fifteen years. Worse than that I see the way he looks at other families, a sick little turn on his mouth like he just learned he got a raw deal. He’s probably the problem. I’ve wondered a hundred times if my body just doesn’t like his body. You know? What if we had different partners? He said the last time he had to go to the clinic, “I’m bringing my own porn next time. No more German dominatrix.” Maybe I’ll get him Jugs for Christmas. HA HA. My estrogen is good. I should be thankful for small things. But everyone, including BellasMOM, just because I’m for real doesn’t mean I’m not positive. MOM 2 B

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  Ava2WW, Good luck. I don’t have experience on Gonal-f, but I did other drugs. It took me over five years to get pregnant. I lost the first one, but I did get pregnant a year later. It can work. I know how you feel. I just kept thinking that the whole thing was kind of a combination lock and I just had to have the right numbers. That sweet baby you wish for might just be nine months away. This might be just the combination you need. Baby dust to you. Baby Luv Jon

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  Everyone, When did we all just become somebody’s mom? I’m as guilty as anyone. I might be the worst, but this is a legitimate question. When did we just become mommy? Didn’t we fight a revolution to have names? Baby dust!! Are you people for real? MOM 2 B

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  Everyone, PLEASE IGNORE MOM 2 B!!!!!!! They should do a better job of getting people like her off this site. BellasMOM

  * * *

  I was just frustrated. I forgot to say good luck. I forgot to wish baby dust. I forgot to tell you all that God loves you and is making your baby right now. Face it, kids, you are your Barrenesses. This is your kingdom. All those symptoms are a joke, Ava 2WW. Did you eat Mexican last night? Bingo, you have your answer. You are not having any symptoms yet. Your maybe-baby is the size of a pin dot. You can’t have symptoms for God’s sake. You want to hug a sweet baby with warm milky breath on your neck? Get a cocker spaniel, they’re a sure thing. MOM 2 B

  * * *

  MOM 2 B, GET OFF THIS SITE. PEOPLE LIKE YOU MAKE EVERYTHING HARDER. BellasMOM

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  MOM 2 B, SEE A SHRINK, LADY. YOU NEED HELP! Baby Luv Jon

  * * *

  I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. Everyone, I’ve been in a state lately. I need your forgiveness. I need to belong to this community. Twelve-year-old girls with no future, or forty-six-year-old menopause women wind up with babies in their arms. They don’t even try. They win and they don’t even try. I can’t stand it. Will someone explain that to me? MOM 2 B

  * * *

  Dear Ava2WW, Try to stay positive. You have a big day coming. BellasMOM

  * * *

  Ava2WW, Here’s hoping for that BFP. Fingers and toes crossed. Baby Luv Jon

  * * *

  Is anyone listening? Can anyone hear me? Don’t drive yourself crazy. You will go insane looking at every little thing, wishing for a sign. Please listen. MOM 2 B

  * * *

  Women have symptoms all the time. Medical science doesn’t know everything. Stay strong Ava2WW!!!!!! BellasMOM

  Ava closed the laptop. She wouldn’t read any more tonight but wanted a diversion that wasn’t reality TV or game shows from thirty years ago, which depressed and demoralized her. The house was quiet with Henry gone and her mother in her own apartment. Henry said he would be at his father’s, but Ava wasn’t sure how much she believed him. She believed in her father-in-law’s need and in the chaos of his house, the filthy rooms he maneuvered poorly in with his pitiful walker, his pill bottles lined up on the television table like an audience. He and Henry were the only ones left from their immediate family, except for Sean, and he was in jail. What Ava doubted was that Henry spent more than a few minutes in the cave of that depressing house with a man he h
ardly knew. He was escaping from her plain and simple.

  A sensation, an ache bubbled up in Ava’s stomach and into her chest to finally pop in her mouth. Henry had another woman. Flashes of him close to her, his hand on her hip, the liquid movements of his torso inching toward the woman’s chest. Ava could see it plain. The woman she did not know. Henry had little game, but he didn’t need any. So many women saw him and figured they’d make up whatever lack he had, get back with the Lord later, or not. How many of them had made this calculation, Ava couldn’t be sure. Henry wouldn’t give her the number. Ava suspected that he wasn’t sure himself. There are secrets in a relationship that probably should remain secret. Little lies of omission, artful (or not) evasions that reminded you that you woke up with a stranger, even if you think you know him down to the bone. Every once in a while you get reminded how truly impossible it is to know another person, even if you love that person, even if you live with him for years, for decades. The paradox of love was how you manage to feel it with so little information. But you negotiate in this life for the best deal you can get. When Ava and Henry first married Ava had convinced herself that she was happy. Henry’s remoteness, his moods were in stark relief when only the two of them maneuvered together in their first apartment. Ava said nothing to anyone, though her mother and her aunt were not fooled. She thought for years she could deal. That’s the key to marriage. Learn to deal. Play the game right and you might even end up reasonably happy. And, good news, if you can manage the machinations and intrigue of a functional marriage you have all the tools you need to rule the world.

  Ava willed the thoughts of Henry with another woman away as she had become accustomed to doing in the past few years. She didn’t have time to think about what Henry did. The past few years had been hard on both of them. That alone should have produced some compassion in Ava for Henry, for his hurt and frustration about what had happened to them. The fact that she felt nothing for Henry’s pain surprised and shamed her.

  She would try to sleep. She turned off the light at the bedside table and closed her eyes. Sleep, sleep. Go to sleep, she hummed to herself. But she wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon. When she was a child she loved listening to the women her mother knew, relatives or women from one of the churches her mother tried. Most of them were very young like her mother, in their twenties and thirties, black women who had had enough hard life already and said another baby meant a tether to the meanness of too little. The women talked in kitchens, shabby living rooms, public parks and backyards, and plotted about how to avoid the pregnancy, how to end it (with a potion or an accident that was sure-fire), and if all else failed finally how to endure it. This talk was not about their children—they were another issue altogether. The idea of their children was divorced in their minds from the pregnancies. Maybe you have to be there, to live there, to struggle there to understand it. But most of them loved their children or at least tried to. Ava remembered them speaking in code to keep their intentions from the kids playing in their midst. Ava was convinced that children were a burden, a worry, the last nail in the coffin. Like her grandmother Mabe said enough times, “Children ruin your life.”

  She reached for the laptop in the dark.

  I AM GOING CRAZY, everyone. When I was in high school and college just about everybody I knew had a pregnancy scare. I felt so smart and superior because I never had to go through all of that. I didn’t have sex in high school and only a few times in my college. I thought I had it all figured out. Did you all have pregnancy scares back in the day? I never did. Not even one time. Not ever. Not even when I got married and not as careful as I could have been. I thought because I was a good girl or just careful or lucky, but now I think I might have been INFERTILE. I haven’t even been able to think like this until lately. Maybe what I thought was luck back then was a curse I’m feeling now. Has anyone else felt like that? Ava2WW

  * * *

  I had a scare or two, but that doesn’t matter. You didn’t really have a sex life just a few experiences and you were just careful back then. That’s all! We are all learning that this whole baby making thing is a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. So many things have to go right. Who knew? I used to think that I could get pregnant anytime. This is embarrassing, but I didn’t really know about ovulation. I really didn’t. I soon found out that a lot of women don’t know. I told my mother I missed my ovulation window when I was trying the first time and she said try again in a few days. In a few days! She didn’t know about ovulation and she has four girls. I don’t know how anyone ever gets pregnant with so little information. LOL! Now that we know better, we just have to adjust. You are going to get pregnant and have your baby. YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT. You have to be strong. Your little one needs you to be strong. Don’t give up, honey. I know you hurt. BellasMom

  * * *

  Oh, Ava I cried when I read your post. We have all been there. Try not to worry. Babies come when they get ready. I don’t mean to sound magical, but I think our bodies have to be ready. There’s so much we don’t really understand. Don’t keep your feelings to yourself. Keep writing us. We will help. We are the only ones who really know how you feel.Baby Luv Jon

  12

  Sylvia picked up the phone and put it back down again on the kitchen table. He would want to know about JJ. He would want to talk about that.

  “Devon,” she said, but the line was quiet on the other side.

  “Can you hear me, Devon? Are you there?” Sylvia put the phone back on her chest. He was not going to speak.

  “Mama.”

  Sylvia fumbled the phone, getting it to her ear. “Devon, Devon. Thank God. Can you talk right now? Can you talk to me?”

  “I need to go, Mama.”

  “I hear your voice all the time. In my dreams. Everywhere I go. I saw a boy who looked like you in the office the other day. He was with his girlfriend and baby. He was so tall and straight-standing, so handsome. I told him I was sorry to stare but he looked so much like you. That’s what I told a stranger.”

  The line ticked on the other end. Sylvia couldn’t even hear him breathe.

  “Don’t call me, Mama.”

  “I know, I know. But I knew you’d want to know that JJ is here. Back in town. I know you remember JJ. Ava’s friend? He told me you cut his hair. I didn’t know that. You don’t want to hear this, I know. I’m getting off the phone. But he’s back. After all this time. Can you believe it?”

  The line was quiet, but if he would let her, she could listen as long as she could to the steady rhythm of his breathing. “I know you can’t forgive me. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I’m sorry. I tried not to call you, but I thought you’d want to hear it. I know you have to go. I know, but Devon, don’t go. One minute. You don’t have to say anything. Please one more minute.”

  13

  A year ago maybe more, Don started going to a neighborhood restaurant called Sisters, a man’s place—spare and dirty—run by Mae and Jonnie Norwood. The name sounded good, but Mae and Jonnie were actually mother and daughter, separated by fifteen years. Sisters wasn’t a fine dining place, just somebody’s converted living room of an old house on Damascus Church Road, with three lightweight dirty tables and chairs bought for a couple of dollars from the recently closed up Chinese place called House of Chow. Mae and Jonnie covered the uncleanable tabletops with plastic cloths, set salt and pepper shakers and hot sauce in the middle of each like a bouquet. At first Mae kept napkins on the tables, but customers would use them like they were the last paper products on earth. Take five when the corner of one would have done fine. Use them to wipe fingers, noses, the tips of shoes, eyes, clean underarms, and save for panty liners. When they were sitting out like that, who wouldn’t assume that there was always more? Sisters wasn’t decorated except for a yard sale clock, but neither woman cared too much for fussing over things, creating some kind of room with the books just so, the pillows fluffed, no shoes or spilled toys to spoil the scene, neither cared for the fantasy decor
ating encouraged. Besides, Sisters was not the establishment to go to if you were looking for scenery, garnishes, or flourishes to please the eye, food piled in artful stacks, or for watching fancy people. The mission at Sisters is to get all you want to eat and go home full. That’s enough entertainment for anybody.

  Mae was good-looking for a woman her age. That’s what people always added, a woman her age. She was skinny but carried herself like a big woman with her arms out to her sides like parenthesis, always straightening her top over her hips like she had something to hide, smoothing her clothes from the creases her imaginary rolls of fat made, habits probably picked up from years of watching her large mother negotiate the world. Mae would have been pretty except for her black-rimmed lips, which she tried to hide except when a big laugh made her forget. When she was a little younger the rumor was she’d open her legs for anybody, though like most things, it wasn’t all the way true. She’d been fooled a few times, standing and lying down, small and lonesome because somebody said on Saturday night that he’d be around on Monday, but who hasn’t felt some of that?

  Don thought if he had been looking for a woman at all his first glance would have lighted on Mae. He wasn’t looking. He was never really looking, but somehow he had no trouble finding women. To analyze the way of a cheater is a losing game. They just do. They just will. Only death or the smell of it will stop them. Many people aren’t loved enough, have lousy parents, have too much responsibility, blah, blah. But most of those unfortunate people aren’t whores who will take anybody they please to bed. Don was not most people. The generous way to think about it was that beauty moved Don, spoke to him, coerced him to set aside what he might believe was good sense, right actions, the proper way. That beautiful face or body or (Lord have mercy) both reasoned to him that this time his body next to her body didn’t really count. Like candy bars in the middle of the night, like sex in prison. If nobody sees and if you don’t care, how can it count?