content warning: infertility
On the day things become unimpeachably real, dial your best friend, most benign frenemy or nonjudgmental neighbor from the car. Tap a button for dinner delivery and order the priciest items you can find: the angry snapper, the Big Boss roll, a fatty hamachi truffle, the Jessica Alba. Swipe right. Bury your feelings at the stoplight, fold a smear of charcoal eyeliner into your palm and let the random scent of Lemon-Quat astringent caramel goo burn your eyeballs open, the barn door scent of a lacerated trajectory towards home. Dig beneath your seat for the glitter flask and crumpled pack of Parliaments hidden away for emergency situations like this. They’re on the left.
Don’t listen when the steady cachunk of the road becomes the-kid-the- kid the-jig-is-up. Park on the lawn. Kiss your phone. Lick today good-bye. Tell yourself you’ll become the dawn after the hum of acid-burn biblical myths and platitudinous media tropes recede—just not today. Gently snap the waistband of your sweatpants and rub your empty abdomen. Tonight is about respite.
Go into the house. Take off your coat. They managed to remove part of your IUD and saw tiny white aliens instead. Impossible! Unimaginable! Unacceptable! Listen. Put the turkey baster back into the drawer. Take a pair of needle-nosed pliers from the yellow Cantilever toolbox and practice your technique, but then talk yourself out of it, Listen. You are not the hillbilly on the front page of the local rag who tried to remove the remaining arm of their own IUD. Take the plastic bag from your purse and admire the tiny white half-cross covered in cervical spittle. Stick it on the fridge with your best magnet. Crack open the good whiskey and pour an inch into a thin crystal glass. Watch young women on TikTok wipe away tears of regret from not starting a family by cracking wads of crisp Benjamins across their balm-stained cheeks. Watch the sun set and the stars burn up the sky. You are ancient stardust, a wet kiss, a fragile aechmea fasciata, a singular unachievable ideal, a sovereign body politic.
Change into your charcoal coveralls. Drag a stretched cotton canvas into the yard. Find your brushes, hell—gather twigs, leaves, your chopsticks. Pick up the crimson. Pour it on the canvas. Use your hands to work it in; move the paint around. Smush the clots with your fingertips. There is a case for not being born, you read so in the New Yorker. Use the rouge, the flamingo, add more white to create shades of bubble gum and watermelon. Go on, splash it on and rub it in. Use the jade, the parakeet, the arctic and sapphire. Add more black. Stab the canvas with your palette knife—no one’s watching, probably not—drag it down, rip the medium then stick your hand through to the other side. Wiggle your messy fingers. There, much better.
You are in the front yard of your suburban home in New Jersey with a dwindling palette of acrylic paint and a glass of whiskey by your side. You are sipping slowly to forget the news you received today about the uterine adhesions, the white-and-pink bands of scar tissue, the stretchy, witchy spirits waving NO THANK YOU at fertility.
You had gone in for a routine procedure to have your IUD removed. This was the first step on a checklist of to do’s before the appointment in which your fertility specialist will transfer a frozen embryo into your uterus using a turkey baster-type device. But in the midst of receiving the news a funny thing happened, which is you were struck by the troubling truth: you were relieved to have a reason. You were not waiting for an excuse to not get pregnant, per se, but you were glad to identify something real.
Ask yourself how you felt about motherhood in the first place. Lie and say that any idiot could do it, and they do. Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe you shouldn’t. Think of the time you accidentally ate your niece’s avocado toast. How you barely changed her diaper because the wiping part was weird. Tell yourself, What kind of selfish person can auto-assign a responsibility so grand? A task only capable of Herculaneum Women? I am not that strong, you think. I can barely lift a bag of cat shit.
Ask yourself: how did you even buy into this crap anyway? Lie and say, because it’s the biggest thing. Tell yourself the truth: it’s not. And what a terrible ruse, to map one’s lifelong dreams using your anatomical assemblage as a guide. As though you are a car and the fertility doctors are overpaid, opioid-prescribing mechanics retrofitting your parts for the task. How basic, classic. Lie and say, this is not you.
You need paper and something sticky. March inside, straight to the refrigerator. That’s it, grab a carton of eggs. Take some mayonnaise, grape jelly, Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbecue Sauce. Grab a stack of medical bills from the counter. Grab the newspaper. Return to the yard carrying the clippings, cahiers, and condiments. Rip the unpaid bills into shreds and crack the eggs. Glue the newspaper bits onto the canvas using the yolks. By now, the neighbor’s light is on. Catch her watchful silhouette. Look both ways, wave your middle finger in her direction and run back inside. Salute the security camera, to your husband who might be watching from an app on his phone at a shopping mall-variety steakhouse on a sales trip to Kalamazoo.
Wake with cramps on the lower left side of your abdomen. Rise from bed, stomp around making coffee, settle down and post your mixed media artwork to eBay. Decide that if the lost IUD arm does any damage you will sue everyone; the doctor, the hospital, the manufacturer of the device. Practice what you will say in court. Immediately change your mind. Think about piercing your nipple. No, a tattoo is better. Squeeze the lint from your belly button and when the ding of a bid on eBay appears, click accept and deposit a check that covers a fraction of your medical bills into your virtual bank account.
Make more art. This time, create in the privacy of your small backyard. Collect more money at auction. Try to relax. Do all the stretches, every which way. Get up at four in the morning to pee. Hear a plop in the toilet. Dismiss the sound as a thing your body will work out eventually. Peer into the toilet—tada— it’s the missing arm of the IUD! Do a celebratory wiggle.
Open your eyes. Do you see the rip of navy in the sky? You don’t believe in mysticism, but take the opening in the clouds as a favorable sign. You are in a dream in which you are on a sailboat in a storm, and there is a crash but not like in the Titanic, more like giant boulders are pelting the deck and you hold on but one of them crashes into your shoulder and you fall, you, startled by the shade of exposed bone (more “gray moth” than “white dove”), vainglorious and strange, and soft organs are spilling from between your legs like strawberry Jell-O and you think, oh—I was a sea creature all along.
Feel around your body. Check the sheets for blood. You are a naive sailor, a kidnapped adventuress, a bungling escort vamping in velour in front of the backlit bathroom mirror. Splash icy water on your face and feel the molecules land like tiny razors. Flex a Mortal Kombat fighting pose. Smile, because today is your birthday. And things are mostly fine.
Open the blinds. The warmth of sunshine is a balm. Feel like a glamorous Hollywood actress for exactly two seconds. See a small pile of mouse shit on the balcony. For a moment, consider leaping back into bed but remember the birthday cake and lurch away instead.
Open your phone. Log your mood. Choose from twenty-five possible answers. Scared is not one of them; neither is terrified, inadequate, uncertain, relieved. Watch the State of the Union then doom-scroll the news. Abortions are illegal in some states and embryos could be next. Do not contemplate forced pregnancy. Do not contemplate jail. Revoke the jokes you’ve previously made about how you’d rather sit in jail eating broken glass than hear waiting room variety forced decompression lounge music one more time.
Text your sister about a recipe for coq au vin. Sign a bill that opposes octopus farming. Answer the phone when your best friend, Sheila, calls. You answer in a soft, lamb-like voice. Who is this lamb, you demand to know but do not say.
Happy Birthday, she says. She knows about an upcoming art exhibit, it’s a show—she puts it that way. A show. You think this is pretentious, but do not say this either. There are exceptions: for iconic Beanie Baby collections, heartfelt collections of Tonya Harding memorabilia, orchids that look like tiny blooming vaginas, oversized cereal boxes stacked artfully at Costco. But since you are charmed by Sheila’s enthusiasm, you accept the invitation to submit.
The show is at the neighborhood laundromat. Put on forty-dollar stockings recommended by Wirecutter and take a brush to your bramble of crimson curls. Slink into a black dress, the one purchased twenty years ago for a sorority initiation you never attended.
The opening is six people drinking drugstore-variety wine around a folding table. There are a couple of people you vaguely recognize. A man in a wrinkled suit keeps blowing his nose. He is carrying a Bible but does not appear to be a priest. You maneuver around elderly Asian women shuttling laundry from one machine to the next. An episode of Seinfeld is blasting from a small corner television. This scene is art, you think but do not say. Sheila is happy to see you. She helps lug your canvases from your car into the space. You prop each one onto an orange plastic mid-century modern chair.
How are you doing? Sheila asks. I’m secretly dying inside, you say. You both grin. Brandon ate shit on the playground yesterday. He literally picked up a piece of dog shit and ate it. Is your kid okay, you want to ask. Continue to smile instead. Your art is seriously good, she says. You should keep going. Accept the tiny bag of orange goldfish crackers she hands you. She always carries good snacks, because she is a Mother.
The man carrying the Bible asks how much for a mixed media painting of an egg with expanded wings you made using smashed quail eggs edged in chunky glitter the evening you almost started a closet fire after trying to light an ornamental grenade lamp you had procured from the local discount store— and since you don’t know, hadn’t thought to prepare a price sheet in advance— you contemplate his question. Let your eye snag the metal sign with the words Two Dollars Per Load advertised in a letterpress font; mentally tack on another zero. Say, Two hundred dollars. Keep a straight face. Don’t forget to blink.
He nods and opens the Bible, which isn’t a bible at all but a cardboard box filled with cash. He removes a gummy wad of greenbacks. My thirteen-year- old daughter will love it, he says, sliding off ten worn twenty-dollar bills. She’s a zig-zag kind of girl, he adds. Nod, don’t ask questions. You can tell by the tone of his voice that this is a confession. Wants to be an artist one day. Could be good for her. When you open your mouth to share a kind word he offers a firm God Bless, then strides away carrying your painting in his arms.
Sheila calls herself an art therapist, but everyone knows she is a real estate agent. She bleaches her hair silver and has a sleeve tattoo covering most of her left arm. Memories, she says, when asked about it, gently touching each illustration—a dove, a lighthouse, a brick pyramid with an eye—to share with my grandkids one day. The tattoos stop at the bendy part of her wrist, and she wears long-sleeved shirts at work to cover them.
Two weeks later, she gets you into a second show. This one is at an art gallery on Hope Street. There are twenty people in attendance. Most are wearing black. A journalist compliments you on your bedazzled crocs and asks four questions before snapping your photograph. The next morning, you are on a popular website below an article about sex workers.
The journalist has given you a warm review. Use the profits from the evening’s sales to purchase more art supplies. You are producing like crazy now, a piece a day. A famous clothing designer tweets a picture of your latest: a maximalist piece featuring an oversized ovary with a child twirling on the end of an outstretched fallopian tube as if they were hanging onto a piece of curling ribbon tied to a mylar balloon, lifting the child high into the atmosphere, drifting them towards a dragon’s mouth with rainbow teeth in the shape of upside -down hearts with a tongue coated in sparkly iridescent candy.
An art director from a big advertising firm calls. We’re looking for an artist to help with a campaign, he says. It’s a popular West Coast skateboarding company. A new clothing line for young women. Any interest? He asks. No way I’ll contribute to your propaganda machine—this is what you want to say, but after he shares the salary, five figures deposited into your account, scoff but then shimmy onto the next flight to Los Angeles. Your husband has rerouted his flight from Boca and will meet you there for dinner. Buy another black dress. Get an asymmetrical haircut. Congratulations—you are now a lightweight commercial version of avant-garde.
Your husband meets you at a cozy restaurant in West Hollywood where trails of silver cutlery shower the waxy lighting with stars. You bring him an extra shirt, because you know he will be sweaty. When he returns from the restroom he straightens his collar and asks, so what did Dr. Frank say? Listen, and this is important—be honest with him. Tell him you’ve avoided the calls. It’s some kind of ovarian obstruction, you explain. Surgery probably, pocketknives, I dunno. Don’t wanna. Can’t deal. This is what comes out.
You know your chances of pregnancy have decreased yet again like a lighthouse beacon searching for life in a jammy velvet fog. Stuff bread into your mouth despite not being hungry. Make the apologetic sorry, can’t talk, eating face to buy time.
Let’s take out a loan and hire a surrogate, you say. You wonder aloud if celebrities consider this, like Aubrey Plaza, busy women considering pregnancies on the side like a straw-woman’s side hustle, a laundry list you’ll face but only on the weekends. What would Aubrey Plaza do, you feverishly want to know, but since your husband will not understand change the subject and tell him that you’re taking a break from the online forums instead. This is a lie.
IVF over 35. Infertility Anonymous. Motherhood Versus Otherhood. Groups of women also celebrating their twenty-first birthday for the twenty-second time with feelings that cannot be tracked in any app. You mostly lurk around the edges of conversation by leaving hug emojis and feel guilty for not participating. You take screenshots of your favorite messages and draw little red hearts, Crayola-yellow suns around them.
The next morning, ignore the Chief Creative Officer who chews on bright ideas while his team of twelve nod appreciatively. Stand, visit the corner snack bar, remove a chrome bag of popcorn called ChickPOW! Sit by the window. Close your ears to the metaphorical idolatry and topical slang and chomp the air puffed beans in peace. Turn your face towards the light. Feel the slant of indifferent sunlight on your cheeks. The sun has no opinion. Look down at the street and see yourself there, ten years ago, as your memory ignites.
I have it, you think.
Stand up. Offer an acceptable lie for leaving. Leave.
The final piece is a twenty-by-ten-foot canvas. You are careful not to include anyone’s personal information. Cardboard cut-out hearts spray painted violet and orange, dollar signs, question marks, free floating eyeballs, prayer emojis, ombre pink roses blooming candy metallic neon green from their hips, plant pups, plums, and coconuts; faux diamonds and tiny rosary pearls smashed and epoxied into dewy rainbow dreams. Brushstrokes of acrylic paint applied with love. Volumes of hope. Voluminous Hope.
Understand—your step is one out of many—of pregnancy, of life. There might be bad news tomorrow. There will be news. There will be everything in between. Your body, a high-pitched vibration, is going to do what she wants to do.
God Bless science. God Bless sanity. God Bless the term panty hose. You are the purest cacophony of light and luminous brass bullets roaring through the silent night. Remember this: you are a prelude and you are the song. Close the Pandora’s box of second, sixth thoughts. Fold the paper. Lower the lid on lies. Don’t screech to a stop. You are the train. You are the motion. You are the heartbeat of this whole operation. You are just the beginning. You, infinite traceable rituals echoing throughout space and time, are a masterpiece. And it’s not just this. It’s everything.
Nicole C. Lehmann-Haupt’s writing has been published in Active Muse Literary Journal, Bryant Literary Review, El Portal, Ignatian Literary Magazine, and Mulberry Literary. She has also received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her stories feature misfits, underdogs, and weirdos, stumbling upon the extraordinary in the ordinary. She teaches creative writing at The Writers Studio online and works as a growth marketer. She lives in San Francisco.