Twins

They can take out a diseased womb, but what about the heart? My heart is sore and aching, but there’s nothing the doctors can do about it, is there?

Can the psychologist cure me? Or the psychiatrist? What can they tell me, what stories can they weave, what thoughts and feelings can they help me separate and understand?

I sigh.

The specialist said to me yesterday that the tumour on my ovary was so large, the removal of it was like delivering twins. I have never delivered twins, not even a single child. That one you see, that girl standing there by the mirror, looking at the flowers in the vase, is the child that came to me from someone else. Another woman gave her to me. I have not seen that woman, and never will.

I do not know what thoughts and feelings she had in her heart when she gave birth to this child, then gave her away. My husband says that she was a nice young woman, but unmarried. He had that look on his face. He can be a prudish man.

That was seven years ago. I wonder where she is now, and what she is doing. I wonder where I would be now, if she had not been pregnant, and needing to make arrangements. There were other babies. We would have chosen one of them, already born, waiting for someone to pick them. Like pets in a pet shop. How much is that baby in the window, the one with the curly top hair?

My mother blamed my husband for our childlessness. She blamed him for everything, through gritted teeth. I do not blame him for everything, and he was not the cause of our inability to conceive.

Not the sole cause.

My twinning ovarian cyst and my womb had to go. The doctor said that because the cyst was so large, he removed the womb and the other ovary as well. I was past childbearing, and there was risk of other disease if he left them there. My heart beats, my heart pauses. The womb contracts and waits. It’s done with waiting. The ovaries, too, are done. No more eggs to farm, only to go to waste. Where do they go, all those unused ova? Is there some mysterious pocket in the pelvis that holds them all? Where do the sperm go, all those millions, destined never to meet their partners in life?

The surgeon is a nice man, smiling, putting his hand on mine, telling me not to worry, everything would be fine. When it was all over, he came in and asked me about the pain, the wound, the urination. He talked to my husband, he smiled at my daughter.

My daughter. She went to stay with people I hardly know. H said he couldn’t look after her on his own while I was in hospital. She seems all right, but I don’t think she really knows what this is all about. She’s too young. She seems to like the people she’s with, but there’s that look in her eyes I see too often. She wanders about this room, and touches the flowers, and sits on my bed, and gives me a cuddle, but I don’t know what she’s feeling.

H is oblivious to what she’s feeling. He loves her and cares for her, but she’s not quite there for him. Not as a real person. I think he looks upon her as something he ordered from the shop, and now she’s here, he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to do. He’s a kind man, but there’s a lot that was taken away.

I wonder if his mother realised. They were so alike. Both as difficult as drudgery.

My husband has come back in.

“How are you dear?”

“I’m feeling more myself.”

“When are you coming home, Mummy?”

“In a few more days, darling. I’ve got to get better. Got to be able to walk.” I smile at her, this dark-haired girl.

She doesn’t ask many questions. I see her looking at me, or her father, but she doesn’t say anything.