I had a habit of being early for important events, and Judith's wedding was no exception, even though I knew arriving early would mean hanging around with more awkward moments of not knowing how to interact with people, before the ceremony started. And it did. Once again, the other bridesmaids ignored me, while Steve talked to their dates.
I'd felt nauseated again since I woke up, and as usual I attributed it to nerves, but it started to get really bad, enough that I finally ducked into the church's bathroom and let myself into one of the stalls and knelt in front of the toilet, dry heaving. After several miserable moments of dry heaving, I vomited, coughing and gagging at the horrible acrid, bitter bile taste, my mouth on fire.
I let myself cry, even though I knew I would have to fix my makeup again and I hated wearing makeup in the first place. I felt so ashamed of my social awkwardness and whatever about me was so broken that I never fit in with groups of girls... and feeling trapped in this body, the bridesmaid dress calling attention to parts I didn't want to have, didn't sign up for.
I took a few deep breaths and steeled myself like I was preparing for a court case, then I quietly stepped out of the stall. I wasn't alone - Judith was touching up her makeup at the sink.
I washed up, and began to re-apply my eye makeup. For a long moment we just touched up our makeup without saying anything, and then Judith said, "You know, it means a lot that you came out to the wedding when I know you don't feel well."
I gave a nervous laugh. "Well, I do care about you, but also after what my mum said, I didn't feel like I had a choice. I didn't want to hurt your feelings with you thinking I was faking it." I knew that was probably a little too honest but I needed to vent about my mum to someone, I was still pissed.
Judith shook her head. "I heard you... um. Upchucking. I know you're not faking it. Though..." Judith bit her lip, then realized what she'd done and wiped lipstick off her teeth and reapplied it. "I hope you're not..." She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. "Starving yourself and purging."
"No. No no no, no, that's not it. I promise you, that's not what I'm doing. I really haven't been feeling well lately, nausea, and now vomiting. I think it's nerves." I sighed.
Then Judith narrowed her eyes and she cocked her head to one side and I could practically see the gears turning in her head. She, like me, was a barrister - though unlike me, she had her eyes on a career in politics - and I knew I had said something that set off those "a-ha" instincts.
Judith turned to me. "I know we planned my wedding around our cycles, but when was your last period? Did you just have it, or..."
I exhaled. "I'm a little late."
Judith pulled a face. "How long is a little?"
"Er." Oh shit. "A fortnight? I mean, I've been, like, a week late before..."
"You should take a pregnancy test, just to be on the safe side."
Oh shit. Shit. SHIT. Shitshitshitshitshitshit FUCK -
Of course, the wedding had put Steve in an amorous mood, remembering our own wedding night - which had been much better for him than it had been for me. Not long after we got home, I wanted to take a shower, as if I could scrub away the anxiety and loneliness, and the minute I got out of the shower Steve was all over me.
"I'm not in the mood," I told him. I'd gone along before but I couldn't deal with one more thing tonight - the idea that he might have gotten me pregnant made my skin crawl. "I'm still not feeling well, Steve."
"Oh come on, Toni." He resumed kissing my neck again.
I really wanted to shove him away, but didn't. "Steve, I don't feel well -"
He was herding me over to the bed, he yanked away the towel, and started groping my breasts, nibbling on my neck. It was really tempting to push, slap, run off to a hotel...
...but once again, I went along with it. I lay there and literally thought of England - the shitshow that any child of mine would inherit - and tears silently spilled down my cheeks when he finished.
Steve went to sleep, as he did, and I tried to sleep - as desperate as I was to shut my mind off and fade away for a few hours, my muscles were so tense they hurt, my vagina was sore from having been fucked hard and fast while dry, and my mind was a whirl of worry.
My silver lining through the storm of the last few weeks had been my resolve to file for divorce in the first week of July, once Judith's wedding was over and done and I'd given myself a few days to recuperate before moving onto the next stressful hurdle, considering that my job was also very stressful and I could only deal with so many stressors at one time.
Now it looked like that ray of light was gone and there were even darker storm clouds on the horizon. If I was indeed pregnant - and with the late period, the nausea and vomiting I knew the answer probably wasn't "if" - then I was going to have to deal with it. I couldn't stay in this farce of a marriage any longer, especially not after Steve had completely disregarded "no" and I felt coerced into doing what he wanted or having yet another exhausting fight. And my career wasn't really compatible with being a single parent. Nor did my conscience feel great about bringing a child into a world of climate change, war and bigotry.
But even if I got help to raise a child on my own, and even if societal problems got better, the thought of being pregnant horrified me as if I were infected with an alien parasite threatening to rip its way out of my stomach. I already had enough problems with my body - parts I didn't want - and society perceiving me as female even when I wore a suit. This would forever chain me to being female, and I did not want it.
Before my mind could run wild with terrible mental images of Steve's spawn growing inside me and watching my breasts grow, feeling my discomfort with my body intensify - which made me want to self-injure again just thinking about it - I knew that the first step was to determine whether or not I was pregnant. At first, I told myself I would ring my doctor tomorrow, while I was at work - safely away from Steve eavesdropping - and set up an appointment. Then I went to the couch to see if I could catch some sleep there, without Steve's disgusting Steveness in the bed next to me.
Time wore on and I tossed and turned, the tension in my body intensifying, my mind continuing to churn with the thoughts of pregnancy. I couldn't sleep. When it got to be after one AM, I knew there was no way in hell I was going to be functional for work tomorrow and it would be in my best interests to pull a sicky. And I also knew that I couldn't wait a few days - or possibly one to two weeks, depending on how booked up my doctor was - to find out whether or not I was pregnant.
I quietly walked back to the bedroom, gathered up a pair of jeans and a black hoodie, got dressed, chugged some water to make sure I would have to pee soon, and then I hopped in my Audi and drove down to Tesco, which was open 24 hours. The store was almost deserted at this time of night, which was just fine with me because I wasn't in the mood to deal with people, especially anyone from London's legal community who might recognise me and ask what I was doing out at this hour.
As I went through the checkout I realised that if I took the pregnancy test at home, even if I was careful to conceal it with some other rubbish there was still a non-zero chance Steve would find it and I didn't want him involved in this at all. Steve hadn't been at me to start a family - kids would cramp his style too much - however, I also knew from prior conversations that his parents would revise their wills to give him more inheritance money if he had children, and I knew Steve was enough of a selfish bastard that if I was pregnant and he found out, he'd pressure me to keep it so he could get more money out of his parents.
So I took my pregnancy test into the Tesco bathroom. The minute I was inside, I broke down crying. Some of that was exhaustion, and some of that was This is what your life has come to. It's two AM on a Sunday night and you're in a Tesco bathroom taking a bloody pregnancy test.
I took a few deep breaths and pulled myself together enough to read the instructions. I peed in the cup, dipped the stick into the urine, set a timer on my phone, and waited. It was the longest three fucking minutes of my life.
Even longer than waiting for Steve to finish. [Sorry, couldn't resist the snark.]
When the timer went off, my hand shook as I picked up the stick. There were two pink lines.
I was pregnant.
I threw away the test, and then I started crying again. I didn't want this. At all. Once again, I had terrible mental images of my body changing during pregnancy, everyone emphasising woman this, female that...
For the briefest instant I considered sitting on the decision for a few days, maybe reading articles about single motherhood and feminist parenting, and then I heard myself scream "NO" and doubled over the sink weeping hysterically. There was no way I could bring this... this thing... to term. There was no way I could sacrifice my body, my sanity, for this.
I was going to need to work out a plan to terminate the pregnancy without worrying about Steve finding out and trying to make me keep it. I thought about whether or not it would be easier to file for divorce first, have the abortion later, and then I had the mental image of miscarrying from stress, and I knew that as much as I wanted to be rid of Steve sooner rather than later, it was better to get this done, then worry about the divorce.
I would have to call my GP tomorrow to get the wheels in motion for an abortion. I knew it would be at least a few days before anything would happen, but likely not longer than two weeks.
For now... I needed to get home, because if Steve woke up and found me gone, that was going to raise questions I didn't want to answer. I took some more deep breaths, splashed cold water on my face, and stomped out of the bathroom, angry at the world.
I was so stressed out that before I left the store, I bought a packet of crisps. I normally didn't eat in my Audi, or allow anyone else to eat in it, but on the drive home I tore into the crisps like it was my last meal.
Steve was, mercifully, still asleep when I got in. I quickly and quietly changed back into my pyjamas and I curled up on the couch, huddled under a blanket, as if I was trying to hide. My hand instinctively slid down to my flat stomach and I once again had the mental image of my belly and breasts swelling, even more trapped in this prison of my body.
I had taken linguistics at Cambridge, and like many solicitors and barristers I had converted my diploma into a law degree. I still continued to study languages as a hobby, and spoke several languages fluently. But for all of my love of words, I had no word for what was going on with me, why I felt the way I did about my relationship to my gender, this disconnect between mind and body, this pervasive sense of being not-female since I was a child. And that inability to even define what was happening made me feel even more powerless.
I felt like I was drowning.
chapter 5 | return to A Place Called Home | return to Original Works | return to index
