Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash
I have never been told I would be a great mother. Some of my friends have. It annoys them, and they rant to me about it. How it’s insulting that people assume my friends would want to be mothers. How it feels like people are invalidating my friends’ lives, insinuating that they only exist to add to the population.
I think about this while I sit at the edge of our bed. You are sitting beside me, playing the newest FIFA game. You don’t know the rules to soccer. You don’t know how to play, but you play anyway. You spend all your time playing.
There is an unopened bottle of Seagram’s Escapes between my palms. I rub the glass back and forth.
There are so many things I want to say to you. I want to tell you that I’m late. I want to tell you that I have been sick the past three mornings. I want to tell you that I’ve been cramping lately in a way that is different than usual. I want to tell you that my breasts are tender and wearing a bra is uncomfortable.
But I don’t know how you will handle it. You aren’t the same man you were yesterday. And the man you were yesterday is not the same as the man you were six months ago. The man you were six months ago is not the same man you were a year and a half ago. You are not the same man I met.
“It’s unlike you to not have already drank that entire bottle and whatever else is in the fridge,” you say, but you don’t look away from the screen.
I didn’t know that you had noticed my presence. I don’t feel like I have a presence anymore. Not since you took all my broken pieces and assembled a ghost of the person I want to be. The person who I should be.
“I guess I don’t feel like drinking,” I say, but it’s not really true. I do feel like drinking, but I know that I can’t. If this is to be my future, I should probably get used to the life of sobriety. I don’t say this. I never say what I think.
I never want to upset you. Except that’s not entirely true, either. Sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I think that I like when you yell at me. When your fingers stretch across my neck. When your knuckles brush my cheeks. I think I deserve it. I deserve everything I get.
“Since when do you not feel like drinking?” you ask. There’s a furrow in your brow. The left one.
I want to reach out and smooth the tension from your face, but I don’t.
You used to tell me that you couldn’t wait for us to have a child. You never told me that I would make a great mother, but you told me that you would make a great father.
This was before.
This was before I made you mad. This was before I found out how many lies you had told me. This was before I knew what you did. What you spent your time doing. Who you spent your time with.
This was before you told me why you sought comfort in other women’s arms. Other more attractive, satisfying women.
I don’t say any of this. I never say what I think.
You pause your game. Something you haven’t done for me in months. “What’s going on? I never finish my drink before you.”
“Stomach is upset,” I say. “It’ll settle down soon.”
“Right. It’s probably the sandwiches we ate for lunch,” you say. You un-pause your game.
I didn’t have a sandwich for lunch. I had ramen. I made your sandwich and then made ramen for myself because I didn’t want to use the rest of the bread on a sandwich for me. You hate it when I use the rest of the bread. You hate it when I use the rest of the bread, even though you rarely eat it. You just like knowing that the bread is there as an option.
I often wonder if I have become bread in our relationship.
On the screen, your team has lost again. I think you would enjoy the game more if you knew anything about soccer, but I don’t tell you this. I played soccer in junior high, and I would like to tell you this, but I think it would just make you mad.
“I don’t think it’s the sandwiches,” I say. I fiddle with the bottle cap, but don’t twist it off. It would be too tempting to drink if I opened the bottle.
You start another game. “What would it be, then?” you ask. Before the match starts, you exit back to the main menu. Even though you have yet to win, you say, “I feel like this game is too easy. I’m going to make it harder.”
I should tell you. I should.
I put the bottle of Seagram’s on the bedside table behind me. There is a cramping in my lower stomach. I can feel my pulse in my wrists. I don’t think this is normal.
“I think I may be pregnant,” I say. It feels weird saying it out loud. My fingertips tingle and the pulse in my wrist quickens.
I wait for you to pause your video game, but you don’t. You don’t glance in my direction. There is something in your upper lip. A curl maybe. For a moment, I think it may be a smile.
You’re going to be a father. I’m going to be a mother. I could be a great mother even though no one has ever told me that.
But it’s not a smile.
“Oh,” you say. You shrug, but only your right shoulder moves. “Okay. I’ll look up clinics in a bit. I can’t pause the game.”
You can pause the game. You’ve paused it before when someone other than me calls.
“Clinics?”
“Yeah,” you say. “So you can take care of your problem.”
My problem.
It’s always my problem.
“I’m sure they’ll be able to squeeze you in sometime this week or next,” you say. “Hey, can you make me another drink?”
That’s how we leave it. I go to the kitchen to make you another drink, and I cry in front of the fridge.
I cry because I am bread. I am present as an option, but you would never pick me.
And I would make a terrible mother.
Katharine Bost (she/her) holds an MFA in creative writing from Miami University, and her work has appeared in Last Resort Literary Review, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Tangled Locks Journal, and Mikrokosmos, among others.