ISSUE 49

At the hospital, everyone looked sick, which made sense, because everyone who came to the hospital would have to be sick, except for the expectant mothers waiting outside the ultrasound room. They weren’t sick, not in the conventional sense of the word. Dahun watched as her sister nibbled on the cashew nuts she had brought with her, waiting for the technician to call her name. She hadn’t wanted to come with her today but no one else knew how to drive and her brother-in-law practically begged her before he left for Mawkyrwat, ‘I’m going for just three days, she has an appointment, and you know she can’t miss it.’ Her sister had a high-risk pregnancy – she had waited too long to start a family, at least that’s what the aunties were saying. The doctors said it was a miracle she got pregnant at all. She had been having fertility issues for years. She spent nine out of the ten years she was married, hopping from clinic to clinic, poked and prodded – blood removed and speculums inserted, hormones injected and ingested, lingering in waiting rooms, quietly sobbing in clinic bathrooms, so when she took a random pregnancy test and it came out positive, the first thing she did was call the doctor who had said she would never get pregnant, and curse him, and then her priest, to set up a prayer meeting. Of course, she called the hospital to set up an appointment, but she reasoned that, first, she had to let God know she was grateful.

Her sister kept rubbing her swollen belly with a smile on her face. All the other mothers looked tired but equally as ecstatic as her sister. Dahun just wanted to leave. This was not where she wanted to spend her Friday. Her eyes wandered around the cramped waiting area, counting the number of people left before her sister could go in. Most of the women were younger than her sister’s thirty-six years, some looked like teenagers, and they still had those happy grins on their faces, the older women wore jainsem to respectfully cover their bellies and the younger ones were in the latest maternal fashion wear – Dahun shuddered to think how those babies were basically living dolls for these women. Then again, who was she to judge? At least these women wanted their babies.

A week ago, she was faced with a question. The question seemed simple enough. ‘Do you want to keep it?’ She couldn’t remember who asked her this question. Was it the pharmacist who handed her the kit? Was it the bathroom attendant at her office building? Was it the girl at the next computer who was just hired? Was it her boyfriend? Was it her? Whoever it was, the question was out into the world now and it demanded an answer.

Two pink lines across a porcelain sink staring at her. ‘Shit,’ she muttered. She carefully wrapped the test in wads of toilet paper before stuffing it down the trash can. She didn’t want the cleaning ladies ‘accidentally’ checking it. Back at her desk she swiftly typed out the words – pregnancy – abortion – four weeks – how – miscarriage – natural –. At first, she was looking for a way to terminate the pregnancy that didn’t require her seeing the doctor. In small towns like Shillong, you were always bound to run into a relative or step into a doctor’s office to find that the doctor is a distant relation of your aunt’s best friend. Going to Guwahati was out of the question, she could not skip work and too many questions would be asked. Too many people eager to join in on a trip to Assam. In close-knit families you couldn’t use the toilet without letting them know what you were doing in there.

She went through pages and pages of the search results, scrolling till she reached the twelfth page which directed her to the Reddit thread of a young woman torn about her unexpected pregnancy. She devoured it once, then again and again and again till she knew line by line what the post said. Maybe having the baby will be the best thing that has ever happened to me. This was not the best thing to happen to her.

She went to her sister’s house that night. She made herself and her sister some tea using special leaves ordered online that claimed to have almost zero caffeine; regular tea had only a miniscule amount of caffeine but her sister only wanted the best for her miracle baby. She didn’t tell her sister about the pregnancy test. Dahun asked her sister about her day. That always got her going. She loved to listen to the sound of her own voice and lately all her stories were about how she was blessed and how she beat the odds and how she could not have been happier.

‘Do you think you would have been happy if you didn’t get pregnant?’ Dahun looked down at her cup, the few leaves that managed to escape the strainer formed a perfect O at the bottom.

‘Maybe … but honestly, probably not. Being a mother … uh … parent was all that was left in our perfect union,’ she said turning to her husband. ‘This,’ she said holding on to her belly, ‘is what our bodies were meant to do.’ She looked at Dahun who tried to maintain a passive face, ‘You should seriously start thinking about it.’ Since getting pregnant, she always made a remark about Dahun’s age and the ticking clock only she heard. She made sure to add, ‘I’m just saying because I care.’

Lately, though, everywhere Dahun went, people seemed to care about her age. She looked young for thirty-three. Sometimes it would be the pharmacist, who himself looked over forty and was unmarried. Whenever she went in to get a refill on her birth control, he would tsk tsk behind the counter. ‘You know, medically speaking, your body won’t be able to have a smooth pregnancy the older you get. You should consider having a child before thirty-five.’ He would then hand her the pills with an expectant look. Like he was offering himself up to be the sacrificial lamb, to use his body so that she might conceive. At a relative’s house her Nah Nah, her aunt, remarked on how she was getting on in age. ‘Certain things … will get difficult,’ she said, gesturing to her belly. Under her breath Dahun would often mutter, ‘Maybe I don’t want children.’

Funerals are a community affair. Relatives, neighbours, well-wishers, aspiring MLAs, and freeloaders flocked to funerals offering help and condolences, but mostly to gossip and drink tea. Older unmarried women were good fodder for discussions around the warm coal embers of the shawla. Her mother’s uncle passed within weeks of her sister announcing her pregnancy. She knew this would mean more pressure and unkind remarks from both the men and women at the funeral house. They were gathered for the first night, preparing for the morning of the funeral when, as expected she was ushered into the backroom ban khoh kwai and joined the other ladies in peeling away the outer cover of the betelnuts. A woman she didn’t even know asked her about children, assuming Dahun must have some. This infuriated Dahun and she retorted, ‘Actually I don’t want kids,’ thinking the lady would be too embarrassed to continue. Everyone in the room gasped; they stopped what they were doing, and then maintained a few seconds of silence for her unused uterus. This was followed by a chorus of ‘But you must’ ‘Children are the greatest joy’ ‘You’ll regret it’ ‘You won’t get a husband’ ‘Who will look after you when you get older?’ She kept her head low taking in their stories of how much more fulfilling their lives were after children. To leave now would be to admit defeat to these ladies, so she kept at her knife bringing it over a section of the nut, over and over, with intense concentration.

Before she left her sister’s house her brother-in-law asked to speak to Dahun. ‘What’s up?’ she asked, knowing that whenever he needed to talk to her it was always for a favour.

‘Could you do me a favour?’

There are not many thirty-something women waiting for an abortion consult outside a gynaecologist’s office. Young women who make the decision to seek a consult come in with heads bowed and in shame, followed by their partners who are equally solemn. Dahun came alone and she was not ashamed, she didn’t tell her boyfriend about the pregnancy. He was a Catholic, he would have told her that the right thing to do was to get married straight away – he felt it was a great dishonour to his family that he had had premarital relations but a quick fix for God and his relatives was needed. Dahun hated the Catholics, she hated that she was one herself. The priest would ‘interview’ couples who wanted to be wed on the pretence of marriage counselling. He would ask the couple if they had engaged in any physical relations and would gently tell the woman that she could not wear white at her wedding if she did. Most couples lied. Dahun would not have lied, she would have told the priest that she’d had sex and that she liked it.

Dahun liked her boyfriend, she didn’t really love him. When she told people she had a boyfriend she felt forgiven. Nosy relatives and neighbours would often soothe themselves thinking that she would have children eventually because she had a man in her life. She could go days without contacting him and he had become so used to her absences that it didn’t alarm him if she didn’t answer his texts or calls. She made regular appearances at his house though so that his mother could tell her mother that things were fine.

She was amazed by how white it was inside the office. She always imagined a gynaecologist’s room to be filled with diagrams depicting the female reproductive system and models of uteruses and babies. This doctor’s chamber had the bed, the instruments, table, chairs, and that was it. The table had nothing on it except for a calendar and the prescription pad.

‘We should do an ultrasound,’ she said while scribbling something on the pad. When Dahun told the doctor what she wanted, she had expected protests. The first time she went to a doctor for a birth control prescription, he had lectured her on her body. When she was adamant, he asked her if she had a husband or partner and to bring him in for the consult, he reasoned that he had a right to know that she would be depriving him of children. Dahun calmly told the doctor she was bisexual and had different partners for each day of the week, ‘Which day should I bring him then?’ At that the doctor hurriedly wrote her a prescription and stuffed several STD pamphlets into her hand.

This doctor didn’t seem bothered by her request, only asking the necessary questions and explaining her options. ‘The ultrasound is standard, so we know what week you are on,’ she said as she took out a leaflet and handed it to her. The leaflet said, ‘Gift from God’ and described the miracle of having children. The doctor could see Dahun frowning and clarified, ‘The nuns ask us to give this to any woman coming for this consult.’ Catholic hospitals.

The date for the ultrasound happened to be the same day that her sister had her appointment. She had planned on taking her sister in the morning, dropping her home, turning the car around and coming back for her own afternoon appointment. She watched as woman after woman went into the ultrasound room and came back out smiling and excited. One of them literally had a skip in her step. When her sister was finally called in and she was left alone, she took the opportunity to book her own appointment for the afternoon. The nurse who was taking down her details gave her a suspicious look, ‘Isn’t that your sister?’

‘Yes,’ Dahun replied, trying to smile.

‘Then why didn’t you just book the appointment together? Would save you so much time. I can tell the doctor to see you next, he won’t mind.’ She started getting up from her seat. Before Dahun could stop herself, she placed both hands on the nurses’ shoulders and made her sit down. They locked eyes for a moment. ‘It’s a surprise,’ she stammered, ‘No one knows yet, I want to surprise them. It’s a surprise.’

When her sister came out, she was beaming, ‘Perfectly healthy, praise the Lord!’ she announced to the room half expecting applause.

‘You should think about it.’

‘Excuse me…’ They were almost home and Dahun wanted desperately to just be rid of her sister. She had been busy on the phone with her husband telling him how the doctor had said he had never seen such a perfectly formed baby.

‘Have a baby … like seriously consider it … you’re getting old, and this won’t get any easier.’ Her sister wasn’t even looking at her. She had turned her body slightly to the window and kept her hand at her sides. ’Don’t you want to be able to run after your kids and play with them? That’s the only thing I think about. I’ll be thirty-seven when the baby comes along. I’m going to be in my forties by the time the baby is in school. I’m going to be older than all the other mothers and I know the way they talk about me. What if my back gets worse? What if I can’t pick up my own child? I’m not as healthy as I used to be. The first few rounds of IVF exhausted me and now I’ll be spending my time taking care of an infant. Do you know how hard that is going to be at my age? Today the doctor told me that I should be having the baby via C-section. Meanwhile my mother-in-law, my kiaw, is insisting on a natural birth, that I should change doctors if they suggest a Caesarean. The doctor said it’s a huge risk at my age, giving birth naturally, it could kill me. I don’t know how I’m going to tell her; she’s going to say they want to make money off me and sometimes I want to believe her. I want to believe that my body would not betray me like that but deep down I know, I know the doctor is right. It hurts so much and it’s because I’m old. Getting pregnant was not easy, and carrying this baby is excruciating, I have not gotten a full night’s sleep since my third month, my husband is busy telling people what a miracle this baby is, and he can’t see I’m struggling, I’m really struggling, and yet this is all I have ever wanted. I just wish I wasn’t so old.’

This rare moment of vulnerability from her sister caused Dahun to stop the car. She turned to her sister and took in her fragile frame, her body was still turned to the window, her shoulders moving up and down slowly, she was scared, she reached out and squeezed her sister’s hand. They sat like that for ten minutes. Neither of them said anything.