By Joujou Safa
@joujousafa

I wake up, numb under the cloak of anesthesia and pain medication. I’ve lost my left fallopian tube and my right ovary. A sort of balance I suppose.

***

I had four sons once. They didn’t last very long inside my belly, but they were mine for a while. Daniel, Jacob, Adam, and Ali. They existed long enough to be named. Long enough for their father and me to hear their heartbeats.                                                             

***

The boys were not my first pregnancy, but they were my last. I was only 27 years old and already done with the flirtations of pregnancy and motherhood—they no longer seduced me. 

***

My body is tired of being used as a vessel to carry the narrative of motherhood—a narrative I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of.  But as an Arab woman I was brought up to believe my worth was weighted heavily in my womb. 

***

The pain crept up on me suddenly. I knew this pain—it has haunted me since I was a young girl. I refused to recognize it. I convinced myself for almost two hours that my uterus was stretching—making room for my boys to grow. God couldn’t be this cruel. Not this time.

***

Blood was seeping onto my mother’s leather car seat. I am apologizing for the mess my body is creating. I am really apologizing for the shame we both feel.

 ***

My fancy doctors have an office right across the street from The Met, my favorite museum. I used to cut class when I was in high school and spend hours wandering the halls—admiring all the beauty humans are capable of creating. When I was referred to these doctors, I took their address to be a sign.

***

Luis the doorman opens the car door and carries me into the building. His white gloves become speckled with drops of blood. He gently places me on the sterile bed of the ultrasound room.

*** 

Four men await me in the room. The four men it took to help create my boys. Three compassionate doctors and my weary-eyed partner. I just wanted to create a family for us.

*** 

Buko juice from the Philippines. Money donated to the shrine of Sitt. Zaynab, the daughter of the Prophet, revered by Muslims and Christians alike. Pray to the Virgin Mary. Acupuncture in the belly. Drink room temperature water only. The snake oil salesman is always lurking nearby.

***

They implanted all my embryos. Despite all the extra medication they gave me, I only produced nine follicles. Nine eggs were all my young body could make. Some of the women I encountered during the weekly doctor visits bragged about how they produced over 20 follicles. These women were at least 15 years my senior.

***

 How do you lose four babies, I ask? 

***

Only one heartbeat exists—mine.

Guest essay written by Joujou Safa. Joujou is an Arab-American writer and entrepreneur from Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been featured in Running Wild Press, Aramica and the Aesthetic Apostle.  She earned a M.A in Creative Writing from Coastal Carolina University, where she served as an editor for three issues of the university’s literary magazine, The Waccamaw Journal. Joujou is currently writing a memoir about her struggles with infertility as an Arab Muslim woman. You can follow her on Instagram.