The same question I've heard one million times. It makes my stomach tie in knots. Screams ache to fly forth from my mouth as my lips tightly shut them in. This feral response rises in me more often than not, and I seethe at my friends, family, and strangers for trying to turn me into a baby making machine. Because I am not a machine, I am a woman; at least I think I am.
A mom coos at me, eyes softening as she hands her two year old a triangle cracker. She is quiet and gentle with her pink cheeked son.
I watch him as he bounces his ball much too high and it rolls down the rocky driveway into the street. There it sits, but he dares not go. Suddenly my arms curve outward and around the small boy. I hold him, lift him, embrace him. It is as if he is a small soul, a being in need of guidance and love, but all I do is find the ball and bring him back from the world of pointless tears. He coos, and so does his mother, and I place his little sneakers on the cement next to her. He sits on her lap and no one sits on mine.
When am I gonna have children?
I once sat on my mothers lap, her arms creating bars blocking out the scary things beyond. And then more and more gaps, fewer and fewer bars, and the dangerous world started closing in around me.
A child, a woman, what is my role?
A bill to pay or a nap to take. An attractive man or a game to play. A broken down car, a lost job, a new home, a new body, and suddenly I realize what my role is, but it's too late.
I was once a child but now I am a woman.
"When are you gonna have a baby?"
I'm not done living yet. Freud might say I have a wandering uterus, a baby would do me good. But my uterus is not lost. It is afraid. Or maybe I'm afraid.
"Don't you want to have a baby?"
I can't tell if society wants me to be a mother, a caretaker, a woman. Or maybe it wants me not to.
Don't be a machine. What about your career? What about you?
My lips force together the pieces of my thoughts, and finally I reply, "Maybe in ten years."
Silence.
But it's a lie because I want children. I write for mothers and paint with kids. I teach for heavens sake. But the lie makes me comfortable. It gives me time. It makes them stop asking the question over and over. And in the silence, maybe I can find my own answer.
- Chiki -
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Chiki Davis is an artist and a writer, native to the beautiful land
of Colorado. For more personal stories and craft ideas, check out rendezvousartistry.com
