No, I Don’t Mind Talking About It

No, I don’t mind talking about it, here, I don’t mind at all – it’s only you and me.

It’s not like you’re one of my oldest friends and you’ve invited me round for the first time in two years (even though I’m godmother to the eldest child).

It’s not like you’ve invited me round for dinner and only after a half-hour blow-by-blow account of how the latest holiday at an all-inclusive resort with seven-days-a-week childcare was alright (but not quite as good as last year’s) that you remember. And ask about it. The surgery I had. On my – condition? It’s not like you can’t remember its name and that I let the misremembering go, don’t correct you, don’t fill in the gap. It was eighteen months ago actually. We did text about it at the time. Details about it are requested, now. Details about how well I am and how I must be fine, I must be fine, even though it’s a chronic, incurable condition.

It’s not like you’re asking what they did – what exactly did they do – as the husband finishes cooking steaks (probably from Waitrose) and hands me a plate. And I find myself reaching for a knife, talking about my vaginal canal, dipping a potato into homemade mayonnaise. God knows when you found the time to make that. Or did the nanny make it? I find myself talking about the wall of my womb as we all sit down and we take another sip of wine and you say – children.

That’s it, the word stands alone and I ask – what, yours? Your children? 

I don’t quite know where this is going and then the talk does turn to their children (one my godchild, another, a few years younger) and how goddamn awful it is sometimes, goddamn hard and awful and such hard work. The last few days have been some of the worst because the nanny had to cancel.

Her husband had a heart attack – poor thing, of course she was given the day off to be in hospital with him but trying to work during school holidays with two children wanting endless attention! I had to make all of their meals and lunch was the worst – there were no left over’s from last night’s dinner as we were out at the opera and that’s when we got the call, actually, about her husband being in hospital. She’d taken my two to the hospital with her and called me when she got there. Imagine! Don’t you think she could’ve called before she left? (I remained non-committal in my response.) We would’ve been back within the hour. (I’m more committed to the nanny’s position now – perhaps she was worried he might die?) And of course I have to work in the front room so I can keep an eye on them but the noise! It’s almost impossible to take meetings.

I look at the husband pouring himself some more wine.

You pause – sorry darling you were saying – about your vaginal canal and the left ovary. 

I finish my mouthful. Her husband was topping up her glass now. When I first saw them together I knew they’d get married, even though he was still married to someone else. I swallow my last bite and take a sip of water and spread my mouth. It looks like a smile, and my body thinks it’s a smile, and it calms me down.

I find myself answering.

Um, yes, the left ovary was safe, it was saved, in the end so that’s good but there’s been ongoing treatment.

There’s an interjection – you must be fine; you must be fine now, after surgery, treatment, surely?

And I, um, yes, stumble and move my mouth again to give the impression of a smile but my teeth are together, lips barely parted and it is, in fact, a grimace. Well it’s not cured. I’m not cured. There is no cure. It’s more about ongoing management of the condition and here it is again.

Children? She’s said it again.

And then, despite the house being cold, I start to sweat. We sit at a large kitchen table in the extension, looking on to a well landscaped garden through glass doors that span the width of the terrace. The house is cold in the same way her parent’s house was also, always, cold. The ceilings were so high and dinner always eaten whilst sat on uncomfortable chairs.

We drink more wine and it is insisted that I really shouldn’t wait. You really should sort it out. I need to sort myself out and get sorted so I can have children. We always thought you’d be the first but now you’ll be last. And by last she means last out of the three of us, from school, who have stayed in touch.

Or is it four? Have we ghosted the forth for some reason? Or was it more of a cut off? Or was it the other one who cut her off, and the two of us here, are actually still in touch with her, or could be, if we wanted to be? Have they both already had children? Yes, one of them has a toddler and the other – the one that we might have ghosted, or cut off, or perhaps she moved abroad and we lost touch – I think she had a baby recently. So it’s not really much of a last place to be in, last out of three or four.

People have children all the time. I say. I don’t see how I can really be the last.

And then something happens. And we stop talking about it. But I’m annoyed and as I leave I say – you should come and visit, come and stay, we have so much room now we’ve left London; maybe not for everyone but pick your favourite child and bring that one. Joking! Ha, I’m not really – they both sound awful! 

I am joking but maybe offence was taken because there have been no visits, not with the favourite child, not even alone.  

I wish I could have left the table the moment I found myself smiling (grimacing) talking about my ovaries, my vagina, the wall of my womb, defending it’s position and empty state in front of the husband who, to be honest, is nice, but nice in that way that men who went to private schools have been trained to be. And it’s not empty. That’s the problem. I think that’s the problem; I think that’s why I’m riddled in pain, not only when I bleed but always. It’s not an emptiness but a fullness. There’s too much in there, too much tissue that shouldn’t be there. Where is it supposed to be?

I wish I had gotten up, left the table, left the house, run out to the darkness, down the street and into the wooded section of the park. I would squat down under the canopy like we did under that Yew tree in the school grounds (do any of them remember?). We would swing on that branch. We’d have to jump to reach but we would reach it and swing back and forth until one day – snap! It fell to the ground and we stepped back. We left it there. We stepped over it; lay out our coats on the dry mud on the other side of the tree still hidden under the canopy. A teacher must have heard, found us, scolded us for sitting in mud (we protested: it was dry) and said we had to stand up whilst playing outside. Don’t sit down! You sit down all day in lessons!

But I didn’t. I didn’t leave the house or even the table to hide under a tree and feel dry the earth. I stayed in the kitchen that had been cleaned earlier that day by a woman who came from the same village as the nanny – thank god she sent over a replacement to clean, at least, whilst she’s in hospital. She cleans whilst the children are at school, you know, a godsend. Usually.

I stayed in the kitchen. I complimented the bespoke painted tiles on the wall above the hob even though they looked tacky and don’t quite go with the colour of the work surfaces (no accounting for taste, my mother said, when I showed her how the newly renovated house had been featured in an architectural magazine). I stayed in the kitchen because I too have been trained to be nice. Nice and polite. I politely grimaced, politely joked about the children being a nightmare, politely drank the expensive rosé and ate the expensive steak – not from Waitrose actually, even better than Waitrose, is what the husband said – and then politely joked about how the nanny was a modern slave and joked – politely – about how generous it was to let her have a day off as her husband recovered from a heart attack. The latter joke went unnoticed.

That’s not generous, that’s basic human decency – is what the other one, the third one (not the forth, she was abroad) exclaimed when I told her about the dinner and the nanny thing (but not the ovary thing) over Facetime during an ad break as we watched Bake Off, separately, but at the same time. I didn’t tell her about the ovary thing. Or how it made me think of the Yew tree. We’ve had that conversation before – about how I should start thinking about it soon because isn’t that what I want? Isn’t it what you want ultimately, anyway? But I didn’t have the words to say both yes and no at the same time, so I said nothing.

I thought of excuses: a lot was drunk (not by me) and I wonder if that’s why the children were complained about so bitterly. The wine flowed so I wonder if the details of the evening, the conversation, were remembered. But now it’s been another two years and I wonder if all my politeness is why I haven’t been invited back for dinner. 

So no, I don’t mind talking about it, to you, between the two of us. I need to talk about my pain. I talk about it all the time. I need someone to listen. I need someone to listen and not insist on my wellness in front of a husband, or for HR records. I need to talk, and to be heard, and not feel how I felt after that evening.

I felt it again when I showed my mother the architectural magazine and she asked if I’d been over to her house again. Instead of answering I cried. I told her what happened and she said: this used to happen when you were at school. I told her what was said – it was the way she said it, in front of her fucking husband as if that’s any of his fucking business what’s happening with my vagina! Or any of hers.

And my mother said she understood, and really didn’t know why we were still friends, that people say the strangest things. She recalled how people had said some awful things to her when she redecorated the kitchen in that purple-blue colour. She was inconsolable after what Grandma said. Ask your father!

I did not know how an ugly kitchen compared to my condition but I was in pain, and tired, so I left it and I haven’t brought it up again.  

No, I don’t mind talking about it to you as long as, when you ask about my pain, it’s not in front of your husband. Or when you hear my pain, you don’t compare it to the time you were upset that your mother-in-law insulted your on colour palate choices. And when you hear about my pain and see me smiling as we talk know that it’s not a smile but a grimace.