Rain

Walkers pass me by, hurrying along, escaping the rain. Drivers sit patiently behind their wheels waiting for the traffic to move, I see them, the walkers, the drivers, the falling rain, but my heart and thoughts are somewhere I do not recognize, an empty place, as empty as my womb will always be, as barren, like a desert, incapable of blooming, of filling the world with the scent of a new life, a new beginning.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Dale, you suffer from a congenital abnormality, a septate uterus, that makes you incapable of conceiving….”

I did not hear the rest of what the doctor had to say, he might have told me that I always have the option of adopting, he might have given me a compassionate smile to indicate how deeply he understood my pain, I might have smiled back, I might have pretended I was still breathing, I might have shook hands with him and thanked him, I might have fooled him, his science and education, and made him believe I was still alive.

I feel my hair clinging to my face, I feel the eyes of some walkers by on me. The umbrella I carry is left unopen, as the womb I carry shall be left untouched, forever untouched by love and promise.

I have no clue where I’m heading; I have no clue of how to soothe the death of dreams or how to calm the throb of pain.

I drag my feet, my dead hopes, my broken past, my broken family. The father who drowned his disappointments in alcohol, the mother who drowned her pain in silence, the brother who found it all too much and decided to end his life, and I dreamed, all my life I dreamed that I will make it all up by building my own happy family, that I will build a home that speaks of love, that smells of content, a home unblemished by loneliness, by the fear of two young children, the shattered love of two parents. They loved us, they never mistreated us, but they failed, they failed, one drowned his failure in alcohol and the other in silence, in an inability to reach us, to reach out for us, and I, I dreamed…

The streets are washed by rain, I might have been walking for minutes, for hours, time has lost its meaning, time is yesterday, now, and tomorrow. Yesterday is a land I wish to escape, now is a moment too long to endure, and tomorrow was meant to be a baby, a child growing, a teenager driving me crazy, an adult who would make me proud, time is of no use without its vow of another day, a better day, an unimpaired day.

I raise my head and look around, I find myself standing before Rudy’s office. What would his colleagues think if they find me standing before them drenched in rain and tears? What am I to tell him? How am I to bear seeing the smile in his eyes fade?

My tender Rudy will hold me, , He will tell me how much he loves me, with or without children, he will hide the bit of him that shall die when I tell him what the doctor said, he is too gentle to hurt, he is all I have wished for, too good, too good for me and my barren womb.

I look up and decide against going in…

He deserves much better…Rudy and his loving, intact family which took me in, engulfed me, made me believe that life gives us second chances. Rudy, the only child, whose father dreamed of grandchildren to carry on his name,Rudy, whose mother dreamed of grandchildren to bestow the sea of love she holds within. I failed them, it must be something that runs in the blood…

My hand pushes a door, I go into a dimly lit pub and sit on the bar, I take off my coat and ignore the waiter’s annoyed look, I am soaking the chair and the floor, I order a whiskey, for the first time in my life, I order a drink, I never drank before, I promised myself never to each time I saw my father drunk and ripped of his pride.

Why a whiskey? I don’t know, the drink is served fast, there are barely any customers. I look at the cup and wonder if that is how my dad felt each time he drank, this suffocating feeling of being trapped in a bottle, incapable of changing reality no matter what he does, no matter how loud he screams. I miss him, I never missed him that much before, I miss his sad smile, sad eyes, his tender, tired hands that held me at rainy nights and told me tales of enchanted worlds. He dreamt of becoming a writer but never did, he worked as a construction worker and came back every evening dragging his exhausted body and dead dreams…I loved him, I cried him when he died, how I cried him…

I raise the cup to my lips and hear him whisper to me, “never let go of your dreams, never…” Those were his words to me three days before he died, he whispered them as he lied on his dying bed, his liver failed him, as his life did, as he did his dreams.

He wouldn’t want me to be here, this is the last place he would want me to be. If I ever loved him truly I would leave. I put the cup down, search my bag for money, pay the waiter and leave the place. Rain has stopped…and life? Has life stopped too?

I walk down the pavement and stop a taxi, it moves along the empty streets of the city towards my past. The drive is not so long, the past is a silent graveyard which I enter, my mom, my dad, my brother. I kneel down before their graves and caress them, one by one. My loved ones…gone… somewhere beyond the grasp of time and its disillusions. I lie my head upon my mother’s grave and cry, I cry them, I cry me, I cry the babies I will never have, the mom I will never be, I cry the dream and its end, I cry the God who shattered my skies. I make believe the three of them are holding me, I make believe the three of them are soothing me, I make believe they have never left me, I make believe and cry the lie of make believe…

I kiss the three graves another goodbye, and promise them we’ll meet again, I get up, it’s nearly dusk, Rudy must be home by now…

I take a taxi, it moves back along the city towards my present. I stand before our home, I look at it, it’s a big one, we wanted a big family…

I insert the keys in the door lock and before I turn it, Rudy opens it…He’s worried, I can see it on his face.

“Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all day. I was worried sick.” He says. I wonder how I look, puffy eyes, tired, mad…

“What’s wrong Lea? He asks again…

I do not answer, I pass him, he grabs my arm, “Lea, what did the doctor say? Are you ill?”

I turn to face him, his beloved, handsome face looks haggard, scared…scared of what he knows I will tell him…

I raise my hand and caress his face, I look into his eyes for so long, if only I he could hide there, in their green, away, so far away from this never ending ocean of loss…

“Lea?....”

“I’ll never be a mom Rudy, I’m barren, a birth defect…there’s no use Rudy…the doctor says it’s time we stopped trying…” So matter of fact, so simple, no big words, no hysterics.

He stands there, incapable of hiding his pain, of moving, of holding me…

“I want a divorce Rudy….” I tell him, using all the strength I have left…

He is silent, he sits down on the couch and looks at me, his look reminds me of the look in my dad’s eye…defeated, tired…

“We’ll find a way Lea…”

“I want a divorce Rudy…I am going to pack whatever I need for the night, I’m going to stay in a hotel…”

He gets up, moves towards me, shakes me, “You will not get a divorce, we’ll get through this…I will not let you run away like that, we’ll face this together… ” There are tears in his eyes…

My eyes are dry, deserts are dry too, forever dry… I let go, I head towards our room, he follows me, I get out a bag, he tries to stop me, He tells me he loves me, he tells me we’ll adopt…I pack, and he unpacks, I give up and just grab my handbag, I head towards the door, he is still after me…

“I’m sorry Rudy, I’m so, so sorry….”

I run out of the big house and its empty rooms. If I stay with him they will always be empty. He wants his own children, I know it, he’ll only adopt for my sake. I’ll never hurt him this way, I’ll never deprive him of joy, I love him, beyond words. I hear him running after me, I stop, I turn to him. It’s raining again, we are both drenched…

“Don’t leave me Lea, please,” He implores, “sleep at a hotel tonight, I’ll drop you, but tomorrow we will talk it over.”

I let him drop me at a hotel. He thinks I will change my mind, but I will not. He’ll learn to hate me for giving up on him, he’s still young, he’ll love again, he’ll move on, and one day, one day when the wounds heal, I’ll be a distant past, a scar, a reminder of what might have been.

If I stay, if I stay I’ll also be a reminder of what might have been, of his own seed breeding life, nurturing it, embracing it, loving it, filling that big house and its rooms with it…If I stay I might end up like my mom, drowning my pain in silence, unable to reach him or reach out for him….

Perhaps I’m weak, perhaps I’m not a fighter, perhaps…at the moment, I am beyond caring…at the moment, nothing matters…

The hotel room is silent, formal, distant…I stand before a mirror, I look at me, the face that looks back is a young one, a pretty one, a beautiful face that saved me from a life of labor. I was just a house maid cleaning houses. My big dreams had to shrink before reality, before a dying mother who, too, was a maid. After my father and brother died, she had to work to support herself and me. She was willing to work at anything to make all my dreams come true. I dreamt of becoming a doctor, I dreamt of saving lives, of giving the sick ones hope, of making their day a better one, I dreamt…The dream ended when my mother’s heart became too weak to allow her to carry on with hard work.

I replaced her; she worked for Rudy’s family, they needed a replacement. I quit my first year at college and replaced her. She objected, she begged me not to, she told me she’ll find a less laborious job, I did not listen, she needed rest, she needed care, my dreams could wait, but her life could not. Something within me knew I was losing her, the pale face, the fading eyes, the deep lines on her face, I knew I was losing her, and I wanted to cling to her, to the only family I had left in this world.

I went to Rudy’s home, and I started my work as a maid. He was not there when I first arrived; he was away at college.

I met him when he came to spend Christmas vacation at his parent’s place. I remember the first time I saw him. It was morning time and I was in the kitchen when he came in for his coffee, tall, broad shouldered, handsome. He had the greenest eyes, full of life and smiles. He smelled of spring, the bloom and breeze of spring.

I don’t know if I fell in love for the first time in my life there and then, but I know that my heart skipped a beat each time he came up with an excuse to be near me, I know I that I missed him when he left, and felt happy when his visits became more frequent, I know I was over the clouds when he asked me out, I know I didn’t care for the consequences, I longed to touch happiness, and that beautiful man made me touch it. The day he asked me to marry him, I rushed to my mom, held her, kissed her, promised her she will never have to worry anymore, I promised her I will take care of her, always…

I remember her touching my face, looking at me with pride and telling me that Rudy is the best there could be and that I deserve the best. I remember her worrying that Rudy’s parents would object.

Rudy fought for me, his parents learned to accept me, and then learned to love me.

My mother did not attend my wedding…perhaps she only stayed to make sure I would be fine… she died quietly, silently, as she lived…

It is like our heart is this big puzzle, divided among those we love, each time we lose a loved one, a piece of the puzzle gets lost forever, we start again, we move on again, but that heart of ours is never whole again…

I move away from the mirror, the hollow eyes it reflects scare me… the mobile flashes, Rudy…I wait for the number to disappear and then I text him telling him I am fine and will call him when I feel better…

We’ve been trying to have a child for a long time now, but no more…

I wonder how he feels, whether it hurts as much when he is not the barren one, I wonder what I’m doing here, in this room, hiding like a bleeding, dying animal, cowered in the corner, ready to bite anyone who comes near, even to tend its wounds. I wonder whether I’m protecting him or punishing him.

I am taking all the decisions, I am deciding what is better for him, I am not even there to tell him I’m sorry for what I cannot give…

Am I protecting myself, am I scared that if I decide to stay, there would come a day when he’d decide to leave?

Am I selfish? Am I incapable of feeling any pain other than mine? Am I not entitled to feel this at the moment?

What is right and what is wrong? I have no clue…

Where do we go when we have no clue? What do we do? Just go with flow? What if the flow is a river of pain?

Perhaps I have to follow this flow; perhaps the raging river will lead me to a tranquil place, filled with green grass and sunshine.

The whirlwinds of my mind go round and round, leading me nowhere…the distant, cold room feels like a cage…

I pick up my bag, open the door, walk out of the room, of the hotel…I walk, I don’t know how long I walk, all I know is that I keep on taking deep breaths, I breathe the fresh night air, the freedom of the open streets and when I get tired, I stop a taxi.

I stop outside the big home; he is in there, my thread of light.

I open the door, he runs towards me, his eyes a dance of sorrow and joy. I hold him, forever I hold him…Together… we might cross the river….