I’m from a large family, all married with large families of their own.  Only I am barren.

        Family reunions are dreaded.  My nieces and nephews, noisy and active, dripping with hugs and kisses and runny noses.  My sister, waddling toward me, face swaddled in a pregnant glow.  Drinks.  Food.  Laughter.  Just when I’m beginning to enjoy myself, there’s my aunt.  She pats my flat stomach and sighs, “Nothing,” reinforcing my failure.

        “Not yet, Aunt Ginny,” I say, sounding cheery and hopeful.  “We’re still trying.”

        Oh yes, Tom and I have been trying.  From the time we were newlyweds, filled with yearning and passion, to the time when sex dwindled to moments predetermined by basal thermometer and numbers circled in red on the calendar.  Not tonight dear, I have to ovulate. 

        And now, after five years of marriage, we have no sex life at all, only artificial means of reproduction invented by modern medicine for the desperate, normal desire suppressed by a stronger need to reproduce.  A sterile room serves as our bedroom.  He in a locked cubicle, clock ticking, his performance measured by how efficiently he returns his offering to the nurse.  I on a narrow clean white paper sheet, covered with sterilized drapes, eyes closed to the glare of the overhead light.  An air of indifference penetrates the procedure.  Pillow propped beneath my hips, I lie still for an hour, go home, stay in bed.  

        No matter.  My last hope flows out of me with my monthly blood.  Tom’s key in the lock on the apartment door signals his return from work.  As soon as he sees me at the kitchen sink, he knows.

        “Maybe next time,” I say, my back to him.  The water streaming from the faucet masks my crying. 

        “Carol, there is no next time.”  He says it gently, almost apologetically, like the time he told me my parents had to put the family dog down. 

        “I'll hardly breathe.  I'll stay in bed and won't complain, not one word.  I promise.”

        “Look at me,” he says.  A look of suffering crosses his face.  “Every month we visit the doctor hoping.  Every month you stay in bed hoping.  Every month I come home to find you crushed.”

        “Don’t make it sound so automated.”

        “It is automated.”

    “If you really loved me, you would do this for me.  You'd do anything for us to have a baby.” 

    “I do love you,” he says, but his eyes are cold and resolute, his decision carved in granite.  I can’t chip away at his resolve. 

        I storm from the kitchen, slam the bedroom door behind me.  I know it’s not his fault we can’t have a baby.  The doctors don’t know why either.  All those tests, all that money, all those reports which yield nothing.  Tom functions, the doctors function, only I don't function. 

      I hear the water in the kitchen stop running and Tom's footsteps moving through the apartment.  He knocks at the closed but unlocked bedroom door.   

    "Can I come in?" 

        “I have nothing to say to you.  Go away.”

        So he does, slamming the apartment door behind him.

        I turn on the bedroom light and stare at myself in the mirror above our dresser, my thin waist and narrow, inadequate hips.  I lift off my shirt and unhook my bra, exposing the small mounds of flesh-covered tissue which pass for breasts with their almost invisible, useless nipples that even my monthly cycle fails to engorge.  What's wrong with me?  My sisters get pregnant just thinking about it.