You were quite aware that Baron and I were trying to have a child. Last September was our eighth wedding anniversary and for the past three years we’ve gone to extreme lengths to try to conceive. I was obsessively tracking my fertility windows. I turned down Baron whenever he tried to initiate sex outside of these allocated days, paranoid that his sperm would meet my unfertilized eggs. What if those itty-bitty sperms ended up being candidates for our baby-to-be? I was like a foreman arranging shifts for my workers and organized our sex lives with utter precision.
According to an article in a pregnant mother’s forum I visited at least thrice daily (named Preprom, as in, Pregnancy Program), overly frequent intercourse wasn’t recommended. Sperm needed at least three days to mature for fertilization, and they would never get to that point if they were being ejaculated every day. Because women were fertile between the 11th and the 21st day in their menstrual cycle, Baron was trying to inseminate me throughout this entire period, with a break every three days. We kept to our schedule with the discipline of soldiers. Baron even started to respond with an “Aye, aye, Captain!” every time I mentioned that according to our calendar, it was intercourse day.
Despite the laughs we had, I was beginning to sense a wave of frustration creeping in.
I didn’t know whether Baron was also going on discussion forums for fathers, whether in those forums they also had their own Preprom threads. What I did know was that sex between us had become lacklustre. It was difficult to fantasize about the things that truly turned us on when we were so focused on conjuring mental images of a baby. I no longer enjoyed making out with my husband or fooling around with his penis that I nicknamed Comrade (because it was slightly curved to the left), nor did I have time to admire Baron’s smile, which wrinkled the corners of his eyes. I was too occupied with calculating my fertility windows through my mobile app, making sure that we were having sex at exactly the right time. Every time Baron finished inside me, I quickly pushed both feet up against the wall to maximize the chances of his sperm entering my uterus.
Couples who had been married for over a year and were still childless would be the talking point of every family function.
“How come it’s taking so long? Are you two just not good at this?”
“You could follow a doctor’s program, or would you rather just go straight for a test-tube baby?”
“Have you had a check-up? It might just be Baron who has problems.”
“You two don’t give enough to charity. You must know that God will repay you.”
“Just start by adopting one child to reel more in.”
“How could you lose to Dika and Megan? They’ve already got two kids.”
“Try reading this Quranic verse, fifteen times before bed and when you wake up.”
“And this verse that’s been written on paper. Dip the paper in water and then drink the rest.”
“Drink honey, too.”
“You shouldn’t be working in the meantime, you’re probably overtired.” That last one was definitely for me.
Despite spending the first five years being assaulted by the judgement of society, we were still able to laugh it off. Children were never our primary subject of discussion. Baron and I had married too young (at least according to our own standards), so naturally we wanted to enjoy spending time together alone. My job at a multinational corporation took me to exciting places; meanwhile, Baron worked as a senior procurement manager at a battery company.
Our days were as perfect as what you would expect to see in a family drama. We had a modest house with a beautiful kitchen and terrace. A small garden in the backyard where we would chat in the afternoons every weekend. Every morning I would make breakfast, we’d eat together then head off to work at exactly seven. Our offices were even close by. Baron would drop me off first and at the end of the day I would take a taxi to pick him up on my way home. In the evenings it would be his turn to do the cooking while I watched my favourite series or reality show on the television. After dinner, we’d drink wine or coffee while catching up—and if the mood struck, we’d make love. Once a month we’d stroll down the aisles of the supermarket and debate which brand of cereal was crunchier, which sausage tasted more like actual meat, or which body soap smelled the best.
Every time we did discuss children, the conversation was more about exploring our fantasies than making concrete plans, almost like a bucket list filled with things we said we’d do but didn’t know when. We often fired off sentences such as:
“We need to foster a love for exercise in our child from a young age. Or else they’ll end up like you, you struggle even going for a morning run.”
“If we have a daughter, she should love books but also be good at make-up. Why choose just one?”
“If we have a son, he has to be skilled with his hands, but also good at cooking and cleaning.”
Despite our picture-perfect fantasies, every time one of our friends cancelled plans or a group holiday because their kid was sick, in a tantrum, needed more help with school or suddenly threw up in the car, Baron and I would exchange a knowing glance. We were thinking the exact same thing: what a peaceful life we had in comparison. Our time was fully our own, without tiny kings who dictated when we went to sleep, or when we were able to go to the café or watch a concert. How luxurious was it to have breakfast in peace and drink wine until we were fully gone on the garden bench every night. We also spent our money carelessly, buying unimportant things that made us happy, like Baron’s model car and shoe collections, or my purse collection. In our financial planning sessions, we never had to put money aside for our children’s education.
At work I once had an international client who handled environmental matters. The research I conducted led to my mind being flooded with thoughts of the waste apocalypse, the water crisis, nuclear extinction threats and other frightening things that convinced me that the world was going to end soon. One scientist studied the water tanks in a waste disposal facility in London and found high concentrations of amphetamines, methamphetamines, cocaine and ecstasy in the River Thames. Urine and faeces did not lie. The sewers were the city’s diary, plainly exposing the fact that modern humans lapped up medication like candy. The world was headed towards its own demise, and it was harder for people to find happiness.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt reluctant to bring another innocent soul onto the face of this Earth. I wasn’t even sure if I could be a good mother. You know that I have the tendency to get tangled up in my own thoughts. I’m impatient. I have a talent to go looking for problems whenever life feels too calm. Think of the poor child who would have to call me their mother. If they weren’t satisfied with my performance, they wouldn’t even be able to trade me in for a better mother, nor would they be able to ask me to resign from my role.
The years passed by and my calendar started filling up with invitations to baby showers and birthday parties. Eventually my shopping cart was no longer filled with make-up pouches or designer bags, but with colourful pyjamas for babies—either pink with unicorns, or blue with the logo of a football team—BPA-free bright cutlery sets, or strollers that I had carefully selected after comparing reviews on five different websites. Every time I came home from a baby shower, I would immediately go on Facebook and tap the “like” button on every single photo on my feed. I couldn’t look away from the babies’ expressions. I’d zoom in on those tiny fingers, tightly curled in a little fist, with their eyes closed. I remembered how nice their heads smelled as my heart thumped with longing beats.
In one of the photos, I was carrying a baby who was cradled comfortably inside a soft blanket, not unlike a giant burrito. In my head, the burrito was filled with my baby: a little girl named Zooey or Chloe, fragrant with the scent of telon oil and sweet vanilla.
Zooey/Chloe would then grow up to be an adorable ponytailed girl. She would be sweet, yet fierce towards boys. She would go to a primary school next door. She would go swimming and dancing on the weekends. In middle school, Zooey/Chloe would experience her first heartbreak and we’d talk about it all night over a tub of chocolate ice cream—the best remedy for love stories with unhappy endings. She would then study abroad for university on a scholarship and we’d talk every three days over video calls. Zooey/Chloe would tell us about her studies, her apartment, her friends, lecturers and, of course, her boyfriend—the handsome architecture student, who still isn’t as handsome as her dad (and at this, Baron would smile with pride). Eventually, Zooey/Chloe would go on to get married, have kids, and I’d become a grandmother. I gazed at those photos for so long, smiling like a teenager in love.
In other photos, I posed in the middle of a baby shower with work friends. Even though we were all circling the baby mama, wearing near-identical smiles, I stood out like a sore thumb as the slimmest woman with the smoothest skin. I had no dark circles underneath my eyes, or extra fat in my waist. I was the most stylish one in the group with my Birkin bag, among the bags of nappies or baby carriers—like an ornament left out of place.
Even our house started feeling quieter. Baron and I started spending more and more of our free time apart because it felt like there was nothing left for us to talk about. I was married to the television and Baron played his football games on his computer. Sometimes we forced ourselves to watch a movie together, but after agonizing over choosing a title we both liked (Baron was a fan of horror films, whereas I could never understand the logic in paying money to be frightened), my husband would just end up falling asleep in the middle of the movie. I turned off the television and went back to our room, while Baron slept on the sofa until the morning.
*
It was a year later that I realized that willpower itself wouldn’t be enough to manifest a child. From the hundreds of thousands of sperm that my husband released each time he ejaculated, not a single one successfully stuck to my eggs. I didn’t know who was at fault. Were my eggs playing too hard to get, or was Baron’s sperm too lazy to swim?
Baron and I had swallowed every type of pill, vitamin, went under every needle, ate dates, drank raw eggs mixed with Arabic black cumin (a cure for all ails—except death), experimented with various sex positions, splashed our genitals with cold water, warm water, cold water mixed with vinegar, and floral water that the prayer paper had been dipped into, the one our relatives kept talking about. We followed every single piece of advice that we found on internet forums, including advice from older folks. It got to a point where I even decided to stop working.
I became short-tempered and the atmosphere at home grew tense. I protested Baron’s smoking, his late nights, his reluctance to eat vegetables, his lack of exercise, his entire lifestyle that I had already known about and accepted since we started dating. In an effort to diffuse tensions, Baron did everything I asked him to. He tried to go to bed by eleven at the latest each night, woke up at six in the morning and put on his shoes to run laps around the neighbourhood with me. He even stopped smoking (at least at home). He would also eat one or two pieces of the fruits I had sliced and stored in Tupperware boxes in the fridge. But this change would only last for about two weeks. After my irritable mood subsided, Baron would simply return to old habits.
I gave up trying to control Baron and concentrated on taking care of my own body. At 33 years old, I was slightly too old to become a mother by Southeast-Asian standards. Biologically, though, it wasn’t too late. My eggs were still healthy, and my womb was still strong. According to the OB-GYN I hadn’t yet entered advanced maternal age, which included women who conceived of their first child at age 40 and upwards. They were more likely to give birth to babies with mental or physical disorders.
If I meet God in the afterlife, I would ask Him why He made women’s bodies the same way canned food was produced. I imagined that, underneath my belly button or my ass, you’d find printed in writing: Best Before May 2026.
In one of the pregnant women’s forums I often visited, there was a woman who had been married for over a decade and desperately wanted a child. One time, she decided to try a diet that consisted of specific food combinations. The point was to control the combination of food groups for lunch and dinner: you could have carbs with vegetables, or proteins with vegetables (only fruits were allowed for breakfast).
Every morning I blended all sorts of fruits to make the kind of luck that woman did. Every lunch and dinner I organized my meals to fit the rules of the diet perfectly. I counted every calorie with precision. I drank my folic acid vitamins daily and never missed a dose. Sometimes I would add some vitamin E and iron to supplement it. I imagined my body as a house that was being cleansed, slowly preparing to be occupied. Baron didn’t comment on this diet, but he responded with a grimace whenever I offered to make him a packed lunch.
I patiently marked every fertility window that had passed. I also marked every upcoming fertility window to come. I wrote down how long my monthly cycles were, and how long the variations were from month to month. My menstrual cycle turned out to be less regular than I had thought. Sometimes it operated on a 29-day cycle, sometimes it was more than 30, and sometimes no less than 25 days. I invested in a fertility detection device that worked by testing my saliva. It was lipstick-shaped, but rounded at the tip, like the head of a single binocular lens. The way it worked was that you had to apply the tip onto your inner cheek, wait a couple of moments, and then see the pattern that formed. If the pattern looked complex and tight, then it meant I was fertile. If it formed a loose shape, then the opposite was true.
Sometimes I even struggled to decipher what I was looking at: was the pattern tight or loose? Complex or simple? I tried to re-draw the patterns to try and analyze them better, but my efforts were in vain because every pattern looked different.
In the middle of the second year of my fertility program, my period came late by a week. Baron and I were euphoric. Baron bought five types of pregnancy tests, from digital ones that cost 120,000 rupiahs to one that was shaped as a single strip, packaged in a cardboard box decorated with red roses (that one cost about 1,500 rupiahs). I decided to try them all out, starting with the cheapest one. If it came up negative, I could say that the accuracy was poor and try out the next, more expensive, test.
That morning I took out the test pack from its thin box, removed my underwear and sat on the toilet seat, collecting my pee inside an old shot glass with a chipped edge. Then, still while seated on the toilet and my pants pushed all the way down to my ankles, I carefully dipped the small strip of paper into the glass. I waited five seconds. Then ten seconds. Then fifteen seconds. I couldn’t bear to look. I took a deep breath, and . . .
. . . one red line. I held back tears.
After five consecutive days, I had used up every single one of the tests Baron bought. In that time, my period still hadn’t come. On the fifth morning, when the digital test (my final line of defence) informed me that I wasn’t pregnant, I threw the test at Baron while he was sleeping. He didn’t stir. And then I started throwing the other four test packs at him, and then pieces of dirty laundry, deodorant, eucalyptus oil, powder, a pail and anything else in my reach. Baron jolted awake and immediately rushed to hold me tight. I sobbed uncontrollably in his arms. At noon, my period came. My OB-GYN said that it was my own stress that caused my period to be delayed. It’s all just hormonal, Sir. Who knew why he was addressing Baron and not me. Please take care of your wife so she doesn’t feel too stressed.
That incident led to Baron becoming more attentive towards me. Rita, his older sister, called often and would drop by various food items that were good for inducing pregnancy: stir-fried bean sprouts, bananas, eggs, almonds and lime juice. Baron bought me all sorts of imported vitamins, with a price tag that made me feel faint. The excess of attention I received annoyed me. I felt like a failure who was being showered in gifts. Failures should be piled on with insults and then whipped to force them to get back up.
“Amara,” Baron said carefully. I was reading in the garden, waiting for the sun to set. Lately, Baron had been spending time in his office until the early hours of the morning, including on weekends. Normally, I would try to coax him out, asking him to spare more time for me, but recently it had been as if I was emotionally constipated. Whenever Baron tried to kiss my forehead, I would turn my head. He looked hurt, and for a moment I felt an odd sense of satisfaction.
Baron shrugged and pulled a chair in to sit next to me. “I want to say something—may I?”
I bookmarked the page I was reading. “What is it, Ron?”
Baron rubbed his nose like someone who had a sneeze foiled. “I think it’s time we took an official fertility test.”
I looked at my husband and his face immediately reddened.
“I know that from the start, we’ve been avoiding this test because we didn’t want to be worried by any uncomfortable results,” Baron said hurriedly. “But we’re coming up to two years now, Mar. We’ve been trying for long enough.”
I was silent.
“Whatever the result is, I’ll accept it. I hope you do too,” Baron touched my head in a quick brush.
“Even if I’m infertile?” I asked.
“Even if I’m interfile?” Baron echoed.
I smiled. Baron grinned and we hugged.
Two weeks later, the test results arrived. We were both perfectly healthy. Baron’s sperm weren’t too lazy to swim and my eggs weren’t playing hard to get—they just hadn’t met yet.
The news gave Baron a new kick of enthusiasm, but it actually made me feel more upset. I could’ve accepted the fact that there was something wrong with both of us, or even just one of us. That would explain our constant failures over the past two years. I never once consumed any contraceptive pills or anything that would’ve messed with my hormones. The fact that we were both healthy, yet I still couldn’t get pregnant, made me feel like I had rotten luck. Lazy sperm or unripe eggs could be cured, but there was no cure for bad luck. Sex became even more stale. Baron would try to perform a few new tricks (most likely picked up from porn), but he stopped when he realized that I wasn’t responding with equal enthusiasm. I would lie there with my legs spread, letting him enter me without passion or resistance. When Baron’s sperm spilled out, I no longer propped my feet up against the wall. I simply stopped moving while he was still panting, dripping in sweat and a softening penis. Slowly, the frequency of sex decreased until we eventually just stopped.
My sex drive plummeted. I still enjoyed watching the handsome faces of my favourite actors on screen, but they were never guest stars in my sexual fantasies anymore. One time, when Baron wasn’t home yet, I came across a video of a man masturbating. He had a huge dick and he looked incredibly sexy, with his athletic build and his short shorts that were rolled down to his thighs. I tried to masturbate with the help of this video, but I gave up after only a minute. The only thing that came to my mind was whether the sperm that came out of that penis would be able to conceive a child.
I don’t know what Baron did to deal with the accidental sex embargo placed between us, but I did snoop around in his unlocked phone to find porn one time. Another time, Baron had even forgotten to flush his sperm that was still floating around in the toilet. It could have been an accident. Maybe Baron wanted to blame me for not fulfilling his needs. Maybe Baron wanted to show that he still had a strong sex drive, that he didn’t see naked women and started thinking about whether they could get pregnant or not. Whereas for me—with all the penises in this world, as long or as hard as they may be, it didn’t mean a thing if they couldn’t get someone pregnant.
But Baron and I still talked. We talked about his job, my job, Rita and our friends. Our relationship was that of two people who just happened to live under the same roof. Baron started spending more evenings in his office room and I spent my nights alone in the bedroom. We no longer spoke about pregnancy and our desires to have a child. I didn’t know how Baron felt. All I knew was that our families and acquaintances, whether in real life or online, were still encouraging me (but not Baron) about our childless situation. If there was a recipe for a juice, a medicine, a vitamin or whatever else was meant to induce pregnancy, they would share this with me. If they wanted to make small talk after ages of not seeing each other, they would ask:
“Are you pregnant yet, Amara?” while holding my stomach.
But nobody held Baron’s penis while asking, “Has Baron made his wife pregnant yet?”
This was probably the reason why my journey towards pregnancy was one of the loneliest times in my life. I felt like I was alone in chasing some elusive thing. Even then, I still loved Baron. When I was feeling sentimental and started imagining our picture-perfect future, I always thought of him. I imagined Baron’s ecstatic expression when one day I would hand him a test pack with two lines. I could see our faces beaming with joy as people congratulated us. I imagined inviting my friends to the baby shower, the aqiqah and subsequent birthdays. I imagined holding Baron’s hand and walking around our neighbourhood complex with a ballooned stomach. Everyone who saw me would smile and think: Look, that woman is going to be a mother. Look at how happy she is.
(Is that why I wanted to have a child? So I could say that I’ve fulfilled my primary role as a woman? So that I could complete my body’s duties, as women are destined to do in the circle of life? So that I could go to family gatherings or reunions without feeling constantly hurt from being asked, again and again, when are you going to have kids, don’t you want to be parents?)
As our third year approached, I got better at accepting my fate. Perhaps being a mother just wasn’t for me. Maybe God knew I would be a terrible mother and He pitied my child so much that He found them a different womb, the womb of a woman who deserved it more. When I was younger, one of our neighbours didn’t have kids. They were this elderly couple with twelve cats at home. Mbah Raji, the grandfather, was a retired veteran and Uti Ani, the grandmother, used to be a kindergarten teacher. Mbah Raji was tall but was always hunched over. When he watched TV, the front part of his sarong would always dangle forwards and my friends and I took turns sitting on it, as if it was a hammock. That always made the old man cackle with laughter. And then Uti Ani would come in bringing a tray of ice cream and squishy milk candy. It made our teeth tickle with a sticky sensation.
Mbah Raji and Uti Ani’s house was tiny and smelled like medicated oil and stale biscuits. I look back on it with a sense of fond nostalgia now. I stopped going to their house only after Toni, my neighbour who got held back at school for two years, poked at the stomach of one of their cats that had just given birth. The cat went berserk and started scratching at whatever was in its vicinity—me. Meanwhile, the perpetrator had dived headlong out of the scene. I touched the cuts that the mother cat left, a long gash across the inside of my left arm. Maybe Baron and I could be like Mbah Raji and Uti Ani one day. We’d be grandparents to a whole village of children. I would spend my days baking cakes and Baron would wear sarongs all day long.
“Ron, look at this,” I turned my laptop screen towards Baron. “Louis Signore, a 107-year-old grandmother in New York. She’s one of the oldest people in the world.”
“The recipe to her long life is,” Baron read out, “. . . staying away from men and marriage.”
I grinned. “How am I just reading this article now?”
Baron typed something into my laptop and flashed a victorious smile. “Here—the lawyer fees for divorce cases.”
“Is that one zero too many?”
Baron and I started becoming more relaxed in our conversations. Sometimes I would touch his shoulder or give him a quick hug while he was working. I was also able to enjoy my activities at home more. If I wasn’t cooking or exercising, I would be cleaning the house. When Baron left to go to the office, I started by doing the laundry. That day I washed the coloured clothes first. I poured out the dirty clothes, the liquid detergent and I pressed the START button. The washing machine played its signature tone and started filling with water until its limit, before mixing up its contents. Suds floated towards the brim. I heard the systematic brrr-ing sounds of the working mechanics.
I went back to the kitchen and took a sip of my coffee. I started to prepare a simple lunch. I took out the meat, bean sprouts and paprika from the fridge. I sliced the meat in thin strips and seasoned them with salt, pepper and powdered coriander. I turned on some classical music and hooked it up to a portable speaker. I then poured out the sautéed meat onto a plate and went to the television room. Our sofa faced the garden at such an angle that I was able to look out at the grass and potted flowers. I sat with my legs crossed, turning out the palms of my hands to block out the sun. I spread them out and shook them slowly. The sunlight filtered through my fingers, a beautiful rainbow spectrum shining through. I finished my lunch with no rush while texting Baron.
“Have you had lunch yet?”
“Yep.”
“What did you have?”
“Beef with green chilies and white crackers.”
“No vegetables?”
“Green chilies are a vegetable.” Baron sent an emoji with its tongue out.
I replied with the same emoji.
I washed the dirty dishes and made some hot tea. From the bookshelf I grabbed A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and on page thirteen I fell asleep.
*
That night, for the first time in almost a year, we made love. Baron held me so tight after it was all over. We lay facing each other until the morning dawned, touching each other and smiling. I fell asleep dreaming of taking a bite of the world’s sweetest apple.
