I looked at her and thought that if our fates were reversed, she’d just disappear under the porch and push her babies out without making such a fuss. Andrew had dropped out of college and was driving a city bus. I could only think, But I’m incompatible for growing a life. He stayed behind, in the other room, holding the pregnancy test. Andrew did not follow me or try to talk to me. I ripped an ice cream sandwich from its wrapper. We sang in silly voices, Our lives are over, our lives are over, one more minute of freedom, thirty more seconds of happiness, ten, nine, eight, we sang the seconds, never thinking for any one of them that the test would come back positive. We danced in the kitchen, laughing, letting the timer run down. I peed on a stick and Andrew set a timer. My mother had objected to his choice of the word “inhospitable” and the doctor had said, OK, so how about “incompatible for growing a life”? The doctor explained that my disability rendered my body inhospitable. At seventeen, when I had my first boyfriend, my mother took me to have some tests run so that we could be certain. I believed it to be true and so it was definitively true. The brain takes the facts it is given and from them forms reality. People sometimes ask me, How could you not have known? But how could I have known? I’d been told my whole life I could not get pregnant.

I blamed this on Andrew who kept bringing over Neapolitan ice cream bars, my favorite, and leaving them in my freezer.

I threw up every day for the next three months, but also I was gaining weight. I’d never had a regular period, so skipping several months was more normal than not. Chronic pain often left me so exhausted that I got sick. Photo-Illustration: The Cut Photos: Gettyįour months after I met Andrew, I threw up in his car.

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