How Loveta Got Her Baby (14 page)

Sometimes, Kiziah thought she had two heads herself. One lived in the world the way it was but the other had on rose-coloured glasses, like the country-and-western song she and Cecil used to dance to, and that head, the rose-coloured one, kept hoping for something better.

It was small consolation that earlier that day, she'd got an A plus-plus herself in the physical check-up of her own body.

“You really got the perfect pelvis, Mrs. Buffett, a classic shape with lots of room, and your tubes are wide open. Patent, we call it. They're of the finest kind. The womb, the uterus, also nothing wrong there,” the doctor said.

He snapped off his gloves.

“A plus-plus,” he said.

“Is there a higher rating than that, than A plus-plus, Doctor?”

“In my scoring system, yes. There's triple-A, but that's reserved for those who've already conceived. At A plus-plus, or double-A, you're at the pinnacle of your own reference group, your own consort, that of healthy women who have not yet achieved pregnancy after a full calendar year of unprotected intercourse. Assuming a reasonable frequency.”

The nurse who worked with the doctor was attractive, young, slender with dark shoulder-length hair and bright lipstick. A little more lipstick, Kiziah felt, than you'd expect for a woman in her position. A nurse. Like she was dressed up for a cocktail party, rather than clinical work. She bent down towards Kiziah.

“There you go, my dear,” she said, “that's good news for you. You're fine.”

“So, frequency of coitus,” said the doctor, “How many times a week, in your estimation, do you and your husband have sexual intercourse?”

Kiziah looked at Cecil. She blushed.

“Three, four times,” she said.

There was no harm in exaggerating. After all, that's how they started out and it was only recently that they'd tailed off. Once a week was more like it now but why tell these doctors everything? Julia, her older sister, had sex just once, the very first time, and even though she wasn't sure what happened to her,
bang
she was pregnant. And now, Julia's happy as can be.

“That's more than enough, three or four times a week,” said the doctor.

“Some do it just once a week,” said the nurse, “that's not considered a good effort.”

She looked at the doctor for confirmation. He nodded his head.

Sure, it was good news, the A plus-plus pelvis, the open Fallopian tubes, and the anatomically correct uterus. Thank God for small mercies. She was ready and waiting for a miracle now, ready to put on the rose-coloured glasses.

But then they sent Cecil off, privately, into another room with only a glass jar and a brown lunch bag.

“Go in there, make sure you lock the door. Read the instructions,” the doctor said to Cecil. “You get the sample by masturbation. No lubricants. No spilling. Keep it warm too, once you got it. Hold the specimen bottle under your arm. There's magazines in there, if you need help.”

Cecil pointed to the indicated door and looked at his wife.

“Magazines?” he said, “I don't think I'll need those.”

“You'd be surprised,” said the doctor, “it's not like at home. The atmosphere here is very clinical.”

Then Cecil went into the next room and closed the door with a click. He seemed to be in there a long, long time, and when he came out, he looked sheepish, standing there with the bag. Then he put the bag under his arm, as he'd been told, and held it there against his chest.

The poor guy, Kiziah thought, that's not easy for him, in a place like this.

Right away, the nurse called back the doctor and the doctor had a look at Cecil's specimen. He measured the total amount in a small syringe, and then ejected a little bit of it onto a glass slide.

“Volume five cc's, good,” he said.

The nurse wrote it down on a form.

“That's lots,” she said to Kiziah.

“We need to look at it right away, while it's still warm from the body,” said the doctor. “That's how we judge motility. The more motility, the better, needless to say.”

He sat down at the microscope and focused the eyepiece up and down.

“Hmm, look at this, please, nurse.”

The nurse walked over and looked into the microscope. She had to brush away that long dark hair to have a look. To balance herself better, without sitting down, she put one hand on the doctor's shoulder. Kiziah noticed her manicured fingernails, smooth and perfect. The nurse looked for a minute and then stood back up then and looked at the doctor and then she looked at Cecil.

“I'm not the expert,” she said.

“Lots and lots of sperm there, lots of them,” the doctor said.

Later, Kiziah wondered why he said it like that. It must be how they break bad news. They perk you up with a spark of hope. Maybe they teach doctors that. “There's no sign of cancer in your lung, sir,” they'd say, “but of course there is cancer in your brain, your heart, your liver, and your leg and you got a week to live.”

“Take a look now, Mrs. Buffett, what do you see?”

“I could never see anything through those, in school,” she said.

“Oh, it's easy. These are much better microscopes. Put your eye right here, adjust this, up and down a bit. You'll see them.”

And it was easy, there were many small head shapes with tails everywhere she looked. Her heart took a leap, like a salmon fighting its way upstream.

“Oh! I see sperm, lots of them! Cecil, good for you!”

Cecil smiled. He was pleased, she could tell.

“Oh yes, there are lots,” the doctor said.

“Yes,” said the nurse.

Now, if Kiziah sold, say, woolen gloves for a living—as once she did—and she opened up a new package of woolen gloves when they came into the store, and she saw, right away, that there were moth holes in each and every pair, what would she say? Would she say to the customer standing there, “Lots of woolen gloves here, Mrs. Whittle, lots of fine wool?” No, she didn't think so. She'd say, “Oh, what a shame, these gloves are ridden with moth holes. These gloves are eaten up, they're no good at all, they're useless for warmth.” That's what she'd say, she knew that. But no, this doctor said, “Lots of sperm, there are lots of sperm.” Then he paused, the nurse took her look, the doctor looked back down the microscope again, adjusted the eyepiece a quarter-turn, shifted the slide here and there, and then he came out with the truth that he'd known all along.

“But this is not good: none of these sperm wiggle,” the doctor said.

“Wiggle?” asked Kiziah.

“Motility is important. Spermatozoa should move, they should be vigorous, they should be pulsing with life, their tails should thrash as they probe their way towards the ready egg.”

“You mean there's something wrong?” asked Kiziah.

Again her heart like the salmon leapt in her chest, upriver.

“Look again, Mrs. Buffett, and this time don't just look for the sperm, watch for movement too.”

That's when she had her second look, and she saw them all there again but they looked dead. She'd seen tadpoles like that once, in a ditch on Waterford Bridge Road where the water had an oily scum.

“Maybe they're in a pause,” she said, “catching their wind after that journey they had.”

That was the rose-coloured glasses talking. The doctor and the nurse both laughed, spontaneously, naturally.

“No, I'm afraid not,” the doctor said, “they don't rest on these slides. After a journey like that, all the way through the seminiferous tubules, from the distant testicles, sperm are frisky. If healthy, they're like colts out of the barn on a spring day.”

The nurse looked at the doctor and turned to Cecil.

“Mr. Buffett, look at it this way: it's like you shake up a can of Coca-Cola. The ejaculation of spermatozoa is an energy release, a life force that spews out. Our job as scientists, here, is to measure the effectiveness of that energy release.”

“There's no sperm in Coca-Cola,” said Cecil.

“Of course not,” said the nurse, “and really, unfortunately, there are no viable sperm, it appears, on your specimen either.”

She pointed to the microscope. The doctor looked about twenty-eight years old. The nurse? Maybe thirty.

“I'm afraid that's right,” said the doctor. “But a better analogy might be, say, ejaculation is like shaking up or squeezing a milkweed pod, shaking it, squeezing it, watching the million seeds fly everywhere into the wind. Catch those seeds, look at them under the microscope, that's what our job is like.”

He looked at the Buffetts, hoping they understood. Of course they understood.

“But wait, milkweed's dry,” said the nurse, “and sperm itself is carried in a liquid propulsive medium.”

She laughed gently and shook her hair again. She was standing right beside the doctor, her right hip pretty much touching his left shoulder. Cecil stood on the other side of the room, and Kiziah could see how deflated he was, downcast. He had his brave face on, though, but she could tell. She probably had the same face on herself. She loved him, she always had.

“Well, let's put it this way then,” said the doctor, “to be successful, the procreative act has to have living seeds. And lots of them, Mr. and Mrs. Buffett, lots of them. Millions, millions, hundreds of millions. Active spermatozoa are the living seeds of
homo sapiens
. Unfortunately, this sample of Mr. Buffett's is severely deficient in that department.”

The doctor put his hand on the nurse's back, and he left it there for a second.

“If you put a red tomato on the floor,” said the nurse, “and then you hit that tomato as hard as you can with a sledgehammer, then you have wet seeds flying all over. High speed. That's what the male fertilization process is like. Sperm are ejaculated at twenty miles an hour.”

“That's a good analogy,” said the doctor, “but for the fact that the explosion of seminal fluid happens, usually, within an enclosed space, the female vagina.”

“Of course,” said the nurse.

They seemed to be talking to each other now, rather than to the Buffetts.

“That's why condoms,” said the doctor.

“What? Condoms? What's that got to do with this?” interjected Kiziah.

“Condoms prevent pregnancy,” the doctor said.

There was a pause.

Then the doctor looked at Kiziah and said, “What I mean, Mrs. Buffett, is that young unattached people, people attracted to each other, wear condoms for protection from disease as well as for the prevention of an unwanted pregnancy. This is of no concern for you today, for you and your husband, because we are in a fertility clinic, the purpose of which is quite the opposite. The nurse and I have mentioned condoms only to contextualize the whole fertility process, as we understand it. No doubt you have used condoms in the past.”

“Not for two years,” said Kiziah.

She felt numb inside. All those dead sperm.

“You, a married couple, trying to get pregnant, Mrs. Buffett, should not concern yourself with condoms. Condoms are for single women.”

The doctor and nurse glanced at each other. Maybe Kiziah imagined it. Cecil had his back against the wall, by the door.

“Let's go, Kiziah,” he said.

The nurse broke away from her satellite position around the doctor, crossed the room and patted Cecil on the shoulder.

“There, there,” she said, “we never give up on just one sample.

Come back next week, Mr. Buffett, try again. Results like this, it could be a fluke. It could be better next time. Make an appointment at the desk.”

“You mean do this again?” asked Cecil.

“No relations for three days, then try again. It's the only way to be sure of the diagnosis.”

“Diagnosis?”

“Well,” she said, “I'm afraid, if we get the same results again, we diagnose male infertility.”

“Seedless red tomatoes you mean,” said Kiziah, “we smash your so-called red tomato against the ground with your so-called sledgehammer and nothing of much use flies out.”

“Maybe we shouldn't have made those comparisons,” said the doctor.

“Maybe not,” said Kiziah.

“It's how we help people understand. Male infertility is common.”

“It's how you belittle people,” said Kiziah.

The nurse formed her lips into a tight line. The doctor stood up. Kiziah took Cecil's arm and they left the clinic and walked out into the parking lot. Three days of abstinence and then another sperm count? They could do that, she figured, even for those unfeeling health so-called professionals. Fuck them. She and Cecil didn't have much choice. Those two were the only ones in the city dealing with those who didn't yet have babies.

On the way home, Cecil was quiet behind the wheel. He didn't whistle
Whiskey in the Jar
and he didn't whistle the theme song from
Titanic
.

“What do you think, honey?” she said.

“I'm sorry about all those dead sperm, Kizie, that's what I think.”

“It's not your fault, you heard what they said. It's common.”

“My sperm are duds. They're useless.”

“No, no, not useless. You never know. Now we take three days off, next week we try again. Like the nurse said, sometimes it's better.”

“She's a piece of work, that nurse. And we had five days off this time.”

“Five? Three. It was only three.”

“Well, five, three, what's the difference? I'm supposed to go through that rigmarole again? I don't think so.”

She smiled at him, leaned over, tapped his thigh.

“Cecil, it's the only way, for us.”

“I'm not going back there, Kiziah. There's no way. That's it. The doctor, the nurse, they laugh way too much. I could have died back there.”

Wait a minute, wait a minute she thought. She turned in her seat and looked right at him.