Fo’s Baby

o Yes, I suppose in my twenties, it was all about my career, proving myself to myself, and to Dad, and fulfilling all those dreams Mum had forsaken for a flawed marriage. I saw having children as a chore I could put off ad infinitum, like changing the washer on a dripping tap. Then, as my thirties flew away, it began to bother me like a fly that won’t go away. Only when I entered my fortieth year, did I become aware that my breeding years were nearly over. Suddenly, having a baby became an obsession that consumed me, body and soul. After that, everything, including my career, faded into insignificance. God knows, I tried to fight it. Yes, with logic, and Dina’s inexorable ‘sensibleness’. There were times when I really thought our combined forces could vanquish my implacable longing, especially when Dina brought in her leftwing feminist reserves, who despise the notion that a woman’s raison d’être should be defined by her ability to produce babies. It’s true I was infatuated by a selfish whim. And there was a strong possibility I was suffering from the frustrated-middleclass-housewife syndrome. With my career in the doldrums, I had fallen back on childbearing to appease the frustration of professional stagnation. However, giving my condition a title didn’t make it any easier to bear. Perhaps Dina was right, perhaps my obsession did stem from something much deeper, something psychological, existential, even. Was I seeking distraction from the unresolved issues of my past? God knows, there were plenty of them. But tracking them down would have required months of groping in the penumbra of my half-forgotten and rejected life. Who knows what demons might have been roused from their benign slumber. I had no illusions about the hardships involved in single parenthood. Life below the poverty line would have been an inevitable consequence, not to mention having to rely on friends to help me out with the baby. Yet, logic was no match for my body. So safe and so uninspiring, logic is a device we make use of in order to avoid taking action we instinctively know is right. Maybe I did need to see a shrink, to delve into my past and come face to face with my demons, but there was something dispiritingly negative in Dina’s rationality, and her insistence on blaming our parents for everything. So, I rejected her steady voice for the croaking one in my head that kept telling me what I wanted to hear. Call it instinct, hormones, conditioned response - yes, I too had my dolls – the fear perhaps, nay, the panic, of failing to seize my last chance to produce life. Dina was right about one thing. I did want to be God, just once, before it was too late. I changed. I became selfish, introspective and irritable, quite horrible, in fact, but somehow I didn’t care. I behaved like a spoilt child who believes her wish should be everyone else’s command. It says a lot for Dina that she stuck by me, pampering my every whim, while trying to make me see reason. But with every passing day, my genetic expiry date was coming closer and my obsession growing stronger. I was an aging chicken without a cock to fertilise my eggs. That, as you know only too well, was the root of all my troubles. Dina I know you’ve never seen eye to eye, Brendan, about Fo’s baby. No, don’t use your Irish Blarney on me. I know you felt I should have been more supportive. But it was easy for you sitting on the sidelines. You weren’t going to be an Othermother, a Non-Biological Mum, or whatever they like to call it. Society doesn’t even have a name for what I would become if she managed to produce a child. Yes, I was afraid. Afraid of it coming between us. Afraid of not loving it in the way Fo would. Perhaps deep down I wanted it to be my baby and not hers. Who knows? I don’t really want to go into all that now. Why not? Work it out for yourself. What does it matter anyway? Just write another novel. What? You plan to make this into a novel? A work of faction? And we are your faction, I suppose. Why do you want to write a book about Fo’s baby? Well, be careful it doesn’t turn into a soppy romantic piece. Lesbian sacrifices everything to satisfy her maternal instinct. What a load of crap! Yes, we all have it, I suppose, but it can be overcome, repressed, sublimated or just plain lived with. No, there are thousands of women who have never had children. It’s nothing to do with instinct, anyway. Social convention has placed women in a mould. And we’re conditioned to feel guilty if we don’t settle into it. No, I wasn’t able to convince Fo, but she can be amazingly stubborn, as you know. If you want my side of the story, you’ll have to put up with the way I tell it. Okay? Yes, you can record it if you want. At least, then you won’t distort my words, as no doubt you’d love to do. Where should I begin? In the Stone Age? All right. Well, here goes. My parents christened me Constantina, after my father’s mother. It’s a Greek tradition. Yes, well, you know that. But my grandmother was a witch. Every time she saw a child she would shake her hard knotty old stick in the air and scream abuse at them. Mother said she went mad after my grandfather died. But it upset me that we shared the same name, so I decided I’d change it as soon as something better turned up. I didn’t have to wait long. When I went to school, everybody started calling me Dina and it stuck.