Chapter 13: The Empty Womb
The gel was still cold on her lower belly, a slick, shocking patch in the overheated room. The paper sheet stuck to her thighs, crinkling with every slight shift. Valentina stared at the acoustic tiles in the ceiling, counting the tiny holes, willing herself to disappear into their uniform grid.
Dr. Evelyn moved the transducer in slow, firm circles. The screen to Valentina’s right showed shifting fields of grainy gray static, like a television tuned to a dead channel. A vast, meaningless landscape.
“No implantation,” Dr. Evelyn said finally. Her voice was neutral, the same tone she’d use to report a low tire pressure. She withdrew the wand, the plastic click sounding final. “Your body rejected it. The lining wasn’t sufficiently receptive. It’s just a hormonal fact. Nothing you did.”
Valentina sat up, wiping the gel away with a rough paper towel. It smeared instead of cleaning. A hormonal fact. A biological no. The relief was immediate, a physical unclenching in her gut she hadn’t permitted herself to anticipate. It was followed, seconds later, by a wave of shame so deep it made her vision tunnel. Relief felt like a betrayal. Disappointment felt like surrender.
“What happens now?” Her own voice sounded borrowed.
“We wait for your next cycle. Then we can discuss adjusting the protocol.” Dr. Evelyn typed notes into the computer, not looking at her. “Higher dosage of progesterone next time. To make the environment more… welcoming.”
Welcoming. Valentina pulled her jeans on over her still-cool skin. The room felt impossibly small, the walls humming with the silence of failed purpose.
Catalina was waiting in the car, parked illegally in a loading zone. She was staring straight ahead, hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. Valentina slid into the passenger seat, the smell of fake lemon air freshener choking her.
“Well?”
“It didn’t take.”
Catalina’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. She didn’t speak. She pulled out into traffic with a jerk that made the tires squeal. The drive home was a twenty-minute vacuum. No radio. No words. Just the hammering of Catalina’s unspoken fury filling the space between them.
At home, Dominic was in the kitchen, elbows deep in a carburetor he was cleaning at the table. Grease streaked the vinyl tablecloth. He looked up as they entered, his eyes going from Catalina’s rigid back to Valentina’s pale face. He knew. He put the carburetor down slowly.
“Cat.”
“It’s fine,” Catalina said, her voice bright and brittle as splintering glass. “It’s just a setback. The doctor says next time, with more hormones.” She breezed past him, heading for the hallway. “Next time will be perfect.”
Valentina stood in the middle of the kitchen, feeling the weight of the failed hope like a stone in her womb. Dominic wiped his hands on a rag, his movements slow, deliberate. He looked at her, really looked, and she saw the same conflicted wreckage in his eyes that she felt in her chest.Relief. Grief. Fury. Shame. A chain, link by link.
Hours later, the house was dark. Valentina stood in the bathroom, the door locked. She stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. She looked the same. Same dark hair, same tired eyes, same jawline that was neither fully his nor fully hers. There was no visible mark of what had happened, of what had been attempted. No sign of the cavity that had been deemed unreceptive.
The lock clicked. The door opened. Catalina never respected locked doors.
She stood in the doorway, backlit by the hall nightlight, a silhouette of contained storm. She stepped inside and closed the door softly behind her. The intimacy was worse than shouting.
“You’re thinking,” Catalina whispered.
Valentina didn’t turn. “Yeah.”
“You’re thinking this is a sign. That it’s wrong. That your body knows better.” Catalina moved closer, her reflection appearing beside Valentina’s in the glass. Their faces, so similar, yet one was a map of weary despair and the other of frantic need. “Your body doesn’t know anything. It’s just chemistry. We fix the chemistry.”
“Maybe I don’t want it fixed.” The words were out, quiet and stark.
Catalina’s hand shot out, fingers gripping Valentina’s jaw, forcing her to turn her head and meet her eyes in the mirror. Her grip was firm, not quite painful, but inescapable. “Look at you. Look at us. Where do you think you came from? A stork? A wish?” Her voice was a low, urgent hiss. “You are the proof that our chemistry is holy. You are the miracle. And you want to stop it?”
Tears welled in Valentina’s eyes, blurring the two faces together. “I’m not a miracle. I’m a secret. I’m a problem everyone whispers about.”
“You are my daughter!” Catalina’s other hand came up, cradling Valentina’s cheek now, a horrifying parody of tenderness. “You are all I have that’s truly mine. He…” She jerked her head towards Dominic’s room. “He has his garages, his cars, his guilt. I have you. And you will give me more of us. You will make this family real. You will make us legitimate.”
The logic was insane, a closed loop that admitted no light. A grandchild would make the incestuous family legitimate. Valentina saw it in her mother’s eyes—a desperate, absolute faith.
“I couldn’t even do that right,” Valentina breathed, throwing the doctor’s clinical verdict back, poisoned now with Catalina’s meaning.
Catalina’s eyes softened, but it wasn’t warmth. It was pity. “Oh, mija. This was just practice. A test run.” She leaned in, her lips nearly touching Valentina’s ear, her reflection smiling a terrible, loving smile in the glass. “We’ll try again. And again. However many times it takes. However many rounds of hormones. However much it costs.” She kissed Valentina’s temple, a dry, possessive touch. “Until you’re full. Until we see the proof on that screen. Until this house is so full of us that the whole rotten world can’t deny we exist.”
She released her, opening the bathroom door. The hall light framed her for a moment. “Go to sleep. You need your strength.”
The door shut.
Valentina stared at the reflection of the empty space where her mother had been. Then she looked down at her own flat, unreceptive stomach. Her hand shook as she pressed it against the skin. It was just flesh. It was a battleground. It was the only thing she supposedly owned, and it was already promised, already scheduled for its next invasion.
From downstairs, she heard the low, solid sound of a wrench slamming into metal, once, twice, three times. A dull, impotent percussion from the garage. Then silence.
She stayed there until her reflection became a stranger, until the cold from the tiles seeped up through her feet and settled deep into the hollow the doctor had confirmed. A cavity.