THE WOMAN
They were sitting on the waiting area outside the doctor's chamber. She was heavily pregnant; probably on the verge. The woman with the baby bump was twenty nine, carrying her first child; rather late, some would say, for a first baby. She was accompanied by her mother-in-law. The older woman looked displeased; she was guarding her future grandchild but not her daughter-in-law. The husband of the woman with the baby bump wasn't there.
"What's your serial number!?" hollered the mother-in-law. "It's thirteen," replied the woman with the baby bump, indifferently.
She was having a difficult pregnancy; it had forced her to take a maternity leave without pay at the end of the first trimester. The doctor told her to take rest; she didn't like it but she had no choice. Her husband could not get off work on time and had told his mother to be the chaperon. The woman with the baby bump didn't like it at all. Why her husband couldn't make time she wondered, and felt enraged at his "insouciance".
She was an attractive woman who was on the dusky side; mothers would be disappointed with her looks; a keen eye would, however, discern the beauty in those sad eyes and that high ridged nose.
A junior teacher at her department at the university became enamoured with her; she was twenty and the teacher was in his mid twenties. It didn't take long for the affair to take off, and their feelings for each other reached fever pitch. Their happiness was for all to see; their love for each other reached dizzying heights. A fall became inevitable.
He went abroad for doctoral research and she carried on with her studies. That was not the fall. She finished her graduation and his research was progressing satisfactorily. Their e-mails became infrequent but did not stop; not a massive fall either. He then called one day late at night and told her that he had fallen in love with another research student and had decided to marry her. Just like that. He apologized profusely; he needed greater intellectual stimulation from a relationship he had told her, with no attempt at solicitation on her part. She sat down with her cell phone dropping by her side and said to no one in particular, "Okay". That was it.
"What's your serial number!?" hollered the mother-in-law. "It's thirteen, I think," replied the woman with the baby bump, now lost in reverie.
She spent a whole day and a whole night without food without sleep and without letting a tear drop.
Her parents and friends came to know her "spurned at love" status and commiserated. They were ready to console an inconsolable young woman of twenty four. But they found her in a jolly mood; ready to launch into the rest of her life. She dumped her master's course and got an advanced degree in business administration and got herself a good job; she had always been bright. The woman with the baby bump met the father of her as yet unborn baby there.
"What's your serial number!?" hollered the mother-in-law. "Well, I am not sure," replied the woman with the baby bump, still lost in reverie.
The woman with the baby bump held an entry level post under her future husband. He was very ingratiating towards her from the very beginning. She didn't pay much heed. He started dropping a poem or two in her virtual inbox and then one day she found a 'real rose' in her 'real' inbox. She felt flattered. He wasn't half bad, she thought and gave him an inch; he took a mile! She started receiving gifts, phone calls at all hours, a 'mixed' CD on her desk and finally an invitation to dinner. He wasn't as philosophically inclined as her ex-boyfriend but he wasn't 'half bad'. She agreed to meet him for dinner one night and several such nights followed. He also got her a job at a different establishment, a better position, to avoid any impropriety within the office. She was not swept but felt good to be 'loved' and be an object of a man's desires; she decided to make the final leap. They slept together, she was not a virgin but he was, she learnt to her surprise. A thirty-year-old virgin? But he wasn't 'half bad'.
He was very loving towards her mother but who isn't? She realized the follies of her ways after taking the final leap.
The house she shared with her husband was ruled by his mother. He stopped the poetry and the love songs and jumped straight into the mundane. He was unable to satisfy her intellectually; the bed was only an escape unto pleasure for a whole of ten minutes. After the sex act, he slept with his eyes firmly shut and she lay awake in regret. A person on the rebound is the most vulnerable creature, she often thought.
"What's your serial number!?" hollered the mother-in-law. "Why don't you ask your son?" screamed the woman with the baby bump, now sinking fast in the toxic marshy bog of regret.