I’ve been hoping to break this kind of news for months and presume that for Kayla it was an accident.
She fishes in her pocket, pulls out a used pregnancy test stick, with matching blue lines going down two little windows.
“How many weeks?”
“I don’t know. Six, seven.”
“I presume its Vijay?” I ask, although it doesn’t add up.
She nods, pursing her lips in a rueful grimace.
“But you said he didn’t ejaculate.”
“Well, he’s obviously no tantric expert,” she smiles slightly at the absurdity of our conversation. “Accidents happen.”
“So what are you going to do?” I whisper.
“I know you’re the wrong person to be talking to about it, but I can’t, I can’t.”
My fingers are interlocked, playing each hand like a fast scale on a piano, over and over.
“I can’t,” she repeats quietly. “I don’t have what you and Adam have. What would I do with it? How would I cope?”
I want to say you should have used protection. I want to say a lot of things, but I don’t, because it’s her life, it’s her choice and I have to respect that.
“But you’re 30,” is all I manage.
The subtext is that by the time you’re 30, you CAN cope, you should be responsible, but Kayla would probably argue that for her NOT having the baby was being responsible.
“Twenty-nine,” she tries to lighten the mood.
It’s our 30 th in a couple of weeks. We’ve both been very much aware of it.
“Kayla, you’ve got to think about this.”
“I’ve carried this with me for a week Ali, hoping it would go away. I’ve done a new pregnancy test every day, hoping the last one was faulty and every day I got the same result. And you know what the sad thing is? I feel great. I feel really, really good. Physically, I mean, not mentally. But I’ve made up my mind and there’s nothing you or anyone can do to change it.”
“What about Vijay?”
“What’s he going to do about it? It wouldn’t make a difference.”
We stand staring at one another, barely blinking, for at least a minute. Kayla breaks the silence.
“I need you with me on this one Al. Please,” she pleads.
I’ve been trying to conceive for more than a year and inside Kayla’s tummy is the growing embryo I yearn for. If this were anyone but my sister, my response might differ wildly. Only this is my identical twin. She could drive her car through my house and I’d thank her for the fresh air.
***
“AHHH.”
I double over in pain and clutch my stomach, take a seat slowly. At first I wonder what’s going on, if this is the sudden onset of salmonella, but deep down I know what’s going on. This is psychosomatic, only not my psyche. It’s an identical twin thing. We’ve always been like this, Kayla and I. Felt each other’s pain physically or sensed each other’s danger. We call it cotwincidence. Once, when we were five or six, Kayla did her knee in and I ended up limping too. Another time we went mountain biking in the French Alps. We’d got split up and suddenly my nose started to hurt, for no apparent reason. Kayla, it transpired, had fallen off her bike and broken her nose. Sometimes we feel the pain on BEHALF of each other. Like neither of us actually suffer from period pain, but we often get stomach cramps when the other menstruates. That’s what’s happening now, but Kayla isn’t having her period. She’s having an abortion and I’m waiting, outside the treatment room, leaning forward, rubbing my tummy.
She chose an Ealing clinic above a central London one because it had sounded slightly prettier, leafier, more suburban. Weird how location could matter, but somehow it seemed to. I hadn’t wanted to go. It was almost too hard, too twisted, for someone who’s trying to get pregnant to stand by and watch a pregnancy being terminated. But how could I not be there for her?
So I’m sitting in
She fishes in her pocket, pulls out a used pregnancy test stick, with matching blue lines going down two little windows.
“How many weeks?”
“I don’t know. Six, seven.”
“I presume its Vijay?” I ask, although it doesn’t add up.
She nods, pursing her lips in a rueful grimace.
“But you said he didn’t ejaculate.”
“Well, he’s obviously no tantric expert,” she smiles slightly at the absurdity of our conversation. “Accidents happen.”
“So what are you going to do?” I whisper.
“I know you’re the wrong person to be talking to about it, but I can’t, I can’t.”
My fingers are interlocked, playing each hand like a fast scale on a piano, over and over.
“I can’t,” she repeats quietly. “I don’t have what you and Adam have. What would I do with it? How would I cope?”
I want to say you should have used protection. I want to say a lot of things, but I don’t, because it’s her life, it’s her choice and I have to respect that.
“But you’re 30,” is all I manage.
The subtext is that by the time you’re 30, you CAN cope, you should be responsible, but Kayla would probably argue that for her NOT having the baby was being responsible.
“Twenty-nine,” she tries to lighten the mood.
It’s our 30 th in a couple of weeks. We’ve both been very much aware of it.
“Kayla, you’ve got to think about this.”
“I’ve carried this with me for a week Ali, hoping it would go away. I’ve done a new pregnancy test every day, hoping the last one was faulty and every day I got the same result. And you know what the sad thing is? I feel great. I feel really, really good. Physically, I mean, not mentally. But I’ve made up my mind and there’s nothing you or anyone can do to change it.”
“What about Vijay?”
“What’s he going to do about it? It wouldn’t make a difference.”
We stand staring at one another, barely blinking, for at least a minute. Kayla breaks the silence.
“I need you with me on this one Al. Please,” she pleads.
I’ve been trying to conceive for more than a year and inside Kayla’s tummy is the growing embryo I yearn for. If this were anyone but my sister, my response might differ wildly. Only this is my identical twin. She could drive her car through my house and I’d thank her for the fresh air.
***
“AHHH.”
I double over in pain and clutch my stomach, take a seat slowly. At first I wonder what’s going on, if this is the sudden onset of salmonella, but deep down I know what’s going on. This is psychosomatic, only not my psyche. It’s an identical twin thing. We’ve always been like this, Kayla and I. Felt each other’s pain physically or sensed each other’s danger. We call it cotwincidence. Once, when we were five or six, Kayla did her knee in and I ended up limping too. Another time we went mountain biking in the French Alps. We’d got split up and suddenly my nose started to hurt, for no apparent reason. Kayla, it transpired, had fallen off her bike and broken her nose. Sometimes we feel the pain on BEHALF of each other. Like neither of us actually suffer from period pain, but we often get stomach cramps when the other menstruates. That’s what’s happening now, but Kayla isn’t having her period. She’s having an abortion and I’m waiting, outside the treatment room, leaning forward, rubbing my tummy.
She chose an Ealing clinic above a central London one because it had sounded slightly prettier, leafier, more suburban. Weird how location could matter, but somehow it seemed to. I hadn’t wanted to go. It was almost too hard, too twisted, for someone who’s trying to get pregnant to stand by and watch a pregnancy being terminated. But how could I not be there for her?
So I’m sitting in
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