My Most Unexpected Life

I was a senior biology major in 1984. I met a PhD candidate from Oaxaca Mexico thru my professor. He exuded that Mexican macho vibe and he fucked me to death that night, owning me in a way I never imagined. I married him right after graduation in order to move to Mexico with him. We lived with his parents while our house was built.

Six months later we moved into our house, the downer was that I was not yet pregnant. My husband's grandmother stepped in an hired a fertility woman. I got the baths, the rubs, the diet, but after several months no progress. It was then that a young woman, 16, was brought to my home. The idea was that another fertile young female in my house would excite me into becoming receptive. If not, my husband would still have the chance for a son with the young woman, girl to me.

This is where culture goes sideways. She was a girl from a good family, but in dire financial circumstances. As a concubine she had room and board, school and the chance of being first to deliver and produce a son for my husband. He took her, destroyed her, by the time he was done her eyes saw no other man, she was pregnant and she was a Daddy's girl, sleeping in his arms. I cried. I was a family failure, nothing worked, I wasn't pregnant and a 16 year old had shown me up.

Her pregnancy was my responsibility, as was her schooling. If I couldn't come up with a son, then my surrogate, his concubine, was mine to nurture and take care of. Being young myself, heart broken and barren I through myself into caring for my surrogate. If it wasn't for me to have children then I would love her and the children she would bring into my home. She responded, she glowed in her pregnancy, she loved my husband as only a young girl can, she took to me as her mother-sister. And no matter how we went to bed, who went first, who he took into his arms, she woke up deep in his arms.

She bore a son, and with the help of the midwife, she delivered her son into my hands. I laid her son on her breast. Caring for her and her infant consumed me. And I got pregnant. Convincing once again the tried and proven fertility myths that surrounded me. I bore a daughter, good but not a son. She bore a second son, and I bore a second daughter. If ever a decision to bring her to my, by then our, house the boys proved them right.

Time only proved everyone right, I never quite became a Mexican wife, I never bore a son, three daughters but no son. Not the life I imagined.