Going the Way of Lefty
A late-night knock at the door is almost never good news, so imagine my trepidation when my remaining reproductive organs showed up in front of my house looking for me.
The uterus has always been a real punk, with lots of impressive scars from many years of street fights and just one from doing its actual damn job. I’d, of course, never been face-to-face with it before. There it was, the source of decades of pain.
The uterus played with an unlit cigarette. Missing a tube and an ovary now, it wore the sleeve of its studded, patched jean jacket pinned at the shoulder.
“How’s the kid?” asked my uterus.
“Fine, asleep,” I whispered, stepping out onto the stoop. “It’s 3 goddamn a.m.”
“You’re not gonna invite me in?” it asked, like we were still pals.
“What the heck is this about?” I asked my uterus.
“Word is you’re going to get rid of me just like you did Lefty.”
“That ovary tried to kill me!” I said, the memory of the rupture of a giant ovarian endometrioma and the ensuing infection still very fresh.
“And I see you’re still carrying a grudge about that. It was an unfortunate incident,” the uterus said. “We all make mistakes. Even me.”
I wasn’t prepared to be standing out in front of my house in the middle of the night having a heart-to-heart with my uterus, who, I sensed, was trying to manipulate me just like any other abuser would. “Fine. What gives?” I asked it before it tried to take me on a guided tour of the good times we once shared.
“Look, I’m taking a sabbatical. Well, me and Righty.” The right ovary had looked skittish the whole time and ducked behind the uterus when mentioned. “I wanted to see what life is like here on the outside, to prepare myself, you know?”
“No, I don’t know. You’re taking a fucking vacation? How nice!” I asked. “What does this mean for me?”
“Well, you’re going to notice the hormones have gone missing. Hell, you may have already noticed,” the uterus said.
“Oh goddamn it. That’s why I’ve felt like a blast furnace?”
“Yeah, sorry. But we figured it was good for you to, you know, get a little taste of what you’re about to get into,” said the sly uterus.
Was that a threat? Did I even have any say in the matter? “Great. Bon voyage, asshole. Good luck on your journey. What, did you buy a ticket on Amtrak? Rent a car?”
“No no, better! A little something I’ve always wanted to do,” said the uterus, gesturing to a chopper parked half up on the curb.
“How did you drive that thing with only one — ,” I looked at the empty left sleeve the denim jacket and then back at the chopper. “Holy shit, are those my— ”
“Your tonsils, yes,” said the uterus.
My tonsils sat balanced on the left handlebar of the chopper.
“Long time, no see, eh?” said the uterus as the tonsils sat, stoic and still, not even acknowledging my wave. “ We’re gonna go see Lefty.”
“Jesus. Sure, why not?” I said and sat down on my stoop.
“Listen,” said the uterus. “I know I’ve been a real son of a bitch but I want you to focus on the good things when we part ways. The boy.”
“He’s the only good thing we ever did together,” I said, thinking of the endometriosis, surgeries, pain, all the blood, and the parts of life it felt like were always out of my reach, living with such a thing.
“Counts for something.”
The uterus hopped on the bike and peeled out down the block, breaking the mirror on my neighbor’s Mini. “Shit — my bad!” it yelled, still a punk.
