Eleanor Kedney
Embryonic Diapause
Obligate
I didn’t have the roe deer’s ability to suspend the embryo and delay implantation
for up to eleven months without consequences. Or, time the birth of offspring
for favorable conditions. I was thirty-seven, believing I could wait.
Between cycles I felt oddly relieved—the pause of reaching a vista, the view and cooler air
respite after the body’s climb. In a second marriage, we’d wake, nudged by early light,
let outside voices and the rur, rur of cold car engines fade. We’d linger in the vines
of each other’s arms.
There were so many sharp edges in my life. I kept you from everything that you loved,
my first husband admitted after the divorce. I asked my mother why she never left my father
whose drinking ruined every Navy homecoming. Where would I go? she said.
I studied the black and white Polaroids of me at five, eight, and ten. I wasn’t smiling
in any of them, hands in my lap or standing in the yard, my eyes clenched, brows
lifted—my small body looped in my mother’s sadness. Our wordless bonding
a jumbled silence. What kind of mother would I be?
I read that pregnancy is seasonal for armadillos, all species of pinniped, many mustelids, all ursids,
one species of fruit bat. Seven days after transfer, diapausing ovine blastocysts are able to
resume growth in vitro. No longer taking birth control, I expected it would happen. It just does.
Facultative
I read that insects with facultative diapause undergo a period of suspended development only when
conditions require it for survival. Facultative diapause is associated with bivoltine (two generations
per year) or multivoltine insects (more than two generations per year). Both of my grandmothers
bore eight children.
My mother had two. Her sisters had two, three, and four. First cousins had one or none. You’re
a dreamer, my mother would say when I’d lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling, a book
at steeple rest on my hip. It’s probably best you don’t have children. You like your quiet.
I was unable to cry. Emotions are physical, a therapist said and had me squat against a wall
until my legs shook with pin-prick vibrations, my empty belly held tight. He’d say a word:
childhood, and I’d respond with another: responsibility. Baby survival; alone survival.
I’d sit by the river, reading A.R. Ammons out loud to the water’s coursing rhythm, split leaves
warming the earth, the days shorter. Animals prepare for the cold months and plants
stop making food—nature was slowly falling asleep. I drifted into menopause.
Also by Eleanor Kedney: "The Study of Rivers," "Riverbank"
Photo: Chris Conforti