Cope No you may not bring any water bottles, cell phones, pagers or electronic devices into the testing center. She looks up at me over the counter, red orange streaked hair and purple cotton jumper, rearranges her papers, stares at me and waits. What if, I offer, I pour the water out and only bring in the bottle?
These are the rules, and she pushes three laminated pieces of paper in front of me. You're really supposed to have read them before arriving here.
It's 8:17 in the morning and I'm getting a little bit desperate. I've arrived for my boards, despite my better judgement and complete lack of preparation, and I am trying to explain to a women with inadvertently orange hair and a purple sweater that, well, basically, my mouth over flows with saliva every five seconds and I just need something to spit into. I put my head into my hands and sigh. Can I at least bring in an empty cup? I ask, motioning to the water cooler behind me.
These, young lady, are the rules, she is staring right at me and tapping a fingernail onto the counter. Okay, I say, I'll figure something out.
I've packed two fried eggs with beans and a tortilla and place them in the designated locker. You are required to eat in the waiting area, she tells me. If you take anything out of your locker you need to show us what it is. I hold up my toothpaste, toothbrush and water bottle filled with dilute baking soda. I need to brush my teeth before I begin, may I use the restroom? She looks at me as if I were absolutely insane. Five minutes, she tells me.
Walking down the hall I bite back the tears. I just want to be normal again. I just want my mouth to stop revolting against me, filling up with a toxic kind of saliva I could never bear to swallow, completely dehydrating me, forcing me to drink huge gulps of water that then make me wretch and gag because oh my god everything tastes like its made of poison. In the bathroom I stand in front of the sink, vigorously scrubbing out my mouth and regarding my reflection. My skin is gaunt and pale, my eyes dark, sallow. Even though I can tell how much my body is changed, my jeans hang off of me, my shirt clings only to my chest, my belt takes up more space than my quietly protruding belly. I don't yet look pregnant, just crazy.
After spitting, rinsing, spitting and rinsing I galvanize myself for the four hour exam ahead of me, take a deep breath and walk back into the door. A new woman is behind the counter, she smiles at me kindly. Do you have a moment? I nod mutely. She beckons me to the back of the office.
Do you have a medical condition that necessitates a cup? She is looking right at me and nodding vigorously.
Um, kind of?
Do you have a note? We both know that I don't.
No, no I don't.
Okay, she says. Listen, I put a call into our head quarters to ask them about this. Mostly they don't want water next to the computers. Can you at least begin the exam and I'll let you know? I nod. She touches my shoulder and smiles. I want to hug her and sob but refrain from either.
My boards, by and large, were a disaster. I felt flush and weak and nauseous, forcing myself to read the questions on the screen. Question and after question, section after section, I sat there in awe and horror. It's as if I had never trained for this, had no idea what any of the questions were, nonetheless the answers. My mouth swelled with toxic spit, I tried discretely to empty it into my non-absorbent wool sweater. My body staged a full on visceral distraction and I was losing the battle to cope. My stomach swelled and my mouth filled with the few bites of cereal I'd eaten three hours before. I looked around in panic, couldn't get up, couldn't forfeit an entire section of my exam and, without recourse, spit it out into my sleeve, biting back the tears and folding the edges over itself in effort to hide what had just happened.
At lunch I opened my little box of fried egg and beans to an overwhelming stench that made me gasp. I snapped the container shut, closed the locker and sighed. I'm starving, shaking, nauseated, defeated. The kindly woman in the yellow dress looked over at me and smiled. I'm still waiting to hear back. If you'd like something to eat we have granola bars, cookies and crackers. She motions over to a table and nods, encouraging. I smile feebly, thank her but say no thank you. How do I explain that anything with any kind of sugar i it tastes like battery acid and splenda? Instead I go back to the bathroom, trying forever to scrub the rancid taste from my body.
Driving home, hours and hours later, after several failed attempts to find anything, anything, anything to eat that doesn't involve a deep fryer and a drive-thru and missing New York more than I ever though possible, the guilt and rage and frustration unleashes itself in torrents. I have five incredibly close and lovely friends who want nothing more in their lives than to be pregnant, all of whom have high likelihoods of not getting to see that happen. Equal to, and in a case or two, almost more than the overwhelming desire to have children, they want, so badly, to be pregnant. I hear people talking about this being the most important thing we can do with a lives, the most important experience in a woman's life (period) and I swell with sorrow and frustration. If this, to be simple and essentialist about it, is the whole reason we exist, then why the hell am I failing so miserably at it? Why the hell do I hate it so much? Why is my body doing everything it possibly can to prevent me from doing the one thing I need to---eat. My previous convictions that my relationship to my pregnancy has nothing to do with my relationship to wanting children is beginning to erode and as I start the long drive home I cannot help but feel as if I am failing in an enormous, universal, evolutionary way.
