S4, Account 5: Noelle
For all the irritation my Aunt Claude causes me, she is not wrong about Pascal. He is husband material. Good-looking with beautiful dark skin and wide brown eyes like a deer, tall, ambitious with a good job, intelligent, kind, and actually funny. My parents and my aunt, and probably the whole church, think that I ignore him all the time, but the truth is we were seeing each other on and off for about a year. That’s why he’s so in love with me now. I broke it all off, not because there was anything wrong with him, but he wanted marriage and kids, and I’m into the latter, but not the former. He thinks he can convince me on marriage though which I do find annoying. He never understood why I didn’t want it.
Look at my Aunt Claude’s marriage. A marriage in name only. Her children can’t stand her which is why none of them live near her even with children that could have benefitted from her support when they were born. Her husband hates her (yes ‘hates’ is the correct adjective because why else would you spend 6 months apart from your wife when you could do what you’re doing abroad, here?), let’s not even talk of his secret children everyone knows about but she thinks we don’t. Yet she has the pride of a peacock when talking to her church friends the majority of whom are widowed or divorced, and finds every opportunity to throw in “my husband” into conversations — the husband most of them have never seen. I noticed their wry side smiles when she goes into one of her oblivious monologues on how to stay married. It’s honestly quite pathetic.
Then there’s my parents. No-one could deny that they are still happy with each other, but when my mother tells me about what she sacrificed to have me, I can’t help the feeling of disgust for my dad that gnaws at the base of my stomach. They repeat that story, over and over again to me, like it’s the noblest thing anyone ever did since Christ Jesus died on the cross, but all I feel is horror that such a uniquely talented and gifted woman was coerced into clipping her wigs, and falling like Icarus through the sky. Then they tell me they’re so glad they got me out of it, and I understand the sentiment but it doesn’t have the heart-warming impact on me they think it does. I just think “I could never”.
And this is where Pascal comes in. He is going to give me what I want. I wish he understood where I was coming from when I told him these things — he’d said he’d be different, that he’d never force me to give up on my dreams for him or our family unless I wanted to, but I am a woman of the world and I know better. I work in spaces with men exactly like my dad, even worse in fact; they hate the idea that their wives’ or girlfriends’ achievements could ever eclipse theirs, and expect those dreams to be relegated to the threshing floor of human existence like countless dreams of countless generations of women before me. Men can say anything to you, whilst you still can set yourself free. And marriage for most women is a padlock on freedom, and if all goes tits up, emancipating yourself again is an exercise is bloody deconstruction, sorrow and pain. I’d rather skip all that and get to the part I want; a child.
Pascal is going to be the father of my child. He doesn’t know and I’m not sure I will ever tell him. It’s not like we won’t be doing anything we haven’t done before. I’ve always wanted a child, but I never wanted an anonymous sperm donor, I want someone who I vetted. It’s not that I don’t value the contribution of a father to a child’s life, my dad has been a great father (all things considered), I just don’t want him to be involved. I don’t want my child’s potential capped (if it is a girl — I feel like it will be), and I don’t want any child of mine walking through life thinking its wants, needs, dreams and purpose supersedes a woman (if it is a boy). I honestly feel like the only way to control that, is to impart those ideas myself. Any man in the picture comes with his default settings programmed by society and parents, the kind of man that although great like my father, whether consciously or unconsciously manages to still put themselves first to the detriment of women. He then passes that down to his children — the boys who end up embodying it, and the girls who end up accepting it thinking there is no other way. There is another way. And that’s what I will teach my child. Whatsoever it may be.
Originally posted: February 28, 2022