The Story of Our Life

chapter one -:- the porcelain rabbit

"Mama. Psst. Mama. Wake up."

Dinah cracked her eye open as she felt the cuff of her pajama shirt getting tugged. With bleary eyes, she made out the precious face of her five-year-old daughter, Ally.

"Good morning, sunshine. Did you sleep well?" The woman asked, glancing at her bedside alarm clock to see it was 7:12am. Ally was an early riser, an odd attribute considering both her mothers were people who enjoyed their sleep very much.

"Mhmm. Good dreams. Can we get food now?"

"Sure," Dinah said, chuckling lightly at the way Ally's face lit up.

"Mommy come with us?" The five-year-old asked, pointing to the darker skinned woman who's back was facing them.

"No," Dinah sighed. "We should let her get some more rest," she added, earning a nod of understanding from the child.

Truth be told, Ally was disappointed that her mommy wasn't having breakfast with her again. She knows it's because her mommy was sick and was now getting better, but breakfast was always their thing, and her mama doesn't know how to pour the right amount of milk in her cereal sometimes.

Dinah was also disappointed to break the news to the child that Normani wouldn't wake up to eat breakfast with them for a third week in a row. But she knew her wife was mourning, and she knew that it would take a while before she could look past her miscarriage.

The couple had been so excited when Normani was cleared by her ob-gyn that she was perfectly healthy and capable of carrying a baby. It was a slight relief seeing as she was the only one out of the two of them who could now carry. 

Dinah had carried Ally, however, there were complications that led to Ally arriving early. Both the woman and the infant were fighting for their lives at one point, but they thankfully pulled through. They were lucky, and so very blessed to have Ally in their lives, but it wasn't something they wanted to risk happening again, so the fate of their future children lied in Normani's hands.

So she went for checkups, got cleared by doctors and finally became pregnant with their second child after one attempt. Her pregnancy was going so well. She was happy, glowing, and the epitome of what a woman should look like during a perfect pregnancy. Normani was 22 weeks into her pregnancy, adorning a beautiful bump that she loved so much, when everything went wrong. One day, while her wife was at work and Ally was at school, she began to bleed. What is now a blur to the woman, she managed to call her wife, 911, and her own mom as she sobbed on the toilet, feeling each painful cramp, and watched the toilet water turn darker shades of red with each passing minute.

The baby died. And so did a little part of their happiness.

Ally was devastated when her mothers told her that her baby sibling wasn't coming anymore. She'd never lost something she loved, so the pain was new to her. She was sent to stay with her Grandma Andrea for a week (something that Dinah is still relieved about doing due to her wife's awful mental state upon arriving home) and had managed to work through some of the new emotions. She learned from her Grandma that when people die they go to a place called Heaven where God is (while she did attend church with her mothers on a weekly basis, this was the first time someone ever sat her down to explain what Heaven was). She was relieved to hear that her baby sister was happy in the clouds and that there were a lot of good and beautiful things up there for her to see. It made the little one feel better, but the same couldn't be said for her mother.

Normani was violent at first. She tore apart the nursery when she got home from the hospital, having to be restrained by her wife who was trying to be strong but was failing miserably.