When I was told back when I was 18 that I couldn’t have children, that I was infertile, and if I did happen to get pregnant, though the chances were 1:10000000, there was a higher chance that the pregnancy would result in miscarriage or fetal disorders, I wasn’t too disheartened. After all, I had my whole life ahead of me. The last thing I wanted was a child to worry about.
But as a I grew older, my mindset began to change, as it always does over time.
Friends of mine started having kids, establishing families, starting their legacy, and I was just the same as I was back in high school only older, child-less, and significantly more financially stable, but just as immature. The more I watched them expand on their lives, the more I wanted that capability too, but I had more than enough concerns that held me back from exploring the option, not to mention the lack of a stable partner that shared the same goals.
Sure, I redirected a lot of that maternal energy into my animals and practically raised a farm for a while between fostering dogs, cats, rabbits, lizards, etc. and housing my own cats, but fur-babies aren’t quite the same. They don’t share your DNA. They aren’t even the same species as you. Still, there was always something lacking in my life I couldn’t put my finger on until it stood out prominently during the winter of last year.
My boyfriend, Frank, has tolerated me for several years, which is quite a feat considering how erratic I can be, but he has his quirks to balance me out, one of which is a birthmark that became a recent problem.
Doctors back when he was a kid, the mid 80’s - early 90’s, didn’t want to bother with what they thought was a hemangioma , or “strawberry birthmark,” which is a superficial cluster of blood vessels that grew on the outside, as they don’t typically grow past early adolescence and don’t cause any impactful complications, but his happened to be right along his femoral vein on his left leg. His mother made a thing out of it, though, and they tried the usual route of prescription creams that usually help reduce them in size and laser treatments to slough off what they could.
Despite all their effort, they couldn’t ever quite get it to shrink or simply go away. His mom eventually found a plastic surgeon willing to cut it out, or at least most of it, at a research hospital and he was mostly fine after that. The scar was minimal, but it was still there on his leg, crimson to black patches of slightly raised skin that looked like a series of flat moles.
We were working in the yard one day when I heard this wild cry and cursing behind the house. I had thought that Frank had cut his finger off, so I rushed to where he was out back with the low mower. He had stopped it and was leaning up against the side of the house with his pants leg up, touching around the noticeably bigger birthmark, in both area and length, but part of it was missing.
That part was clutched in his fist, a steady stream of thick dark red blood ran from the crater that had been left when the growth had
broken off . I knew that it had been bothering him for months. He often complained that when the weather changed, the hemangioma (or whatever it is) got dry, it would rub up against his pants and get irritated, but never had it simply broken off, to leave a significant quarter-half dollar sized crater on the side of his leg, parallel to his kneecap.
We went inside and cleaned the wound, which had crusted over almost immediately. Inside, it really did look like a moon crater, a large gaping hole filled with clusters of some sort of tissue. I wrapped the piece that he held in a paper towel and put it in a plastic bag with the intention of getting him to go to a dermatologist, which I knew wouldn’t be easy. Something wasn’t right with this ‘birthmark’ and the more research I did on hemangiomas after that day, the more I thought what he had
wasn’t a hemangioma. I didn’t know what it was, though, as I could not find any information that described a similar condition.
Not having health insurance really limits us when it comes to seeking treatment for anything. If it can be managed at home or with a single self-pay bill from an urgent care place, we usually go that route, especially if it’s Frank. He won’t see a doctor unless he is literally dying, so I knew it would be up to me to find out what was up with the birthmark and what we could do about it to make his life less miserable.
It took a few months for it to heal over, but when it did, it grew twice as big in half the time it took to reach that size before. The reddish-brown mass had turned black, crusted over, like a burnt marshmallow protruding from the side of his leg. I didn’t notice it at first, even seeing him naked as often as I did, until he started to show signs that it was bothering him.
I called him over one night after he came home from work, miserable as could be with an expression of pain on his face, limping through the door. It had gotten colder out, and I knew that the temperature change probably dried it out and he was particularly bad about just keeping the damn thing moisturized. I had a little vat of Vaseline in my hands and a pair of gloves over them, just in case.
He was reluctant to sit down and let me apply the Vaseline, even though he knew that it would help. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, and went to yank his pants leg up. He stopped me with his hand and a stern look.
“What the hell, Frank?”
“Don’t. It hurts.”
He normally put a band-aid over the bumps, just to keep them from rubbing against his pants, so when I went to yank up his pants leg I knew he didn’t have one on by the wincing. He still fought me, though, which was unlike him. In my experience, most guys liked to be nursed on and fussed over, but not today. He wanted nothing to do with me or my nursing abilities.
After a fifteen minute argument about taking care of himself and seeking treatment for it before it caused more issues, we had settled in and were getting ready for bed. It never took Frank long to fall asleep, and he often did before I did, which gave me a little time to read whatever book I was into or play some solo games. Reading was just a diversion that night, however.
He didn’t wear pants to bed, so all I had to do was duck under the covers and slide down a bit to where I was almost eye level with his leg. I hit the flashlight on my phone and turned it on low, so the light radiating from under the comforter wouldn’t wake him.
I didn’t anticipate what I saw. This was no longer considered a hemangioma, for sure. What I was looking at was definitely something else. It had grown out again, like a tumor, another large throbbing black crusted mass that seemed to have some kind of bone structure to it, white, smooth, pointed ridges poked out from the mass.
Even worse, it had hair. Several strands of long black hair were somehow adhered to it. I giggled to myself under the covers, wondering if it had also grown a personality overnight as well. The more I looked at the monstrous tumor on Frank’s leg, the more I started to consider it a sentient, living thing. A pet, or a
child.
The next day, when Frank got home, I stood in the kitchen waiting for him with something I had bought from Wal-Mart. When he saw me holding it, he gave me the weirdest look I had ever seen someone give, but it didn’t bother me.
“Booties?..For my birthmark?”
“It’s name is Ezekiel .”
I stated. I had just picked the name. The booties were cotton, tiny white socks with black trim, just big enough to fit over top of the abomination. At the time, I didn’t think there was anything crazy about this or strange. I had done much stranger things during the course of our relationship, but perhaps this had topped the charts of the most bizarre in the history of us as an item.
Frank didn’t mind the name, but refused to wear the sock over Ezekiel, which bothered me significantly. I felt offended that he didn’t like what I picked out for him, like he was somehow thwarting my maternal instinct or motherly decision making. He had taken to trying to put a band-aid over it again, but they would no longer stick. Ezekiel had grown too far off his leg for the ends of the bandage to adhere to his skin without popping right off.
When he would fall asleep at night, I would duck under the covers to see if Ezekiel had any more characteristics, any new hair growth, hoping to see something more definitive. A face? Little feet? Tiny fingers?
I would use a toothbrush to gently clean around him while Frank slept, and even sung him made-up lullabies. So far as I knew, Frank had no idea what I was doing, and slept soundly throughout.
One evening, I ducked underneath the covers as I usually did with my flashlight and a glove/washcloth to clean Ezekiel when I noticed something fascinating and delightfully new. He had grown an eye. A single, tiny, blood-shot eye with a black iris that seemingly stared up at me with love as I gently patted him with baby shampoo and water. The eye never moved. It never blinked, just stared up at me with what I interpreted as unconditional love.
I left the bed and returned with eye drops, hoping to clear the redness, but my motion woke Frank, who was watching me with a look of shock, awe, and disgust on his face that was simply indescribable.
When he returned from work the next day, to my horror, there was a crater on his leg. Ezekiel was no more. The mass that I had fallen in love with had been removed or had left on its on accord, most likely with some help. I resented Frank for this. How could he take away the only child I would ever have?
But before I could start a fight or cry and scream, he produced a mason jar. Inside, Ezekiel sat, his tiny eye still staring, but blankly and off center with clusters of long black hair around it, the rigids now visible, were evidently teeth it had grown, breaking the surface of the black, crusted, tumor. Frank explained to me that it had been bothering him so much that he went to the emergency room that day and they had told him then that it was something rare, especially where it was.
A teratoma , such as a dermoid cyst, is what my beloved Ezekiel was, just a cluster of random tissue and organs - a parasitic twin of sorts. Frank had requested to bring home the tumor after it was biopsied, which allowed me to see the teeth on the inside, and the round eye in its partially formed glory. The doctors also removed what looked like an umbilical cord attached to the mass, underneath the skin that had adhered to the muscle. It coiled around Ezekiel in the jar like a tail.
It took some time, but I gave up imagining Ezekiel as a replacement for the child I would never have, leaving it in the mason jar, tucked toward the back of our bookshelf in the master bedroom. I threw out the baby things, stopped referring to ‘it’ as ‘him’, but every so often when Frank is asleep and I am engaged in my novel, I hear something whispering right up against my ear, in a soft, child-like voice.
Mama..Mama..Sing to me again…
And look to that spot on the bookshelf where it is barely visible behind our library of hardcovers, the blood-shot eye clearly looking toward me, its eye lid low as if it felt the pain of being forsaken, my only son.
