My in-laws wanted a grandson so badly.
They divorced me when I told them I was having a girl and happily signed away custody.
Then I gave birth to the son they wanted, and suddenly they wanted their heir back.
From the day I got pregnant, my in-laws had one question.
Not how I was feeling.
Only:
“Is it a boy?”
My mother-in-law, Henrietta, asked at every visit.
“Have you found out yet?”
“We need to know if it is a boy.”
When I said we did not know, she lost interest until the next visit.
In their family, only a grandson counted.
A granddaughter was nothing, and they said it out loud.
“A girl cannot carry the name. We need a boy for this family.”
My husband, Tim, agreed with them on everything because whatever his parents wanted, he wanted.
He barely looked at my belly.
When I talked about the baby, he checked his phone.
His parents had already picked out someone else for him, a woman from a rich family they kept bringing to dinners.
Her name was Temperance.
Henrietta would seat her next to Tim and seat me down at the end by the serving dishes.
And then she would say in front of everyone:
“Now she would give strong sons, and her family is so well off.”
Once she said right across the table:
“You should learn from her. She carries herself like a real wife.”
Another time she told me:
“Do not take it personally, but love does not pay for anything.”
“Money and a son, that is what a marriage needs.”
Nobody ever corrected her.
Jurgen, my father-in-law, would keep eating.
Tim would laugh a little.
The way you laugh when you want a thing to be over.
And Temperance would look at her plate with a small, polite smile.
And I remember thinking she looked uncomfortable.
And I remember deciding I did not have the energy to wonder why.
They were not even hiding it.
They wanted Tim to leave me and marry the rich one.
And Tim did not argue.
The only thing keeping them from pushing me out fully was that I might be carrying the grandson they wanted.
So when I went for the scan and found out, I sat in my car in the parking lot for 20 minutes with the printout in my lap.
I thought about Temperance in my seat at their table.
I thought about being nothing to these people except a body that might produce a boy.
And about what that would make my son.
Growing up in a house where love was a bonus paid on delivery.