Afro-Bougie Blues - Chapter Excerpt

Mourning Angela

My body tried to warn me, but I didn't want to listen. So, it sent my back pain. I ignored it. A stomachache Not feelin' it The spotting was the final hint, and then the geyser came Another miscarriage was dashing my hopes for motherhood

It was 10 o'clock in the morning and I was midway through an experiment in the laboratory that would just have to wait until I could get back to it. My mind had flipped into mushroom mode, and all I could think of was getting back home to the comfort of my own bathroom, where I could hide from the world and cry in peace.

The drive home was mercifully brief and required enough concentration to block out everything but the pain But when I got home, there was no more escape from the voices in my head It was my fifth miscarriage in two years, and each one took another piece of my sanity and yanked it from my psyche

Alexis the Perfectionist couldn't do the most natural thing in the world The rows of prenatal vitamins, immunological and Progesterone boosters, and herbal remedies mocked me from my medicine cabinet. I couldn't hide from the reality of my failure and the treachery of my uterus.

Seventeen years ago, when I hadn't wanted to be pregnant, I was. Now at age 34, when I wanted to get pregnant, I couldn't. So, there I sat in my cream-colored bathroom, crying. Again. Just as I had five months ago and three months before that I was sure this was some sort of punishment visited upon me by a vengeful God over the innocent life I had taken in my youth My past had come back to haunt me; seventeen years ago, I had aborted a child

Only my mother and my husband Terrence knew. To the rest of the world, I was a perfectionist ice queen who had probably never thought about love or sex for that matter. Instead, I had spent seventeen years immersed in books and research, clawing my way through college and grad school, then letting my Ph.D. and my "I'm in Control" attitude open new doors for me and slam shut on the disaster of my youth and my ill-fated attempt at love

My marriage to Terrence had shocked my co-workers, but he had broken through my ice shield with an overwhelming barrage of warmth and laughter, pulling me out of my career-minded rut and giving me a reason to try to love again.

We had met when my lab needed an IT consultant to create a system for the reams of data that threatened to drown us. Terrence was completely in his element, sweeping in, learning everyone's jobs, designing a database that would fit who we were as scientists, and giving it enough bells and whistles to make us want to use it