Dorcas was lying curled up fast asleep. Suddenly her eyes shot open and she sat up in bed. For a moment she wasn’t sure where she was.

She listened in horror as the sound of drums filled every corner of her bedroom. She shook her head in disbelief. Who on earth would be playing drums at this time of the morning? It had been a stroke of luck to find this lovely flat when she had arrived in Grahamstown – until a muso moved in next door. She had lived with a musician for two long years, so she had every reason to detest them.

This morning she had wanted to spoil herself. She’d had a hectic week at work, and she felt she deserved to treat herself to a long sleep in.

“Oh no,” she moaned. “This can’t be happening to me.” She had lived through too many band practices in her years with Jason. She had never got used to the noise and she never would.

Jason had walked out on her nearly three years before. In the time since he left, Dorcas’s life had changed drastically. And it wasn’t just because Jason had left her. Dorcas had started a whole new life. She was proud of what she had accomplished in the last two years. She doubted if he would recognise that she was the same person he had abandoned.

It still hurt, but Dorcas was quite able to carry on her life without Jason in it. She had to admit she was far better off financially now. She hadn’t realised until Jason had left exactly how much she had been spending supporting the two of them. He liked the finer things in life, even if it meant spending his girlfriend’s money to get them.

It hadn’t always been like that. When she first met Jason he had paid for his share of the expenses and treated her like a princess. She had fallen madly in love with him. He told her many times how much he loved her.

“How much?” she would ask him. It had become a joke between them.

“More than Jeff loves his Fender.”

Now that was love. Jeff was in Jason’s band. He would never be parted from his Fender. It was one of only five in the country and he slept with the guitar on his bed.

But then Jeff met a girl he wanted to marry, and they had a baby. Then Nosizwe, the singer in the band, got pregnant. Everything began to change. Jeff so loved his son that he brought him along to band practice. Jason became desperate for a child.

He and Dorcas had sex whenever they could. Dorcas would even rush home at lunch break. They felt like naughty teenagers again.

At first Jason was very kind to her when she didn’t fall pregnant. He’d bring her chocolates and flowers. He’d cradle her in his arms, whispering soft words as she wept against him.

“Don’t worry, darling. It will happen soon. You must not stress yourself.”

Dorcas had read somewhere that tension and stress would prevent her from falling pregnant.

But then he started to put pressure on her. She told him that he was making her stressed and it would affect their chances, but he said that was nonsense.

They never seemed to make love spontaneously any more. He was always fretting about her cycle and when she would be most fertile. Dorcas found she couldn’t relax around him. She began to panic when he touched her, knowing that all he was thinking about was making a baby.

He told her again and again that she wasn’t a real woman. A real woman would have given him a child long ago, he used to complain. And he’d strut around like a peacock saying that there was nothing wrong with his manhood. He just needed the right woman to prove it.

“If you can’t give me a child, I’ll find somebody else to do the job for me,” he threatened her more than once.

Only women who’ve suffered a similar fate would know the anguish Dorcas experienced as, month after month, she was reminded of her infertility. When her ‘monthly’ arrived she cried for days on end.

“What kind of woman am I?” she had sobbed into her pillow at night. “I’m twenty eight years of age and I should easily fall pregnant.”

It seemed everywhere she looked all she saw was babies. Why couldn’t she have one?

* * *

Tell us what you think: How can not being able to fall pregnant affect a relationship?
Do you think Jason wanted to be a father for the right reasons?