Cold Uterus

by Ann Yuan

I have a cold uterus.

It’s hard to explain. In traditional Chinese medicine, one cause of infertility is that your uterus is too cold. Of course, when they say “cold,” it doesn’t mean it’s cold to touch. Also, the term “uterus” includes the whole set of reproductive systems instead of just the pear-shaped organ itself. The point is, you have to provide an optimal environment in order to grow something as delicate as a fertilized egg. 

This makes perfect sense to me. I always have cold hands and feet. Despite being healthy and fit, we have tried for several years without any positive results. At the ripe old age of thirty-five, I had no reason not to trust the theory that Chinese women have practiced for a thousand years.

To keep me warm and hydrated, I drink hot water. The thermos has a double-wall vacuum insulation, a smooth cylinder for my grip. I sip the water when it is hot but not hot enough to burn my mouth. The stream travels through my blood vessels and runs down to my fingertips. I lie there with a pillow under my butt, imagining my belly is a patch of rich black soil and my husband plowing like a diligent farmer. 

By the end of the next cycle, my period arrives as punctually as the train at the Grand Central.

In winter, New York City becomes very unfriendly to people trying to conceive. It’s bitterly cold and windy, like a bad show that drags forever and refuses to let audiences leave. I allow myself to sleep in, unwilling to move or eat. Our landlord turns down the heater during the day when most people go to work. The apartment is empty, so am I. I watch a TikTok video of a woman who teaches us how to sleep with a rubber hot water bag tied to her belly.  

Infertility, my OB says, can happen without any reason. But there is a reason! I yell. She looks at me, her eyes behind her rimless glasses apprehensive and empathetic, which makes me ashamed of myself. I run out of the office before she suggests any fertility procedures.

On the street, women wear shirts; women drink iced coffee; women do things like the weather doesn’t exist. Do they care about anything at all? 

I drink more water, the hot hot one. My tongue is numb and my throat a scorching pipe. The nerves are dead. I gulp boiling water without blinking my eyes. The meat tastes like wax paper, my favorite walnut crispy cookie just a mouthful of extra fine sand. My mother knows me better than to check the results each month. Quite often she sends me all kinds of warm-up uterus tips on WeChat, black bone chicken soup, DangGui, and ginger roots. 

At night, I put my hands on my belly. It’s soft, abundant, slightly squirming under my palm, but I can sense a deep void that absorbs all the heat, like a black hole. Soon my concern becomes everyone’s concern. Wherever I go, there are always eyes scanning my stomach and giving me this “I understand” look. That doesn’t bother me until one day I come to my office finding all the girls girdling Shelly and chattering like a thousand ducks.

Apparently, Shelly gets pregnant after the first try. 

Morning sun pours in through the glass. The room is white in a blinding incandescence that makes me feel like inside an oven.

Lucky bitch. All she did was have one unprotected sex.

And then I hear the heartbeat. Not the one in my chest but a second one, the size of a grain, is beating out a radical rhythm and trying to take over my life. I sweat and shake. Don’t panic, I tell myself . This is how it feels. This is the way it should be. People are still cheering on the other side of the room. I get up and walk toward the girls, smiling, as the black hole inside me slowly closes up.

Ann Yuan’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, Gone Lawn, Five on the Fifth, Moonpark Review, BULL, Pine Hills Review, and elsewhere. She has been included in the Overheard Anthology and the upcoming Iridescence Anthology. She lives on Long Island, NY.