An old woman reads my future. She tells me how three children will be born from my body. A girl, two boys. XX, XY, XY. 

One will be curt. One will be light-footed. One will not survive the separation.

She holds the soles of my feet and bows over the peeled polish on my toes. Her wrinkled hands cover my heels, callus to callus, elephant-skin thumbs against the arch of my bare foot. Tipped back in the chair we can’t see each other’s faces. I can hear her voice. She can feel my cold feet. We can both smell the musty blankets muffled by wood polish. 

And you believed her? my date says. I shrug my shoulders, take a sip of my drink. 

Maybe. I mean, no. 

Not really, I say. 

I shift my weight from one foot to the other, the leather of my shoes pinching my ankle. An old boyfriend told me he was worried I would get myself pregnant because I wanted it so much. As if it were something I could do, as simple as clicking add-to-cart. My gravitational pull toward the infant in any room was a red letter that warned off men and signaled to women that I had ambitions smaller than theirs.

When it happens, I don’t think I’ll tell anyone. 

Maybe I’ll take you away. Give birth to my girl up in the mountains like a woman running with wolves. Raise you on foraged berries and witchcraft. Bare feet and scraped elbows. 

When he kisses down my leg, I tell him to stop. Giggling as his lips reach my ankle. 

No! I say, not meaning it. I laugh, covering my face with both hands. 

He tells me to “just try it,” and I lean back and lift my eyes to the peeling wallpaper. His mouth brushes the bridge of my right foot, his breath warm against my skin. He glances up at me. He flattens his tongue against my toes, taking them one by one into his mouth. Runs his fingers down my thighs. I flinch. I relax into it. 

He looks up at me, eyebrows raised, brow wrinkled—a victory of possibilities. He stretches and moves up the bed to kiss me. I stop him halfway up. 

Or to the beach where I’ll wean you on papaya and coconut. 

Dip your baby boy toes into the breaking waves and fall asleep on pillows of sand. Or to the city. Teach you to walk on the marble floors in front of Nike, Khalo, or the melting clocks.

But they wouldn’t go to church, I tell him, spreading my hair across the pillowcase. 

Ever? 

No. I mean. If they wanted to, but I wouldn’t want them brought up thinking that there’s this all-knowing sky-being who cares if they masturbate or has strong opinions on which days you eat fish. 

He rolls to face me. 

What if your husband wanted them to? 

Well. I’m very unsure about the whole “I love you so I’m going to make it legally complicated for you to leave me” thing.

I pause for effect.

And no, I say finally. They wouldn’t go. 

He lifts one eyebrow and waits for me to finish.

I knew I was being verbose. Making sure my sentences were quippy enough to soften the point I was trying to make: that I will not compromise. When I imagine my children I imagine them mine.

There’s something mocking in how you need two people to create one. I want to pull them into existence from my own body, not to fold someone unknown into the mix. 

The one who comes last will be the balance. 

An invisible edge to this open-sided square. 

Without you, sentences will feel unfinished, the backseat will never be full. Arms will hold a muscle-memory ache where you rested, quiet and cold.

I don’t know why you take any of this stuff seriously, he says, as I describe the old woman again. 

Because it matters, I reply. 

He scoffs and runs his other hand across his face. He looks at me like I’m stupid. Says: It’s nonsense, you must realize what she said can’t matter?

That’s not what I meant, but I don’t counter. I push my stomach out and place a hand above and below. 

These children were with me when I was born. Mothered inside my own mother. 

A set of Russian dolls starting with mitochondrial Eve and ending with you. 

Dolls that open layer by layer to reveal a body already painted, a face already set. Until you reach the smallest doll. One without a cut and groove that you can’t, however nicely you ask, twist and break open to reveal another face.

After a while he doesn’t argue. I talk until his silence becomes a cavernous vessel. We lie like specks of dust against its clear bowl. 

He falls asleep, and I can’t be there any longer, watching him breathe openmouthed like a beached fish, wondering if it’s a genetic trait. It’s hard to find what is mine in the dark, but I don’t dare turn on a lamp. Barefoot, I walk home alone. Perhaps I’m too selfish to have children.

Beth Carter writes and lives in London. She has a background in anthropology, social entrepreneurship, and marketing strategy and continues to work somewhere in the middle of all three. Matryoshka is her first published piece of fiction. You can find her on Twitter as @bethkcarter or online at Beth Carter Is Typing.

Susan Metrican is an artist and curator based between Fairfield, Iowa and Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a BA from the Kansas City Art Institute, an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Metrican has exhibited at Able Baker Contemporary in Maine, Boston Center for the Arts in Massachusetts, Knockdown Center in New York, and Unity Gallery in Iowa, among many others. She is also a curator at the Kniznick Gallery (Brandeis University) in Massachusetts, and a co-founder of the collaborative art space kijidome. More of Metrican’s work can be viewed on her website.