Making Babies

The first time I ever had sex I cried hysterically for a full twenty post-
coital minutes, curled in the fetal position, praying to God there was no 
fetus conceiving itself inside my uterus.  
	My coitus partner, my first lover, my first love, was beside his 
naked self with worry.  “What’s wrong?  Oh God, did I hurt you?  Are you 
okay?  Talk to me, please.”  Though he begged me to speak, I couldn’t.  I 
tried.  I opened my mouth and air.  Whimpers.  Drool.  It seemed as if 
the virginity fairy had not only taken my voice as well as hymen.
	My boyfriend’s desperation grew and finally words burst forth 
from my sniveling mouth, “I don’t want to make babies!”
	He almost laughed, “Silvi, we’re not making babies.”  I would’ve 
slugged him if he’d said what I knew he was thinking.
	“We’re having sex!” I protested, “and sex makes babies!  And 
condoms are only 95-98% effective!  And my family’s been reproducing like 
rabbits for decades!  And I’m just saying I’m sure I’m a fertile bunny!”
	My hysteria was certainly compounded by the fact I’d had babies 
on the brain for days, one very specific baby, actually: the one forming 
inside my sixteen year old sister.  A couple days earlier she’d sent me a 
cryptic email—“we need to talk”—followed by a brief and direct phone call—
“I’m five months pregnant and you’re the only one who knows.”  I cried 
then too, almost as hysterically, dropping to my knees at a phone booth 
inside the campus library.  I kept thinking, “She’s just a kid having a 
kid.  Like our mother who was sixteen when she had her first of nine.  
Like our grandmother who was sixteen when she had her first of ten.”  I 
was a junior in college, weeks shy of twenty; I’d escaped the legacy so 
far and I’d rather be damned to the depths of virginal hell than join the 
generations of early motherhood. 
	But I’d just saved myself from that virginal hell, the one I 
never thought I’d get out of.  Eventhough I had, as my girlfriends called 
them, an “entourage” of suitors for much of my life—a gaggle of ten or so 
ogling, interested men—none of them suited me, and the ones who were 
lucky enough to get with me, didn’t get much.  I’d like to say that’s 
because I only gave the gold to those who really knew how to dig for it, 
but the truth is I had so little experience “digging” I avoided the 
prospect all together.  Not to mention, my first experience beyond first 
base left me quite scarred.  I was in ninth grade, and I reported the 
incident to my best friend in a letter.  “Dear Sandra, Nick from Fredonia 
frenched me and touched my butt."  Her mother found the letter, read it, 
and proceeded to read the letter to my hot-tempered Ecuadorian mother who 
told me, “You freakin be messin wit boys so young I kill you,” my 
Spanglish speaking Ecuadorian mother warned, “I freakin kill 
you!”          
	“You just don’t understand what the consequences feel like for 
me,” I sighed to my boyfriend, composing myself a bit, wiping my tears.
	“Oh,” my boyfriend laughed, wrapping his arms around my fetal 
positioned body, “I’ve heard your mother’s warning.  I think I freakin 
do.”