I wasn't suppose to get pregnant and yet it somehow happened despite how careful I was. If only I knew I was carrying the Devil's spawn, the very one who would destroy me. My pregnancy with her was the worst. I had non stop morning sickness that was so horrible I accidentally on purpose fell down the stairs. As a result I was hospitalized on bed rest under constant doctor supervision. I prayed and prayed for a miscarriage but she thrived on as my body grew weaker. I felt like she was feasting on my youth and vibrance.

I was stuck in that hospital for months, confined to stay in bed waiting and waiting. I spent my days embroidering and clipping magazines, building a dream world I would never know because of her. She would kick inside my stomach day and night to remind me of her looming presence. I felt like Satan's seed was inside me and all my father's prophecies would come true.

Christopher blamed city life for my accident and thought we should move out to the country. When I was suddenly discharged from the hospital he picked me up in a new car and told he had a special surprise for me. We drove for hours and I thought he was surprising me with a special honeymoon in Niagra Falls like he once promised. But then we passed the Pennselvania state line to a place called Gladstone where all the houses looked the same and then I knew, this was not a honeymoon. He pulled up to a tacky little house the size of some slave quarters at a plantation. It was canary yellow with white window shutters, a three bedroom one story cheap colonial knock off, a gingerbread nightmare.

He had went ahead and bought a house behind my back. As if I hadn't lost enough, as if sacrificing my body wasn't enough, I was now suppose to sacrifice my freedom as well. I needed the city to thrive, without it I'd go mad with boredom. I hated that god forsaken little house that was to be my little jail cell.

Christopher was excited, he was animated as he gave me a tour of the house, he was so proud of himself, of his booming new career and of what his higher pay check could now provide, having such pride for this tiny factory made house that looked like all the others on the block. It was pathetic how he could be so contempt with having so little and I fearfully wondered if he honestly believes this modest life will be more than enough. Oh god, I didn't once consider his poor upbringing was this inpovershed.

He twirled me in a dance, giddyly showing me the pink kitchen I would have to cook in, the bedrooms he painted with little Chris, his new navy blue room, bedrooms I would have to clean, new carpets I would have to vacuum, a lenoleum bathroom I would have to scrub, and the yard with a small garden of roses, panzies, tulips, daisies, and dafoldils he had planted for me, flowers I would have to water everyday and all the dirt that would get under my nails. All I could see was the endless work in it for me.

I thought of all the timely little tasks, those mundane chores I would have to do everyday for the rest of my youth and all of my adult life. Right then I thought of all that I would never experience, of all the places I would never venture to in my lifetime. This can't be it, this can't be all my life will be from now until death.

I started to hyperventuate with racing axiety coursing through my mind like a dark fog covering every ray of hope. The suffocating clausterphobia I was feeling from that wretched house caused my water to break as I was reeling in the worst pain of my life, mentally as well as physically.

We got back in the car and drove to the local hospital. I felt like I was going to die and I wanted to if it would make the pain stop and let me die a beautiful young martyr no daughter could live up to. No matter how much I pleaded, threatened, and begged, they wouldn't knock me out and told me I would have to give birth the old fashioned way since I was already fully dialated and ready to push. I screamed in dire agony as she came into the world ripping me apart and tearing up my womanhood into tatters. They lifted her up and her face was grotesquely coved in white mucus, a en caul birth, Satan's sign.

After, I couldn't even look at her and refused to hold her. I felt nothing for that baby but contempt. She was an ugly baby with feverish pink skin and a swollen up face, she looked like a ninty-year-old turtle. I nicknamed her Lon Chaney.

Christopher adored her to no end, doting on her every cry and couldn't understand my coldness towards a seemingly innocent infant. He wasn't the one whose unmentionables were in stitches and was being ignored in favor of a younger girl who will grow up to be a better, more beautiful version of yourself, one you couldn't ever rival.

Christopher gave her his white trash mother's middle name, Catherine, to honor that gold digger, and my own middle name of Leigh to honor me. Catherine Leigh. I hated that name.

At least my little blue-eyed baby boy favored me more but he was going to start pre-school and leave me and I would have to be alone with her all day long.

She cried like a banshee, so loud and shrill, I feared the whole neighborhood could hear her. Day and night she wailed on and on no matter what I did, until Christopher came home friday and she'd be a giggling little cherub, all smiles and sunshine.

Making love was painful after her, even after the stitches healed it felt like I was being ripped apart all over again, sex was now a vile sting that burned, I would wince and violently push Christopher away and that one encounter would leave me reeling for days after with this unpleasant gnawing dull pain.

Baby Cathy was so manipulative, she knew what she was doing. I tried dressing her up in dresses that matched mine, tied ribbons in her blond whispy hair, and as soon as I stepped out the door with her she would throw up all over her pretty dress and pull her bows out of her hair in a tantrum as if to mock my efforts. She made leaving the house an impossible task.

It were the worst years of my life carring for that baby I never wanted, who held me prisoner to her iron will. Her first word was "Dada" of course, but her second word was "No!" and it was her absolute most favorite word. "No!" She would yell "No! No! NO!" nonstop while kicking and screaming in the middle of the grocery store throwing canned peaches at my head and smashing jars of jam on the ground, making a huge scene with everyone was starring at me in such bitter judgement, all those nosy jealous old biddy mothers were oh so satisfized to see me fail as a mother. I never wished for death more.

After I would lock myself in the bathroom and silently cry to myself as she banged on the door incessantly. I looked up to Christopher's razor and would think, "What if…."

Then there would be silence and I'd snap out of that whim and would eventually open the door and come out where I'd be greeted by the horrific sight of whole house torn apart with her, the walls, and carpet all covered in every sticky sugary food she could find in the fridge and pantry, food I just bought for the big dinner I was going cook for Christopher and his boss that night.

Suddenly I had only two hours to reclean the whole house, go on my hands and knees and scrub off all the stains she made, take the laundry off the lines and fold them neatly into a basket, bathe and change Cathy, pick little Chris up from school, go back to the store with a screaming out of control baby and an over chatty four year-old who always needs my doting full undivided attention to his every word with a detailed response to his every annoying question, somehow fix up an amazing gourmet dinner with a delectable desert baked from scratch, then curl my hair, paint my nails, do my make up, and get dressed up to greet them at the door with an effortless smile, and I had to achieve it all without a car and with just ten dollars in my purse. What did I do to deserve this and who the hell called domestic life bliss?

They never tell you how thankless motherhood is. The depravity of having to give away all of yourself to sustain a family and to watch in pain as they grow and gain all that you lost that you can never have back again because of the heavy chains you bear and are expected to wear like fine jewels. Suburbia might as well be a barren desolate wasteland for it is no garden of eden to me.

AN: Forgive me of my run on sentences