i wrote this in one inspired go in 2006, back when i didn't know what it was even going to be about, to help out on a friend's thesis (which was a magazine about color. can you guess which color i was assigned?). i seem to be an old hand when it comes to permanently losing stuff i write, so hopefully uploading it here would be enough backup until i accidentally delete this space in the future. knowing me, you never know.
apples in season
In those floating moments before passing out, what she saw behind her eyelids was the sun as she had seen it months ago, a great ball of flame barely hidden by the curtains in the man’s office. She remembered staring at the window, the doctor – was he a doctor? – droning on about the safe mechanics, the safe instructions to be followed (like a strawberry tart recipe, she’d thought) of the safe procedure. She remembered not listening after the second unpronounceable word he’d used, had given up even the pretense of nodding by the third. Fear clawed round the rims of her numb decision at his voice thrown out so casually, so she risked a glance at him and saw the tips of his fingers pressed thoughtfully together – they were infant’s fingers, smooth and light like cotton candy silk to the touch, the glare of the sun reflecting off his glasses and shielding his eyes. He looked to her at that instant a predator, a subtle one studying her, even a polite one, but one whose innate aggression was boiling patiently within, waiting to spring. Somehow, as the sun was setting a dark magenta inside the room, so the fear increased
And the tension peaked,
And her body heaved,
Erupted,
And she found the strength to bolt from her seat and go for the door, not once looking back into that room where a thousand little pink faces seemed to hover in the air, perched in his shoulders, peering in from the curtains, not once although the dry woman at the desk (so dry you could strike her with a flint) shouted for her to come back.
Come back!
As he was still explaining the safe extraction, the last words she’d heard as she was running towards the door were
tissue,
scraPING,
CURETTE –
the words rising in rapid succession, the words like burning wounds in her skin, as the man witnessed the escape of his prey. He would, she knew, he would – he would suck her dry if he could.
---------------------------------------------------------
Come back to us, dear. Don’t pass out now.
A fiery spasm gripped her, and her eyes shot open to blinding light.
She was screaming with pain, she knew, near hysteria, but her mind lingered on that other place, of guilt and remembering. Her body rocked with the spasms, swam with the volcano of her stomach as it gave up nine months of blood and tears (and a heartbeat, oh so silent only she could discern it). Something on her forehead wiping the sweat off, someone holding her hand, telling her to push. (What? How?)
To push. Her nails dug deep at the hand, bit into the flesh.
To push. She bit her lips and drew blood. She wanted to cry, but the tears were stuck.
To push! Her insides ripped apart, and she pushed, she pushed, mouth opening involuntarily into breathless gasps. The pain. Was hell.
And release, as she fainted dead again. The ball of flame beckoned, barely hidden by the curtains of a room once visited, and often haunted.
---------------------------------------------------------
A lustful wailing.
Smatterings of applause, a loud smack – of life, an initiation of the first sensation of pain, like a gong resounding to start a ritual.
Relieved laughter, bloodshot eyes.
Total labor time: 3 days and 9 hours.
The new mother slept on.
---------------------------------------------------------
Waking up was like surfacing from below a desert, and her throat was parched for water. Her head felt light and she wanted to shake the lethargy off, her body aching from lying in one position for too long. She tried in vain and found that she could not, the best she could do was turn her head in ever-small angles on both sides.
Until then, her eyes were open but what she saw she couldn’t grasp; she didn’t care, her mind made no connections and no recollection. What was plain was the emptiness, the sudden loss of a weight that she knew she carried long, but couldn’t remember just then. Painfully, to have any motion at all, she willed her head to lean left, and it felt like a door with hinges creaking from years of disuse. Limp and battered, she froze at what greeted her mere inches away.
Wrapped in a white swaddle of towels was the tiniest, most paradoxical creature she ever saw, so unobtrusive in its quiet sleep yet so demanding of attention that all she could do was stare. For the first time in her life words failed her, in that even if her throat hadn’t been screamed dry she would have found no sound to utter, no tone to express. She stared, now remembering the past days of labor, with childlike bewilderment that grew with the seconds into wonder.
Hardly drawing a breath, for fear it was a mirage to spite her, her hands crept to the baby by her side, shaking not so much from what had been flagging strength to the renewed sense of vigor and eagerness that overflowed though her now as she found it solid. She exhaled, a ragged rush of air.
Mouth working soundlessly as her hands traced the bald head, the closed lids, the pointed flesh of a nose. She caressed the shying earlobes; her eyes roving round the baby’s skin that blushed with birth and the bloom of life. It was a boy, she discovered, elated, her heart pounding with the discovery.
Then, reverently, feeling it the most perfectly beautiful, the most blessedly natural thing in the world, like wild roses in springtime and apples in season, she drew him to her, nearer, and he gurgled as his tiny fists flailed energetically into the air. She brought her face close to his, and his rosebud mouth she pressed to hers
gently,
joyfully,
lovingly.
The fears now fled.
And the ashes of hope blazed into the air, a phoenix in its climax, in its birth in never-ending glorious cycles. She was being reborn, the how’s and why’s irrelevant. The cynicism of dashed expectations now being swept up into the locked drawers of Time; the bitterness, the hopelessness, the anger, now being forgotten, forgiven.
She felt his need, and she could only love; the past shrinking in the light of this present miracle, in the sound of his heartbeat that only she could discern as it beat in time with hers.
Flesh and blood, her son. She smiled amidst her tears.
And so the mother slept on.
---------------------------------------------------------
* for the Giver of apples.
apples in season
In those floating moments before passing out, what she saw behind her eyelids was the sun as she had seen it months ago, a great ball of flame barely hidden by the curtains in the man’s office. She remembered staring at the window, the doctor – was he a doctor? – droning on about the safe mechanics, the safe instructions to be followed (like a strawberry tart recipe, she’d thought) of the safe procedure. She remembered not listening after the second unpronounceable word he’d used, had given up even the pretense of nodding by the third. Fear clawed round the rims of her numb decision at his voice thrown out so casually, so she risked a glance at him and saw the tips of his fingers pressed thoughtfully together – they were infant’s fingers, smooth and light like cotton candy silk to the touch, the glare of the sun reflecting off his glasses and shielding his eyes. He looked to her at that instant a predator, a subtle one studying her, even a polite one, but one whose innate aggression was boiling patiently within, waiting to spring. Somehow, as the sun was setting a dark magenta inside the room, so the fear increased
And the tension peaked,
And her body heaved,
Erupted,
And she found the strength to bolt from her seat and go for the door, not once looking back into that room where a thousand little pink faces seemed to hover in the air, perched in his shoulders, peering in from the curtains, not once although the dry woman at the desk (so dry you could strike her with a flint) shouted for her to come back.
Come back!
As he was still explaining the safe extraction, the last words she’d heard as she was running towards the door were
tissue,
scraPING,
CURETTE –
the words rising in rapid succession, the words like burning wounds in her skin, as the man witnessed the escape of his prey. He would, she knew, he would – he would suck her dry if he could.
---------------------------------------------------------
Come back to us, dear. Don’t pass out now.
A fiery spasm gripped her, and her eyes shot open to blinding light.
She was screaming with pain, she knew, near hysteria, but her mind lingered on that other place, of guilt and remembering. Her body rocked with the spasms, swam with the volcano of her stomach as it gave up nine months of blood and tears (and a heartbeat, oh so silent only she could discern it). Something on her forehead wiping the sweat off, someone holding her hand, telling her to push. (What? How?)
To push. Her nails dug deep at the hand, bit into the flesh.
To push. She bit her lips and drew blood. She wanted to cry, but the tears were stuck.
To push! Her insides ripped apart, and she pushed, she pushed, mouth opening involuntarily into breathless gasps. The pain. Was hell.
And release, as she fainted dead again. The ball of flame beckoned, barely hidden by the curtains of a room once visited, and often haunted.
---------------------------------------------------------
A lustful wailing.
Smatterings of applause, a loud smack – of life, an initiation of the first sensation of pain, like a gong resounding to start a ritual.
Relieved laughter, bloodshot eyes.
Total labor time: 3 days and 9 hours.
The new mother slept on.
---------------------------------------------------------
Waking up was like surfacing from below a desert, and her throat was parched for water. Her head felt light and she wanted to shake the lethargy off, her body aching from lying in one position for too long. She tried in vain and found that she could not, the best she could do was turn her head in ever-small angles on both sides.
Until then, her eyes were open but what she saw she couldn’t grasp; she didn’t care, her mind made no connections and no recollection. What was plain was the emptiness, the sudden loss of a weight that she knew she carried long, but couldn’t remember just then. Painfully, to have any motion at all, she willed her head to lean left, and it felt like a door with hinges creaking from years of disuse. Limp and battered, she froze at what greeted her mere inches away.
Wrapped in a white swaddle of towels was the tiniest, most paradoxical creature she ever saw, so unobtrusive in its quiet sleep yet so demanding of attention that all she could do was stare. For the first time in her life words failed her, in that even if her throat hadn’t been screamed dry she would have found no sound to utter, no tone to express. She stared, now remembering the past days of labor, with childlike bewilderment that grew with the seconds into wonder.
Hardly drawing a breath, for fear it was a mirage to spite her, her hands crept to the baby by her side, shaking not so much from what had been flagging strength to the renewed sense of vigor and eagerness that overflowed though her now as she found it solid. She exhaled, a ragged rush of air.
Mouth working soundlessly as her hands traced the bald head, the closed lids, the pointed flesh of a nose. She caressed the shying earlobes; her eyes roving round the baby’s skin that blushed with birth and the bloom of life. It was a boy, she discovered, elated, her heart pounding with the discovery.
Then, reverently, feeling it the most perfectly beautiful, the most blessedly natural thing in the world, like wild roses in springtime and apples in season, she drew him to her, nearer, and he gurgled as his tiny fists flailed energetically into the air. She brought her face close to his, and his rosebud mouth she pressed to hers
gently,
joyfully,
lovingly.
The fears now fled.
And the ashes of hope blazed into the air, a phoenix in its climax, in its birth in never-ending glorious cycles. She was being reborn, the how’s and why’s irrelevant. The cynicism of dashed expectations now being swept up into the locked drawers of Time; the bitterness, the hopelessness, the anger, now being forgotten, forgiven.
She felt his need, and she could only love; the past shrinking in the light of this present miracle, in the sound of his heartbeat that only she could discern as it beat in time with hers.
Flesh and blood, her son. She smiled amidst her tears.
And so the mother slept on.
---------------------------------------------------------
* for the Giver of apples.
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