Exploring the Fictional Worlds of Poet Tasha Cotter

Published on February 6, 2012 in birth, interview and motherhood. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Headshot for Tasha Cotter, Writer

Tasha Cotter

Your prose poem, “A Lack of Power at the South Central Women’s Clinic” opens with a clean, crisp image of “men in hard hats dart[ing] like bats in a gray air.” Can you talk to us about your process of writing this poem? How you decide when to use the prose poetry form? (Or to blend traditional stanzas with prose poetry, as you do in “Description of a Figment and a Letter to Imagination?”)

Even now A Lack of Power at the South Central Women’s Clinic seems strikingly different from much of my other work, the language and scene feels more raw and exposed. The poem came about when I was in a lobby, waiting to get a physical (it was a requirement before I could work with kids in the schools). Like so many of my poems, I used one element of reality to begin sketching a fictional world. For me, it feels like taking the essence of something and building a world to anchor it.
The poem began like this: I got a journal out and began braiding threads together–segmented thoughts and abstract concepts all started fitting together. The man at reception, the discomfort that arises from the most trivial things. I asked myself what if you were very scared? I tend to be a very discreet person, very secretive too, and so I used a voice much like my own in this prose poem–a form I associate with Baudelaire and the french, that’s being reimagined and redefined by contemporary poets like Sarah Manguso, Laura Kasischke, and Ann Carson.
I sat there scribbling for a while, hoping that I didn’t seem too strange, lost in my frantic little world in the Professional Park Plaza. It was rainy and cold out–a combination that always puts me in a gloomy mood. I remember feeling better once I got most of the poem on the page. It felt like I’d had a parallel anxiety that only found relief once there was something on the page. Odd, I know. The whole business of writing continues to alert me to aspects of myself I didn’t know existed….
You preface “Description of a Figment and a Letter to Imagination” with a few lines by poet Sarah Manguso. Can you talk to us about what draws you to Manguso’s work?
Sarah Manguso has been a very important influence on my own work. My two favorite books of hers are “Siste Viator” and “Captain Lands in Paradise.” I still remember how I felt after first reading her poem “Address to Winnie in Paris.” Dickinson said that she knew poetry by the sensation of “her head being taken off” and whenever I read Sarah Manguso’s work, that’s how I feel. My other two favorite poems of hers include “What we Miss” and “Love Letter (clouds).” The world gets re-ordered when I enter her poems and that’s what I look for in poetry. I was always drawn to the surrealists and the dada movement in Paris always captivated me for that same reason. I love Man Ray’s work and Duchamp’s—when I view their work it’s like something in me is being fed. Poets like Rusty Morrison and Ilya Kaminsky are other poets who just continue to inspire and astound me. They infuse my life with beauty and so I return to them again and again.
The poem Description of a Figment and a Letter to Imagination is something I’ve been working on for about three years now. It’s one of those poems you put away for a while and re-visit every six months or so, tweaking a line-break, checking the language, and basically improving it incrementally. The poem arrived too fast–I’m always suspicious of anything that comes about too easily, even if it feels nearly right. I don’t know where the idea for the poem came from, but when I re-read it a few months ago, I had a new take on it–it felt spacious and airy.
The white space seemed to operate like stage lighting for the beginning half of the poem. For some reason I kept imagining a white landscape when reading the poem–a blank modern shell of an apartment that comes off as distant and cold. The poem seemed to defy intimacy and inhabit it all at once. Now, more than ever, I see the poem being about the possibility of fertility–there’s something about life giving rise to life that seems so mysterious, so unexpected to me. Sometimes I just sit and meditate on what feels magical in an effort to understand it better: the notion of birth, some technologies, computer languages… I am endlessly fascinated by these things.
One of my favorite lines in “She Shouts at the Absence,” is the one that suggests, “Talk like a cowgirl who has chased an animal / For days, in a lonesome expanse of burnt orange country.” How did you arrive at this image? Any desire to discuss the writing of this poem?
I wanted to begin with a directive of sorts. I’d seen it done before and I liked the effect of pulling the reader into this world. I begin with “Go to a party…” and I wanted to continue building this world and guiding the reader. At the time I was living out west, surrounded by a burnt orange landscape. Mountain sage grew wild. I’d never seen anything like that vastness—it’s an image that still stays with me because of how compelling it all was—it just made a big impression. I was living in Colorado and I couldn’t help but think about how land—spectacular places like that—have this ability to minimize all other preoccupations and really transport you out of yourself and out of all that is human. You can’t help but feel small and a little awestruck. You start to question the great mysteries when you’re living in the shadow of a mountain range.
It’s that feeling I was trying to capitalize on when I was writing the lines you mention in your question. When you’re facing something that vast—when you’ve lost something that could by now be anywhere—you can’t help but feel lost and a little hopeless, but it doesn’t keep you from searching, even if what you need remains unreachable. I’ve always looked to the land for contrasts in my work. Naomi Shihab Nye has this line in her poetry about inheriting the ability to stand on a piece of land and stare. She’s not changing it, not transforming it, but looking as if to find something—to receive something just by that gesture of being present. I grew up in the rural south—I’ll always crave a certain amount of distance between myself and the rest of the world.
Some say it’s necessary to find “one’s voice” in their work. They work and work until something stabilizes–the voice, themes, language. To an extent, I understand what they mean. But when I look over my own work there are several personalities present: contradictory theories on life and lots of literary forms at play because I’m constantly experimenting. Maybe there’s a common denominator that I’m missing, I don’t know. The truth is I pay little attention to genre, focusing almost entirely on whatever it is I’m trying to communicate. I’ve written a three page poem before and I’ve written a hundred word story. As a writer, it feels like society wants to find a label for each piece of writing, though I think journals are getting more comfortable with accepting pieces whose form is irregular and resists classification.
Any mentors you’d like to share with us?
I was an undergrad at the University of Kentucky when I met Nikky Finney, who was a hugely important figure in my life. I took two of her courses—Poetry 407 and 507. She was a constant inspiration. She made me think of myself as a writer, constantly treating me like I was a peer. I’d never met anyone like her. Her comments and feedback on my work were exactly what I needed. I remember she had us all keep a word journal in which we were to turn in ten new words each week—a short definition and a sentence on why we chose each word.
I kept my words in a black moleskin journal—I still have it. I remember I logged a lot of hours at the William T. Young library that semester, trying to find the most interesting, most poetic words to include in my journal. I still have that journal—it’s like a treasure chest. She motivated me to think differently and to observe everything. At the time my poetry was rather cryptic, not anchored to the ground at all. She opened my eyes to narrative and accessibility in poetry. I was thrilled when I heard she received the National Book Award in Poetry—it couldn’t have gone to a more deserving poet.
For a long time I called poetry home, though I never, ever called myself a poet. I didn’t even like the term writer. I surrounded myself with books by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Plath, and Joyce growing up, so I don’t think I’ll ever feel right referring to myself as a writer or poet. I remember in June of 2006 getting a package of books in the mail from Nikky–(all by Guy Davenport) she’d written ‘Poet’ after my name on the front of the package she’d mailed to me. I’ll be honest: seeing that title after my name thrilled me, but, despite being immensely flattered, I rejected the whole thing, opting instead to identify myself as teacher, educator, advisor. Anything but writer. Anything but Poet.
What are you currently working on?
For the last two years I’ve been in the midst of writing fiction. When I heard that The Fertile Source wanted to feature three poems, I felt a bit like a prodigal daughter, finally home after a very long trip away. I re-read the work and began to recall the choices I made. I remember who I am when I return to my old surroundings. There was poetry, waiting for me though I’d been away for some time. There was something comforting about being back–after all, poetry was what started it all for me. It has personally defined me for so long now. It’s been a lens I’ve used to give shape and meaning to my life.
Right now I have two full-length poetry manuscripts in need of a publisher. I’m not very good about entering contests–the whole thing can get pretty costly in no time, so I’ve been doing research on small, independent presses. Although I’m mostly working in fiction, I almost always have a poem I’m polishing–at this point it’s an act that I’m convinced is bound up in my identity. I like the element of understanding and the process of discovery comes with trying to capture the nuance in what I see and what I feel. In terms of publishing, I try to always have some of my flash fiction or poetry circulating among the literary journals. I’ve found that having a background in poetry can be a very useful skill-set for a fiction writer. I’m convinced that working in more than one genre can only improve upon the other.
And Tasha, for fun, we noticed the guitar in the photo on your website. Is music part of your poetry?
The picture on the website was taken at Normandi Ellis’s PenHouse Writer’s Retreat in 2011. It was an open mic event. I will say, though, that the idea of flight and music play a big part in one of my poetry collections. I’ve always been fascinated by bird imagery—Booth published a poem of mine titled “Goldfinches” last year. Some of my work seems to orbit both of those elements. It’s also true that I listen to music a lot when I’m writing. Right now I’m listening to Bon Iver, Lana del Rey, Vetiver, and The Shout Out Louds.
I want my work to be sonically pleasing. Without fail I always read my poems aloud as I’m editing them. I want the sounds to sort of inform each other. If a line feels clunky, or I leave out a word when I’m reading the poem aloud, I know something needs correcting and I’ll work to smooth out the language.
Tasha Cotter’s work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in Booth, The Rumpus, Contrary Magazine, and elsewhere. Her fiction was recently nominated for a story South Million Writers award, and her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology 2011. You can find her online at www.tashacotter.com.

Three Poems by Tasha Cotter

Published on January 30, 2012 in motherhood. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A Lack of Power at the South Central Women’s Clinic

It looks like the power lines are being restored. Outside, men in hard hats dart like bats in a gray air. This time I’m not worried about my medical records or what my hypothetical political rival would leak to a hypothetical media. The man in front of me wants to know which insurance carrier is better: Humana or Anthem? There are more men than women in the office. I hate it when men are in lingerie stores, tampon aisles, and women’s clinics. It’s 2 PM on Tuesday and it’s unseasonably cold. No one wants this more than I do.

Description of a Figment and a Letter to Imagination

Where are you if not outside the enclosure?
Only figments live inside.
I am colorless and cold, I am my own figment.
–Sarah Manguso, “The Black Garden”

Small—as you would imagine.
Immaculate and white
Like a light beam of memory
Focus until I see a tiny blank
Body the size of a keyhole.
You are unspeakably clean.
So pure, I’m scared of you.
But this is where my emptiness
Goes. You are the address
I muster after sight settles down.
My body is adrift, we pace
This room. I notice someone
Faint through the wall
To wall windows.

***

I am told to be realistic by everyone but you and so I thank you and each piece

of dandelion wing I see in wind oddly departed from its weeping stalk. How does it feel released from cell—weaker parts get me down. You can’t be located biologically, but I say what about all those endless shivers and wakes that speak for themselves (loudly & within). Watch what you read: unreliable definitions cause panic. Think of the light as coming from within. Think hard on what you are.

She Shouts at the Absence

Go to a party of mothers and daughters.
It’s just that you are motherless.
As you listen to the sound of braiding hair,
As you listen to pepper jelly recipes
Don’t tear up.

Hold that bird your heart.

In the basement they are searching
Their skin tones for clues, propping
Themselves on beige furniture.
You pretend you’re fine, lightly laugh,
Accept wishes, whatever they are.

Talk like a cowgirl who has chased an animal
For days, in a lonesome expanse of burnt orange country.
The animal escaped, passed a point of no return.
Sit wondering how it happened.

(Cowgirl thought it wanted to stay).

Act like the blood that escapes
The bullet hole is not physical, not seen.
Dab it with a handkerchief of lace.

Tasha Cotter’s work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in Booth, The Rumpus, Contrary Magazine, and elsewhere. Her fiction was recently nominated for a story South Million Writers award, and her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology 2011. You can find her online at www.tashacotter.com.

 

 

Bastard babies are born with broken hearts: an interview with Leslie Worthington

Published on January 23, 2012 in adoption, birth mother, motherhood, pregnancy and sexuality. 2 Comments

Interview by Jessica Powers

Last week, we published Leslie Worthington’s short story, “The Beach House,” a story about a young woman, pregnant and  unwed, and trying to deal with her emotions as the father of her baby arranges an adoption. This week, I spoke with her about the spark for her story; about the realities of young women and pregnancy both today and back in the 1960s, when the story is set; and about why writing about these issues is important.

1. What was the spark for your story?

 The spark for the story came from a single sentence: “Bastard babies are born with broken hearts.”  That popped into my head, and I liked the alliteration and the oxymoronic nature of the phrase “bastard babies.”  We don’t use the word “bastard” in its original sense much anymore, so it added a shock to the statement.  At first, I thought the sentence was a line of poetry, but it eventually became the story “The Beach House.”  I wrote the story around it.

 2. Setting (time and place) is critical for this story. Can you give us a little bit of historical background for women who found themselves in your protagonist’s situation (unwed, pregnant) in the 1960s, when this story is set? The 1960s are an interesting bridge between cultural mores since the so-called “sexual revolution” was happening yet it was before Roe v. Wade.

Women find themselves in this situation even today.  Their options may be different, but sometimes when they are young and poor as Cecelia is, things aren’t all that different.  I set the story in the 60’s partly because I wanted the reader to think about that.  At first glance, you can say “oh, thank goodness it isn’t like that anymore.”  But is that really true?  Yes, as you say the sexual revolution had begun, but yet women didn’t have access to reliable birth control, there was no planned parenthood, and the options were, keep the child or put it up for adoption.  I think most women got married whether they wanted to or not.  Those who put their babies up for adoption were often hidden away as Cecelia is.  These girls were kicked out of school and sometimes sent off to homes for unwed mothers or to live with family far away so they could come back and pretend nothing had ever happened.  No one spoke of the child, and the girl could never speak of what had happened to her.  Another option was sometimes to give the child to a family member as Cecelia’s mother had left her to be raised by her grandmother.  Most of the time, these women never had a voice or avenue for release, a way to deal with their loss and pain over the huge thing that had happened to them.  They just had to shove it down inside themselves.

 
 
 

Dr. Leslie Worthington

Despite easy access to birth control, despite additional options, despite the lessened stigma on pregrancy without marriage, women, not just girls, still find themselves in this situation.  As a college English professor, I meet them all the time.  They are in my classes, they miss exams to have babies, and they write essays about babies they’ve lost and given up.  And society now, in the twenty-first century, isn’t as forgiving as we might like to think; these women aren’t always as forgiving of themselves. 

For Cecelia, she isn’t going to get married.  The baby’s father doesn’t have that in mind.  Her family thinks she is, so she can’t even go home without humiliation.  Can she go home to her grandparents with a baby, as her mother did?  It’s obvious she doesn’t have the means to keep the baby and care for it by herself.  It’s also obvious that she doesn’t want to give that baby up.  She’s decided on the baby’s gender, given him a name, and a future.  She’s imagined his future without her.  She’s fallen in love with her child before he’s even born, as mothers do.  Cecelia faces a horrible dilemma.

3. I love the ending, where we don’t know if Cecilia dies or just imagines her death and, later, makes it to shore. Metaphorically, however, she felt as though her life was essentially over. Can you talk about how you crafted the ambiguity and the metaphor into that ending?

I guess I haven’t thought much about intentionally crafting the ambiguity of the ending.  I’ve displeased some readers who couldn’t believe I’d create a woman who would kill her child.  I think the ambiguity comes from the fact that even Cecelia doesn’t know what she’s going to do.  She doesn’t set out intending to commit suicide.  She doesn’t go into the water intending it.  Maybe she thinks she’s letting fate take over, and the universe will decide.  She’s been in denial, not thinking about what’s going to happen.  She’s a very adaptable person, as we can see from her memories of her life before the baby.  She’s alone, and her future is uncertain, but she’s making the best of where she’s found herself.  She’s enjoying the leisure, her reading, the beach.  Being able to adapt to change and stick it out through hard times is a desirable and even admirable quality, but sometimes it hurts us.  Sometimes we need to be able to say, “No, stop this” “or I want out of this.  I’m not going to take this anymore.”  Wes’s remark about this being over soon sets her thinking more deeply about her situation.  So when she sets out for her walk that day, reality is flooding over her.  She does not want to give up her baby, and maybe killing herself and taking the baby with her is the only control she’s ever going to have over her own life.

One thing I did want the story to have was metaphor.  I wanted the things she sees on her walk along the beach to have meaning to her, as our surroundings take on life and meaning when significant things are happening to us internally.  Yellow houses become symbols of a happy life.  Birds protecting their nests become young mothers who have to give up their babies.  The world around Cecelia becomes infused with meaning as she becomes more emotionally aware.

4.  Why do you think it’s important to probe these issues surrounding sexuality, pregnancy, and motherhood in literature?

These issues are part of our common experience, and art is a cultural experience as well as an individual one.  I don’t believe literature has to be didactic, but it does need to be about something, something important.  Sexuality, pregnancy, motherhood are all important to who we are as women, and the sharing of these experiences and feelings joins us.  Sharing can sometimes lead to healing.
 

5.  What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished an academic book about intertextual connections between Mark Twain and Cormac McCarthy entitled Cormac McCarthy and the Ghost of Huck Finn.  It was released a couple of weeks ago.  I’m currently working with a colleague on an anthology of essays about images and definitions of home in the work of Appalachian artists.

With my own fiction, I’ve been working on a collection of short stories for some time now.  It will probably be called Odes of Solitude. Each piece has a female character who imagines, remembers, or hallucinates the story, yet she’s the only character who is actually present.  “The Beach House” is part of the collection.  And I continue to write poetry, usually about the experiences of women: career, love, children, grandchildren, and balancing all our many, many roles.

The Beach House

Published on January 16, 2012 in pregnancy. 0 Comments

Fiction by Leslie Harper Worthington

Cecelia walked the beach again that morning.  A few other beach houses dotted the shore, but she didn’t give a damn.  She was barefoot and big-bellied.  It was 1962, and she wasn’t hiding any more.

She had that dream again last night, the one where she gave birth to three little black kittens, each small enough to fit in her shoe.  What would he think if that was all he got – little black kittens?  She tried to keep herself from such silly thoughts.

Seagulls were soaring overhead and diving for their breakfast.  Raw fish didn’t sound like a bad morning meal, but she had to admit she’d been eating some strange things lately and craving even stranger ones.

That Army doctor said not to gain more than twenty-five pounds.  It’d been only seven months and she was sure she’d already gained more than that.  What did he know about having babies?  He’s an Army doctor.  Still, it was nice of him to see her, considering she and Wes weren’t married. 

According to that palm reader, they were never going to be.  No one can see that in your hand.  “This child will not fulfill your expectations.”  What did that even mean?  If you talk in riddles, then people can believe what they want to believe.  The girl wasn’t much older than Cecilia herself.  She had startled Cecelia when she approached her on the boardwalk and took her hand without asking, but Cecelia could see reassurance in her hazel eyes.  “It’s going to be okay, “was what Cecelia saw her eyes say.  Who knows what more she could have said if Wes hadn’t pulled them apart.  “This is nonsense,” he said as he took Cecelia by the arm and guided her toward the clown giving out candy on the other side of boardwalk.  Cecelia didn’t realize she was even showing.  Wes probably didn’t either.  It was the last time he’d taken her out anywhere.

Wes’s sergeant was kind to let her stay at his parents’ beach house.  She wondered if they even knew she’d been there the last four months.  Everyone was being so nice.  For Wes’s sake.  It wasn’t as if any of them knew Cecelia.  She had never seen any of these people before Wes brought her here, and he wouldn’t have done that if not for the baby.  He was being nice for the sake of the baby.  What was going to happen after?  She didn’t mean happen to the baby.  Wes had that all planned out.  The baby would have some where to go.  But what was going to happen to her?  Who was going to be nice to her then?

She’d like to stay right here forever.  True, there wasn’t a radio or television, but that made it peaceful.  The high ceilings of the beach house reminded her of the church she had attended as a child, the church where she’d learned to sing “I’ll Fly Away” and “In the Garden.”  That white church around the corner from her house had been the place she’d loved most.  She’d sneak in early to listen to the choir practice before service began.  She wanted to sing too.  The church was close enough that she could walk there by herself, so she never had to ask for a ride.

She didn’t have a ride anywhere now either.  If she had a car, she could leave when she wanted, but she wasn’t sure she would ever want to leave.  She found the solitude restful.  She could barely remember a time before she’d had to work day in and day out.  She’d started working weekends at the mill when she was fourteen and had quit school to work full time at sixteen.  Before the mill, she had helped Momaw watch the babies she kept during the day while their Mommas worked.  She felt like more than four months would be required to rest from the first twenty years of her life. 

She didn’t want to go anywhere right now.  Wes came every Saturday, and she wasn’t half way through The Complete Works of Mark Twain she’d found on the shelves in the living room.  She couldn’t leave until she finished. Huckleberry Finn was currently keeping her company. 

What if she had a boy?  Would Wes let her name him Huckleberry?  Of course not.  She wasn’t going to get to name him anything.  But Huckleberry could be his secret name, just between the two of them, while she still had him.  When she remembered his slime-slick face and first-breath screams, she could think about her Huckleberry.  When she imagined him toddling across the kitchen floor, running onto the little league field, or walking across the high school stage in cap and gown, she could call him Huck. 

The Killdeers rushing away from the surf caught her attention just then.  They looked as if they were afraid their little bird feet would get wet.  Cecelia didn’t care this morning.  Her green maternity pants were soaked to the knees.  She should have worn her dress again.  It didn’t matter.  The wet felt good.  It weighed her down as she walked along the beach.  The water was her anchor.  Wes would probably yell about the mess.  He yelled so much more now.  Most of the time, she couldn’t figure out why.  He used to be all sweet talk.

If he were here he couldn’t yell now.  The day was so beautiful.  The sky was as blue as her Papaw’s Irish eyes.  She wondered if Papaw and Momaw wondered what had happened to her.  The note she left that night said she was getting married but not where she was going or when she’d be back.  They were probably happy for her.  They didn’t know Wes, but she’d told them he was an officer.  In her small mill town, that meant something.  She could hear them in her head.  “Don’t worry none.  Celie be back fore we know it,” Momaw would be sayin’ to Pap.  “Don’t yall know it.  Bet that boy’s taken her north to meet his folks,” Papaw would reply and then flash a smile at her, so she’d feel better about it all.  How could Papaw be so happy when all he did was work all day in that nasty mill and come home too tired to even pick a tune on his guitar?  That town was a dirty place.  Momaw knew it even if Papaw didn’t.

Everything was so clean here.  The sea air rushing through her nose was fresh.  She wanted to open her mouth wide and swallow it all.

She wondered if the Killdeer had a nest somewhere nearby, if their dance was meant to distract her from finding their eggs.  None feigned a broken wing the way she had seen them do, but she probably wasn’t threatening enough or maybe just not close enough to bring on the full show.

A brown pelican landed on a pole a few yards away, a sliver fish in its peak – breakfast.  Cecelia was hungry.  She’d only had coffee before she headed out for her walk.  But it didn’t really matter today.

What had Wes said the last night he was at the beach house?  He’d brought groceries and a stack of old magazines.  She made spaghetti.  “It’ll all be over soon.”  That’s what he’d said.  She didn’t need magazines.  She had Mark or Sam rather.  She’d never known Mark Twain’s name had really been Sam.  What’s in a name anyway: Mark, Sam, Huck?  She felt she’d come to know him well enough to call him Sam.

As she looked up from the Killdeer, she noticed the sea oats dancing in the morning breeze.  They were supposed to be endangered.  If no one protects them, there might not be any more.  Without sea oats, the sand would wash away – no sand then no beach.  She was amazed how everything is connected to everything else.  Today the tall shoots looked like little brown boys having a game of freeze tag: stuck in one place till the wind touches them, instant unfreeze, and they are all free to run again.

She couldn’t tell how far she’d walked, but farther than most mornings, farther than ever before she suspected.  She didn’t remember that peach house.  The houses were so cute here – pink and blue, yellow and peach, like doll houses or the houses in the picture of the Swiss village above her mother’s bed.  She couldn’t remember much else from her mother’s house, but she would lay awake nights tracing the streets of that tiny village, wondering if life was happier in yellow houses.  Momaw and Papaw’s house was just dirty white, like all the puny, row houses on their street.  She’d spent only that one summer with her mother, the summer she’d turned twelve.  Her mother had called her “a handful” and sent her back on the Greyhound bus.  “Handful, my ass.  Celie never give me a minute’s trouble.  Unlike some other little girl I could name,” Momaw said to Pap, as they road back from the bus station.  

Cecelia was a long way from home today and a long way from the beach house.  She’d not seen the pretty peach one before.  She would have remembered the swing on the porch. She’d better pay attention and not get too far to walk back.  At least the beach wasn’t like the woods.  You couldn’t get lost on the beach.  All you had to do was turn around.  You could wander in the woods for days and still never find the way out. 

She remembered that day at her Granny’s house.  Granny was her Momaw’s momma.  A rabbit was munching the grass under the butterfly bush beside the back porch.  Cecelia startled him, and he ran into the woods behind the house.  She was seven and she had to follow him.  She soon lost track of the rabbit and realized she’d been walking in circles.  It couldn’t have been passed noon, but she would have guessed it was passed midnight, with no more light than what trickled through the trees.  Cecilia would probably still be there in the dark if Brutus hadn’t found her.  She dropped to her knees when she saw that big, black dog standing on the ridge.  She didn’t have to be strong any more.  He’d save her.  He walked her to the road on the other side of the woods, and Mr. Burns, Granny’s cross the street neighbor, happened by in his pickup truck. He carried them back to Granny’s house.

That wasn’t the only time Brutus had saved her.  She’d love him even more for the stormy nights he jumped on her bed, circled a few times and then settled at the foot.   He’d lay his snout across her leg so even in her sleep she’d have a reminder that he was there.  Thunder frightened her more than anything else on God’s green earth, but she was determined never to let anyone know it.  Brutus always kept her secrets.

She wished Brutus was walking with her today, but he had been gone almost ten years.  Cecelia had never gotten another pet.  She wasn’t sure she ever wanted one after Brutus.  It would be like replacing a brother.

What would she do now if she got too tired to walk back?  Stop at a beach house and ask strangers to borrow their phone?  She didn’t even have a number to call.  It was okay.  She wasn’t that far or even that tired yet.

She looked out at the aquamarine waves.  From where she stood, the sea never ended.  She hadn’t been in the water for a long time.  Baby Huck was swimming in her water.  She waded out a little ways into the surf.  The water was cold, but it felt good around her knees. It would probably feel even better around her waist or where her waist used to be anyway.  She didn’t really have one anymore.

The water was deeper and calmer a few yards out.  She lay back and floated.  Making snow angels in the sea, she watched the gulls directly over head.  She wondered if the birds were taking breakfast back to their babies in the nest.  Some birds chew and swallow their food and then vomit it back into the baby bird’s mouth.  Her Momaw told her stories of women chewing beans and spitting them back out to feed their babies, in the years before manufactured baby food or at least back in the hollers where there wasn’t much store-bought food.  That was before they’d left the farms for the mills.

Birds aren’t much stranger than people, she thought.  Cuckoo birds lay their eggs in other bird’s nests, so once the baby cuckoo hatches, the foster parents feed the cuckoo before their own babies.  The cuckoos are bigger and eat all the food up from the smaller birds who eventually starve.  Are those cuckoos any happier for the switch, she wondered?  Wes said everything was going to be alright, that Huck probably wouldn’t ever even know.  But Cecelia knew from experience.  Bastard babies were born with broken hearts.

A wave splashed her face and reminded her she was floating along the shore. Is this how Huck feels?  But it’s dark where Huck is.  She’ll have to try it after the sun goes down.  She determined to float there — surrounded by fluid — till after dark.  She was floating a way.  She could be the only woman on earth.

Cecelia may have fallen asleep.  She wasn’t sure, but a seagull’s cry startled her and she realized she couldn’t touch the sandy bottom.  When she looked to the shore, the peach house was tiny.  In the opposite direction, a boat sailed in the distance.   The Bloody Mary, called the tattooed side panel.  If she started screaming who would hear, the people on the Bloody Mary or the people in the tiny peach house?  Wes off on that Army base?  Her mother over in Atlanta?  She had wanted to scream for a long time now, but still didn’t.  What would it feel like if her lungs were filled with water?  Could she scream?

Maybe she could wave, but she thought better of that too.  She was just too tired and floating felt too good to stop.  She lay back once again, not willing to resist the current, determined to drift till dark.  Where would she be by then?  She couldn’t tell.  She decided she didn’t care.  They were too happy to change course now.

Leslie Harper Worthington is chair of the Department of English at Gainesville State College where she also teaches composition, literature, and creative writing and serves as advisor for The Chestatee Review, the college’s award-winning literary magazine.  She holds a Ph.D. from Auburn University with a concentration in Southern Literature and is the recipient of a Brittain Fellowship from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Quarry Farm Fellowship from the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College.  Her short stories and poetry have been read at the Southern Women Writers Conference, The Southern Literary Festival, The Mildred Haun Conference, and several Gainesville State College events.  Her poems “She’s the One” and “Home without You” appeared in the “Pectoriloquy” section of CHEST: The Journal of American College Chest Physicians in summer 2011, and her book Cormac McCarthy and the Ghost of Huck Finn will be released by McFarland Publishers in summer 2012.  Dr. Worthington lives with her children and grandchildren in Flowery Branch, Georgia in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Mother, Writer, Mentor-come write with us!

Published on January 12, 2012 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Announcing Mother, Writer, Mentor: practical tips for writing moms

The Fertile Source is kicking off 2012 by expanding its offerings with a sister site, Mother, Writer, Mentor: practical tips for writing moms.  Our focus is two-fold, to offer writing courses for mothers who write and to develop a mentoring program for writing moms. At Mother, Writer, Mentor, we hope you’ll find a place to share the layers of your experiences with one another in a safe writing community full of members aspiring to be the best mother and the best writer possible. 

Those of us who have come through those early years of sleepless nights and phantom manuscripts know that the most empowering support for maintaining a vision of wholeness and possibility when it comes to the dual role of motherhood and writing comes via the solace of the words and direct experiences of those who have gone down the path ahead of us.

 Consider this our call to you, our loyal readership, to help us tailor our Mother, Writer, Mentor website as we strive to offer resources that fit actual needs. While we can certainly guess at some of those needs based on our own trajectory to writing, editing, and publishing while mothering, we’d love to hear from you directly. Please email us your suggestions either to jess [at] catalystbookpress [dot] com or tania [at] catalystbookpress [dot] com.

While we are developing the rest of our resource offerings and the mentoring program, we will be posting regularly to the blog on the home page of Mother, Writer, Mentor (where we will shortly be putting up a call for guest posts).  In the meantime, we are offering two courses this spring, at a reduced introductory rate. Visit Mother, Writer, Mentor for full course descriptions:

February 2012

To the Cradle and Beyond: Excavating and Writing the Poetry of Motherhood with poetry editor Tania Pryputniewicz

April 2012

Sexy Mommy Stories: Writing Romance Back into Motherhood with founding editor Jessica Powers

Male Miscarriage, Reptilian vs. Human Mating Rituals, and Inappropriate Lactation: An Interview with Poet Laura Thompson

Published on January 9, 2012 in breastfeeding, interview, miscarriage and sexuality. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

 Poet Laura Thompson“My Boyfriend’s Miscarriage,” right off with that title, takes us into unmapped emotional territory. Not only for its secondary implied point of view, but for the serious subjects it juxtaposes (miscarriage and a cancer in a child). Can you talk to us about the process of writing this poem and how you arrived at that stellar title?

People often say that men can’t understand pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, etc., because they have never physically experienced it, which becomes particularly problematic when men attempt to control or legislate what goes on inside women’s bodies. This poem came about because I wanted to envision a scenario through which a man might gain a better perspective on miscarriage. Because the boyfriend in the poem has experienced a situation where his body (in this case, his bone marrow) was unable to sustain a child’s life, he begins to understand why a woman who has had a miscarriage might be unwilling to try again.

“Heat” continues this push into unmapped fertility/sexuality territory, with that feral metaphor of the over-heated, hatched female “sterile, chunky / aggressive” fending off the fertile females, landing beautifully with the closing image of the pull to female to female passion. Again, can you talk to us about your process and choice of metaphors, if there are other images you are further working with in your poetry along these lines?

I’m fascinated by the animal kingdom, especially when it comes to mating rituals, and I often find that describing a literal phenomenon that occurs in nature allows me to then explore metaphorical issues that impact my own species. The sex and breeding behavior of a gecko is directly determined by environmental factors, whereas the environment of human society dictates what behaviors and expressions of sexuality will be regarded as deviant or defective. The speaker’s anger issues may be a result of her prenatal environment, but what provokes her anger is social constraints and a one-size-fits-all mentality; when given free expression, her condition becomes celebratory. Another metaphor I’ve used is the the feeling of wanting out of one’s own skin, which I compare to reptiles who literally shed their skin.

I found “’Inappropriate’ Lactation after a Miscarriage” incredibly moving—thank you for writing this poem. Have you encountered other poems in your reading history along this topic (I know I haven’t yet) that you would point our readers toward?

Thank you. I haven’t actually come across any poems that portray this particular aspect of a miscarriage, which is one reason why I wanted to write about it.

Any poetry mentors or other inspirations you’d like to share with us?

All of these poems were written while I was a student at Vermont College, where I worked with Betsy Sholl, Leslie Ullman, Natasha Saje, and Roger Weingarten. I enjoy the work of Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Lucille Clifton, among other feminist poets. I also admire Sharon Olds’ use of the body as subject matter and Pattiann Rogers’ use of animals as metaphors.

What are you currently working on?

 I’m currently enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Cincinnati, where I’ve been working on a series of poems that explore my experience with chronic illness.

And just for fun, (if we assume the pet shop source is personal and not projected), will  you be sharing the poems with that owner?

 That poem was inspired by several pet store owners I’ve encountered over the years, none of whom would appreciate being immortalized. My pets, however, are fans of my work.

Laura Thompson earned her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of the Fine Arts and is currently enrolled in the PhD program in English and Comparative Literature, with a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Tributary, The Rectangle, and Tiger’s Eye. She is also a part-time English and Creative Writing instructor and serves on the editorial staff at the Cincinnati Review.

4 Poems by Laura Thompson

Published on January 2, 2012 in breastfeeding, fertility, infertility, miscarriage and sexuality. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Outgrown

The pet store owner hates me.
The bags of skittering crickets
I buy can’t make up for the sales
he’s lost. Releasing swarms of doubt
among his customers, I tell them
how big those babies behind glass will get.
The sulcata tortoise that fits
in your child’s mouth will be 200 pounds.
The frog sitting on your thumb eats fruit flies
now, rats later. In a year, that iguana will need
his own room. Caiman is just another
word for Crocodile. Is it animal welfare
that makes me speak up, or my own
fear of a life that will outgrow
the space I leave for it? When my eight-months
pregnant friend says how much she wants
this baby out, I don’t tell her
about my embryo, just another word
for a baby so small I didn’t know I’d brought
it home, how my deformed
uterus ran out of room at eight weeks,
and the tissue meant to cushion crushed.

My Boyfriend’s Miscarriage

On a Harley Davidson notepad, I draw
a normal uterus: pear-shaped, adorned on either side

with ovaries, and then mine, upside down, toppled
by a mass of eggs on one side, nothing

on the other, fallopian tubes
a gnarled ball of yarn.

The perspective father of my children
still isn’t convinced: Wouldn’t a child

 from your own body mean
more? Wouldn’t that be worth

the risk? I find him sobbing, face down
on our mattress, clutching

a Christmas photo—his niece’s bald head
covered by a Santa hat, smiling despite

chemo and swollen cheeks—he flinches
when I brush against his hip where a drill

pierced his femur, drawing rich red marrow
from the hollows of his pelvis to patch holes

in a child’s blood, the only relative whose genes
matched. Nine months later, the cells he donated

have died inside her. I was wrong
he says. That’s the last part of us
I want to lose.

“Inappropriate” Lactation After a Miscarriage

To not “take possession of.”
To not “set apart for a particular use.”
Not “fitting, suitable, apt.”
Not milk, but milky,
meant for a baby never
truly possessed.
Not white, but bluish gray,
insinuating itself into a bra’s
lace when someone else’s baby cries.

Set apart but not useful,
twin tumors the heart beats against–
ignore the pressure, refuse to release it,
and it will go away.
“Express” it and it will never
stop. Soothe with frozen
cabbage leaves, brittle green reminders
that babies are not found
where they were thought to be.
The only cure: to become
fertile again. What is natural
can also be wrong.

Heat

Inside a freshly laid egg, a gecko
begins female, but temperature
changes everything. Incubators
set at 75 guard oviducts, but
crank to 80 and androgen pools
in hemipenal pores. A simple formula, unless
a thermostat malfunctions and temps
reach 90, for an egg just shy of omelet
hatches “hot female.” Sterile, chunky,
aggressive, they savage males who try
to mount them, dance a slithering samba
when “normal” females approach.

Off her meds because of me, my mother
hid in closets and crawl spaces
in June, heat stroke less threatening
than life. Were those prenatal summer
months the reason the dress shop calls
my waist a “size other?” Did it make
me throw a desk at the teacher who said
I’d never find a husband peering
through a microscope? Is that
why I sizzle in a woman’s
arms like butter
beneath scrambled egg?

Laura Thompson earned her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of the Fine Arts and is currently enrolled in the PhD program in English and Comparative Literature, with a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Tributary, The Rectangle, and Tiger’s Eye. She is also a part-time English and Creative Writing instructor and serves on the editorial staff at the Cincinnati Review.

Happy Holidays from The Fertile Source

Published on December 27, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Happy holidays from The Fertile Source! We will resume normal publication after the New Year.

Into the Center of a Maze:Amy Amoroso on giving birth, motherhood, death, medical school, and writing

Published on December 12, 2011 in birth and interview. 0 Comments

Interview by Jessica Powers

Amy Amoroso’s essay, “Hundred Year Old Soup,” was published in The Fertile Source on December 5, 2011.

1. One of the things that really drew me to your essay was the way you discussed how your understanding of what it means to be a writer helped you through the last final gasps of giving breath. Can you talk about that process a little bit more–both the writing process but also the fact that knowing this helped you give birth?

 
 
 

Amy Amoroso, photo by Duncan, age 4

Amy Amoroso, photo by Duncan, age 4

Giving birth to Duncan required going into a kind of dream-state. Seth and I took a class called Birthing from Within to get ready for the birth, and one of the things we learned is that the journey into labor is like journeying into the center of a maze. You (metaphorically) turn corners and twist through small places, moving further and further away from your rational brain and closer to your animal or mammalian brain. Our mammalian brain helps us to birth a baby without drugs or interventions. In this state, we don’t feel pain in the same way. But there are things that can take you out of this trance, like fluorescent lights, loud noises, or perceived stress of any kind.

 When things got stressful during Duncan’s birth, I did momentarily come out of the dream-state and it was very scary. I began to doubt that I could give birth at all. But I was able to get myself back into the birth trance by looking down, turning inward, and lots of deep breathing.

 When I’m writing and things are going well, I go into a similar place that allows me to turn off the part of my rational brain concerned with logistics, like the checkbook, the house cleaning, or the grocery list. In this state, I can transport myself to different times and places. I can be the people I’m writing about, and let the story unfold organically.

But coming out of that state in order to edit or revise, requires a different part of my brain. And if I come out of the dream-state too soon and start to layer in metaphor or play with the larger themes before the story has been “birthed,” I risk doubting my instincts, making a wrong turn, and losing the story altogether.

Maybe on some level, I was able to return to my birthing trance because I was familiar with the dream-state of a writer. But I think we all have access to this state. It’s just a matter of letting yourself go there.  

2. Knowing that Duncan was born without breathing, I initially had a very different thought upon reading those lines, “If the sun and moon should doubt, they would go out.” Can you talk a little bit about the symbolic and metaphorical links between a) being an artist, b) giving birth, and c) that awful reality called death?

 When Duncan was on the cart not breathing and I was on the bed holding my breath, I was hit with the reality that he could die, and that everything we’d prepared to bring him safely and peacefully into the world and back to our home, all the love we’d already filled ourselves with for this child, would be for nothing. And that place was even darker than where I was when I was doubting my ability to push him out. I think I was also, on a subconscious level, scared to lose a part of who I was, if Duncan didn’t survive.

 Children carry on our gene pool and our legacy. Art carries a piece of the artist’s soul, and as long as the world is willing to read or look at it, art will live on forever. Birthing, parenting, and writing require my heart and soul. And pouring heart and soul into a work of art that may never be born or that will never see the light of day can be devastating because you’re giving up an integral part of yourself. My greatest hope is that my work, as a mother and an artist, will thrive long after I’m gone from this world.

3. Why do you think so many of us mother writers are compelled to write the stories of our children’s births? What compelled you to write “Hundred Year Old Soup”?

I initially wrote Hundred-Year-Old Soup to heal. When I began it, I was pregnant with my daughter and I knew that I needed to heal the wounds of Duncan’s birth before attempting to give birth again. The first version of this essay was three times as long. In that first draft, I did a lot of exploration to try to figure out why Duncan got stuck and why it happened the way it did. I went down many different paths— everything from blaming myself for my own patterns of getting stuck in my life to blaming Seth for having such broad shoulders and passing them on to our son!

What I finally came to was that none of it mattered and that I just needed to tell the story and forgive myself for whatever I thought I’d done wrong. I spoke at length with Duncan’s pediatrician about the helplessness I’d felt when his cord was cut and he was taken from me. She reminded me that I wasn’t helpless, and that I knew exactly what Duncan needed when I told Seth to go over to him and let him hear his father’s voice. This was a pretty big shift in the way I began to see the story.

I think mothers are compelled to tell the stories of their children’s births because they need to understand what really happened. We are so quickly thrust into raising these little people that it is hard to reflect on and process what happened on the day they were born. And too often we hold on to judgment of ourselves for the choices we made—sometimes without even recognizing it.

I’ve been teaching a class on writing birth stories here in Portland at a wonderful community center called Birth Roots. And the work we do to find the heroic moments in child birth is transformative for so many mothers who start the class feeling shame or guilt or remorse about the choices they made around their child’s birth. And it is not like we are just putting our rose-colored glasses on. There are always heroic moments in childbirth—for the mom and the baby. Always.

4. You left medical school to become a writer. Tell us about the process you went through to make that choice. How does your background in science/medicine inform your writing?

My decision to leave medicine is another essay (or book!) altogether, but it was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made. As a child, I was fascinated with the insides of things. I remember in seventh grade the day we dissected the cow’s eyeball was the day I decided I was going to be a doctor. And as I grew up and became more and more interested in stories, my choice of medicine was reaffirmed because what better position to be in than a doctor’s to hear the most intimate details of people’s lives? My plan was to be a doctor who wrote novels.

There were many heart aches in medical school for me. But in the end, I was not happy doing it. I kept a notebook where I was supposed to keep notes on various health issues and treatments, but instead I wrote about my patients’ lives. I wrote about the sterility of the hospital locker room. I wrote over and over again about how something was missing in my life. Something was missing.

In my second year, I took a class called Medical Humanities. In it, we read poetry and fiction, watched films and looked at paintings and sculptures all related to healing, death, dying, and medicine. It was probably the best class I’ve ever taken in my life. I remember sitting on the ground outside of my pathology lecture hall, reading Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. I never went into my pathology lecture that day. I just sat their reading for two hours.

Eventually it became clear to me that what was missing in my life was writing. And when that reality hit me, it hit hard. I couldn’t go back to the hospital for one more day. I remember one of the mornings after I’d decided not to go back, my mom took me to breakfast and was trying to convince me to just finish out my surgery rotation—if anything for the writing material. It was good advice, because I probably could have gathered all kinds of good material. But I was done and it was the first time in my life that I decided I was going to follow my heart and not listen to the advice that everyone (even those I loved and respected dearly) else was giving me.

My two years in medical school left me with a great many stories and even more layers to weave into my work. Medicine is such fertile ground for writers because it is rich with tension, disappointment, humility, and miracles.

5. What are you working on now? And, how do you balance the demands of being a mother and being an artist?

 I’ve been working on a novel about a fictitious family who lived in the toxic neighborhood called Love Canal in Niagara Falls and lost a son to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The book begins with their twenty-two-year-old daughter, Ila, born seven months after her brother died, on a quest to find out who her brother was. Through stories from her brother’s high school girlfriend, his pediatrician, and her mother, she begins to uncover the circumstances that lead up to her brother’s death, while also coming to grips with her own surprising history.

Being a mother and a writer is a balancing act. I rent a writing shed that’s about two blocks from our house and if I wake up before the sun, I can usually sneak out of the house before anyone is awake and write for an hour at the shed. But if someone is sick or had a bad dream or sad about something else, I don’t get to the shed. And that’s okay, too, because everything feeds the work. If we are constantly running from our lives to get our writing done, we miss the opportunity to be there when life happens. And being there when life happens is the very best material for writers. I will write about all of it at some point.

Hundred-Year-Old Soup

Published on December 5, 2011 in birth and motherhood. 1 Comment

An essay by Amy Amoroso

For Duncan

 

 

I made a pot of carrot lentil soup the day before going into labor. It was big enough for dinner that night, plus two nights during the week. But instead of easy meals for my final days of pregnancy, the soup came to the hospital with us, where it would sit in glass jars on a shelf in the Labor and Delivery refrigerator for days. We never ate the rest of it. And for some reason that lentil soup is one of the details I can’t ever forget.

            Duncan came four days early. He came without crying. He came without breath. And after all of our childbirth classes and birth plans, we couldn’t have been prepared for what happened during his birth.  On the short ride to the hospital, I thought of all the things I’d left undone. There were boxes of baby clothes that needed sorting, the sixty-year-old family bassinet that needed painting, and the cloth diapers that needed another round of washing and hanging in the sun. I assumed, since Seth and I are perpetually late, that our child would fall into line and that I’d have plenty of time to get these things done. I also imagined that after a healthy and hard labor, I would welcome my child immediately into my arms and onto my chest like I’d seen in the DVD’s we watched in class. It turns out that I was wrong, and maybe I should have taken my early broken water as a sign.

*

 Seth and I expected to spend most of the early labor at home, but since my water broke, our midwife thought we should meet her at the hospital. At first we were giddy and excited about meeting our baby, but as the hours went by, time became warped and we stopped exchanging words. Orange leaves dropped from a maple tree outside our hospital window and the sun was high in a blue sky, but I had no real sense of how long we’d been there. Yes, there was pain, but I can’t access it anymore. Not in a concrete sense. I remember breathing like the sound of waves, loud enough to push my thoughts away and deep enough to dampen the sharp edges of my contractions.

            Before I knew it, the sun was gone. An entire day had almost passed and I was still laboring. Most of the details are fuzzy, but I remember chicken salad, a red rose on the windowsill from my sister, and Van Morrison singing Astral Weeks. I wound my way inward to a place inside my body I’d never been before. Numbers, time, even food had left my consciousness. I moaned and moved according to the rhythm of my body. I floated in a Jacuzzi, squatted over a toilet seat.

When it was finally time to push, I was on the floor. Seth and our midwife were there too. Their faces weren’t in my view, but I could feel their hands and hear their words. With my knees bent and my head bowed, I felt like an animal. It didn’t matter that I was in a hospital on the corner of State and Spring streets in Portland, Maine. I could have been in the woods on a bed of pine needles or in the middle of the ocean.

*

Duncan’s head came while I was there on the floor, and I felt immediate relief. But the rest of him didn’t slide out like I’d seen in the birthing DVDs. I didn’t know this at the time, but he was stuck, and our midwife had started to panic. She tried moving me to different positions and then finally decided to help me up onto the bed.  I was reluctant to heave my pregnant body, complete with a newly born head poking out, back up onto the hospital bed. It was the one place I had decided early on that I did not want to give birth. When I was squatting on the ground, I could push every one away and focus. I could imagine I was an animal birthing in the woods the way we talked about in one of our childbirth classes. Up on the bed, plastic monitors flashed digital numbers, numbers I had no concept of at that point. People in scrubs swirled around the room. And the gray institutional doors and florescent lights brought consciousness back to me. All of it lifted me from my birthing trance and I suddenly became rationally aware of what was happening.

            When I was in graduate school for writing, a professor of mine would say, If the sun and moon should doubt, they would go out. He was talking about us as writers and the natural flow of a story. It’s only when we start to doubt what we’ve written, when we stop to break down the components of the story before it’s done, that the whole magical gift of storytelling goes out like a light. Giving birth is similar. You work yourself into a trance and you flow there until the job is done, until the pain of it is over, and you have the first draft of a beautiful life. But if you stop in the middle of it and think about what it is you are actually doing, you risk putting the breaks on the whole process.

            So there I was, surrounded by nurses, by Seth and my midwife, and by the reality that it had been 22 hours since my water broke and at 24 hours it wouldn’t be as safe for the baby to be inside me anymore.  I wasn’t sure what kinds of interventions they would try, but I saw in their faces that it was time to push the baby out. Except that now I was suddenly conscious of how much time it’d been since I last slept and how utterly exhausted I was. They were all cheering me on as if I were twelve years old again and swimming in a race. That’s the one, Amy. That’s the push. I wished they would stop. I wished I was back in the middle of the ocean by myself, birthing my child. I told the midwife I couldn’t do it anymore. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t giving in to anything yet, but for some reason I had to say the words and see what kind of power they had.

            It was then that I saw Seth’s eyes. I mean, actually saw them. Blue, blood shot, determined. He moved his head into my line of vision and somehow lifted me from the hospital room, the bed, the day that had slipped away from us, and said, “Aim, we need to get this baby out now.” He wasn’t mad or scared, just matter-of-fact, like he always is, pulling me back to the work that needs to be done. Somewhere between consciousness and dream, I pushed, and the others in the room chanted, I pushed, they chanted. It went on forever it seemed. But finally, with a nurse shoving my legs back toward my ears and the midwife pressing hard on my belly, Duncan was born.

 *

He came into the world silent and blue. Before I could catch my breath, Duncan’s cord was cut and his slippery soul was whisked away to a plastic cart beside my bed. A nurse pressed on his tiny chest and blew air into him. For seven minutes we waited, suspended between life and death.

            Flashes of what I knew about babies in the womb came to me like tiny dreams, messages from the gods. “Go to him,” I told Seth. “Let him hear your voice.”

            My knees were heavy. My arms numb from pushing the bed, the floor, the tiles in the shower. But I held each limb with such intensity that I was almost hovering above that hospital bed.

            Our midwife yelled to call anesthesia, to get the baby intubated, but the nurse refused. She was calm. She’d been here before. “He’ll breath on his own,” she said, quietly. “He can do it.” Two fingers pumping, lips blowing. Nothing.

            Seth moved from my side to the cart. He took Duncan’s tiny fingers in his own.

            This couldn’t be happening, I thought. After all of that, he had to be okay.

            If the sun and moon should doubt… There was a space just above the light of the warmer, a space full of air and breath and the energy of all the women who’d given birth before me in that room, a space where the sun and the moon had shone, where everything merged together. It was that force, like water coming together at the mouth of a river, that I focused on during those minutes of limbo. I held it with my whole being, that God of the moment, and begged it to give me my child. To make him cry. To fill the room with the missing sound I ached in the center of my chest for. It was worse than what I imagine being starved of water or food would be like, my own flesh and blood nurtured and loved for 40 weeks, tucked safely under my heart, now limp on a plastic hospital cart that seemed miles away.

            The room was painfully quiet as Seth leaned down close to Duncan’s body. “Hey, little guy,” he whispered.

           And then I could see a foot move. Fingers curling. Then, full of the gusto of life and fight, Duncan parted his lips and screamed. He screamed a blood curdling beautiful song. And we all took a long, slow breath, as if we too were tasting air for the very first time. Even though it seemed the whole world had been in suspension a moment before, we now didn’t have time to doubt the animal instinct inherent in all of us: to simply fill our chest cavities with air and breathe.

            Hey, little guy. I still hear those words like a prayer in my mind.  

*

 

Duncan screamed for almost an hour. We cried, too, and laughed, and held him so that his little lips were pressed against our skin. Feeling the warmth of his breath was like feeling sun on my body. When it was over and we were sure he was okay, I walked down the hall to the hospital refrigerator. I was starving. There on the middle shelf in two glass jars was the lentil soup we’d brought from home. It was just as orange as it was the day before. And it reminded me of all the undone things I had on my to-do list. It reminded me of the bassinet, and the piles of clothes, our dirty bathroom and all the things that didn’t really matter. Everything had changed since I last ate that soup. I’d been out to the middle of the ocean, to the woods, to a place only the animal brain can understand. I’d hovered in limbo for what seemed like hours, waiting for my baby to come to life. And I wasn’t the same person. I would never be who I was when I made that soup again. It seemed like the soup was 100 years old as I stood there in my slippers, with my uterus shrinking. 

            That night, Seth told me he felt something different in his heart now. “I don’t know how to explain it,” he said. “It’s like waves pulsing in my chest.” He put his hand on his heart and his eyes filled with water. Perhaps he’d been to the woods and the ocean and back, too. We didn’t eat our lentil soup that night. Instead, my sister brought us sushi and champagne.

Amy Amoroso is a writer and mother of two. After leaving medical school, she completed an MFA in Creative Writing and went on to teach writing at George Mason University and the University of Southern Maine. She currently works as a ghostwriter in Portland, Maine and helps women write about their birthing experiences. Amy is working on a novel and several nonfiction essays. Her fiction is published in Alligator Juniper and Upstreet.

 

 

 

 

 

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