My bra feels like a piano wire.
Tangling around a neck.
Becoming taught.
Rubbing jugular skin raw.
It feels like I’m starting to hallucinate:
Your eyes are onions
And I’m pulling thin translucent rings
Out of your pupils
Because I hate the taste
And the smell .
That’s why I got all teary eyed
When I threw them in the garbage
*
The water broke. And he put me in handcuffs. Tightening them way too tight. And carefully shoved me into the backseat of the car.
An amalgamation of fluids
Churning
Rustling back and forth
Against my belly button
Feels like indigestion
And I’ve taken recommended dosage of antacids
For a woman of my size
But it’s not helping.
And there’s no stopping it now:
PAIN.
“That’s it push!”
Latex gloves molesting my expanding vagina.
PAIN.
Relief?
PAIN.
Life.
I vomit out a fully formed child covered in a viscous film of half digested mash potatoes, shreds of buffalo chicken, specks of lettuce, and pieces of my personality saturated in stomach acid.
You smile behind your handheld video camera. Documenting every moment as carefully as an anthropologist in an unexplored region of the world. Not missing a millisecond. Not paying attention. And you never held my hand or helped me breath.
“THIS HAS TO BE SOME KIND OF WORLD RECORD! WOW! AND I GOT IT ALL ON TAPE! THIS IS GOING TO BE AN INTERNET SENSATION FOR SURE!”
The doctor tries to hand him a sterile pair of scissors, but he was uploading the video on his smart phone. I grab the scalpel on the tray next to my bed and slice through the umbilical cord like it was a piece of paper.
PAIN.
“I still can’t believe I fucking got that on tape. What a fucking miracle. Right?”
The doctor tilts his grey hair down and exclaims, “Congratulations, it’s a girl.”
I readjust my body so that my back is representing my place in the conversation. It was terror twilight and rain was lapping against the pane of the hospital window before it dropped to the pavement below.
He inches closer to the doctor, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I mean, have you ever seen or heard of anything happening like that in your entire life?”
“No.”
“So this is the first documented case?”
“Yes.”
He rubs the outside his index finger over the scrubble on his chin. BINGO!
“You know this is going to make all of us fucking rich. Rich and famous! The rest of our lives our set my friend.”
He, the doctors, and the nurses, joined hands and began dancing and jumping up and down because they just won the lottery.
They put my baby in a plastic box, and left it as is because they couldn’t tamper with the evidence. It can’t be contaminated.
My husband posts the video on the internet, and it receives 50,000 views in the first three hours.
The best doctors from around the world are flying in on their private planes in order to study this strange reproductive phenomenon.
I think about the future: hours of medical tests and studies, syndicate talk shows, movie documentaries, parenthood, control, responsibilities, PTA meetings, and where I fit into all of this.
It was all his idea. And so far, he’s only touched his daughter through the movie screen.
“We are RICH! HONEY! RICH! RICH! RICH! No more office job. I can finally get whatever I want. And so could you!”
I peek over at our daughter motionless in the hodge-podge of fluids it was birthed in.
She isn’t crying, yet.
But I am, because I never wanted her. And I never wanted to get rich. I wanted an abortion.
“I’m sorry, but she will be a carrot for the rest of her life,” the doctor said popping the cork off a champagne bottle. Foam raining down the plastic sides of the life support machine.
They go outside, imagining sports cars, awards, recognition, gold teeth, television specials, private jets, stacks of benjamins, and the American dream coming true in 2012.
Distracted.
I quietly sulk out of the bed in my hospital gown, and tiptoe over the linoleum, leaving footprints of DNA for forensic investigators to discover and collect later.
I look at my daughter. My baby carrot.
I love her, but she doesn’t deserve this:
I pick her up and cradle her close to my breast, swaying back and forth, humming a soft lullaby into her orange ear.
I pop her into my mouth with a little bit of ranch, swallow and choke.
I will choke on her for the rest of my life.
*
Here’s some advice:
1. You’re life is not important because you get married. (The divorce rate in America is over 50%.)
2. You’re life is not important because you have the ability to reproduce.
3. You’re life is not important because you raise children.
4. You’re in jail, along with me. Life sentence.
5. And overpopulation is the number one problem in the world.
*
The jovial smell of jubilation masks the smell of bodily fluids drifting off the dirty linens in the hospital room. I bury my head in the pillow to escape the smell, and start tunneling through the center with a homemade tool made out of five scalpels and an ice cream scooper searching for daylight.
