Yes, you\u2019re still within me, baby, a comfort like you\u2019ve always been, since the very moment when you were just a single cell as lonely as I am now. You believe me, don\u2019t you? Let the rest of the world not believe that I have nobody either on the Earth or on Mars. \u201cMa\u2019am, you missed the part about your companion,\u201d said the receptionist, chewing gum with her mouth wide open. Returning the form to me, she kept on chewing with a squishy sound. I explained I was an alien in US. \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d she asked, shifting to a sucking sound. Having said I\u2019d come from Toronto, I paused for a second to await the next question a black-haired immigrant would expect to hear. \u201cBut where are you from?\u201d she asked so tenaciously that I forgot my conventional anger. \u201cFrom hell,\u201d I said with a calm snigger. She bewilderedly gave up, began chewing rhythmically with a slapping sound, and droned in a metallic voice, \u201cSorry, I cannot make you an appointment, unless you have somebody to accompany you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I look around the waiting room to check if everybody has a buddy. In the alcove a young blonde, newly married, I bet, is sitting like any very pregnant woman exhausted by her heavy load. She has two attendants: an elegant middle-aged woman, still in good shape, with radish cheeks and perpetual smiling look; and a very young freckled guy with short amber hair in a well-tailored navy blue suit, who looks as uneasy as any soon-to-be first-time dad. In the right corner, close to a counter with coffee, it\u2019s the realm of a woman in her late 30\u2019s, with arms crossed on her bulged belly, head leaned back against the wall, and eyes half opened to fugitive dreams, half closed to present surroundings. Shiny brown in her turquoise sari, she spreads her charms, like a mother goddess, over her territory populated by three pre-schoolers circling her feet on the floor, chirping and chatting nonstop. Can they take care of their mom? Or, will their dad be here after work? On my left side I see another mom with her little girl, hanging around restlessly, not knowing how to entertain herself. The woman is flipping through a tabloid unenthusiastically. With her purse in her lap, I cannot measure the size of her tummy. I can see, though, they are Hispanic. A few seats away, in the corner, a young dark-skinned woman, curled up in a wide leather armchair with her folded knees besieged by her crossed arms, looks around with big brown eyes full of fear and confusion. She\u2019s also not alone. She came in with a leggy guy. He\u2019s probably gone out to smoke, for his tight jeans pocket bulged with cigarettes and lighter. Or, maybe he\u2019s gone to the lobby to buy a coke from the vending machine. Sooner or later he\u2019ll be back, and regardless of what the young woman feels or thinks, he\u2019ll be her companion.<\/p>\n
When the nurse explained that the operation would not be done if I couldn\u2019t find anybody to be with me, I was caressing my belly to assure you that I have no bad feelings for you. Believe it or not, I\u2019m telling you the truth, baby. It\u2019s true, though, that the first moment the doctor told me about you, I panicked — exactly like the other time, when I was as young as the two young women in this room and as horrified as the dark-skinned one now staring at me with her frightened look. This time, after the first shock, there were tides of sorrow, pity, disappointment, and the like, coming and going, pushing, pulling, depressing, oppressing. Then there came a time of emptiness, when I was nothing but a void. This brought along a surrendering, not unpleasant at all. No, I was never angry at you. How could I be mad at you who\u2019ve been within me such a long time, so quiet, so hidden, so deep! The other time, I have to say, the wave of shock became a flood of anger, and nothing else.<\/p>\n
Well, it was neither the right time, nor the right place — the same nightmare my mom and dad had experienced, this time cloaked in a molla\u2019s guise. Then, I was not scared about what was going to happen to us. But he panicked the instant he heard the result of the test. He was too embroiled in his political activities — doomed to come to an end soon after the horrible mass slaughter of opposition groups — to wish to be the father of a baby who might be born or grow up in a jail or in hiding. No, I was not afraid of what was happening around me. It could only make me furious, and it did. The external disaster was not the only target of my fury, though. I was angry at myself for not being careful enough to prevent pregnancy. Down there, in the gynecologist\u2019s dim waiting room, I felt frantic, while avoiding his terrified look.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>The leggy guy is now back; he\u2019s leaning his sagging right shoulder against the corner, as if he tends to keep his distance from the young dark-skinned woman. He\u2019s in a slightly curved posture, twisting away from her, like a young tree submitting to an invisible pressure. He looks sad, though, rather than angry. The woman is still as motionless as a bronze statue, except that her big eyes full of fear and confusion move around gently. She seems to be uninterested, if not disinterested, in his presence. Or, maybe, she\u2019s just drowned deep down in her concealed world, where there is no space for the other.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we need others,\u201d said the nurse, briefly, in response to my long boast that \u201cI take the responsibility. I can take care of myself, without bothering others. All these years, I\u2019ve managed to live a lonely life. How come you cannot see this rhino right in front of you? …\u201d All in vain! I gave up — just because you\u2019re growing inside me blindly and brutally. The first person that came to my mind was my American landlady, the only one around me with free time. Safe and sound in her eighties, she does whatever she likes, including driving, which always results in a minor collision. But she could not be expected to take care of me as a companion in the hospital. Instead, I talked to my housemates, Franca and Shalini. They both offered their assistance. None of them, though, can be here at the time I\u2019m going to be taken to the operation room; they will be here, some hours later, to take care of me. Shalini doesn\u2019t drive; yet, she insisted on coming with Franca when she would be back from her work at Hartford and Franca had returned from visiting her son in New York. The arrangement was eventually, though reluctantly, accepted by the hospital. It was the nurse who smilingly said, \u201cWell, what can we do with you in such a bizarre situation!\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t tell her that there is nothing bizarre under the sun<\/em>. She\u2019s a \u2018right\u2019 creature undeserving of a headache caused by the \u2018absurd\u2019 thoughts and words of \u2018wrong\u2019 animals like me or the one who first uttered this eternal truth. Definitely, you have no idea about eternity. Neither do I, baby. I do know, however, the meaning of \u2018wrong\u2019 and \u2018right\u2019. Not that I\u2019m a learned animal. No, simply as a very humble creature, I\u2019ve lived an absolutely \u2018wrong\u2019 life. You don\u2019t understand what I mean, baby, do you? I couldn\u2019t understand, either. I mean what my dad said the day I went to the hospital to see my mom after a horrible night, the first one I had spent without her at home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A nurse with a white form in her hand comes to the waiting area and calls a name in her sharp voice. Hastily throwing the tabloid on the side table, the little girl\u2019s mom stands up to follow the nurse. The girl runs after her, but her mom orders her to stop by nodding and flapping her hands. I don\u2019t see her expression, for her back is toward me. Her arms extend in the air in vain, and come back to her sides slowly, like frail wings of a baby bird. I close my eyes and lean the back of my head against the wall. I try to see my mom in my mind. I don\u2019t. I remember, though, that I stopped at the threshold of the ward, perplexedly gazing at her pale face with a shiny smile. Half lying, half sitting, she nodded at me to come to her. I was transfixed. Dad, stood behind me, put his warm hand on my shoulder and pushed me a bit forward. I stepped in clumsily. My arms extended towards mom. In the middle of the room, while I spotted a big doll, beet-faced, in a cradle next to Mom, I stopped again. My arms fell down feebly.<\/p>\n I open my eyes to seek the girl. Standing in the space between room and corridor, she watches the casual going and coming of orderlies pushing patients on stretchers. I can see only her profile and one of her two black braids. I take my eyes off her and watch the signs here and there, on the wall, all in Spanish. I try to decode words. I did the same, baby, when Mom said those words. It was a while after the big red-faced doll had been taken out by a nurse with a huge bouncing bust. My head was in Mom\u2019s lap and she was caressing my hair gently and quietly. \u201cHoney, you\u2019re wearing your sweater the wrong way out again.\u201d She said. I just shrugged. She mumbled something and moved my head up. While Mom was trying to help me right my sweater, I heard Dad, in the midst of Mom\u2019s rebuke saying, \u201cafter all, she was born in the wrong time …\u201dMom\u2019s muttering response interrupted him. I was struggling to bring my head out of the tight turtle-necked sweater; I couldn\u2019t see his face. His words made no sense to me, but I recognized a trace of sad sarcasm in his tone.<\/p>\n <\/strong>The very pregnant blonde, leaning her head against the very young freckled guy\u2019s drooped shoulder, has, now, a sweet pale smile on her face that makes her look like the perpetually smiling woman next to her. I wonder if the charm of her smile comes from a family inheritance, or the serene flow of the guy\u2019s murmur, or the pleasure of touching her belly. Her long narrow white fingers are rotating softly and constantly, as if performing a religious ritual. I can\u2019t help putting my sweaty palm on my belly. I hope you don\u2019t think that I\u2019m doing something wrong, baby. But if you do, I\u2019ll remind you of my dad\u2019s attempt to take away the blame. Not that I expect you to understand it, but that I understood it eventually. That day, in the hospital, while striving to get rid of the suffocating sweater and digesting the presence of the beet-faced doll, his words didn\u2019t evoke curiosity in me. They were carved in my mind, though. Dad never repeated them, at least not in front of me. But he replaced them with a clearly expressive nodding gesture, whenever I did something wrong in my exclusively odd way. He also avoided talking, in public or private, about the traumatic turning point in his world. Any mention of the coup d\u2019etat<\/em> or anything else refreshing the anguish of the time when Mossadeq<\/em> was removed from power, and its aftermath, was as if taboo. Nonetheless, gradually I learned about it, either by hearing, on and off, his mournful words, loaded with a long-held grudge when he got drunk with his friends at home, or by asking anybody else about that time. That I was born on the night of the coup d\u2019etat, <\/em>immediately after Dad was arrested as a supporter of Mossadeq<\/em>, cracked the code of his words in the hospital where my sister was born, in the right time. However, it was some years later, in the office of the gynecologist who took the risk of performing abortion, that I felt the deep bitterness of my dad\u2019s words. Staring at the gaudy fluorescent ceiling light, I sipped this poisonous bitterness, feeling it creep noxiously along my veins. Deep inside, something else was also happening. In contrast with the sort of painful relief I\u2019d experienced through being conscious of removing the embryo from my body, I felt, more than ever, a burning desire to hold a baby, not in my womb, but in my bosom.<\/p>\n The mother goddess, shiny brown in turquoise sari, is now observing her creatures with compassion and satisfaction. Fascinated by this simple scene, I reluctantly note the vibration of my cell phone. It\u2019s Shalini, ensuring me they will be here as soon as they can. I want to tell her about the mesmeric tableau that is in front of me. I bet she would be enchanted even more than me if she were here now. After all, it\u2019s she who calls me to join her watching through the window the parade of the mother duck and her little baby ducklings. Yes, I\u2019m talking about our right neighbour and her kids, baby, when they march toward the park near our house. She is a plump woman blessed with health, beauty, and the privileges of an American upper-middle-class family. Contrary to her, Shalini is from a low-middle-class family in South India, which rightfully boasts of sending their brainy eldest girl to a top US university such as Yale. Shalini has brought her asthma and nostalgia along with her to the land of opportunity. Graduated in Economics, she\u2019s got a humble job at a small company in Hartford in the hope of saving some money for her dowry, by following a strict budget. She eats almost nothing other than homemade veggie foods, and drinks a lot of free tap water, often flavoured with herbal teas mailed to her from back home, in small boxes full of inexpensive local stuff. Such a diet makes Shalini so twiggy that sometimes I worry about her. Her body is nothing other than bones and dark skin. But she puts her slimness down to her genes. When asthma hits her, she looks more than ever like a twig, bending and falling under the pressure of a nasty wind scattering her smelly breath. I pray that she won\u2019t have an attack while we stand at the window to watch the parade. It\u2019s not fair of you to think that I do this just to avoid the smell. True, Shalini always smells of garlic, for she sucks on fresh cloves that she has put into her mouth. But, believe it or not, I pray because I wish for that devil disease not to ruin her pleasure at watching the happy parade toward the playground. At such times she dreams about going back home, marrying with a decent guy, and raising a prosperous family. How do I know? Well, there is no doubt that Shalini is shy and taciturn. Nevertheless, one late afternoon, when we were watching her favourite scene, she told me that her golden dream is having a big family with healthy babies. Now, if she\u2019d been here she could have envied how graciously the Indian mother goddess, trailed by her kids, is leaving the room, following the nurse with a blue form in her hand. That late afternoon, I had laughed loudly, and when I noticed her awkward look, I said to her that my dream was having only one baby, rather than many.<\/p>\n While Shalini didn\u2019t like the idea of having an only child, Franca and I couldn\u2019t imagine having more than one child. It made no difference whether that baby would be a boy or a girl — yet Shalini and I liked to play the guessing game when Franca, out of the blue, became pregnant. We had no way to quench our curiosity. She\u2019d refused to have an ultrasound, for she believes it\u2019s against the natural way. Only Shalini and I knew a secret that was at odds with this belief. We never mentioned it, though. It was a long ago, before her trip to Havana. Our landlady was away, and the three of us had dinner at the kitchen table. Franca and I were drinking Brazilian Chardonnay and Shalini accompanied us with her glass of tap water. Sounds weird, baby, but Franca, coming from a village in south Italy, is even more taciturn than Shalini. Not that she\u2019s shy. No way! Just looks like she enjoys her silence, much as a devoted monk or guru who has taken a vow does. Yet that night, her face all flushed, she said that she was so dying to have a baby that she\u2019d done a bit of research on sperm donation. Shalini, with her big brown eyes wide open, looked so shocked that Franca stopped talking. It was too late, though, for her odd words had already triggered an asthma attack. The next day, Shalini tried to convince us that it was the intense aroma of wine that had done it. Franca and I didn\u2019t believe her, but we stopped drinking our favourite Chardonnay while Shalini was with us. A year later, when Franca was spending her summer vacation with her mother in her home village, we received a letter from her that shocked me as well as Shalini. It was a short letter to say that she would be back to her work at Yale soon. Well, no wonder, if she wanted to keep her sessional teaching job! What stunned us was her other news: that she was knocked up by a Cuban guy who she\u2019d met on her recent visit to Havana. Avoiding Shalini\u2019s wide eyes, I folded the letter and involuntarily muttered, \u201cI bet the guy\u2019s dream is to leave the Island.\u201d Before having her inevitable asthma attack, Shalini could only respond to my pessimistic comment so: \u201cNo problem, if he\u2019s the right guy\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The sharp-voiced nurse, now with a pink form in her hand, comes in again and calls a name. The young blonde stands up slowly and, with her escorts to right and left, follows the nurse. Thank God, Franca is not here to feel jealous of this lucky blonde who has two pamperers. Franca had to deliver her baby in her mother\u2019s village, while the Cuban guy was still waiting for his papers in Havana. When he eventually arrived in Italy, Franca had to come back to the US. She had a rented apartment in New York and knew a reliable baby sitter over there. So, she\u2019s spending half of her time in New Haven and the other half in New York. The baby\u2019s father has to wait until Franca\u2019s new lawyer can manage all required papers for him to move to the US, at the expense of Franca\u2019s entire savings. The previous lawyer abandoned her in the middle of the process with some feeble excuse, but didn\u2019t return her money. The cost is estimated to exceed all her savings. On top of it, baby, the Cuban prince is grumping that he\u2019s got bored living with a ninety-year-old woman who talks nonstop in Italian. Franca never complains, but Shalini and I see how difficult life is for her. No doubt that Franca wouldn\u2019t have finished her studies if she hadn\u2019t been such a hardy girl. Her mom was a farmer\u2019s widow with no support. That\u2019s all she\u2019s said about her past. I guess her dream about coming to the land of opportunity helped her to succeed. That she has a temporary teaching job at Yale is not a minor success; it can lead to green card one day. Moreover, what could she earn in Italy? At most she could be a high school teacher. I bet in her dreams her Prince Charming was a Yankee. But it turned out that the prince was actually wandering around Basilica Menor de San Francisco de Asis in Havana and daydreaming about Yankee land.<\/p>\n That Franca\u2019s man is the wrong guy doesn\u2019t mean something is wrong with her. At least she can now put a face to her baby\u2019s father — which she couldn\u2019t have done if she\u2019d gone to a sperm bank. About the motionless woman, who\u2019s still in the same posture, I cannot be certain. In fact, I tend to think it\u2019s different for her. No matter if the leggy guy is wrong or not, it seems to me that something must be wrong with the woman, who has such an odd look. To avoid her eyes I turn my head toward the other side, trying to spot the restless girl. She is now in the corridor, rubbing her small palm over the white wall, killing time. Who knows, baby? Maybe she was born in the wrong time and place too. I try to catch her eye to confirm my guess but the nurse, with a white form in her hand, interrupts my thoughts by calling my name. I stand up unwillingly and follow her to a room where I am to be prepped for the operation.<\/p>\n Finally we\u2019re inside the operation area, on the stretcher, and ready for sedation. Don\u2019t panic, baby! You\u2019re still in my tummy and I\u2019m touching you with all my bizarre feelings. But is there anything bizarre under the sun<\/em>? I don\u2019t know, baby. I\u2019m confused. The anesthetist, staring at my moving lips, says, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be worried. It\u2019s good, though, that you\u2019re praying.\u201d I smirk, \u201cI\u2019m not praying.\u201d She smiles, \u201cWell, self-talk might be as good as prayer.\u201d I respond with a glassy stare, \u201cI\u2019m talking to the baby, not to myself.\u201d Stunned, she tries to keep the smile on her face, \u201cIt\u2019s not your baby, dear\u2026\u201d I touch you again, without taking my eyes off her. \u201cIt\u2019s a mass, honey, not a baby.\u201d She continues. I keep touching you so that you make sure that I\u2019m with you, and by no means against you. \u201cYou\u2019re here for an operation\u2026 aren\u2019t you?\u201d She asks. What can I tell her? But I have something to tell you, baby, for you\u2019ve been with me for such a long time. \u201cWe\u2019re helping you to get rid of this ovarian cyst, and soon after you\u2019ll be able to have a baby, hopefully\u2026\u201d I lose the thread of her words; her hollow voice is floating away past my ears. So, before she puts me out, let me tell you something, baby. I know when you were a single cell — as lonely as I am now — you just got confused and stayed in the wrong place. That\u2019s what the doctor said when she saw I was panicked. Well, if everybody blames you, baby; I — though I am a wrong person — won\u2019t. After all, you\u2019re all my labour and toil here under the sun.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You got Confused, Baby<\/strong>
\n <\/strong>But who knows who is the right guy, and who the wrong one? For instance, this leggy guy, who\u2019s now going out again — I bet he cannot be the right one for the motionless deer-eyed woman. She looks as lonely as I am now and as I was when I had him<\/em> as a partner. Oddly enough, when we were friends — for whatever reason, whether common political views or our illusions — we believed we were as one. But living under the same roof proved that we were not on the same wavelength at all. If he hadn\u2019t been executed during our first year together, we would have divorced in the second year for sure. I\u2019ve never revealed this secret to anybody, baby. After all, he was a political martyr, and I was respected as his widow in the eyes of his comrades. Otherwise they wouldn\u2019t have helped me to flee the country, either for my safety or for theirs.<\/p>\n
\nYes, you\u2019re still within me, baby, a comfort like you\u2019ve always been, since the very moment when you were just a single cell as lonely as I am now. You believe me, don\u2019t you? Let the rest of the world not believe that I have nobody either on the Earth or on Mars. \u201cMa\u2019am, you missed the part about your companion,\u201d said the receptionist, chewing gum with her mouth wide open. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2109,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions\/2109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}