Elisa Albert - After Birth

Finally, pregnant with my mother at the advanced age of thirty-two, she was prescribed a miracle drug. Even better: an experimental miracle drug. Diethylstilbestrol. DES, for short. Some kind of synthetic estrogen. (Hey, listen, rule of thumb? The minute anyone says “miracle drug,” run. Especially if it’s a lady-specific miracle drug, dig? Opt the fuck out, please. Stay away. They have no idea what they’re doing to you, and they Really Do Not Care.)

So it did indeed prevent miscarriage, good old DES, but in so doing also — oh yeah, oops, by the way, sorry! — fated the unborn to all manner of cancerous disaster. DES Daughters, they’re called. Too soon to tell whether we Daughters of Daughters will have what are euphemistically referred to as “indicators,” but hey, I’m on the edge of my fucking seat.

Every few years I get a packet from the CDC. A big white eight-by-ten envelope with their logo: Safer·Healthier·People . It’s vaguely sinister how they track me down, my little epidemiological parole officers.

The first packet landed in my college mailbox freshman year. I mumbled something to a Health Center doctor about it, gravely offered up the packet, mumble mumble DES something mother died mumble cancer mumble.

Probably meaningless , the doc said, and shrugged, glancing through the packet. (My mother, dead of medical-establishment hubris. Meaningless? Oh. Okay.)

Then she offered me that pill where you get your period only four times a year. It’s new , she practically squawked, and wonderfully convenient!

I yearn to one day rip open a CDC envelope and find a different kind of letter. An on behalf of the entire community, our sincerest apologies for the shortsightedness and carelessness with which we treated the reproductive health of your forebears… our bad … promise to stop fucking with you ladies , et cetera.

Anyway then of course my mother had a nearly impossible time getting pregnant herself. The DES Daughters stuff was just coming out, all those shockingly deformed reproductive organs, wow, who knew? So they had to assume it wasn’t going to happen, had no choice but to be okay with it not happening, IVF still mostly a science-fictive question mark, though that first freak guinea pup in England was born the very same year. My parents had been married a while and made their peace. A lot of DES Daughters, it turned out, were in the same boat. My mother’s deformed reproductive organs turned out to be functional, but barely, and on a short fuse, so to speak. The cancer made itself known six months after — surprise — I was born.

Will’s trap has done its thing. Hurrah. A squirrel quivers in it all morning, petrified. Like the baby when we brought him home from the hospital. I stare at him, he stares back. Old/new face, death-wary but fresh. Are we blinking? Are we breathing? What now? I feel bad for him. The squirrel and newborn Walker, too. What a predicament, being here, alive. It can only end badly.

Will picks up the trap with these huge thick canvas gloves, puts it in his truck. We sit on the stoop.

He accidentally brushes the side of my thigh, and there’s a current there, of course there is, just how it goes, we’re all grown-ups here. After a while he speaks.

How’s writing?

Whatever.

I actually have no idea what you’re writing about.

Me neither.

He waits.

Girls , I say finally. I’m getting my PhD in Algorithms of Girl.

He is prepared to take me seriously, and what a gift that is. So the least I can do is take myself seriously for the moment.

I wrote this thing for my master’s about how feminist organizations very frequently tend to implode and it got published in this journal nine people read and so I got this fellowship to turn it into my dissertation and I sort of went with it.

There’s a great series of row houses opposite us. Beige, navy, dark green, burgundy. Contrasting trim on each. A bunch of people had wanted that fellowship. Good for me.

So why do feminist organizations implode?

Because women are insecure competitive ragey cuntrags with each other. In a nutshell. A lot of the records of some of the better-known ones are, like, in archives. Women in women-only groups just rip each other to shreds.

He laughs. Then I laugh, which feels like clean air, spring water. It’s not until you laugh again that you realize you have not laughed in a long-ass time.

I used to be really into, like, Adrienne Rich, and Andrea Dworkin — God, Andrea Dworkin. I’m this little radicalized undergraduate dyke freak screaming myself hoarse at Ani DiFranco shows, and next thing you know I’m blazing through a master’s, now I’m in line for a doctorate.

That’s pretty cool.

I guess, except I don’t care anymore. My advisor’s pretty much given up on me, and soon the fellowship will run out and I can stop pretending, like, just admit that it’s a bust and I’m not up to it. Then I have no idea what to do with myself. Maybe have another baby . This is meant as a joke, and I say it all mocking, stupid-like. But it’s so not funny, I’m dizzy.

I pick up a piece of forgotten yellow sidewalk chalk and scribble. It’s not until you really talk to someone that you realize how infrequently you actually talk to anyone. I feel like Will likes me, weirdly enough. Paul does exquisite fucking, problem solving, logistics. Paul follows instructions. Paul is an excellent driver. Paul makes sure we don’t bounce checks. But Paul does not necessarily keep me company. And who can blame him?

Will lights a cigarette. I reach for a drag. This is the longest conversation we’ve ever had. The drag is a mistake.

I think I, ah, sort of lost my mind this year?

Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Yeah , he says finally. I think a lot of women go through that.

What, abandon their dissertations?

Lose their minds. Having a kid.

Sitting on this here stoop requires my full attention. The second drag is also a bad idea. It’s windy and cold and I’m not wearing a hat or gloves. My nose is running.

Thanks for the squirrel assist.

No problem.

We could climb into his truck and drive until we hit the farthest ocean, never come back. Things like that have been known to happen.

Instead we go inside. I offer tea, which he declines, like I’m trouble.

Sorry , I say, out of nowhere.

No , he says, leaving. He’s wearing a gray plaid flannel shirt and it’s the same gray as his eyes, goddamn it.

She was not beautiful, my mother, but is remembered as such, small recompense for dying young.

My father, when pressed to talk about her, admits she was “moody.” Which is deeply hilarious, like all euphemisms.

Bitch from hell , I scrawled in my diary at nine. Made her only child call her Janice. Used physical force and terror for shits and giggles. Paid someone else to care for her child and treated that person horribly.

In a fine mood she might take me shopping or out for ice cream, host dinner parties with a half-insane, vivacious gleam in her eye. In darker moods she’d scowl to bring down the house, rage, take to bed for days, say terrible things to my father and to me. If she was angry, if she was sad, you were going to suffer. The darkness is most memorable, far outweighs the decent. The malevolent fog.

She abused our housekeepers, made them cry. She preferred Hispanic housekeepers to black ones, because the black ones didn’t take shit. The Hispanic ones took her shit like real professional shit takers, just how she liked it.