Elisa Albert - After Birth

Tell me about it , I say.

Why doesn’t anybody talk about this? I mean, how stupid do you have to be to worry about strangers seeing your tits in the wake of this?

Here’s the problem: we are taught nothing.

How to sew, grow food, preserve food, build things, fix things, make fires, birth babies, care for babies, feed babies, move through time, grow old, die, grieve, change, sit still, be quiet. Still and quiet, endless Interneters, quiet, quiet, quiet.

How to be alone, how to shut up and be with ourselves for five minutes, how to listen, how to be still, how to mark and process passage, how to ritualize, bare feet in the earth. Basic knowledge in shocking disuse while we tap away at our devices. To call us monkeys is to insult monkeys. Birthing and care of newborn humans a specialty now, an area of expertise, hired out. Basic biological functions, ceded a generation or two or three ago and by now vanished as if the knowledge never existed in the first place. Like if breathing became specialized, or, no — like if shitting became specialized. Like if some corporation struck gold convincing us all that shitting is not necessary.

You need not labor over the toilet, ladies and gentlemen! It can be difficult, it can be painful, it can be slow, so much can go wrong. We’ll free you of the whole business. Your body isn’t doing as good a job removing its own waste as you might think. Let us do it right, let us do it for you! And oh, that opening is so small, while your waste matter can be quite sizable. Why put your body through that? Scores of people suffer from constipation and bowel diseases, both of which can now be eradicated! Try our simple shit removal, a must for modern folk on the go who need not be bothered by traditional, filthy human elimination! Let us make a tiny incision near your bowel to remove the contents on a daily basis. Sterile. State-of-the-art. Simple.

Leave the stinking excrement to the apes and savages. You’re better than that, and besides, who needs the embarrassment? Now you can know exactly when and where your elimination will take place.

And very quickly, within a few generations, no one remembers how to take a simple dump anymore. No one knows that a silly magazine can help, that straining is ill advised, that herbs or Epsom salts or castor oil as a last resort can be a fine thing.

But, ah, well, the years are rolling by and it seems as though, er, perhaps, heh heh, there’s some, ah, human error and shortsightedness involved in these “advances” after all. Also turns out — who knew? — there’s actually considerable benefit to the normal contraction of the bowels, the body its own best caretaker, judge, healer.

Take it easy, now, they’re gonna get around to doing a study eventually. Maybe someone’s grandmother remembers taking a shit, the idea that your own body might actually be well equipped to dispose of its own waste. It’s like a freak folk tale: foreign and fascinating.

Meanwhile, pay no mind to your scar, sucker.

Everyone’s so “worried” about me all the time. I haven’t really “bounced back,” as Sheryl says.

Sometimes I’m with the baby and I think: you’re my heart and my soul, and I would die for you.

Other times I think: tiny moron, leave me the fuck alone so I can slit my wrists in the bath and die in peace.

In the café where I never work on my dissertation is the woman I’ve seen at the co-op with her brand-new baby. We smile.

Do you ever feel like you’re completely losing your mind?

Her smile fades.

It’s okay if you do. It’s perfectly normal.

Her roots are brown and gray, the rest is dyed red. She’s probably doing that thing where you refuse to part with the first look you ever liked on yourself. When she was like twenty-three, she dyed it for the first time and never got over being that girl with the red hair, loved making those salon appointments, felt very on top of herself. Oh, but sweetheart, time has passed you by.

We’re getting along fine , she says. Bitch, please: sell it someplace else.

How old is she? (Head-to-toe pink, so safe assumption.)

Five weeks . Glass bead. Bud in bud vase.

Did you have an okay time with the birth?

She actually flinches.

Here , I say, tearing a page from my mostly empty notebook. Here’s my number. If you ever need to talk or anything, call me. Women aren’t supposed to do this alone.

I’ll make her a casserole, sure thing. Hold the baby so she can take a shower or a nap. Nurse her, if she wants.

She takes the folded paper.

Thanks.

What’s her name?

Luka.

My name is Luka , I sing. Suzanne Vega.

We weren’t really thinking of that.

After she’s gone, I do some research. Ancient Roman lore about a heroic woman who saves her imprisoned father from starvation and death by nursing him in secret. Roman Charity, it’s called. See also: Rubens, Caravaggio, Steinbeck. Precedent! Ask your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother. The Arabic term for people who were nursed by the same woman, some approximation of “milk-brother,” implies a stronger relationship than that of two people actually born to the same woman.

I write to Marianne. Guess what? I’m the neighborhood wet nurse now! How fourth wave is that!?

With her wedding over, Erica’s shifted her focus to sheer terror of pregnancy. (As well she should! Cackle, cackle!) We visit on the device while I fold laundry. On her screen she watches herself talk to me, plays with her hair.

They’re “trying,” but four months have gone by and nothing is happening.

It’s been a while , she says. I’m getting kind of worried.

A tiny green sock in need of a mate.

Come on. You have to know better than that. Don’t you? You do know better than that, right?

So, what? You think I should just not have a kid?

I think you should relax and go about your life and be grateful for whatever you get, and hope you get a kid sooner or later one way or another and be fine if that’s not what you get, too.

Oh, right, Ari, because you had a baby and now you’re a Zen master.

Uh-huh.

Fuck you , she said.

Whatever.

I’m really not that excited about how fat I’m going to get, though. No offense. Can I ask you a question?

That was a question.

How did you know you were ready? We got one of those predictors? Where it tells you literally to, like, the minute when you’re ovulating? But we totally chickened out. Watched TV and got take-out instead. She turns around to make sure she’s alone, lowers her voice. Okay, honestly? Steve couldn’t get hard. Too much pressure, he said.

It’s weird when people talk about readiness. I so don’t work that way. My brain has absolutely no sway over my heart. I’m never ready. There is no such thing as ready. There is only doing, despite.

Sooooo maybe you’re not ready.

A pair of Paul’s boxers are tangled up with my pajama pants.

So how did you decide to go for it?

I did nothing to prevent it. Then some time went by and it happened.

Teeny-tiny T-shirt.

I mean, like, how long? How much time?

I don’t know. A year?

That tiny green sock’s mate. When Erica and I were very little, she used to call herself CaCa.

Well , she said, I made an appointment to get all checked out and get a referral. Just in case.

A tiny orange sock. Of course, because if you could remotely afford medical assistance — or if medical assistance was covered by insurance — you were definitely supposed to need medical assistance.