Lance Olsen: Girl Imagined by Chance

One must always see what one sees , Charles Péguy once said, and Paul Valéry once said To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees .

You may develop cravings, naturally.

You may develop aversions to foods you usually adore.

If your breasts are large, you may be more comfortable wearing a bra at night as well as during the day.

Andi raising her camera for the first time in your presence and then, after the shoot, you perhaps not unpredictably making a point of waiting around so you could start up a conversation with her.

Talking with the woman who would become your wife but was not your wife then.

Her eyes.

Her eyes, brown and bright as the candy in her hospital room years later, being the part of her you remember best.

You, of course, knowing only one of these facts at the time.

That she was not your wife, that is.

Her brown eyes and the way her hand self-consciously reached for her jaw, as if she had a toothache, not knowing what else to do without her camera.

Limb buds emerging like white anemones.

Limb buds emerging like white anemones, her eyes, her hand reaching up, and how she smiled into the cloudy sunshine, walking toward you, enjoying the faultless day.

Enjoying the apparently faultless day.

Never douche during pregnancy, it almost goes without saying, unless your doctor tells you to.

Brain and spinal cord no more than a barely decipherable flatworm.

If you drink alcoholic beverages, so does your baby.

If you use drugs or medications, so does your baby.

And so you asked her if she would like to catch a bite to eat after the shoot and she said after a not unpredictable second’s pause Why not?

Never believe the myth that bed rest helps improve blood flow to your uterus while reducing physical stress.

Current studies, needless to say, showing the opposite.

Current studies showing that such rest for most women can actually produce serious side effects, including depression, headache, muscle loss, weight loss, and difficulty walking.

She said Why not ? and a week later she took your photo from behind, naked.

Duck, she said, walking into the bathroom while you shaved.

Duck and cover.

And you saw in the flash the red pinprick pulse of the fetal heart, though you would not recognize what it was you had seen for almost seventeen years.

More than a decade and a half.

Almost half your life.

Clicking.

The subtextual message of the information you uncover is twofold.

On the one hand, everything will turn out fine in the end. Ignore the bad times and remember the good. Your baby and you will live happily ever after.

On the other hand, appalling, deplorable, ghoulish things might happen to you and your child if you are not careful.

If you are careful.

If you are careful or if you are not careful, some babies are born without faces, for example.

Without brains.

Without compassion.

So remain vigilant.

Do not take any shortcuts and hurry home fast as you can.

Remain vigilant, but understand that sometimes remaining vigilant will not be enough.

Sometimes the forest will burst into flames around you.

All you can do is drink six to eight glasses of liquid every day, try pullover tops and skirts or pants with elastic waists, and remember that special creams are available for soothing and softening your dry scaly skin.

Hot baths will make you dizzy, the area around your nipples will darken, the total amount of blood in your body will increase.

Now you are you.

Now you are you and more than you.

Do not cut down on salt, contrary to what you might think.

Contrary to what your intuition tells you.

You to the second power.

The embryo of an advanced form more or less retraces its evolutionary path as it develops, echoing stages of lower ancestral forms: before it becomes a mammal in the uterus, it becomes a fish, an amphibian, a reptile.

Within your child’s brain resides the brain of an insect.

An amoeba.

A virus.

If amoebae and viruses can be said to have brains, obviously.

Traveling, traveling.

The English, Andi reports over breakfast one day, refer to fetuses as little strangers and to pregnant women as preggers or hairy preggers .

To cheat the starter for them means to become pregnant out of wedlock , while on is a euphemism for the menstrual cycle, and hence not becoming pregnant, as in No, I’m not pregnant, thank god, I just came on .

Synonyms for the phrase to make pregnant include put in the club, put up the duff , and stork used as a transitive verb.

As in:

He storked her .

Australians say you are up the flue or clucky when they mean you are pregnant.

In African American slang, a woman can be fat, in pig , or poisoned .

One can always have a bun in the oven or an egg in the nest , be on the hill, up the creek, caught , or gotten with child .

One can always be heavy, great, carrying, anticipating a blessed event , or simply in a delicate condition .

You explain to Andi you are dizzy with details.

It feels, you say, glass of organic kiwi-and-strawberry juice in your hand, like the first ten minutes in the Kathmandu airport. Everything is fresh and interesting and overwhelming. You do not understand the language. You cannot figure which way to walk. Everyone wants to carry your suitcases.

How do people do this? you ask. How do they make it turn out all right in the end?

Organic kiwi-and-strawberry or organic pineapple-and-banana juice.

Which one is unimportant, to be honest.

Next day you experience psychosomatic morning sickness.

The sensation is both exhilarating and disconcerting.

If you think hard enough about it, your breasts hurt.

You want to use the word boobs to refer to them.

My boobs are humongous , you want to say. Humongous and achy .

Andi cancels a PR shoot for a Mexican restaurant in Moscow and stays home to look after you. She brings you a plateful of crackers and sits in a rocking chair beside your bed, reading to you from her library books.

When you are taking an iron supplement to stave off anemia, she reports, your bowel movements will become darker and harder than usual.

Should I know this? you ask, palpating your nipples.

Playing classical music may lead to more complex brain development in fetuses.

Then again, it may not.

By the fifth month, your fetus will begin to turn head over heels in your uterus like a weightless scuba diver.

Your nipples will begin to drip small amounts of clear or yellowish fluid called colostrum as a sign your body is preparing for breast feeding.

Should I know this? you ask again, palpating.

Leg cramps.

Leg cramps and hemorrhoids perhaps being the worst.

Colostrum can dry into a crust and should be washed off with warm water since soap and alcohol dry the skin and contribute to making your breasts sore.

Leg cramps, hemorrhoids, or swelling of the face.

Wear a cotton or absorbent pad in your bra.

Unless severe headaches, blurred vision, flashes of light, sharp abdominal pain, relentless vomiting, the appearance of blood vessels protruding from the rectum, or the sudden escape of fluid from the vagina are the worst.

From beneath the light sheets, you explain to Andi that you are horrified.

Horrified and intrigued.

It is not an either-or distinction.

You feel like you are picking your way through a zone of trespass, yet cannot stop inching forward.