Paula Bomer - Nine Months

What about that blossoming she felt, that new freedom, the no-babies feeling? The break she felt was her due? And what about painting? Can’t she paint and take care of babies? Can’t she paint while she’s pregnant? Why this choice and not another? Sonia is convinced there’s no right or wrong choice, just a choice to be made, and hers for the making. And why not one more? Three isn’t five. It isn’t eight. It’s three. And then they’ll fix their parts like the stray animals they are.

In the meantime, there’s life on a daily basis. And a bored woman with half a mind is a dangerous thing.

WHO COULD BE HER role models? It was one thing to rebel against the world as a young childless woman. The tattoo on her ass. The fuck whoever she wants. The safety pins in her ears when she was fifteen. The snarl, the fuck-you middle finger up at the slightest provocation. The anti-cheerleader, anti-good girl.

And yet, of course, there was ambition. But who could be her role models as a mother and a human being in the world, an artist in the world? Georgia O’Keefe? No kids. Frida Kahlo? No kids. Mary Cassatt? Well, not to her taste. The work of women with live-in help, the work of a certain class of women who weren’t expected to take care of their children on a daily basis. They could have kids and hire someone else to take care of them day and night and still be considered a good mother. Maybe Sonia was born too late. But that’s where all Cassatt’s pink comes in. All those mushy brushstrokes, all that pure love. Real love is never pure. Vanessa Bell? Well, maybe if she weren’t less important than her childless sister. But then, not even. Sue Coe? Too straightforward, plus, who knows if she has kids?

She wants to be Egon Schiele. She wants to be a man. She wanted to be her instructor, Philbert Rush, not just fuck him, although she only managed the latter. She wants to be a man in her art, for some reason. She doesn’t want to represent goodness and motherhood in her art, because that is not all she is, and how often do the two even go together?

And the poets? Adrienne Rich? Angry lesbian poet whose children felt God knows what about her? Yeah, that’s right, having a life means torturing your kids. Because even the little punk rock girls with their shocking pink hair who abuse drugs and fuck without condoms still want mommy to give them lots of money, still want mommy to take care of them and, most importantly, still blame their mommies for not loving them enough, or loving them in the wrong way. And, it’s probably true. Mothers fuck up their kids. Tough boys, dark boys, art boys, radical boys, listening to Radiohead and heavy metal, fuck, they’d still let their mothers wipe the very shit from their assholes if they could, bend over and expose their raw bottoms up, defenseless and needy. Everybody wants a warm meal prepared and served with a smile. Everybody wants to get into a warm bed at night, get tucked into fresh sheets in a dark room. Everybody wants and wants, and nobody says, “That’s enough! I’m ready to not be treated warmly, to not get any affection, to not be taken care of!” Fuck, if it’s not paying some new age depressive to put cucumbers on your face, it’s the next thing. Our needs are endless.

Role models from the poets? Sylvia Plath. Anne Sexton. Crazy stupid bitches who totally screwed up their children. Hey, they were mentally ill! No one would give a shit about their art if they hadn’t killed themselves. And what if you love life? What if you have no desire to kill yourself? What if you’d rather kill them instead? Or kill no one, ’cause face it, it’s not like Sonia is crazy. She just wants it all.

And who, really, truly, honestly, wants to grow up and become their own mother? Everyone wants a mother, but who wants to be their own mother? No, we’re supposed to be learning from their mistakes. Have kids and no life? Study sewing? No, thanks. Be a corporate lawyer, adopt one kid when you turn forty-five, and by that time, you’re too fucking old to take care of the poor thing? No, thanks.

And then there are the childless women who for some reason Sonia despises as well. The whiney, self-absorbed ones who remain perpetual children. Who still fucking blame it all on their mothers. Who have no idea. Who reads Virginia Woolf without smelling her forever-a-maiden status? Interior dialogue? Sounds great, if you don’t have kids, which thankfully keeps you from such self-absorption. Sonia’d rather read the worst of twice-divorced Jane Smiley with her four kids. At least she has a clue. At least she doesn’t have to pretend that art is separate from life. Musicians? Stevie Nicks, Aimee Mann. Past forty years old, clinging to the girl/woman thing. And why not?

Because women are not girls. Their faces sag. Their tits sag. They can’t blame it all on being female anymore. They know better because they’ve been there. Yes, Sonia wanted to be there. And she is there. She just didn’t know it would be so hard. All her life, all of her thirty-five years, she’s only wanted to experience everything, except maybe heroin addiction. Who are you going to blame now for the mess you’re in?

And what if she maybe doesn’t want to paint? What if being a housewife is easier in some way? Not trying? Not figuring out if she’s as good as they all said she was, so long ago? What if she doesn’t want to know if she still knows how to paint? Grandma Moses? Not her plan. But what is her plan? Is she … afraid? Afraid she’s not all that?

It’s true that when Sonia was a little girl, five, six, seven, she wanted to be a boy. They didn’t get yelled at as ferociously for jumping all over the furniture. They were supposed to do that. They were boys. If they hit someone, well, it wasn’t OK but, hey, what do you expect, they were boys. A five-year-old boy could walk into a room and command more attention, more freedom, absorb more fucking oxygen, than Sonia could at the same age. And she knew it then. But later, well, later, she decided it was fun being female. That being female didn’t mean being passive. Thanks to Katrina Nelson. Thanks to the women’s movement in the sixties and seventies. Thanks to a lot of people and things, but, really, thanks to Katrina, the friend that changed her life, the friend she met while waiting on tables, the nineteen-year-old high-school dropout from Kalamazoo, Michigan, who changed her life when they met in Boston. Maybe there are no role models. Maybe there are just people, and some more influential than others.

Last she heard, Katrina had married and had a baby, was still living in the Boston area. Maybe Sonia should go visit her.

But Sonia’s having this baby.

The decision’s been made.

“Do you have to kill a cow to get meat?” Tom asks Sonia this as they walk slowly down Court Street. Mike is asleep in the stroller, his hair dark with sweat and plastered to his red face. It is hot. It is August in Brooklyn. The air is so thick, so humid, that Sonia can’t see very well what’s in front of her.

“Yes, you have to kill a cow to get meat, sweetheart.”

“Does everyone have meat inside of them? Do bugs have meat inside of them? Do I have meat inside of me?”

“Well, yes, I guess so. But we don’t eat bugs or people. We eat fish, cows, chickens. Pigs.”

“I love meat. Can we get some meat? Can we have hamburgers for dinner tonight?”

Tom starts rubbing his chest. He, too, is red-faced. Sonia’s heart constricts, and for a moment, she fears that her children will die from the heat. That their red little faces mean they are dying.