Succor
On nursing a baby boy.
by Erin Cressida Wilson
November 30, 2006
"A boy," I cried. Leaned over, doubled over. I wept as if they had just told me, "You have black lung." But the news was "a boy." A snapshot of the evidence. The doctor wrote "penis" on the sonogram. Said I could embarrass him in years to come. Put it in the album. But I was crushed.
My dream of pink girls. My dream of girlhood. My dream of femininity, prissiness, lace dolls, crayons and purple drapes and flowers was gone. The childhood I had never had.
Raised by a feminist, such a feminist she didn't even call herself a feminist. Who never taught me to wash a dish, bake a cake, stir a stew, plant bulbs or calla lilies. A sexy professor whose pastimes were love, erotica, English as a second language, and fierce autonomy. She served TV dinners and never mended the curtains — they still have safety pins in their hems forty years later. And my father? He was a charming loner who lived inside books. Who woke up every morning at five a.m. to write. I'd pad behind him in my nightgown and sit down to move my fingers on the pretend typewriter keys that he had carved into the wood of my desk, so I could be just like him.
Instead of food, I grew up eating words and definitions, dictionaries and books of etymology for dinner. My fantasies were not of weddings or men in shining armor, but of independence and a bed made especially for writing in all day long.Together, my daughter and I would learn to make cupcakes and conquer the world. But, instead, the sonogram showed a penis.
As an adult, I ended up with two left hands in the kitchen and became confused by a needle and thread. It would be through my daughter that I would repair my feminist and bookaholic upbringing.
I would teach her not just what my mother had taught me, but what she had not: to be a hostess, a glitter girl, a wife, and a cream puff. Together, my daughter and I would learn to make cupcakes and conquer the world. But, instead, the sonogram showed a penis. With testicles formed already in utero.
"Nine point nine," the nurses exclaimed as my boy screamed out of my C-sectioned stomach, the doctor's hands pulling him out without any grace. John watched from the top of the tent as I asked, "Will I vomit?" And the anesthesiologist said, "I know the theme of this one." "Will I throw up? I feel nauseated," I said over and over again. And out of desperation, I grabbed the nurse's arm, caressing the dark hairs that ran to her shoulders. The last touch I would have before I was forever changed by the sight of his mouth, his eyes, the sound of his cry.
They stuck oxygen on my face as I continued with the "Will I vomit/I feel faint" litany. I cried through the mask as John held his dangling body up for me to behold. His very long limbs, and yes, his testicles. His face, like a girl's. Squinty eyes that had a good look at me. And rosebud lips. A tiny nose. And from then on, everything up to that point in my life was utterly insignificant.
Wheeling him in his plastic see-through bed down the halls of the hospital, I have bare feet.
They say, "Don't you have slippers?"
But I don't care, I want hospital all over me. I want to gush blood on their floor. I want to pee for the first time, shit for the first time, as a mother. Feel the whole thing. With him in my arms. All night long.
©2006 Erin Cressida Wilson and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Erin Cressida Wilson wrote the screenplays for Secretary and Fur, An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. Her twenty plays have been produced regionally, Off Broadway and abroad. She co-authored The Erotica Project with Lillian Ann Slugocki and is currently writing a remake of The Hunger. |
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