Succor
On nursing a baby boy.
by Erin Cressida Wilson
November 30, 2006
My hospital roommate says, "Don't take this wrong . . . "
"Yes?" I ask.
"He has the most beautiful cry."
And I agree.
I will hold his mouth up to my ear and let him scream his 9.9 out of ten voice into me.
We couldn't name him. I wouldn't settle on anything. Twenty years of naming fictional characters, and I was incapable of naming my own flesh and blood until forced to sign papers for the birth certificate and proof of fatherhood. Liam was his name, because of his legs. He had Liam legs. Enormous mitts and fingers with the sweetest nails.
(Later, I remembered, trying to keep it in my mind for the rest of my life, the first real tear that fell down his cheek. The first tooth that cut through his swollen gums. And good-bye to that toothless mouth that opened wide with the sadness and joy of life.)He sings nursing songs. And then he farts. A word I could not actually bring myself to say until now.
He spits up milk. Runs down his cheek. And onto my blouses that now smell rotten. My tits have worry lines. I've got nipples for days. And then the breast pump from hell.
Pull at me like a handle. I'm fat and now I can't imagine anything but a boy. Not a girl. But a boy. And though we will cut his tongue, untie it from his rosebud lips, we will not cut his penis. Keeping its integrity, I feel blessed and relieved that now I don't have to confront a woman. That I don't have to be the mother to a daughter. That I don't have to stand up and live this feminist, postfeminist dream. That I can live ensconced in men and boys. And remain the one girl in the house. Writing erotica and R-rated films.
He will be our little boy, with a widow's peak and pudgy feet. I shall feed his weeping into my ear and let him grow up to be a thug, a street fighter, a lawyer, a failure, an actor, a dropout, a genius. He may, and is allowed to, scratch my face off, begging for food.
He sings nursing songs. And then he farts. A word I could not actually bring myself to say until now. Shits up his back. Like Grey Poupon mustard.
This is the way you write when you're nursing. No time for sentences. Just shorthand in hieroglyphics. "That's a good boy. That's a good boy. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay." And then, "I love you."
His breath rolls across my face. And I write with my eyes along his flesh. Because I don't have time, because I only speak in baby talk, because I am embroidered with his feedings. No procrastination. No capital letters. The logarithms of motherhood. And I realize, this is what I was meant to be. Twenty years of writing was only practice to do that thing that everybody I went to school with did right away. Now they are having midlife crises. And I am forty, finally doing what I was born to do. By making rice cereal and wiping it off his fingers and taking the boiled carrot off the top of his eyelids from where he smeared it, by picking up his shirt the moment it drops to the floor, by telling the story of the caterpillar who ate the apple and imitating the quack of a duck, I become the bunny I was meant to be.
I learn how to walk and talk like a woman. Other women finally speak to me with more than furtive glances. And I learn to write like a woman, with no punctuation and no pause. Because now I have no time.
©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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