Succor
On nursing a baby boy.
by Erin Cressida Wilson
November 30, 2006
Now I can repeat myself, introduce the theme halfway through, or even too late, establish who I am after I dive into the wrack of emotions. I can skip all the introductions, just full speed ahead, get it out, before he wakes from his nap.
And so many times, long ago, in the million years before the six months that have just passed since his birth, I had to write or fuck in an attempt to have a baby. And all along, all I had to do was say, "This time, don't pull out."
I've been wasting my time fucking without conception, writing without sperm. Now, in my new incarnation, I'd like to set up arts and crafts tables, knit in my spare time, and have infinite patience.
His ear is a tiny fossil. I look into his past as he drinks and laughs for hours. I watch as his two small layers of eyelashes form on his lids. And the day he stuck out his tongue for the first time.
My heart is already broken by the boy who will become a man, who will step into the shoes I give him and walk out our front door. I kiss his feet and mourn the moment it will become inappropriate. I want to wrap his toes in dough and eat them as hors d'oeuvres, fry up his fat knees for supper. The smell of the back of his neck and the sweet milk breath with the white on his tongue that we wash away with a silver spoon full of boiled water every night.
He is, at first, no more than half a centimeter from my body at all times. Because his tiny intestines need my warmth.
Besides, all the books say he still thinks he's inside of me.
He falls asleep with his hand and mouth open. And I am rolling in motherhood. Drowning in milk. And the wiggle of his mouth: the way he latches on in one fell swoop.
He is a bomber, a peacekeeper, a hippie, an economist. He will hate his parents for being hippies, he will spray paint the peace sign on his bare chest, he will wear the tie-dyed onesie my shrink gave him, look at the Diane Arbus print given to him by Stephen. "Because," as he wrote on the card, "you will not be born once, but reborn every day of your life."
I tell myself, he is not the center of the universe, but then he just plain is. I want to play washing machine with him when he is six months old in the YMCA pool, teach him to skate with his father on the long river in Ottawa. I'll draw his face on napkins. I cannot be healthy about this. My body is his to graze upon.
This essay is an excerpt from the essay "Milk Dress: A Nursing Song," which originally appeared in the anthology The May Queen.
photo courtesy Nan Goldin
©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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