Remember a little while ago when I posted something about taking a pregnancy test? Well, after I finished it, I became kind of obsessed with the idea and I wrote more. And here is the finished product.
How My Baby Would Kill the Devil and God With A Bat of Her Non-Existent Eyelashes
Clear: the result
Blue: a little
Easy: not as much as you would think
Clear: I’m in the…
Blue: En este momento, in my bathroom with the blue tiles, my mosquito-bitten ass sitting on the blue bathtub, yo quiero estar en el mar. In the blue water, deadmanfloating looking up at the sky so bright blue it hurts.
Easy: Is that why they call me…
Clear: Pa’ que estemos claro. I don’t want a child but sometimes I see little hands wrapped around bigger ones en dondequiera: the market, the shoe store, the bus stop, the pharmacy and well, I can romanticize, right? I can be a woman in my latefuckingtwenties, right?
Blue: My vein bulging out of my forehead, when I’m worried. When I’m thinking too hard, assuming too much, when I cum and I fall.
Easy: Does it…But do it.
I am not pregnant.
Which is an extremely good thing for the following reasons:
- I am unemployed
- I like being unemployed and dread the day my rumbling belly will tell me to update my resume, get my ass on a bus, and work BITCH
- I am slightly crazy
***
The Devil is not unprotected sex.It has been forty days. Forty days since I last looked down at my underwear and saw a stain like rust telling me it’s time. Time to plug myself up, to shed the lining of my uterus because I DON’T NEED IT THIS TIME AROUND. A stain like rust: as if I am not using my parts, as if I have forgotten about them! But I haven’t; and this is why I’m in trouble in the first place.
Forty days is a biblical amount of time. Jesus fasted and wandered through the desert for forty days and the Devil tried to tempt him three times. Each time, Jesus cited scripture and the Devil ran away. I think if I retreated to the desert for forty days, I would see the Devil too but surely I would not chase him away. I would need someone to talk to, someone to help me pitch my tent. Surely I would accidentally trade my soul for some directions. The Devil is a tricky, smooth-talking motherfucker, I hear.
According to the Christians handing out yellow pamphlets and telling me that “Dios me ama,” I don’t even have to wander into the desert to see the Devil. Apparently the Devil is the reason why I think I’m pregnant. If I have seen the Devil in the past forty days it has been:
1.
When I walked down the Paseo de Diego to buy some avocados and saw a young man, surely not older than me—pero ave Maria, how heroin ages you, he looked so tired.
He sat on the sidewalk, nodding out, almost hitting his head on the ground.
(But you know he never will right? The Devil has slipped an invisible noose around this man’s neck and he will never let him rest. Just when he slips into unconsciousness and his forehead is about to meet the grey reality of the cobblestones and he will finally be at peace, the Devil, sometimes quickly sometimes gently but always violently, tugs that invisible rope and wakes him up.)
The young man’s left arm is almost completely gone. A gash, the only abyss I’ve ever seen in my life, takes up the entire inside of his forearm.
So deep you see bone.
So deep you gasp.
So deep you don’t look but then you do again, avert your eyes, but then you look again.
So deep you wonder how he is still alive enough to ask you for a quarter.
But then you realize that it’s only the Devil that could be keeping him alive when clearly it would be better to be dead.
He is so far gone, his skin so slimy I thought my fingers would slide right into it as I pressed the shiny coin into his palm. Like Silly Putty, I swear to God.
(to who?)
The Devil made me want to wash my hands afterward.
2.
When I see the man with metal sticking out of his leg, walking around, with a Burger King bag full of somebody else’s left over french fries. I don’t really (want to) understand but will try to explain it:
Certainly he has broken his leg in many places
and someone was concerned enough to take him to the hospital.
The doctors performed a complicated surgery in order to put him back together,
a surgery that included sticking four shiny metal vises (is that what they are called?) into his calf bone.
Maybe those vises are supposed to be tightened on a precise schedule (you see, young man, you turn the little, butterfly-shaped metal thing approximately 14° to the right every two days. Remember: righty tighty, young man, righty tighty!)
Maybe he escaped from the hospital
or the hospital kicked him out
because he couldn’t pay.
or because he wanted more and more morphine and the nurses wouldn’t administer it to him
(maybe it’s the Devil that makes me think that).
Forty days is a biblical amount of time. Jesus fasted and wandered through the desert for forty days and the Devil tried to tempt him three times. Each time, Jesus cited scripture and the Devil ran away. I think if I retreated to the desert for forty days, I would see the Devil too but surely I would not chase him away. I would need someone to talk to, someone to help me pitch my tent. Surely I would accidentally trade my soul for some directions. The Devil is a tricky, smooth-talking motherfucker, I hear.
According to the Christians handing out yellow pamphlets and telling me that “Dios me ama,” I don’t even have to wander into the desert to see the Devil. Apparently the Devil is the reason why I think I’m pregnant. If I have seen the Devil in the past forty days it has been:
1.
When I walked down the Paseo de Diego to buy some avocados and saw a young man, surely not older than me—pero ave Maria, how heroin ages you, he looked so tired.
He sat on the sidewalk, nodding out, almost hitting his head on the ground.
(But you know he never will right? The Devil has slipped an invisible noose around this man’s neck and he will never let him rest. Just when he slips into unconsciousness and his forehead is about to meet the grey reality of the cobblestones and he will finally be at peace, the Devil, sometimes quickly sometimes gently but always violently, tugs that invisible rope and wakes him up.)
The young man’s left arm is almost completely gone. A gash, the only abyss I’ve ever seen in my life, takes up the entire inside of his forearm.
So deep you see bone.
So deep you gasp.
So deep you don’t look but then you do again, avert your eyes, but then you look again.
So deep you wonder how he is still alive enough to ask you for a quarter.
But then you realize that it’s only the Devil that could be keeping him alive when clearly it would be better to be dead.
He is so far gone, his skin so slimy I thought my fingers would slide right into it as I pressed the shiny coin into his palm. Like Silly Putty, I swear to God.
(to who?)
The Devil made me want to wash my hands afterward.
2.
When I see the man with metal sticking out of his leg, walking around, with a Burger King bag full of somebody else’s left over french fries. I don’t really (want to) understand but will try to explain it:
Certainly he has broken his leg in many places
and someone was concerned enough to take him to the hospital.
The doctors performed a complicated surgery in order to put him back together,
a surgery that included sticking four shiny metal vises (is that what they are called?) into his calf bone.
Maybe those vises are supposed to be tightened on a precise schedule (you see, young man, you turn the little, butterfly-shaped metal thing approximately 14° to the right every two days. Remember: righty tighty, young man, righty tighty!)
Maybe he escaped from the hospital
or the hospital kicked him out
because he couldn’t pay.
or because he wanted more and more morphine and the nurses wouldn’t administer it to him
(maybe it’s the Devil that makes me think that).
A Portrait of the Devil on La Calle Humacao:
The Devil is heroin and he is destroying my island.
***
Forty days is the amount of time you fast before Easter. Forty days is the amount of time God made it rain. Forty days is how long it took Him to kill Everything. How long did it take Him to decide we were not worth living? To realize that He Fucked Up and needed to start all over again? A split second of a second thought perhaps. One hundred and eleven years is how long it has taken the United States to:
I know the United States is not God even though they both work in mysterious ways, here they are both unseen and all powerful, many Puerto Ricans look to them both for salvation and prosperity and will drop to our knees if either one of them tell us to, even though everyone here has a few family members they have lost to both of them.
QUE DIOS NOS BENDIGA (Cross yourself.)
QUE LA ESTADIDAD NOS BENDIGA (Wave your flag.)
For forty days I have been wandering in the desert that US imperialism has made. And if I have run into, crashed into, collapsed into the warm and inviting arms of sin, I don’t mind. God is a gringo in a suit that can’t get me off anyway.
bomb the shit out of our island and say i'm sorry but not before babies were sorry they ever breathed in so deeply they inhaled fumes so toxic their lungs buckled under the weight of an asthma so powerfulIt took the United States one hundred and eleven years to make sure we forgot what freedom was.
sterilize the women on our island under the guise of testing birth control (“it’s better for you,” they say in english as they scrape our wombs clean of possibilities)
commit massacres in Ponce, in Utuado, Río Piedras, Jayuya, and San Juan
kill our leaders
imprison our leaders
replace our farmland with cement (“it’s progress,” they say in english as they pour highways over our houses)
I know the United States is not God even though they both work in mysterious ways, here they are both unseen and all powerful, many Puerto Ricans look to them both for salvation and prosperity and will drop to our knees if either one of them tell us to, even though everyone here has a few family members they have lost to both of them.
QUE DIOS NOS BENDIGA (Cross yourself.)
QUE LA ESTADIDAD NOS BENDIGA (Wave your flag.)
For forty days I have been wandering in the desert that US imperialism has made. And if I have run into, crashed into, collapsed into the warm and inviting arms of sin, I don’t mind. God is a gringo in a suit that can’t get me off anyway.
***
I waited five days before I consulted the white plastic fortuneteller. For five days I thought about having to make one of the hardest decisions in my life. It wouldn’t be a baby anyway, right? It’s hard to reconcile pro-choice politics with the feelings that come from terminating something that all those pink and blue books say will give you unprecedented amounts joy. A mere collection of cells. A creature that will smile and grow and give your life meaning. Which one is it? Then there are those women who have babies for all the wrong reasons: to have someone to love you unconditionally, to have someone to love unconditionally, hoping it will make a man love you unconditionally, to put your womb to use before it lays to waste. I don’t want to be one of those women. For five days, however, I loved the potential group of cells in my may-or-may-not-be-empty womb.
I am scared of what these feelings mean. I am scared that my friends will think I have turned into some kind of pro-lifer evangelist, giving a spirit to a blob of blood and proteins. Yet for as much as I denounce religion, I can’t reject the pulsing spirits I feel inside of things (everythings): Have you ever sat on a rock in the middle of a river after it has rained long and hard, ants stinging your thighs, the chirping of frogs filling your ears? The leaves of the trees that hold you in that moment shield the sun from your eyes. Then they open to let the sun warm your shoulders, still cold from the swim you took to get to the most perfect spot in the world. Has that ever happened to you? Yes? Remember that spirit you felt as you hugged your knees close to your chest and closed your eyes? Then you must believe there is a spirit in the pin head-sized gathering of cells that began to take shape inside of you when you squeezed a man closer to you, squeezed your vaginal muscles tighter and tighter (no te vayas) as that man came inside of you. How can you not want to protect that bead of potential life in the same way you wanted to protect that man from everything bad this world will hurl at him, as his head rested on your collar bone and you noticed with every swelling of his chest as he inhaled, your chest caved as you exhaled? There are many things in this world I want to cradle in the clammy crook where my bicep meets my forearm: the baby brown bird with a broken wing I found on the street the other day, fresh baked bread that has risen perfectly, a branch separated from its tree during a storm, a book that makes me miss my stop on the subway, a beautiful man after he has fallen from orgasm, the idea of being a mother even better than my own.
I am scared of what these feelings mean. I am scared that my friends will think I have turned into some kind of pro-lifer evangelist, giving a spirit to a blob of blood and proteins. Yet for as much as I denounce religion, I can’t reject the pulsing spirits I feel inside of things (everythings): Have you ever sat on a rock in the middle of a river after it has rained long and hard, ants stinging your thighs, the chirping of frogs filling your ears? The leaves of the trees that hold you in that moment shield the sun from your eyes. Then they open to let the sun warm your shoulders, still cold from the swim you took to get to the most perfect spot in the world. Has that ever happened to you? Yes? Remember that spirit you felt as you hugged your knees close to your chest and closed your eyes? Then you must believe there is a spirit in the pin head-sized gathering of cells that began to take shape inside of you when you squeezed a man closer to you, squeezed your vaginal muscles tighter and tighter (no te vayas) as that man came inside of you. How can you not want to protect that bead of potential life in the same way you wanted to protect that man from everything bad this world will hurl at him, as his head rested on your collar bone and you noticed with every swelling of his chest as he inhaled, your chest caved as you exhaled? There are many things in this world I want to cradle in the clammy crook where my bicep meets my forearm: the baby brown bird with a broken wing I found on the street the other day, fresh baked bread that has risen perfectly, a branch separated from its tree during a storm, a book that makes me miss my stop on the subway, a beautiful man after he has fallen from orgasm, the idea of being a mother even better than my own.
***
Triplets
| One evening when I was a senior in high school, I gave birth to a little pink ball of flesh. To this day I have no idea what it was. I remember sitting in the common room of my dorm and doing my homework when I felt something uncomfortable in my underwear, like when you haven’t put a tampon in correctly and you can feel it slipping out. It did not hurt and I do not remember if this birth was preceded or followed by cramps or blood. I remember I was not menstruating at the time. When I went to the bathroom, I pulled something out of my vagina that was about the size of a golf ball. It was the color of my insides: a pink you would never wear, blue bulging lines the color of your eyelids when you’re sick. I placed it on a wad of toilet paper. I sat on the floor of the bathroom for quite some time observing it. It was a hard, little thing. I flushed it down the toilet and told no one about it. Sometimes I wonder if that was the only chance I would be given to… A chance…in and of itself. I mourn it but there is nothing I can do. | Mom told me once that you had two abortions when you were a teenager. Those were hard times, huh sis? Dad, a full-blown tecato fuck up. Mom, depressed and barely holding it together. I was still in boarding school and I rarely came home cuz I hated it. When I did, we pulled each other’s hair and clawed at each other’s faces. I’m sorryI’m sorryI’m sorry Those two procedures were secrets, never daring to cross the tightrope of your lips. I want to ask you about them, to get the advice older sisters are supposed to impart on little ones. What was it like, both times? Was the second one harder or easier than the first? Did you take a pill, sis? Did you have a surgery, sis? So many things are not talked about between us. People say we look like twins. But I don’t see it. If you looked like me, surely we would have more in common, more stories to share, more mindtomind connections that would take the place of conversations. You have two dogs you refer to as the girls, just like mom and dad refer to us. It’s so good to have all my girls here for Christmas, dad, now clean and happy, says. | I had a dream that I carried a baby in a dark Washington DC. I held her in my arms in a blanket. She was me as a baby. I held myself and I wasn’t crying. We were lost and there were police officers who helped us find the metro station. When I got to the escalators, all the gears and chains and mysterious machinery that makes things move were exposed and each step was like a grate but there was a wide space in between each bar and there was a wide space in between in step. I didn’t want to get on. I didn’t want to get swallowed. The baby was not scared. I remember the dream in shades of blue and grey. We were by the baseball stadium, even though I had never been there in real life, but it was under construction. The only sounds were the loud churning and clunking of the escalator, the drills drilling, hammers pounding, men throwing planks of wood into piles. |
***
For five days I thought about this moment right now, in the bathroom, sweating, shaking, not wanting to look at myself in the mirror, not knowing which result would be the right one. Then I peed into a white plastic fortuneteller and waited for two minutes for either one or two lines. One line=I’m good. Two lines=I’m fucked. (???)
Why was I doing this all alone? Certainly I wasn’t the only one who got myself into this mess! These are the names I called the man who made me think I was preggers:
Why was I doing this all alone? Certainly I wasn’t the only one who got myself into this mess! These are the names I called the man who made me think I was preggers:
- sperm donor
- asshole
- mi amor
- douchebag
- papi
- lindo
- jerk
- dick
- wonderful
***
(Setting: Raquel’s pink and blue bathroom in Río Piedras. It is early afternoon. The mirror is broken, the toilet is running, the garbage can is full to the brim with toilet paper. There are two cats fighting loudly outside and the neighbor is blasting “Loba” by Shakira. It is hot. There are two identical Raquels. They are both sweating. They are both naked except for a turquoise towel wrapped around their chests. They are sitting on the edge of the blue bathtub. Raquel is reading the instructions to the pregnancy test. Other Raquel is looking at them over her shoulder.)
Raquel: (Visibly angry.) What a douchebag, he couldn’t even return my phone call.
Other Raquel: (Smiling. Not really listening to what Raquel is saying.) He’s probably just busy. He’s beautiful! Think about what his baby would look like!
Raquel: No. I don’t want to think about his stupid baby. I swear to God, it better not be inside of me. Fucking jerk, he knew I was going to do the test today.
Other Raquel: Well maybe he didn’t get the message because he had no service, you know that can happen where he lives. (Gets up and dances around the bathroom.) ¡Ay pero qué lindo, qué precioso, qué HOMBRE!
Raquel: Well that dick should have been paying attention to his phone. God, I hope I’m not pregnant! If I am, I swear , I’ll rip my uterus out and beat the shit out of him with it!
Other Raquel: It’ll be okay. Just because he’s not here, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. After all, he’s wonderful! And maybe we can have wonderful babies together!
Raquel: (Now infuriated.) You know what, fuck you! You just don’t get it!
Other Raquel: (Insulted.) Hey! No, fuck you!
Raquel: No, fuck YOU! (She picks up other Raquel by the hair and flushes her down the toilet. We hear the gurgled screams of Other Raquel. Raquel sighs heavily as she sits back down on the rim of the bathtub.)
Raquel: (Visibly angry.) What a douchebag, he couldn’t even return my phone call.
Other Raquel: (Smiling. Not really listening to what Raquel is saying.) He’s probably just busy. He’s beautiful! Think about what his baby would look like!
Raquel: No. I don’t want to think about his stupid baby. I swear to God, it better not be inside of me. Fucking jerk, he knew I was going to do the test today.
Other Raquel: Well maybe he didn’t get the message because he had no service, you know that can happen where he lives. (Gets up and dances around the bathroom.) ¡Ay pero qué lindo, qué precioso, qué HOMBRE!
Raquel: Well that dick should have been paying attention to his phone. God, I hope I’m not pregnant! If I am, I swear , I’ll rip my uterus out and beat the shit out of him with it!
Other Raquel: It’ll be okay. Just because he’s not here, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. After all, he’s wonderful! And maybe we can have wonderful babies together!
Raquel: (Now infuriated.) You know what, fuck you! You just don’t get it!
Other Raquel: (Insulted.) Hey! No, fuck you!
Raquel: No, fuck YOU! (She picks up other Raquel by the hair and flushes her down the toilet. We hear the gurgled screams of Other Raquel. Raquel sighs heavily as she sits back down on the rim of the bathtub.)
***
***
***For five days I entertained the romanticized idea of what it would be like to have a child:
I would do yoga everyday so that my baby would come into this bleak world flexible, ready to bend and not be broken by the difficult situations this world would throw at her. I would eat only the purest foods—clean the soil from them with my fingernails—so that my baby would be healthy, not addicted to the chemicals, preservatives, and artificial colors that only serve to make us weak to the interests of companies who only think they are larger and more powerful than the love I would have for that imaginary child inside my may-or-may-not-be-empty womb.
I would sing to her and dance with her to give her the lightness of spirit that will allow her to travel inside the spirits of others and heal them. You see, my baby would be a traveler. And I would pack her suitcase with epiphanies, lullabies, hands to hold, and bombas molotov.
My baby would see inside of you, see through the wool you try to pull over her eyes, see solutions in people blinded by ignorance. See possibilities, shiny and brilliant as shards of broken glass, in this society inured by colonialism. She would have x-ray vision, even though she would probably wear thick glasses, like her mother, the kind that magnify your eyes and make you look like a spider(woman).
I would exercise everyday so she could be strong enough to Fuck. Shit. Up. Tear down seemingly impenetrable walls of silence. Slice through handcuffs with the sharp blade of her tongue. Lift the weight of US occupation off of our chests with her bare, calloused hands. Carry the baggage our grandmothers have hauled for too long with their long, sinewy fingers spotted with age, broken by generations of hearing “no, eso no se hace.” She would be strong enough to love whomever she wanted, fearlessly, fiercely because I would have planted that love inside of her, fearlessly and fiercely.
I would give offerings to Yemayá and Ochún so my baby could be one with them. Offerings of the blood that escapes from my skin as I fearfully jump and crash into their laps. Offerings that would help those water goddesses drown out the Devil’s distractions so my baby could swim through this world with her eyesWIDEopen in water with waves so powerful they knock the weak off their feet and wash away the non-believers.
But I
am not
pregnant.
So I sit on the edge of the blue bathtub and stare at the white, plastic fortuneteller that comes in the aluminum wrapping that comes in the white and pink box, that is Walgreens brand because my first response to First Response was, “hell no, my unemployed ass will not spend eight more dollars for the same shit I can get for $11.99.” And I wait for the second blue line to not show up. And in the empty white space that confirms my empty uterus, after the two minutes of obligatory waiting time, I see nothing.
And now
I don’t have to say
Nothing
To him
I don’t have to plan
Nothing
With him.
I don’t have to worry about
Nothing.
And so,
I throw out the white plastic fortuneteller in the white plastic bag it came to me in, roll a cigarette, pour a glass of wine,
And feel.
Nothing.
I would do yoga everyday so that my baby would come into this bleak world flexible, ready to bend and not be broken by the difficult situations this world would throw at her. I would eat only the purest foods—clean the soil from them with my fingernails—so that my baby would be healthy, not addicted to the chemicals, preservatives, and artificial colors that only serve to make us weak to the interests of companies who only think they are larger and more powerful than the love I would have for that imaginary child inside my may-or-may-not-be-empty womb.
I would sing to her and dance with her to give her the lightness of spirit that will allow her to travel inside the spirits of others and heal them. You see, my baby would be a traveler. And I would pack her suitcase with epiphanies, lullabies, hands to hold, and bombas molotov.
My baby would see inside of you, see through the wool you try to pull over her eyes, see solutions in people blinded by ignorance. See possibilities, shiny and brilliant as shards of broken glass, in this society inured by colonialism. She would have x-ray vision, even though she would probably wear thick glasses, like her mother, the kind that magnify your eyes and make you look like a spider(woman).
I would exercise everyday so she could be strong enough to Fuck. Shit. Up. Tear down seemingly impenetrable walls of silence. Slice through handcuffs with the sharp blade of her tongue. Lift the weight of US occupation off of our chests with her bare, calloused hands. Carry the baggage our grandmothers have hauled for too long with their long, sinewy fingers spotted with age, broken by generations of hearing “no, eso no se hace.” She would be strong enough to love whomever she wanted, fearlessly, fiercely because I would have planted that love inside of her, fearlessly and fiercely.
I would give offerings to Yemayá and Ochún so my baby could be one with them. Offerings of the blood that escapes from my skin as I fearfully jump and crash into their laps. Offerings that would help those water goddesses drown out the Devil’s distractions so my baby could swim through this world with her eyesWIDEopen in water with waves so powerful they knock the weak off their feet and wash away the non-believers.
But I
am not
pregnant.
So I sit on the edge of the blue bathtub and stare at the white, plastic fortuneteller that comes in the aluminum wrapping that comes in the white and pink box, that is Walgreens brand because my first response to First Response was, “hell no, my unemployed ass will not spend eight more dollars for the same shit I can get for $11.99.” And I wait for the second blue line to not show up. And in the empty white space that confirms my empty uterus, after the two minutes of obligatory waiting time, I see nothing.
And now
I don’t have to say
Nothing
To him
I don’t have to plan
Nothing
With him.
I don’t have to worry about
Nothing.
And so,
I throw out the white plastic fortuneteller in the white plastic bag it came to me in, roll a cigarette, pour a glass of wine,
And feel.
Nothing.
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