Black Milk (19 page)

“Bingo! It is a Brain Tree,” says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

“So tonight we have all gathered under the Brain Tree,” Milady Ambitious Chekhovian says, launching into a speech. She has climbed onto a branch, where she pouts like a dictator assessing his people’s intelligence before starting to lecture them.

“This is a historic moment,” she bellows. “The time is ripe to make a choice once and for all.” She points an accusing finger at Mama Rice Pudding. “Do you want to be like her? A forlorn housewife? Or would you rather live your life like a majestic arboreal brain?”

I can’t take my eyes from the tree. In the velvety dark of the night, surrounded by all this snow, the tree looks fearsome and impressive.

“Please don’t listen to them,” whispers Mama Rice Pudding as she clings to my legs. Tears have formed in her eyes. So fragile she is. So little I know about her. I’ve seen her only twice while the others have been with me for years.

“We can make a great team, you and I,” says Mama Rice Pudding.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

A strong wind blows in fitful gusts, swirling the flakes. I feel like I’m on the set of
Doctor Zhivago
. This is not Russia and there isn’t the slightest possibility of a Bolshevik revolution on this campus, but there are still profound emotional changes under way.

Finally, I muster the courage to answer. “If I have to make a choice, I’ll certainly choose the Brain Tree.”

“But you made me a promise!” Mama Rice Pudding bursts forth.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, unable to meet her eyes.

Milady Ambitious Chekhovian jumps down from her branch and Miss Highbrowed Cynic grins at her, shouting, “Give me five!”

Partners in crime. They do such a complicated high five, with their arms and fingers passing through each other’s, that we all watch with awe.

When the show is over Dame Dervish sighs heavily, Little Miss Practical takes off her glasses and cleans them nervously, Mama Rice Pudding cries silently.

“Now you have to repeat after me,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian.
“I’ve traveled wide, I’ve traveled far—”

I do. On the snow-covered Mount Holyoke campus, under that breathtaking Brain Tree, I swear these words to myself:

“I’ve traveled wide, I’ve traveled far, and I’ve placed writing at the center of my life. At last I’ve reached a decision between Body and Brain. From now on I want to be only, and only, Brain. No longer will the Body hold sway over me. I have no want for womanhood, housework, wife work, maternal instincts or giving birth. I want to be a writer, and that is all I want to pursue
.
”

In this moment, one of the many things I realize is that this is a turning point in my life, a sharp one. While I veer fast, I don’t know what awaits me around the corner.

“May the Body rot and may the Brain glow. May the ink flow through my pen like oceans to nourish the novels that shall grow within
.
”

I repeat this oath three times. When it is over, I feel numb inside, almost anesthetized. Perhaps it is because of the cold. Perhaps the gravity of what I have just uttered has started to sink in.

B
efore two weeks have passed my body starts to show signs of change. First my hair, then the skin on my face and hands, dries out. I lose weight. My stomach flattens. Then, one day, I realize I have stopped menstruating. I don’t get my flow the next month, or the one after that. At first I don’t pay any attention to it—in fact, I am even relieved to be rid of womanhood. Wouldn’t it be liberating to free myself of femininity and sexuality, and become a walking brain? I feel like a crazy scientist who is experimenting with all kinds of unknown substances in his murky laboratory—except I am experimenting on myself. Not that I seem to be turning into a green, giant, humanoid monster. But I am transforming into an antisocial, asexual, introverted novelist, who, perhaps, is no less scary than the Incredible Hulk.

In late May, I am perusing the magazines in the waiting room of the Women’s Health Center while waiting for the kind, lanky gynecologist who has done all sorts of hormonal tests on me. Finally, the nurse calls me in.

“Here is an interesting case,” says the doctor as I walk into his office. “Feeling any better?”

“The same,” I say.

“Well, well, let’s see what we have here. . . .” says the doctor, inspecting the test results from behind his glasses. “Your hormone levels have come back fine, and so have the thyroid tests.”

“You are normal,” says the nurse next to him, as if she could not quite believe this.

“But, then, why don’t I menstruate anymore?”

“Under these circumstances there is only one answer,” the doctor responds. “Your brain has given your body the command not to.”

“Is that possible?” I ask incredulously.

“Oh, yes, it is very possible,” announces the doctor, squinting slightly, as if he were trying to peer into my soul. “You have to discuss this with your brain. I would, but I don’t know its language.”

“It’ll take us some time to learn Turkish,” says the nurse with a wink.

They chuckle in perfect synchronization—in the way that only people who have worked closely together for many years can manage. I, in the meantime, wait silently, unsure what to say.

“Could you tell me what you do for a living?” asks the doctor.

“I am a writer.”

“Ah, I see,” he says with brightened interest. “What kind of books do you write?”

This is a question I’d rather avoid. I don’t know exactly how to categorize my books, and I am not sure I even want to. In fact, this happens to be a thorny question for almost any writer who doesn’t produce within established genres, such as “romance” or “crime.” Fortunately, the doctor is less interested in my answer than in an idea that has just occurred to him.

“Think of your brain as a riveting, suspenseful detective novel,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

Then he lowers his voice as if revealing a terrible secret. “Your brain has kidnapped your body. . . .”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Now all you need to do is to tell it to stop. You can do this, believe me.”

“I am sorry, I lost the thread here. Is my brain a detective novel or the detective himself or the villain?”

He leans back, and heaves a deep, deep sigh. That’s when I realize, as nice a person as he is, the doctor is not good with metaphors. He tried to clarify things with a figure of speech, and ended up only complicating them more.

 

I don’t go looking for other doctors. Neither do I tell anyone about the strange diagnosis I have received. But I visit the Brain Tree regularly, searching for stoic serenity it cannot grant me. Caressing the sturdy, old roots that rise out of the ground, observing the leaves on its infinite branches, I renew my vow and watch my womanhood perish day by day.

Every morning I go to the library with Miss Highbrowed Cynic. We are as thick as thieves now. Everything progresses the way she and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian had planned. I’m always reading, always researching. Many a night I stay until the wee hours, hunched over books in an area flanked by two collections: English political philosophy and Russian literature. Whenever my eyelids droop, I take a nap on the brown leather couch that is situated between the two long rows of bookcases.

In my spare time I go to panels, which are plentiful in a place such as this: “The Plight of Women in the Third World,” “Feminism and Hip-Hop Culture,” “Female Characters in Walt Disney: Does Mickey Mouse Oppress Minnie?” and so on. I attend all of them.

In the evenings, I sit in front of the computer and write down notes and compose journal entries far into the night. I don’t socialize anymore, I don’t go to parties and I avoid brown-bag lunches, as strong as the urge is sometimes. I don’t allow anything outside of writing and books to enter my life.

Mama Rice Pudding watches me from a distance with eyes that cannot hide their hurt. Whenever I try to communicate with her, she turns her head and stares into space, sitting as still as a marble statue. Some nights, in bed, I hear her crying.

One day a major Turkish newspaper does an interview with me about my life in America. I speak to the journalist on the phone for about forty minutes. As we are about to hang up he asks me about marriage and motherhood.

I tell him that I am miles away from both right now. It is a huge responsibility to bring children into this world, I say. But when I am old enough, that is, after many more novels, I could see myself becoming a foster mom or perhaps raising someone else’s children, helping their education and so forth.

That weekend when the interview comes out, its title is as catchy as it can be: “I am Raring to Become a Stepmom!”

Next to the revelation, there is a picture of me taken in Istanbul standing in front of the Topkap1 Palace. I am dressed head to toe in black, my hair a cuckoo’s nest due to a strong wind, my face etched with a grave expression. When my image is juxtaposed with the words, I look like a black spider about to jump on any divorced man with kids.

I decide not to give any more interviews for a while.

Approximately at the same time, as if a muse has fallen from the sky onto my head, I begin to write a new novel. It is called
The Saint of Incipient Insanities
. The story has sorrow cloaked in humor and humor cloaked in sorrow. It is about a group of foreigners in America coming from very different cultural backgrounds and struggling, not always successfully, with an ongoing sense of estrangement. I write about “insiders” and “outsiders,” about belonging and not belonging, feeling like a tree that is turned upside down and has its roots up in the air.

T
here is a short, round Mexican cleaning lady, Rosario, who every morning at seven o’clock vacuums the northwest section of the library where I usually work all night. I can still dip into Spanish, albeit clumsily. Rosario loves hearing my funny pronunciation and correcting my mistakes. She also teaches me new words every day, blushing and giggling as I repeat them, because some of them are pretty lewd.

When I fall asleep on the leather couch only a few feet away from the John Stuart Mill collection, it is Rosario who wakes me up. She brings me coffee that is so heavy and black my heart pounds for about three minutes after I take a sip. Yet I never tell her to make it a bit weaker. I guess I like her.

“Why are you working so hard?” she asks me one day, pointing to my laptop and a stack of books.

“You work hard, too,” I say, pointing to her vacuum cleaner and duster.

She nods. She knows I am right. Then she takes out her necklace and shows it to me. There are four rings on her silver pendant. When I ask her what they mean, she says, smiling from ear to ear, “One ring for each child.”

She is a mother of four. That’s why she works so hard. She wants them to have a better life than the one she has had.

“How about your husband?” I ask.
“Tu marido?”

“
Marido
. . . puff,” she says, as if she is talking about gunpowder. I cannot figure out whether he has died or run away with someone else or never was. Oblivious to my confusion, Rosario smiles again and elbows me. “Children are a blessing,” she says.

“I am happy for you.”

She pats my shoulder with a touch so genuine and friendly, I drink two more cups of coffee with her, my heart racing.

“You are a good girl,” she says to me.

“Some of me are,” I say, thinking of my finger-women.

She finds that hilarious and laughs so hard she almost loses her balance. When she manages to get hold of herself, she says, “When you finish your book you don’t need to send it to a publisher. There is an easier way.”

“Really?” I ask, inching closer to her.

“Yup,” she says, nodding. “Send it to Oprah. If she puts her stamp on your book you won’t have to work so hard anymore.”

“In America they stamp books?” I ask.

“Sí, claro mujer!”
She rolls her eyes as if to add, “You don’t know how crazy these Americans can get.”

I thank her for the advice. Then I go back to my novel and she goes back to her work, walking her slow gait, dragging her vacuum cleaner and rolling a bucket of detergents and soaps beside her. She disappears among the aisles of hardcover books. Puff!

 

In the summer I visit Istanbul for a short while. I am here to pick up a few bits and pieces from my old apartment, to see my friends and my mother, to do some book readings and signings in the city and to seal a contract with my Turkish publisher for
The Saint of Incipient Insanities,
which I have just finished. Then in ten days, I will return to the States.

However, life is a naughty child who sneaks up from behind us while we draw our plans, making funny faces at us.

On my first evening back in Istanbul friends invite me to have a drink in Yakup, a well-known tavern that journalists, painters and writers have long frequented. Jet-lagged and slightly grumpy, I nevertheless agree to meet them.

When I enter the place, the sound of laughter and chattering greets me, along with a thick cloud of smoke. Either there is a chimney inside the tavern or everyone is puffing on at least two Havana cigars at the same time. It is quite a change of scenery after my sterile life at Mount Holyoke.

I walk up to my friends’ table, where I know everyone—except a young man with dark, wavy hair and a dimpled smile sitting at the end. He introduces himself as Eyup. It doesn’t occur to me that it happens to be the name of the prophet Job, of whom I have said not just a few critical things in the past. Once again in my life, the angels are pointing their milky-white fingers at me, giggling among themselves. Again, I am failing to foresee the irony.