Black Milk (23 page)

 

Louisa May Alcott and George Eliot, two contemporary women writers with a common passion for storytelling, one of them regarded as the voice of feminine writing, and the other known as a defeminized author—both equally unconventional in their ways. They remind me, across centuries and cultures, that there are other paths for a woman than conventional marriage and motherhood. Perhaps marriage is less a legal arrangement or social institution than a book awaiting interpretation. Every reader brings his or her own gaze to the text, and ends up reading the story differently.

T
wo years after saying “I do” in Berlin, I’m shaking like a leaf on the bathroom floor in Istanbul. The tiles on the walls are painted emerald and streaked with dark green ivies that suit your mood perfectly when you feel like a leaf.

I had spent the last year and a half teaching at the University of Arizona as a full-time tenure-track professor in Near Eastern studies. Moving from chilly Ann Arbor to sunny Tucson required a radical change in my wardrobe, which, thank God, consisted of two suitcases. During this entire time I had been commuting like crazy between Tucson and Istanbul, and now here I am, sitting with my back to the bathtub, taking deep breaths to calm my thumping heart.

In my hand there is a tiny object. It feels odd to attribute so much importance to an object this small and plastic, but that is how it is. On the back of the box it came in it reads: “If two lines appear on the screen it shows pregnancy. One single blue line indicates lack of it.”

But at the moment I avoid looking at the screen, focusing instead on every other trivial detail, such as the date of expiration and the place of manufacture. It is made in China. That is why it cost me one-third of the price of the other home pregnancy test kits at the drugstore. I wonder how reliable it is. Doesn’t it say in the newspapers that Chinese toys can cause allergies? How about Chinese test kits, could they give false positives?

More curious about the reliability of the product in my hand than my own physical condition, my gaze slides down to the small white screen. Relief. Oh, good. There is only one line. Blue. I wasn’t ready for the second line. I can go now. But there is a nagging suspicion at the back of my mind, and something tells me not to hurry, not so soon. Then, just as I feared, taking its sweet time, the pink line appears.

Why doesn’t the pink line come first and then the blue one? Or why don’t they appear simultaneously? There would be less anticipation that way and far less apprehension. Have the Chinese manufacturers designed it this way to make it more exciting for women?

It takes me a few minutes to stop quarreling with the Chinese manufacturers and acknowledge my situation. Slowly but surely my mind recognizes what my heart has already accepted: I am pregnant.

Now what? I need to talk with someone but whom? The first thought that pops into my head is to consult with the finger-women. Yet I quickly abandon the idea. I can’t tell them anything yet. Especially not Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, who, I fear, will tear the walls down. Nor Miss Highbrowed Cynic, I definitely can’t tell her either. Even talking to Dame Dervish sounds like a lame idea. She will not give me advice to solve this predicament; instead she’ll want me to figure it out on my own. But I am far too panicked for that.

Who can I speak to if I can’t speak to them?

That’s when I recall Mama Rice Pudding. She is the only one among the Thumbelinas who knows anything about babies and pregnancies. But where is she now? How is she doing? I haven’t spoken to her since that night under the Brain Tree. I need to see her urgently. But will she talk to me? I’m sure she is still quite upset and will not respond if I send her an invitation. I guess I should go and find her.

 

Once again, I take a flickering candle and descend into the labyrinth of my soul. Again, I find it very confusing down here, where there are no road signs, no traffic lights. I don’t know where Mama Rice Pudding lives and can’t imagine what her house looks like.

After an hour of toiling I find her house. It is made out of a milk carton, complete with lace curtains and pots filled with tulips, carnations and hyacinths on its window ledge. I press the doorbell. It chirps a merry tune of singing birds.

“What do you want?” she asks when she opens the door and sees me.

She is wearing a rose-patterned dress and has her hair done up with multihued clips. She seems to have gained a bit more weight. On her feet are fuchsia-colored slippers with pompoms. She wears a red and white polka-dotted kitchen apron that has “Super Cook” written across the top. A divine smell wafts from inside the house. Something sweet and fruity.

“I want to apologize for breaking your heart,” I say meekly. “I don’t know how to make it up to you, and I fear that now it might be too late. It is just that there is something urgent we need to talk about. May I come inside?”

“Sorry,” she says frostily. “I’m kind of in a rush and don’t have time for you.”

She looks over her shoulder toward her kitchen counter, as if she were about to slam the door in my face. Perhaps she is.

“I have food on the stove,” she says. “I’m making beef kebab with artichokes. It is a special recipe that requires maximum attention. I’m also preparing strawberry marmalade. If it boils for too long the sugar will crystallize. I need to go back to my work.”

“Wait, please.”

Words get clogged in my throat, but I manage to utter an intelligible sentence: “Look, I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. I need someone to talk to, but the other finger-women won’t understand. Only you can help me.”

“And why is that?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Because I am pregnant.”

The door springs wide open, a shriek of delight pierces the air and out runs Mama Rice Pudding, her face blossoming with life, her arms open wide. She jumps up and down with joy. I have never seen anyone receive news with so much glee, and for a second, I fear she has lost her mind.

“Congratulations!” she yells, staring at me wide-eyed, like a child at a circus.

“Listen to me, please. My mind is so confused I don’t know what to do or how to feel. I guess I wasn’t prepared for this, you know.”

“Great! Fabulous! Oh, bless you!” she yells again. “Come on in, let me give you some food. You need to eat more now.”

During the next hour I do nothing but gobble. Though she cannot convince me to eat meat, she makes me devour a generous slice of raspberry cheesecake, and then pushes into my mouth homemade pastries and spoonfuls of marmalade. When she is fully convinced that I cannot possibly eat another morsel she leans back, suddenly serious.

“Well, well. So this is the way of things,” she says. “So you want my help?”

I don’t like the change in her voice, but I nod all the same.

“All right, I will help you. But there is one condition.”

“Which is?”

“There will be a change in the political regime. We are no longer living under martial law, is that understood? We are done with the coup d’état.”

“Sure, of course,” I say like a good sheep. “I have always wanted the Choir of Discordant Voices to move toward a full-fledged democracy. This will be the beginning of a new era.”

“About that . . .” she says, suddenly having a coughing fit.

“Did something get stuck in your throat?”

Mama Rice Pudding gathers herself upright. “I need to make something very clear,” she says. “I am not advocating democracy here. Actually, I want to go back to a monarchy again, except this time I will be the queen.”

She must be joking. I’m about to scoff but something in her eyes stops me midway.

“Was there democracy when I was being oppressed?” she asks. “Why should I condone a democratic state now that I’m in charge? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Time to hoot my toot!”

Suddenly I find her irritating, almost scary.

“Go and make me a golden crown,” she says. “Those two crazies of yours are no longer in power. I’ll have them rot in Alcatraz!”

“There is an Alcatraz inside me?” I ask.

“No, but I will build one,” she roars. “Finally the tables have turned!
Je suis l’état!
¹³
”

 

On my way back, I stop by Miss Highbrowed Cynic’s house and break the news to her. She listens without a word, her face as pale as a white sheet. Together we go to Milady Ambitious Chekhovian’s apartment and warn her about the upcoming takeover.

“You can’t just get rid of us just like that,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, the strength in her voice missing.

“You can’t do this to us,” repeats Miss Highbrowed Cynic like a nervous parrot.

“There is nothing I can do,” I remark. “This pregnancy has changed everything. As of this moment the coup is over.”

First there was an oligarchy, then it was a coup d’état, inside me.

Now a monarchy has come to the Land of Me.

 

Today Mama Rice Pudding has ascended to the throne. She walks around with a crown on her head, and in her hand she carries a scepter no larger than a matchstick. To look taller, she has taken to wearing high heels. When she needs to go from one place to another, I carry her on a palanquin. The timid, rosy-cheeked woman I met on the plane has vanished. In her place is a tyrant.

Her Majesty the Queen’s first act has been to create a new constitution. The first clause reads: “Motherhood is Holy and Honorable, and it should be treated as such.” Unquestionable, untouchable, unchangeable.

As of now, even the tiniest criticism against marriage or motherhood will be punished by law. Simone de Beauvoir’s books have been seized and burned in a huge bonfire. Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Anaïs Nin, Zelda Fitzgerald and Sevgi Soysal are strictly banned. I am not allowed to read any one of them during my pregnancy.

There is only one book Mama Rice Pudding allows me to keep nearby.

“Read
Little Women.
It will remind you of the importance of familial ties and thus prepare you for motherhood,” she says.

“But I read that a long time ago,” I complain.

“Just go over it again, then.”

I understand that for Mama Rice Pudding there is no difference between reading a book and knitting a sweater. Just as you can knit the same pattern over and over, make the same recipe for years on end, you can also be content with a few books on your bookshelf and “go over them” again and again.

 

 

 

This week I have learned that “morning sickness” need not be in the mornings. It can happen anytime.

“Mama Rice Pudding, I feel tired and sleepy all the time—as if I’ve been carrying a sack of stones,” I say. “How will I bear it?”

She hits her scepter on the ground with a thud so loud that the earth trembles under my feet.

“You will bear it just like our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers did. What of the peasant woman who gives birth in the fields after a hard day of work? She cuts the umbilical cord with any available instrument and without a single complaint goes back to hoeing the crop.”

Do I look like a heroic peasant woman? I can’t even tell barley from buckwheat, but I dare not remind her of this.

“Be grateful that you haven’t come to this world as an elephant,” says Mama the Queen. “If you were a female elephant you would be pregnant for twenty-two months! Thank your lucky stars!”

Sad for not being a peasant woman but happy for not being an elephant: That is the sum of my mood this week.

 

 

 

I am not interested in food, only in snacks. And since most snacks are stuffed with calories, I am afraid I will end up like the plump woman on the steamboat.

In order to snack more healthily I do some shopping: low-fat biscuits, low-fat pretzels, low-fat milk, low-fat yogurt, low-fat cheese—and unsalted rice crackers. When I get home, Mama Rice Pudding jumps off her throne and inspects my grocery bag.

“What is this?”

“Nothing, just a few things to nibble on,” I say.

She catapults my bag out the window.

“For shame! You should be embarrassed! No salt, no sugar, low fat, no fat. What is this? Are we running a weight-loss clinic here? Is that Blue Belle Bovary messing with your head? Don’t you dare listen to that hussy!”

Befuddled and hurt, I consider how best—or whether—to answer her.

“Your only priority is to eat what is good for the child,” she concludes. “So what if your figure changes from size eight to size twenty, who cares?”

My cheeks burn with guilt. Could she be right? Have I put my looks ahead of the health of my child? Her Majesty the Queen teaches me a deep human truth—that motherhood has a pen name: guilt.

Just to be rid of this guilt, I go and eat a huge box of hazelnut cookies. And I don’t even like hazelnuts.

 

 

 

On TV Christiane Amanpour interviews AIDS orphans in Africa. The CNN crew has ducked into an adobe hut, placed their cameras on strewn straw. The landscape is harsh, unforgiving. With a napkin in my hand, I watch and cry.

These days, all sorts of things bring me to tears. There is a pair of shoes—faded blue Converse sneakers—that dangles from the electric pole around the corner, and every time I pass by them I feel a sense of sorrow well up inside of me. I wonder who they belonged to. How did they end up there? Rain or shine, they are always there—by themselves, so vulnerable, so alone.

It isn’t only the sneakers. Boys bullying one another at the playground, two stray cats fighting over a slice of meat in the garbage, the skinny Kurdish street vendor who sells chestnut kebabs with worms, the neighbor lady who beats her carpet out the window and showers the passersby with dust, the melting icebergs in Antarctica, the polluting of the atmosphere, the quagmire in Palestine, a piece of crushed bread on the ground. Everything, and anything, is so distressing. The world crumbles in my fingers like sandstone in the wind and my days are painted with melancholy.