First people by Marlene Dumas

We thought the baby would make it better. Neither one of us could pinpoint what the problem was.  Something to do with an engine puttering out or water evaporating or the air leaking out of a balloon. We used to kiss in the streets in full daylight. We wrote our names in sandy beaches. We fed each other oysters. But somehow, it fizzled. The baby. The baby would bring us back to deeply-in-love selves. 

I got pregnant in a second. I swear  I could feel the exact moment when it happened; I felt immediately seasick afterwards and threw up on our new Ikea rug ($49.99). 

From there, it took hold. I waddled by month three, even though my stomach was flat. My fingernails grew fast like something in a fairy tale. I kept forgetting and scratching my face, leaving tiny lines of blood. I couldn't keep anything down at first, but then I became a vacuum for sweets and bread, unable to stop myself from putting my bare fingers in horseradish and sucking it down even as my eyes swam. 

I don't recall months 7, 8, and 9. I sleep-walked, growing larger, radiating with heat in the middle of winter so I had to beg him to let me keep the fan on at night, telling him the whooshing of it would keep the baby quiet. The thing inside me bucked and pawed. You could watch it roll around under my skin at night. We sat on the bed and watched, as my stomach poked out and the skin rippled as if the creature were trying to get out through my belly button. 

The labor took no time, barely fifteen hours. I opted for the epidural. Give me double! I told the doctor, giddy. I felt none of it. I sucked on ice and looked at my legs splayed in the stirrups. I thought, They've amputated my legs and didn't tell me. Why did they do that? He stood next to me, clutching my hand, a smile stuck on his face, his hair sticking up wildly as if he'd been electrified. 

The baby slipped out like a fish and the nurse caught it, held it dangling by the feet. It convulsed, this red, thrashing thing and let out a scream before taking its first breath. What is it? I asked, still numb from the waist down. I didn't mean was it male or female, I really meant, What is it? What was this thing? They whisked it away. 

I sat back on the hospital bed while they did more things to me down there. It felt like a whole river poured out. I heard it rush onto the floor and worried that my internal organs had released themselves from my body. 

They kept it away, doing something to it on the side. Then, she, the nurse, brought it to me, her face covered by a white mask, her eyes dark and round. She offered it to me, wrapped in a white blanket like a little mummy. All you could see was this round purple face, eyes squeezed shut, looking like an old man. Here you go, she said, her voice muffled. She laid the mummy on my bare chest, heavy, smelling coppery. I tried to bring my arms up to hold it, but they too had gone away, turned to lead. They handed it to him, my husband, and he took it as if accepting a package, held it far away from his body. He looked at me. What should we call it? he said, his voice fuzzy.  I turned my eyes to the tiled ceiling, suddenly and feel asleep.

The baby never slept. We put it in the crib, looked down at it, legs kicking, mouth open in a scream, looking like a little old person. We'll feel love eventually, he said, patting my back as if burping me. I thought it an odd thing to say at the time, but knew what he meant. A tiny shiver of doubt wiggled down my spine. 

We named it Baby.