Pregnancy

She wanted to be something besides the baby inside of her. But it seemed as if no one else would let her.

She was not selfish, only human.

She loved her baby, loved all that he (---they'd already determined the sex, in a costly display of human ingenuity that was, sadly, a blatant reminder of the human fear of everything, of being so needant to know despite all else---) would bring, her lovely baby boy; how he would be looking up at her with nascent eyes of sparkling beauty whatever the color the irises were, his small hands gripped nice and snug around her finger as if he were the one who was taking care; he was the one who was nurturing her.

That was in the future, but it seemed so present, so right now.

Even though, here, her co-workers seemed to be conspiratorially mocking her, though she really had no ears for it. But she supposed they were better than her friends and family, because they, her co-workers, didn't know her that well, didn't really know her intimately-personally, and they didn't know everything there was to know about her. And this was good. Why? Because life was so strange now that she was pregnant. It was like she really didn't exist --- to her friends and family, at least. It was like she was just the shell that was slowly swelling, and people could try and make comments on it, praise her for her womanly-turning-to-motherly radiance, but she knew what was really going on, knew the truth: they only cared about the child, the new grandson, the first grandson of the family; and she was only getting the leftovers, the run-off, --- the child was the true target of the affection, and she was merely the shield, the thing that had to do its duty and be dealt with, but once it was said and done she'd easily be passed over.

It was a shame in this society how accolades seemed to always trigger a tinge of paranoia. And it was extremely hard not to be self-conscious, especially when you were a woman, especially when you were pregnant, and especially when you were mutating further and farther away from the cover of the Cosmopolitan magazine.

No, these co-workers were fine. They still cared about her, because they still didn't know all about her, and thus they were quite curious and could speculate . . . even if their speculations were probably the most negative of gossip.

She needed to quit. Even though she wasn't that far along --- had only just started her second trimester --- she needed to quit. She laughed to herself but it was so forced, all naturalness muffled. Her emotions and anxiety were mixing in a bad maelstroming way. She was thinking too much, too fast, and not about the right things. She needed to be the next Laci Peterson. No, that was heinous, wrong, far too morbid. She needed to be living in a different state, closer to the ocean. That was still too morbid.

This was the real crux of it all: pregnancy forced a woman to be a man. Speaking psychologically, and then entwining all the natural chemical patterns of physiognomy and anthro-biology, with a bit of sociology and humanistic evolution tossed in the mix, all the mysteries of the two genders could be summed up as this: men were in search of a womb, and women were in search of a room. Men sought solace, a place where they could expurge themselves and be at peace, be nestled in a contenting rest. Women sought safety, strong arms holding and protecting them from all the weathering storms outside. Both quests were campaigns of trust for trust. And all of this was only a generalized rule that had exceptions: --- the generalized rule pertained to seventy-five percent of any given population that was of the age of sexual maturation; the other twenty-five percent were the exception that kept the rest in the realm of assumed normalcy. And now she, a member of that seventy-five percent, found herself in a dubious and disturbed place in her life. With this pregnancy, what was she now? If men wanted the womb, and women wanted the room, then what did she really want now? What was she, for that matter? Sure, she was a woman who had a womb and was in search of a room and she had found a man who loved her womb and she loved his room and they had married and they were happy with calm trustworthy clarity because they knew their own roles and were respectful of each other's roles and then . . . now . . . ? Pregnancy threw a monkeywrench into Mother Nature's machine. Because her unborn son within her was her womb now, and she, her real body, her real essence, was only the room that protected him, kept him safe with her strength.

And it was hard being a man. Especially when you had grown up your entire life thinking that this was a duty you would never be required to do.

She left work early. She supposed that she had the rightful entitlement to do so, but maybe only because all the people at her place of employment gave her that idea.

When she got home the clock on the wall told her that her husband Jack wouldn't be home for another four hours. The television was not a friend currently, couldn't amuse her, provide her escapism, only brought her closer to reality . . . --- and it wasn't really a reality she wished to see. There were books. The trend of historical fiction novels had gotten her back into the classics, all those she had forgotten about, all those she'd hastily overlooked in her youth. Maybe she liked them because Jack didn't. He called them "period pieces" with a disgusting accented inflection in his voice that made no qualms concerning his harsh opinion. Henry James allowed her to escape. Sure, there was elitism in it, but a lot less pomposity than was in a majority of the intelligentsia of that time. As she got through the first few pages of this next chapter she knew that secretarial work was wrong for her, was a step down that hadn't been right, a concession she shouldn't have made. Just because the current economy was a mess didn't mean that she had to lower the standards and expectations of her own abilities. She had a college education, a college degree in literature . . . --- and she was still paying on ("off" was not the correct practical word) those student loans. But it was always something, solve one problem and get ready for a bunch of new ones. She needed to have her baby, and go back to school, no matter what the cost, get a Masters and teach. Maybe that's why her family and friends were overlooking her currently and were pinioning themselves to the baby, because she was constantly trying to teach in her personal life. Maybe that was why all her co-workers were talking bad of her when she couldn't hear them distinctly and could only sense their murmurs; because she was constantly teaching, or trying to; she was constantly, slightly but in her own intruding way, telling them what to do, even when it was not --- no, especially when it was not her place to do so. In hindsight she knew she did it all the time and knew that she should not do it at all. But all correction was always after the fact: when she was doing it she was right there within it, all automatic (and maybe instinctual?), no time for any distant objectivity or introspection, no time to assume a God-like view of herself and judge her own actions or intent.

A few pages more and the thoughts were different, different from before, but the same in that they were still distanced from the Henry James text. You couldn't go back. That was why she did not believe in abortion. It wasn't just morally wrong to her, it was also illogical. No, you had to move on, a "sorry!" being "my bad!" being a concession that never helped you in the long run as much as it refuted you. Once again the acidic concoction of her emotions and anxiety was making her thoughts quite questionable, more capricious than sagacious.

Everything was pregnant. Every single thing, for it was the absolute vivacity and vitality of all life. Her heart was pregnant with palpitating then pulsating then palpitating then staying-steady pulsing work, the changes so instantaneous they never were needant to be analyzed or dismissed for they in their nanosecond-seeming time of historical duration were never actually recorded, recognized. And his heart was pregnant for his life to be, all the hopes and all dreams and all the actual successes to come. It was blessed beautiful. It was real because it calmly, uncontrollably, was.

She was reading still but the words were only doing a dutiful job of sublime subconscious activity: she was dreaming. Day. For that was life. The eyes still open but seeing so far, both the concrete and the esoteric beyond. That was it, the true role for all, for all humanity: everyone and everything was constanly pregnant with something, something new and beautiful and that would be the now soon. She had been constantly pregnant her entire life, with her hopes and dreams and desires and fears and conquests and moments of extreme exhaltation and more.

But it had taken this concreteness of her son's creation, his tiny kicking, his warm small snugness inside of her, to make her truly knowledgeable of this spiritual fact.