The Unborn

by Anne Babson

 

I.

 

 

And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD… out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto. – 1 Samuel 1: 15-16

 

 

At the altar, I                          imagined the five

of you – my fingers                splayed into the next

generation, stretched              palpating, and like

fingers, I could count             you on my one hand,

that is if you would                just stand still for the

 

family photo   –                     Wake up, my Tima! 

Maha, I told you                     leave Dawood alone! –

Yusuf, let me help                   you with your hair; it’s

sticking up again.                   No, for the thousandth

time no, this is our                  Christmas card, and no,

it’s just you and me                and your father, it’s

just all of us.  Stand                still.  Look straight ahead.

 

I help Sarah with                    her tights as she squirms.

I feel the pull of                      the nylon slightly

burning against my                 palms, leaving a mark

on my thumb tips that            disappears too soon.

You disappear, my                 imagined blessings.

 

This is the only                       photograph we will

Ever pose for, my                   beloved ones, my

Treasures I have hoped           for enduringly.

 

There is no marker                 where I have buried

You.  There is no red              biohazard bin,

no medical waste                    canister. Neither

were you corpses nor             mourned abortions,

nor miscarriages –                  perhaps miscarriage

of justice, my dears.               I cannot complain

to the police.  This                  Christmas photo

will never appear                    on a milk carton.

 

I have buried you                    here, in the folds of

these papers, smudging          your cheeks in ink

jet the printer spits.                You are caught in the

tangles of x and                      the lower t, snagged

on the c without                      cedilla, on the

consonants of the                    cop who might ask me,

“And where exactly                did you last see them?”

 

I have last seen you                here.  This is my last

glimpse, beloved ones,           smelling of milk and

white glue, of yellow             tempera paint and

pee.  This is where the            guards drag you off.  I

tangle in the barbed               wire against which I weep.

 

I have no right to                    mourn you, the unborn.

And yet I look at                     the bloody writing

in the lines of my                   palm, and I read in

the ancient Hebrew,                the koph, the daleth,

and the shin from                   “Kaddish.”  The branch ends.

 

 

II.

 

 

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. – Mother Teresa

 

 

How dare I lament you, you who have never come into the world, when all around me, there are those who crave something unoffered?  I visit the foundling home to give a workshop, but what I need to do is grab every baby out of every bassinette there, raid the orphanage and the animal shelter and leave with an army of babies, and puppies, and kittens, and troubled teens.

 

The teens hotwire a caravan, and we join, we make a circus.  We eat weenies around some backwood camp fire, and we tell ghost stories –

 

The ghosts of the parents who left cigarette burns on the arm of this one, the ghost of the father who touched this one there, and there, and there while the mother stood by and did nothing.  We think of new songs to sing, ones that have happier lyrics than the other ones on the radio, and we make up jokes where the punch lines make no sense, but we laugh so hard the soda comes out our noses.

 

But there is only so much money.

Even if there were money, there is only so much time.

Even if there were money and time, there is only so much me.

I am not a loaf or a fish, and Jesus has not divided me after giving thanks.

I am no meal for five thousand hungry ones.

I am barely a single happy meal.

I bake cookies for the neighbors on some holidays.  I leave notes.

They don’t thank me.  It’s a rough neighborhood.

They probably don’t eat the cookies.  Who can you trust these days?

Outside the garden, there are razor blades in apples everywhere.

 

 

III.

 

 

…Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. – Luke 23:28-29

 

I have been prudent.                           I have not brought out

a person in time                                  of war or downturn.

No one at breakfast                            has glared at my booth

because spilt milk brought                 on crying over.

I never get glares                                in aisles because a

child has gone limp to                                    wail or get a spanking.

I have not become                              a statistic or

a burden on the                                   Republic or church.

I give charity.                                     I don’t receive it.

 

I have been quite sure,                        terribly cautious.

No one has been at                             all inconvenienced.

My bedroom is warm,                                    tidy, and my debt

Is measurable.                                     I am wise, quite wise.

 

Because look out there, out on that screen, around that corner, and in the drain pipes, and you’ll see the PCBs and the rock-throwing Palestinians, and the Irish Republican Army and the scandals, the matted hair, the teeth of the skull they just dug up, and the polar bear who is hungry, and swims to his death.  The Janjaweed brandishes his machete.  The girl has acid burns on her face.  The boy has no arm.

 

The price of cream is rising.  No one needs another suckler, do they?

 

And yet, let me show you their picture.

 

 

IV.

 

 

“…Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.” – Genesis 30:1

 

 

Yusuf leans lankily against the wall

As I type these words about his non-existence.

 

His arms are brown branches of an olive tree.

When he colors, he makes green and black circles on the page

 

“Ma!  Look!”  He lifts skyward the fruit from his fingers.

His head is slightly curly, coarse to my lips as I kiss.

 

I inhale scents of vegetation and clean boy sweat.

No matter how much I feed him, he stays skinny –

 

The sandwiches stretch him upwards, and I wonder

If he will be hanging from the hoop one day on

 

The court, or if some force will chop him down. I hear

The buzz saw.  I turn to look over my other shoulder.

 

The crayons are gone, the butcher paper is blank.

I turn back.  There is no shadow of him left.

 

I am in my apartment, a room mate only, no scuffs from

Size two sneakers anywhere to track his path away.

 

 

V.

 

 

No one is scouting for them anymore but me.

The search party has been called back in from the storm.

The investigation is cold cased.   Only I am

Leaving the pictures posted everywhere:

The frame with question marks over ovals,

And I am asking if you have seen them, if

You can draw them you might be an artist,

And if you will let me know as soon as they arrive.

The one in the corner, that looks like Munch’s screamer,

That’s me.

 

 

VI.

 

 

Sarah won’t get out of bed.

 

First I grab her face and kiss it, and she mumbles and squirms.

Her eyes stay shut, and even though that beatific sleep caste

 

Has left the mask of her cherubic face, that sleep that looks

Like a heavenly reward to which we may all return one day

 

If our lives have been right, unlike mine, which fills up the

Air with lies like these lines, but Sarah, an imagined thing,

 

She is safe if not saved, and she rolls on her stomach,

Knowing that this is only stalling the inevitable.

 

I call her name, intoning, “Sa-oo-rah!  It is a school day!”

And so it is – even though she is only enrolled in my

 

Imagined classroom, and she moans, “No!”  I leave

The room, pour milk in her plastic cereal bowl, sprinkle

 

It with berries, and again I return to the bed, where

Sarah is attempting to hide under the covers.

 

It’s as if I can’t see her at all under the bunched-up

Duvet.  Again I lament, “Sa – oo – rah!” This is

 

The she-wolf in the dark howling for her pups,

Her icescape call, and she waits in the silence.

 

I lift up the quilt, sure I’ll see the footless pink

Flannel with the balloon clusters printed all over,

 

But she must be up.  I check bathrooms, listening for

Sinks left running after the Snoopy toothbrush

 

Bristles.  Where is she?

 

 

VII.

 

 

At birth?  At conception?

No!  Much sooner than that, or much later.

 

Life begins when the women sits alone, perhaps even as a virgin, perhaps in a place where no one knows her and she is forever anonymous, and she says to herself, “there should be another.  I will give her pause.”

 

The hollow expands, sometimes until it is the size of an island, and the woman hangs a hammock up between two palm trees and rocks waiting.

 

The hollow says, “Be it done to me according to your word.”  It is done, but not according to her word, never according to her word precisely, but it is done.

 

 

VI.

 

 

Maha has taken the seat cushions off

The two couches and built a fort.  She peers

 

Out between the blue upholsteries, makes

The sound of bullets whizzing, empty wind.

 

Maha is impersonating a warrior princess today.

She just learned the word revenge – or thinks so.

 

“I am The Revenge!”  She shouts, or am I

Hearing the argument on cable news

 

From the next room?  “I am The Revenge, Ma!”

She rustles between the pillows like change

 

Lost in the lint, the remote hidden where

I sit uneasily, wishing to flip

 

Infomercials but cannot find the box.

I dig in the cracks of the soft spaces,

 

Expecting to tickle her, The Revenge.

I dig and dig and dig and dig and dig.

 

It’s funny how things disappear like that.

Maha is missing, The Revenge vanished.

 

 

VII.

 

 

The week after September 11^th, after having calmly leading the evacuation of the nearby building where I worked, after losing my job the very next day in a layoff, I lay restless at home, cat-napping.  I dreamt I was in the rubble with an empty baby carriage, a white mask over my mouth, digging for them, gagging.

 

 

VIII.

 

 

Sophia doesn’t know how to read yet,

But she has taken one of my textbooks,

 

One that explains insanity in

Post-war protagonists, a banned book, no —

 

Wait, hang on — I think I mean a burned book,

And she is flipping through the pages that

 

Are covered in the cuneiform she

Can’t comprehend – do I mean “burned” or “banned”?

 

“Ma!  I’ll tell you what it says!”  She grabs my

Leg and hugs it, yes, I’m sure she hugs it.

 

I feel the weight of her.  “What does the book say?”

I hear pages turning under my desk.

 

“Sophia?  What does the book say?” I hear

Crying.  Yes, I hear my own voice crying.

 

 

IX.

 

 

“I want to pursue that subject you mentioned to me when you were last here, and to show you that I am not all stone.” – Charles Dickens

 

 

There’s another one missing –Well, missing?

I don’t think I miss him. “Waled!  Waled!”

 

He has a theme song.  It’s in Arabic,

and that song – I play it all the time, not

thinking about him, because I wouldn’t

let him steal the song along with the rest.

 

In the live recording, they are shouting

another Arab name, “Waled!  Waled!”

 

Waled is a pop star in Lebanon.

The one I don’t miss, his name might just be

Waled.  How would I know?  The name on his

passport, green card, driver’s license — all fake.

 

The FBI, Interpol, NSA –

They might just miss him.  They call him missing.

 

The drums roll.  Violins moan.  I think the

crowd is in a park in Beirut.  They shout,

“Waled!  Waled!”  They love, they miss Waled.

 

The Queens County DA gave him a file

number.  I had a taffeta dress made.

 

I hear a male voice moon-howl digitized.

It whispers like a wraith autotuned.

He’s whispering in my ear,

“?? ??????, mère de mes enfants.”

The crowd in Beirut chants “Waled!  Waled!”

I don’t know any Waled.  I just know

music.  Music plays.  Waled sings to me.

 

The NSA took over that file.  I had

the invitations printed in light green.

 

I know how to belly dance like a bride

at her own wedding in Beirut.  I can,

and I do.  The best part about belly

dancing: I can do it without partners.

 

The real Waled starts  to sing in Beirut.

I undulate.  I tremble, a tent in

a sandstorm.  I once owned finger cymbals.

I used to wear a big ring.  The finger

cymbals got lost when I moved.  My ring left

with him, the one who might be named Waled,

too, for all I know.  The account emptied.

 

The FBI is calling again.  He

demanded more.  They trace some old transfers.

 

I am still dancing.  I fling my long hair

around, forgetting him, but not my hopes.

Osama Bin Laden got shot.

The one that was not named Waled,

The one who is not on this recording,

A secular song, the kind the Osamas of the world

Hate, the one that makes me shake,

The one that is not this singer Waled,

“Waled!  Waled!  Waled!”  He is at large.

Waled the singer croons to me.

I jut my right hip out, then back, then out.

 

The local police advise me to get

a handgun.  They guarantee me nothing.

 

I should look for ammunition, but I’m

dancing.  I’m dancing forward.  He did not

get away with those lingering bass notes.

the song in the air – yes, I still own that.

 

I am still undulating and trembling.

 

He’s still out there.

He has my social security number.

He has my photograph.

He has my address, notarized documents.

 

I am still undulating and trembling.

I still own this rhythm.  I still own it –

What I thought would be – it’s still mine.

I am still undulating and trembling.

 

 

X.

 

 

There are one million new children forced into sex slavery every year.  I give a few hundred dollars to free a dozen of them.  That’s all it costs – a few hundred dollars.  I wait for when they will send me the package containing them, but I don’t ever get a box with holes drilled in it in the mail.

 

My mother never knew me.  She saw me every day murkily through an etching in her head of another girl, not a naughty girl, a girl who cared about things she said I did, a girl who would have nodded when she said, “But you WANT to go to uncle Bill and aunt Jen’s house!” — That girl.  This was a girl who wanted to do well in girl math class so she could get a girl good job one girl day.  She would have waited until.  She would have worn hemlines lower.  She read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Mermaid,” and thinking of hemlines, she repeated to herself his “lowadown, lowadown.”  This girl did not think nice girls did the girl things I did.

 

One day I was grounded because my mother had a dream about the real me.  It was my fault.  I was her nightmare.  The other girl thought this was entirely fair, and like a good girl, she refused to stay in the girl room with me where I was punished.  I did not miss her, turned up the music, waited for them to box me up in the big carton with all the holes in it, waited for the clerk to scan the bar code, forward me to the next spot for tracking.

 

 

XI.

 

 

Dawood helps me decorate cupcakes.  He holds

The green sprinkles and the red hots away

 

From his chest, radioactive materials.

He turns canisters upside down and shakes them.

 

He makes the sound of bombs dropping – the red hots napalm.

The green sprinkles strafe the chocolate glaze.

 

Then, having run out of desserts, just or unjust,

He moves to the rest of the table, covering

 

The table cloth with Christmas day carpet bombing.

“That’s enough, Dawood!” I scold.  He looks up just once,

 

Does the math gaze determining the ratio

Of how mad I am to how much trouble awaits,

 

And he continues, “No, Dawood!  Stop it!”  I grab at him,

But he is out of reach.  The carpet bombing bombs

 

On.  Chocolate spreads, covering the table now.

He is out of reach.  “I said to stop it, Dawood!”

 

But somehow, like stealth bombers we send to

Arab world countries, where children get named “Dawood”

 

Instead of “David,” Dawood disappears in dark

Frosting, leaving me holding canisters I have emptied

 

Onto cupcakes I have baked for no one at all

To take to a birthday party for the unborn.

 

 

XII.

 

 

My friend Deborah, who lived in a condo near Ground Zero back in 2002, held a baby shower.  While she opened gifts with little tunics, little sling shots, little sandals, little scrolls, I glanced between ribbon cuttings over my shoulder out the window and watched them hauling away pieces of charred iron i-beams turned into curly fries in barges headed for Fresh Kills and parts beyond.

 

We “oohed. “ She grinned proudly.  This condo blew centralized air conditioning temperatures on us, but still we went outside on the roof winter garden and saw from there the smoking hole left where the towers had stood.  We needed our coats up there.  It was chilling to the bone.

 

When the baby was stillborn, they had a memorial service to her – a baby girl —  on that roof garden, now sprouting, except for her.  I hugged Deborah.  She wailed.

 

I told her, “God will reward you for your patience this day.”

 

What a blasphemer I was.  God forgive me.

 

After the reception, I walked down to the loading point of the barges and looked in the box car of concrete being hauled away.

 

Ours weren’t in there, either.

 

 

XIII.

 

 

Fatima is my baby, my youngest one of all.

When she goes off to college, my work will be done.

 

I change her diapers now.  I find them empty.

She curls up on the changing table, grabbing her toes and trying

 

To stick them in her mouth while I hum to her

The song is – what is the title again?  Something about swans.

 

She gurgles back to me cheerfully.

The baby wipe is blank, no signs of rash, either.

 

I sprinkle talcum powder on her, much too much,

The white container hiccups a cough of white

 

Dust and Fatima, my baby, my last one, is

Assumed into it, a holy virgin rising, as it dissipates.

 

 

XIV.

 

 

Here are some fortune cookie secret messages from headquarters:

 

Due to female infanticide

When you reach a fork in the road, take it.

 

There are thousands of missing baby girls.

You will hear today from an old friend.

 

The men find a void when they look

Your secret admirer will soon appear.

 

For someone to walk Forbidden Palace Grounds with.

Your lucky number is two.

 

They crack open these biscuits, and hope to find.

You can depend on the trust of the collective.

 

Gentlemen, I’ve already searched there – fortune cookies aren’t even Chinese, really, and as for the missing women, every time I think I’ve found one, I see it is just my own reflection in the mirror staring back at me.

 

 

XV.

 

 

“Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:” – Sonnet LXV

 

You have read my five                                   fingers, their whorled prints,

and yet when police                            detectives dusted,

they saw the ghosts of                        no touches at all.

 

You have read my palm.                    The lines curl downward,

a slippery slope,                                 and I am fallen.

No one cares but me                           about the unborn

misbegotten ones                                I have invented,

and why should they when                 they hear other cries,

have children of their                         own to educate?

 

I have no marker but                          these words, no stone or

flower to leave at this                         memorial, just

this requiem of ink.                            Other mothers have

children they have just                       imagined, ones they

never understand                                but think they do, ones

they have pretended                           exist, but these ones,

unlike mine, have an                          incarnation on

which to project the                            impossible plans.

 

I have loved you, my                          unborn ones, more than

I have ever loved                                the living or dead.

You are the best of                             my aspirations.

You are the peace I                             leave in the wreckage.

I have failed you in                             failing to have you.

How can I grow old                            without you grown up?

This age has left me                           with a smoldering black hole.

The barges ship the beams                 to Fresh Kills, and I

Remain here in                                   false bereavement.

They will rebuild it                            over my ashes.

 

Anne Babson, a Coney Island poet recently transplanted to Mississippi, has been nominated three times for the Pushcart. She has won awards from Columbia, Atlanta Review, Grasslands Review, and other reviews.  Her work has been published in the US, in England, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and Turkey.  She was included in a British anthology of the best working American poets today entitled Seeds of Fire (Smokestack Books, 2008) and another British Anthology related to the current riots in England entitled Emergency Verse (Caparison Books, 2011).  She has five chapbooks, over a hundred journal publications, including work recently featured in in Iowa Review, Barrow Street, Atlanta Review, and many others.  She is featured on a compilation hip-hop CD– The Cornerstone (New Lew Music, 2007).  She has read her work for national radio programs and has appeared on television in the United States and in Taiwan.  Catch her blog about her North-South culture shock at www.carpetbaggersjournal.com.

 

Founder and Editor in Chief Barney Rosset worked ceaselessly on the Evergreen Review until his death February 21, 2012. This piece was among his final selections for publication.