UNDERWORLD

I could never forget that day. The little bun was finally taken out of the oven on  a very rainy afternoon.  It was an experience that quieted so many chatters inside my mind and which  made  me never to see life in the same way again.

We had been expecting all these  nine months that  the child would have a normal birth so we were very relaxed.  I was lying down on the delivery bed of the clinic- dextrose tube and all- then on the last minute of labor the doctor discovered that there was a cord prolapse, a condition where the umbilical cord was constricted at the opening of the cervix, and that if I would move any further, in a matter of minutes  due to the constriction, the blood supply would be cut off from the child and the child could die. So they transferred me to another hospital,  and along the way  calling the hospital to prepare the operating room as fast as possible. The doctor  kept telling me, don't move, don't move.

I thought it could happen only in the movies- and to others- and definitely not to me. But there I was on the steel table, injected with a lot of drugs and tubes – staring at the numerous lights hanging from the ceiling, medical men and women moving about in a haze. Darkness came next. You'd know what happened next- cut me up and pull the baby out. From the moment the operation started, it only took nine minutes until the child was delivered. 

 Good evening, darling baby.

If there was one question I would like to ask the child, I think it would be 'Where have you been?' Really, where have babies been? When I looked at her, her eyes were open as though she had been to a place that I didn't know. Tell me, tell me.

But the baby was quiet and has very curious eyes. She was held to me by the attending nurse, and shivering and perspiring (drug- induced)there on a bed on a dark corner all numbed and drugged, I could not reach out so I told her 'Hold her for me'.

 

After birth began what seemed to be the darkest days of one's life- those few days of solitude that seemed to stretch so infinitely. Women know this. I lost track of time, if not drifting into that a drug-induced sleep and dreaming of strange things, then staring at the gray wall outside the hospital window as it got drenched in the rain. There were those lucid dreams of strange places and strange animals and people- street festivals, amphitheaters, a field full of the gold ribbons. Imagine Dali paintings. And because I could not walk but wanted to see desperately my child who was at the nursery room, I had to ask my schackler to push me on a wheelchair to have a glimpse of the kid. I simply could not touch the ground- the pain would be excruciating. There was just too much quiet uncontrollable sobbing in the dark hospital halls. I didn't realize that so many days have already passed.

In our culture there is the belief that a woman who has just given birth must not bathe for ten days. We followed that, so when the tenth day came, a so-called witch doctor (hilot) was summoned to the house to bathe me. She was an amiable woman who seemed to have hidden giggles right beneath her throat.  It was like bathing with hot tea- the bathing water was a dark maroon of fragrant herbs. The baby was bathed first on a tub, and the witch doctor could tell from a child's first bath whether the child would be an obedient or a hard headed child. She said I wouldn't have any problem with the little bun.Then she made me sit down on the toilet seat all naked, the herbs under my feet. She poured the concoction (was very hot- but it was meant that way) all over me, and has been telling me that I should have had my waist-long hair cut before I gave birth. I got a massage afterwards and many hours of sleep.

I didn't get fat during pregnancy but I am aware that my body – nor my soul- would never be the same again. There  is the effect of drugs and the scars to heal, and most of all there is already an individual that needs you. If you're not ready to make sacrifices for anyone, not ready to accept that you have to look after someone  besides yourself, then don't go for it. Don't tie the knot. Use condoms. Celebrate your freedom extremely while you can. But I like the powerful change that such experience brought me just as I like aging and the numerous metamorphosis that a woman goes through in the many stages of her life.

 It is said that there are only three instances in her life when a woman is most beautiful: when you see her naked, when you see her pregnant, and when you see her nursing a child. When a woman accomplishes all of it, she truly has come full circle.