She hasn’t the comfort of knowing that it isn’t a monster at all, cuddled there beneath the curve of her ribs; it’s just me, twirling senselessly on my stem, inscribing, upon the placenta, in the amniotic fluid, on my own beautiful and rapidly multiplying fronds, a poem, composed of the only letters I know: CGD’O.LD’O.CGD’O.LD’O . . .
• • •
My mother is a stubborn woman. Even after the advent of the hellebore and juniper leaf tea, she refuses to call a truce. Instead, as soon as she is well enough to leave the house again, she purchases, from the chemist Jim Watt, a small, red tin containing “Widow Welch’s Female Pills: A certain remedy for removing the obstructions to which Young Women are so frequently subject.”
And when those don’t work she also tries, in quick succession, Hooper’s Female Pills, then Trowbridge’s Golden Pills of Life and Beauty, both without result.
None of these attractively packaged products lives up to its advertised claim to resolve issues of female irregularity and obstruction.
My mother’s issues remain unresolved. She is still obstructed.
It is around this time, perhaps, that she begins to realize she is stuck with me—really stuck with me—or rather, that I am really stuck to her, that I have attached myself, that her heart is my heart, her lungs my lungs, her stomach my stomach, her liver my liver. We are, for all intents and purposes, one creature. She cannot shake or squeeze or press me out; she cannot poison me. The only way to get rid of me will be to get rid of herself. And my mother is much too conceited for that. A world without Clotilde is an inconceivable world.
• • •
She’ll never be really, truly alone again. This will be her new torment and despair, also her new conceit and her new joy.
She is pursued. She must run. But not yet.
• • •
Her surrender, when at last it comes, is quick and complete.
Two more months have passed.
Tighter, Mary! Pull the laces tighter!
La! I canna do it, madam—it’s impossible! You’ve grown too fat!
There is inexpressible weariness in my mother’s reply.
Very well, Mary. Very well.
Clotilde relaxes her grip on the bedpost. Mary relaxes hers on the corset laces.
The servant is confused. She has never seen my mother give up—on this, or, for that matter, on anything. Except on Thomas Argument.
She had no choice but to give up on him. That was entirely beyond her control.
Does madam want to try again?
No, Mary. You can go.
Clotilde sinks down onto the bed. Beneath her thigh she can feel, through the thinness of the mattress, the sharp edge of her traveling trunk, half packed with dresses and corsets and camisoles and stockings and new cambric hankies.
• • •
This is it: it’s the end. My mother has to accept, at last, the undeniable thickening of her waist, the engorgement of her breasts, their soreness, the darkening of the aureoles, the increased prominence of the nipples. The gorge that rises in her throat every morning, whether she’s eaten breakfast or not. She knows what it all means:
I exist. I am coming. Whether or not I am a monster, I am coming. I am budding crazily now. I have a head. Limbs. Two cells rubbed together to form four, then sixteen, then two hundred and fifty six, and suddenly I have a brain, sparking, percolating with electricity, creating thoughts. All at once I have ideas of my own. Some of which are very definite ideas, about being born. I do not know there is a world, but I intend to enter it. I have begun to write something new, the limited letters of my little alphabet, CGD’O.LD’O.CGD’O.LD’O, twining together to form something new, the essence of me, the core of what will be my self. CD’O.CD’O.CD’O . . .