
Eating the Baby by Josh Martin
- In the span of three weeks, my daughter transformed into a pear, an avocado, and an onion. No, this wasn’t an outpouring of toddler imagination. Nor did I ingest several grams of potent psilocybin. Instead, my wife and I were charting our baby’s second trimester growth via average food sizes.
- Besides garlic, onions are my favorite alliums to cook with. I’ve learned to dice them with the dexterity of a surgeon. Still, they make me weep – especially if I make errant cuts out of rage or impatience. Comparing our baby to an onion made me pause, momentarily, beside the chopping block, the blade barely nicking the allium’s newborn-sleek skin.
- Nevertheless, my wife and I decided to commemorate our daughter’s growth by cooking with each week’s fetus-food comparison. My favorite dish? Week 27 when our baby was the size of a three-pound coconut. That week, I made Thai Chicken Coconut Curry. I couldn’t bring myself to bore a hole into an actual coconut like a stone fruit lobotomy. Instead, I used a 13-ounce can of full-fat coconut milk.
- On the baby app we downloaded to chart our baby’s growth, we could have selected several different comparisons. We could have compared our baby to fishing lures, sports equipment, or Star Wars droids. Like most people, we chose fruits and veggies. I’d rather consider my baby a radish than a multicolored hacky sack kicked around by college kids stoned on skunk weed.
- Plus, I yearn for duck carnitas tacos overflowing with radish escabeche – not my failed attempts at joining hacky sack circles.
- Even more so, I’m mesmerized by that phrase uttered by Southern grandmothers after meeting young children in country-style restaurants: “she’s so cute I could just eat her up!” This is often followed by a cheek pinch or pursed-lip kissing noise or both. Thankfully, I’ve never seen an octogenarian say this while eyeing a saltshaker or serrated bread knife.
- For a civilization so hellbent on tabooing cannibalism (rightfully so), we sure do enjoy measuring cuteness via threats of digestion.
- When my daughter was born, my mother-in-law nibbled on her wrists. My father nibbled on her left ear. I can’t remember what my wife and I nibbled on, but I’m sure we did. We couldn’t help ourselves.
- Western civilization hungers for stories centering the consumption of other bodies – especially the bodies of children. I remember the first time I looked at, really looked at, Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. Like most people (I presume), I was not so much disturbed by Cronus gnawing on his offspring’s left arm (and decapitated head) as I was by the wild, uncontrollable look in his eyes. His eyes bulged like onions, like diapers ballooned with pool water.
- Or consider Hansel and Gretel, that famous folktale of attempted child cannibalism. According to some scholars, the folktale functions as a Catholic admonishment of divorce. In this reading, the evil witch embodies the wicked stepmother – though it is the children’s mother who concocts the plan to abandon them far in the woods. Others read the tale as supporting “patriarchal order;” the women in the story are, after all, the deviants while the children’s father comes across as loving and sympathetic. I read the story simply as a tale of immense hunger. Hansel and Gretel’s parents are incredibly poor and cannot feed themselves, much less their children. Is the story asking us to consider the lengths we will go to feed ourselves? I’ve never been hungry enough to consume other human bodies – or even entertain the idea. History tells us others surely have. See: the Donner Party.
- I’ll never forget the first time I almost swallowed a baby. Fortunately, the baby was pink and made of plastic – a hidden symbol of prosperity nestled in the rich layers of a King Cake. Although I’ve tried hundreds of King Cakes in my life, I’m still perplexed by this tradition. The story goes that the baby-in-the-King-Cake concept was the brainchild of Donald Entringer who decided to bake a plastic baby into each of his cakes after a traveling salesman approached him with miniature porcelain dolls. Apparently, the small plastic humanoids signify the baby Jesus. After feeling the baby roll beneath my tongue, I spit the Jesus baby into my hands.
- I held our newborn seconds after my wife delivered her. Our daughter had soft pink skin and a white creamy film – vernix caseosa – covered her. I couldn’t help but think of a Jesus baby pulled from a layer of buttercream icing. I was immediately in love – and simultaneously repulsed. What does it mean to look upon your children with both love and repulsion, attraction and ambivalence?
- My daughter was born at 38 weeks. My wife lost a liter of blood during labor and delivery. While I sat in a chair looking into my newborn’s eyes, my wife shivered and grew pale, her lips transforming into the purple-blue hue of radishes. In that moment, I thought about how privileged we were to receive the medical attention that we did. We are white and middle class and live in 21st century North Carolina. Had we been anybody else in any other time, my wife likely would have died during childbirth as so many other birthing people have – their bodies failing in candle-lit rooms, their newborns screaming in the dark.
- Psychologists have a name for the strange, yet intense, desire to consume that which we find adorable: cute aggression. Feel compelled to squeeze the impossibly cute kitten like a furry stress ball? Blame cute aggression. Have the urge to nibble on the newborn’s fingers? Again, cute aggression. According to psychologists, cute aggression occurs because our brains can’t deal with an overload of “cuteness.” As a result, we feel compelled to act less-than-gently towards the objects of our affections.
- I’m so tired of hearing people describe only the joys of early fatherhood. Yes, holding your daughter against your chest at 2 AM while light rain patters upon the porch is beautiful. It can also be profoundly isolating and lonely, stressful and aggravating. When you haven’t slept more than two hours at a time and your daughter’s constantly wailing, you begin to understand the madness in Cronus’ eyes. Cute aggression takes on a whole different meaning.
- Our newborn consumes us. Although I am beyond grateful that she’s in our lives, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I occasionally feel resentful for the degree of this consumption. Our time is no longer ours and this is difficult for me to accept. Your loss of autonomy never becomes more palpable than when you’re using the toilet with your baby in your lap. I knew the child-rearing process would decimate our autonomy, but this knowledge doesn’t make it easier.
- My wife and I have made the choice not to post pictures of our baby’s face on social media. Instead, we’ve opted for black and white shots of her hands, fingers, and toes. So many of our friends and acquaintances post pictures of their babies and children. First birthday parties. First spaghetti dinners. First days of snot-nosed kindergarten classes. In all these pictures, the child is blissful; the parents, if they are present, appear impossibly happy with their lives. Perhaps they are. But what I want is the sobbing child, the father with the eyes of Cronus. What I want is some dose of reality, the miniature Jesus baby spit out into tired, trembling hands.
- The last document the hospital asked us to sign before we could take our daughter home included a paragraph about “what to do if you feel the urge to shake your baby.” Step 1: even if they are screaming, place your baby in their crib or bassinet. Step 2: walk into another room. I don’t remember Step 3. It probably included a strategy about what to do when aggression far outweighs your baby’s cuteness. As we signed the document, I couldn’t imagine new parents breaking down to the point of shaking their babies. After our first sleepless nights with our cute, miniature noise machine, I started to understand how people could break down. This realization terrified me.
- Accurate representations of reality aren’t the only reasons why we aren’t showing our baby’s face on social media. According to several sources, “digital kidnapping” of babies is on the rise. This form of identity theft involves strangers using images of your baby in baby role playing exercises. Some people will even claim your baby as their own. I suppose this is digital consumption writ large, a modern-day version of Hansel being led to a boiling pot of unsavory digital desires.
- During our 26th week of pregnancy, our baby was the size of a cabbage. To commemorate her ascent into cruciferous vegetables, I quartered a head of cabbage before sautéing it with apple cider vinegar, garlic, salt, and pepper. I served it with sausage and apples glazed in brown sugar and cinnamon.
- Our daughter will soon be six weeks old and things are getting easier. Last night, during an especially intense bout of cute aggression, I looked at my daughter learning to roll over on her stomach and said, “I could just eat you up!” Then, I pictured her burgeoning baby rolls as stuffed cabbage filled with ground beef and onions. I felt a weird mixture of revulsion and adoration.
- If my wife had died in the hospital, what would I feel towards my child? Spite, anger, resentment? Or would I be overwhelmed with cute aggression bordering on rage? During the pregnancy, we joked that our daughter was a parasite consuming my wife from the inside out, a bloodsucker whose life seemed inversely proportional to my wife’s well-being. When viewed this way, I can no longer see my daughter as a sweet potato. Or a cucumber. Or a cherry.
- We crave “baby” foods. Baby carrots. Baby lettuce. Baby cauliflower. You name it. Until the 19th century, people called these immature tender offshoots of mature crops “young” vegetables. Then, someone decided to move the nursery into the frying pan. Now, you can slide baby Bok choy into your shopping cart next to dry-aged steak. If your gastronomical nursery-love extends farther than leafy greens into baby meat, you might mosey up to the butcher counter for veal. I rarely eat veal. That said, I’d be lying if I didn’t prefer its mild, tender sweetness to the beef of older bovines. If I have a plate of veal Bolognese steaming in front of me, I try to block out the image of the 20-week-old calf pulled into the slaughterhouse.
- What are the ethics of eating babies? In the 1980s, animal rights activists pointed towards veal as evidence of human depravity. Then, the consumption of baby calves became more “humane.” According to an article published in Tasting Table, most veal calves in the US are reared on small, family-owned farms where they “lead a much better life than those raised for beef” (Sherman, Amy. “Is Veal OK to Eat?”.) Moreover, given their size, veal calves don’t need as much water and nutrients – and don’t produce as much excrement – as full-grown cows. This makes rearing veal calves “better” for the environment.
- Our daughter has a picture book of baby farm animals. On page four, we point to the baby calf grazing beside its mother and say “mooooo.” Then, we nibble around our daughter’s neck and wrists.
- From an evolutionary perspective, “cuteness” can be just as beneficial as cleaver-sharp fangs or microscopic eyesight. According to many evolutionary biologists, a baby’s cuteness functions as a survival mechanism. In other words, we’re driven to care for animals and objects we deem “cute.” But remember: the cuter the baby, the stronger the aggression.
- One night my friend, who’s not an evolutionary biologist, argued – over several rounds of beer – that cuteness is the reason why new fathers don’t consume their babies out of hunger, a lack of resources, or because like Cronus, they perceive their children as social threats. We laughed, but a few weeks later I dreamt that our OBGYN handed me a plate, utensils, and dining napkin in our birthing room.
- The need to preserve vs. the drive to destroy is at the heart of cute aggression. Do we preserve through destruction or destroy through preservation? When I was five, a drunk driver hit us north of Memphis, causing our Jeep Grand Cherokee to spin through the air like olives in a food processer. Though my brother, father, and I survived, the drunk driver killed my mother instantly. My father drank heavily for the next decade, consuming us with his grief and self-hatred. At times, I felt like the god Pluto with his torso halfway down Cronus’ gullet. Drinking no doubt destroyed my father, but I’d be lying if I said it also didn’t preserve him – if only until the next morning/afternoon/night.
- Over the course of two months, I’ve repeated “I am a good father,” “I am a good father,” I am a . . .” more times than I can count. I don’t know who I’m trying to convince – me or my daughter.
- The consumption of one’s offspring is quite common in the animal world. Zoologists have observed chimpanzee and lion fathers killing and eating their young when they 1. Don’t believe they are the father and 2. Lack the resources to raise their offspring. Hamsters also occasionally cannibalize their newborns. Zoologists speculate this occurs because the mother hamster lacks essential vitamins and minerals. Again, preservation often entails destruction.
- This is my confession: two mornings ago, around 4:30 AM, my daughter began flailing her arms and legs like a miniature tube man outside of a used car company. She then started crying and wouldn’t stop – even after I’d fed her and burped her and swaddled her and sang to her and hushed her and changed her and took fifteen laps around the house. Even after I read Shel Silverstein to her. Then, as if my neurons were filled with powder kegs, the drive to shake her exploded in my mind. I immediately put her in her crib and sat down on the couch and started crying. The need to preserve vs. the urge to destroy. Something about being a good father.
- Though I didn’t read this poem to my daughter, Shel Silverstein’s poem “Dreadful” makes light of child cannibalism. Here’s the second stanza:
Someone ate the baby.
It’s absolutely clear
Someone ate the baby
‘Cause the baby isn’t here.
We’ll give away her toys and clothes
We’ll never have to wipe her nose.
Dad says, “That’s the way it goes.”
Someone ate the baby.
At the end of the poem, we learn that the speaker, presumably the baby’s father, consumed the baby. The poem’s tone is one of quiet elation – what Hansel and Gretel’s mother likely felt as she led her children to the witch’s cauldron. (Silverstein, Shel. “Dreadful.” Where the Sidewalk Ends. HarperCollins Children’s Books, 1978.)
- I stopped keeping track of our baby’s size food comparison during the 28th week. That week, our daughter morphed into spaghetti squash, and I baked a lasagna with the vegetable. I don’t know why I stopped tracking our daughter’s growth at the 28th week mark. Perhaps it’s because the 28th week signaled the start of the third trimester and our daughter finally seemed real – at least to me, the non-birthing partner who had the privilege of not carrying our daughter for seven months, of not feeling the nausea and cramps and utter limitations of pregnancy. For my wife, our daughter felt real almost from the outset. This is the privilege of the non-birthing partner: the ability to live life for nine months as if gestation is nothing but a folktale.
- While looking at our daughter’s last ultrasound a few days before delivery, I couldn’t help but think of her head as a pile of mashed potatoes. That night, I ate meatloaf surrounded by molehills of mashed potatoes
- Our daughter is seven weeks old today. Last night, for the first time, she slept a solid six hours and woke up smiling. I said “dada” over and over while cradling her. I thought of my own father’s patience as he held me when I was two months old. Were there times when he resented me? Almost definitely. Did his love outweigh his resentment? The answer, I think, is yes, unequivocally.
- I don’t know if I’ll ever know what it means to be a “good” father. All I can do in the inaccurate ledger of fatherhood is to make sure my acts of preservation far exceed my acts of destruction. All I can do is embody love whenever I can.
- Before my stepmother arrived in our lives, my father raised us as a single parent. I didn’t ask him about the experience until two weeks ago – thirty-four years after my mother’s death. “How the hell did you do it?” I asked him. He put down his beer and looked me hard in the eyes. “You don’t have the option to fail,” he said. “You do the best you can. Or at least you try.”
- As I hold my daughter, I tell myself I’m a good father. I repeat this as I change her diapers and make her bottles. I say this, and though I may not yet fully believe it, I’m starting to understand the nature of undying love, how in fatherhood, successes are inseparable from failures. I tell myself I’m a good father as I dice an onion for the Bolognese my wife and I will eat tonight while our daughter sleeps in her bassinet. And when she wakes and flails and inevitably cries, I will hold our daughter and think of a love that consumes us – what Andrew Marvel calls “vegetable love” in “To His Coy Mistress.” It is a love that is slow and expansive, growing like cauliflower or beefsteak tomatoes in the sweat-soaked gardens of summer, sustaining us like fatherhood – however beautiful and dirty and real.
Joshua Martin is an assistant professor of English at Tusculum University. The winner of the 2024 Pinch Literary Award in Poetry, his poetry and nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming The Pinch, storySouth, The Bitter Southerner, Baltimore Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Gray, TN with his wife, daughter, and two cats.
8 August 2024
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