Lamentation 2 by Anne de Marcken

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It turns out it would have been snowing on your birthday. Large soft flakes fly up like down, and later corn snow bounces off my black coat. And it would have been raining. And it would have been sunny. And the wind comes up. And then it drops. It is warm. And then it is cold. At around three o’clock it grows so dark it looks much later. But then the sun comes out again. When truly it is dusk I don’t know for sure. Today isn’t a real day. This is the space for a day that didn’t happen. This is all the weather that might have been. All the stories of yourself I might have told you.

I go leafing through journals, mine and famous people’s, looking for entries with this date. I become afraid I will find something and stop. Nothing else should ever have happened.

The sound of a crow in the fog.

Here are three questions:

Why were the embryos photographed on that blue background? 

Why were the embryos photographed at all? 

Which one were you? 

Because the embryos are photographed on a Hockney blue background, there is a swimming pool. And because there is a swimming pool, there is a woman in a red one-piece swimsuit. And because there is a swimsuit, there is the bathhouse. And because there is the bathhouse, there are certain smells: of pee, of saltwater, of bone white seashells, of sunlight, of grey wood. Because of the seashells, there is the brittle brownblack of dried rockweed. And because of that, there are rosa rugosas. And because of rosa rugosas, there is a small blue glass bowl. And the blue glass bowl means there is a nightstand. And the nightstand means there is a dark gap across which I have to reach. And because of the thing that might grab my wrist, there is a hand mirror. And because of the hand mirror, there is a bloody nose. And because of the bloody nose, there is the question of self-mutilation. And because of that question, there is the feeling of having made everything up.

Self-doubt must be the kernel at the center of every hopeful endeavor. To fully trust my intuition is wicked or crazy. To believe what I knew: The baby will die. Crazy, also, to feel when you did: Yes, that’s right.

I read Jane Eyre when I am eleven and learn that it is bad luck to dream of a baby. Also bad to be crazy. You will be kept in an attic and eventually set yourself on fire. 

Answers:

Because that blue is not a background, a surface, but an endless depth. 

Because potential is proof. 

That one.

Is it because of the doll named Julia that I would rather not have the parts that I would rather not have? Her uncanny hair. But especially the follicles. Perfectly round holes in her porcelain scalp. Not only did she not have a vagina, she had no body at all below the waist. 

I hate the word vagina. But I love opossums. Opossums have two vaginas.

A woman is a whole series of faintly disgusting words, vagina first and foremost. Who can make that word sound the way it should? Soft and endless as nine o’clock on a dystopian August night. I have really paid attention, but the best anyone can manage is to say it without hate.

My mother told me never to use the word hate.

I hate the word pregnant. Also womb. 

When you are pregnant, you place your hand on your abdomen. Your new body does not belong to you and is the body used by many women before you. Like an exam gown. It does not fit, but it does not matter. There is no privacy. It is designed to let people in. It is white with a repeating pattern of small nonrepresentational shapes. It is soft from many washings and dryings. You put your arms through the sleeves and tie the tie at your throat and the one at your belly button. It seems backwards. Your old body, your own body, goes in a bag. 

I kept careful charts of things about which I don’t like even to think.

I hate a low grey sky.

Or let’s say the bathhouse is my pregnant body. A private public space inside of which I stand naked looking at other people’s clothes hanging on pegs. Seeing the clothes of people I know without the people in them changes everything. I think about their bodies. On the top of the wall that does not go all the way to the ceiling, there is a swallow’s nest. The swallows fly in and out as if the sky is a door.

It is too bad about the word baby. Better words for you: Ladle. Candle. Soot. Salt. 

Because the end of the microscope’s perfectly round tunnel is a sky door. 

Because proof is potential.

Or that one.

It is Mothers’ Day—really—and we are eating at another Thai restaurant when the nurse calls to tell me I am pregnant. I go outside to take the call. Someone I know walks by and I think how strange it is that he will always be a part of the memory I am forming. I hang a hammock in the space between this moment and the moment I know is coming. I climb into the hammock. It is like being carried upstairs when you are not really asleep. A lie. But it feels so good to be held. 

Carry me.

Carry me.

I would not let my mother tie my shoes. I would not be picked up. I would not wear what was selected for me. My mother thought that when I was nine years old I would drown, but instead it was the year I learned to swim. Which brings me back to the bathhouse and the smell of pee. Which means there is a bathing suit turned inside out to dry. Which means there is a flesh-colored lining. Which means there is something appalling about the body. Which means I have only one friend. Which means I will lick the flavor off every Dorito chip before I eat it. Which means I won’t know how to take it when someone says I look like Jennifer Grey and someone else says Cyndi Lauper. Which means I will go too far one Fourth of July. Which means I will finally stop caring. 

Loss is license. The human animal wants to turn toward a wall, wants to walk away just walk away from that person who keeps talking talking. The human animal wants to squat and pee. Which brings me to the bathhouse again. As if it were the site of a pivotal scene I am always about to remember. 

Because the world was created by a swallow who flew through a hole in the top of the sky. 

Because seeing is believing. 

Or that one.

A rental car, a lawnmower, a turtle tattoo, a backyard, a waiting room with expensive magazines and an assortment of teas, a pedestrian bridge, a keypad, a cold-snap, an inflatable mattress, a conference room with glass walls, a small couch, ice packs, a thermometer, syringes, needles, dye, a lawyer who was a Patti Smith fan, a psychologist, decaf, an information session, blood tests, real plants, an unexpected death, a Buddhist monk, latkes, an acupuncturist, another waiting room, a slow elevator, the sweaters I knit for you instead of smoking.

It is during this time I accidentally discover that I like to sit in the car in the garage with the lights out. When I would open my eyes, it was the same darkness.

To look through my closed eyelids at the sun is to imagine I can see my own blood. To realize I am inside a pulpy red body. The bright possibility of harm pressed against my eye. Like looking through the dark tunnel of a microscope at my own cells. Make a map of the spaces. The spaces make the sucking sound of a sigh played in reverse. The future runs in reverse. Water going back into a hose. A rock flying back into my hand. 

Let’s go back farther to the yellow tomato baby. The one I did not choose. The one I chose not to have. I did not feel empty after the abortion. I think maybe there was still some baby in there. A baby is like a morsel of food in the underworld. You cannot have even a speck. 

My cat absorbed her three kittens before they could be born. Dismantled them. Organism to organ to cell. Multiplied her nine lives by their number. Cell into cells. Cats can do this, and everyone I tell is amazed not horrified. 

I fall down the stairs head first. I fall from the top bunk. I put on my lifejacket upside down. I eat mistletoe berries. I eat bitter blue cat pills. I get seven stitches. I get three stitches. I don’t have two babies. How many deaths have I got in me?

You’re not supposed to eat in the underworld and you’re not supposed to look over your shoulder. These are early lessons. But it is like things down there are just trying to slip into your mouth. And I like it in the rooty tunnels. Anesthesia. The utter absence. I imagine that to die will be like surgery that lasts forever. I suppose I like it only because I return from it. I feel about it the way I think you should feel about a vacation—sorry to come back. No. Sharper than that. Regret. I want to go back under. Return me to the dark.

How old was Persephone when she went down for the first time? Young, surely. And then every year after that. To die every year. It can’t have been as easy as counting backwards. 

The last time I came back, I came back empty. I went down with you and left you there. It was a relief to be only myself again. It was okay to not care about anyone. Not anyone. It was okay to turn toward a wall. 

Because when you are in the underworld, the sky you imagine is cloudless.

But belief is the opposite of proof. 

Or you were the same one as the one before.

We waited and watched for weeks. When finally there was no flutter, the doctor asked us if we wanted a copy of the ultrasound. The printer malfunctioned and it took three nurses to pull loose the crumpled black-and-white image. 

Think of the Daguerreotype portraits they used to make of dead babies, perfect in their christening gowns because they did not move during the long exposure. You could smudge away the silver halide surface with your fingertip. 

I was given three lucky charms: a small dish of salt, a tie clip, and a white silk scarf blessed by a Buddhist monk. 

What if once I thought the wrong thing while holding the tie clip in my palm? What if once I did not bring it with me? What if it had a dark history? What if the tie clip was worn on the day of a terrible disappointment? What if salt, according to some system of belief, is an ill-omen, a curse? What if I found the white silk scarf with its damask pattern ugly? What if a blessing is a thing I cannot, no matter how hard I try, believe? 

First stars. Shooting stars. Eyelashes. Dandelion clocks. Birthday candles. Things on which you can wish.

Clare Agnes. Alba June. Audrey. Aubrey. Agnes. Gus, short for Augustus. Names you might have had.

Poppy seed. Sesame seed. Lentil. Blueberry. And blueberry still when you should have been a grape, a kumquat, a fig. The size of you.

I think there may be something you get for every skip of a stone. If you find a penny, pick it up. Heads you keep it. Tails you gift it. If I find more than one penny in a single day, the luck is diluted. If I find a folded dollar bill, I smile. If it is a twenty, I feel like a thief. 

I wondered, do I return the tie clip now that it has failed? Was it a gift no matter what, or on condition of the hoped for outcome? For a long time I kept the dish, though not the salt. I wished I had left it in the parking garage. I wrote a story in which I did leave it there, but I later changed that part. 

There are some choices that seem like important choices. But every choice must count.

I used to blow an eyelash from the tip of my finger, but now I drop it between my breasts. 

Everything that exists can be considered permanent or temporary. Right now it seems to me that only an event is permanent. A thing that happened will always have happened. But the thing itself is temporary. The things I do will always have been done. But the things I create will pass away. 

The baby I — I stumble. 

The baby I chose not to have. And the baby I chose to have. Were you the same baby, like the same trick, the same story, told at two different times? You are half-sibling conjoined twins that share the same heart (mine). Good monster, today you would have been this old. Or, alternately, this old.

The future is a perilous landscape of mirages. The future is a history of fantasies. 

Because that blue existed first in my imagination 

and I do not believe

you were ever here. 

How I grieved: I am a woman given a white room filled with clear breakable things and left alone to destroy them, cutting herself in the process. The surveillance footage does not have any audio. It took three nurses many attempts to put in the IV. 

Is this nothing, or is it everything? Am I being dramatic? 

Did I never return? 

Am I down there?

This is the feeling of not feeling the feeling that I am feeling. The feeling of something that is heavy and does not fall straight down. 

Guilt or anger or snow.

Snow at night.

Snow is not silent.

So few people seem really to know about snow. It makes me tired. Who else has held her ear to the drift and heard the pile-up. As in collision. As in wreck. 

I am not sad I don’t have you. I am just sad. I am wrecked.

How I wish I’d grieved: I don’t bathe, just swim in the sea. My hair never quite dries. There is a fine sand of salt on my skin. When I lick my lips, they are salty. I sleep in the bathhouse. It is everything I could ever need. A room with a roof over one half and sky over the other. A room with a bench built into the wall. A room with pegs built into the wall. A room with a swallow nest up in the ceiling and swallow poop on the floor. A room with a few long grasses growing up between the floorboards. A room almost as much outside as inside. 

Still, I don’t know what to do with all the sweaters I knitted for you. I am smoking as I write this.

I do not know where I put the tie clip. I’m going to go look for it right now. 

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Anne de Marcken’s credits include multimedia installations, short and feature-length films, and hybrid fictions and realities of various lengths. Winner of The Novel Prize, her book It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over will be published simultaneously by New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions and Giramondo in March of 2024. She is also author of the lyric novella, The Accident: An Account (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020), and her writing has been featured in Best New American Voices, Ploughshares, Narrative, Entropy, Glimmer Train, Southern Indiana Review, on NPR’s Selected Shorts and elsewhere. She is an Artist Trust Fellow and recipient of the Howard Frank Mosher Prize for Short Fiction, the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Prize, the Mary C. Mohr Short Fiction Award and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award. Her work across disciplines has garnered grant and fellowship support from the Millay Colony, Jentel Foundation, Centrum, Artist Trust and the Hafer Family Foundation. De Marcken lives on the land of the Coast Salish people at the southern tip of the Salish Sea, where she runs the innovative press, The 3rd Thing.

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23 April 2024