Your Honor by Annie Bartos

Even though I was cast as Alice, stumbling upon a vessel labeled “drink me” felt salacious. I knew I shouldn’t have raised it to my lips. Maybe it was Catholic school. Maybe my fear of God was already cemented. Conflated with my fear of falling. Down the rabbit hole. Into an underground maze that terminated at dead ends. Diabolical.

It felt sinful. It did. But the script told me to drink it despite the scathing gaze of the congregation. It was written. 

Had I known that curious sip would mark the time in which the threads of my frail ecosystem began to unravel, I might have declined. But that time has come and gone. Far worse crimes have been committed since then. Lord knows I have anguished. Begged for forgiveness. Scattered my sins in the sea. But it is now the hour to stand trial for the transgressions I have made. The most momentous. The least excusable. The day I’ve been led to dread, hosted by a punitive judge and prejudiced jury. 

Before we begin, you must know my Lord, your Honor, that I have historically been deceived by your dogma. Scared by your sanctity. You seem to be no one, and everyone, and someone. A holy trinity of judgement. You hold power I can’t see, nevertheless touch. Your firm grip destroyed my sense of solidarity some time ago. Still, I seek your acceptance despite your disparaging disapproval. I may be foolish to take the bait you offer of repentance. Your court typically holds empty promises for redemption. But maybe you have come to realize that revelation could be revolutionary. Therefore, I acquiesce. You may call your court to order. Let the persecution commence.

I am guilty, your Honor, of that fateful sip. I have great regret. Substantial shame. 

I was deluded to believe that my body was a temple: a fecund female sanctuary for my scion. I now know that is a fallacy. My body is less, not more, than a seething cemetery essaying to survive. My mourning mind stays, bears witness, indulges in sorrow. There is nowhere to escape the suffering. It is all inside: the sensation of death that once was life. 

I will myself to stay. Alive. In my cells. To my chagrin, I’m trapped by the ghost of possibility. Singed by the wrath of your God. Burned to my core. 

Decisions demand violence which violates any sense of volition. It is all divine decree. That takes humility to believe, which is in short supply, I know.   

Temples should be shelters, should they not? Sacred spaces solely for the serious. To sit in full surrender to the sound of silence. 

But the brash heart beating! The swoosh of blood rushing! The droll laughing, singing, crying, breathing! Good thing babies can’t differentiate the droning within their home. But I could. I heard it all. I asked all the convoluted questions and received all the knotty answers. All of which were savage. There is not a choice if there is no option, your Honor. The vessel was very clearly labeled, but the solution was opaque. What else was I supposed to do?

The clock was ticking. I concede, I felt him kicking from within my catacomb. His strong legs. His hiccups. His elbow nestled underneath my rib cage. If only my body could have given him asylum…

Alas. My sanctum was a painless prison, which only prolonged the inevitable torment of living he was never intended to endure, fooling him with a sense of safety. Fresh air is eventually fundamental for survival. Yet, the air beyond my ocean was his deathtrap.

My desire to sustain him was defeated. He was doomed. Demise was his destiny. And I was disinclined to be his morbid midwife. He was languishing. And I was liable to save him.

Some surgeries are sacrilegious. Others are salvation. Sometimes both. Simultaneously. 

I confess: all of this is hellish to swallow. I would recast the outcome if I could. But my time as Alice taught me the myth of free will. How there never was one. I never consented to any of the madness. Nor would my own child. To spare him, I extracted his choice to suffer, and I seized it as my own, on my own, for the rest of my time on this earth. 

Therefore, I repeat and condense my simple story, your Honor. I was born a mother to safeguard my children. I failed. My sentence is written in stone, which should never have been yours to rule. I have nothing left to sacrifice. Mortality is my truth. This diatribe is my pitiful penance. 

Annie Bartos is a writer and an academic. She has taught in geography, gender studies, environmental management, global studies, and comparative history of ideas in Auckland and Seattle. She is currently living near the Salish Sea and working on an MFA in creative nonfiction. Find her writing at www.anniebartos.com