Figure 13-9 - Another Excerpt From a Work in Progress
Another excerpt from my larval novel, which seems to stand okay on its own. Enjoy.
“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to know the gender?”
“It’s not like I’m keeping the thing. I don’t need anything that’s going to give me any more of an attachment than I already have to it.”
The obstetrician wiped V.’s abdomen clean of the gel with a disposable cloth.
“I don’t feel that your attitude towards having a child is particularly healthy, even if it’s a surrogate pregnancy.”
“It’s a job for me.” V. sat upright and lowered her blouse. “Just a way to make my way through school.”
“Do you know why the biological parents haven’t been to any of these appointments?”
“Geography.”
“By the way, V., you’re measuring a little over a week ahead. I’m going to move your due date up a week. You’re officially twenty-seven weeks along.”
V. made a vaguely celebratory gesture and left without a word.
This is about length. How far can one go? How long can one last?
V. sat on the sofa in her apartment. V. lifted her legs and laid herself on the width of the sofa, placing a pillow behind her lower back. V. opened up a large, well worn leather notebook, filled to the brim with text written in various widths and colors of ink, though all in the same hand. There was no place left to add any more substantial amounts ink to the pages. It contained five years of her life from the second half of her sophomore year of high school, to the end of last year. It’s not so much a journal as it is a record of her mental state. V. did not record events, she recorded her moods, her ideas, her fantasies and her fears. Somewhere in the middle of the notebook, around the summer before going off to college, she drew a large fetus in a womb, a detailed tracing of an etching of an old anatomy book from the library labeled “Figure 13-9.” On the page before, she mused on names for a potential child, settling at last upon the statement: “The father can pick a name. I’m out of ideas.” Under the womb/fetus tracing is the caption: “For someone else to do. Why can’t we just grow babies in bottles like in Brave New World?” Somewhere in the middle of V.’s womb, the child turned and kicked at its enclosure. V. placed the notebook down atop her abdomen, and tried to stay as still as possible, daring the child to kick again, shift the notebook, do anything to disturb her further. “I need to get out of this room.”
To V., the most frustrating thing about pregnancy—by far—was the restrictions it placed on her. Bundled up against the cold, she drank a cup of decaffeinated coffee, sitting in the park at 18th and Center. Someone was on her mind. The coffee was cold comfort. She wanted something bad for her: a cigarette, a cup of real coffee, a shot of whisky, or a long drag on a joint. Why, however, was unclear. She’d never been a drinker. She tried smoking twice, tobacco once and marijuana once. Neither appealed to her. She wasn’t even much of a coffee fan before this. If she could only crave pickles and ice cream like a normal person… She could play the avoidance game too. Someone was on her mind. She’d spent a lot of time with… a lot of time in this park, on the riverfront, in little book and record stores, trying to maintain interest, but glad to be with him. She’d spent a lot of time without him, a lot of time with others, but they didn’t feel the same. Nothing felt the same, though it never felt right with that someone either. The child kicked and fluttered.
The phone cord, she recalled, was surprisingly cold against her breasts.
