Black Milk - Elif Shafak [22]
She is four and a half inches tall and weighs barely thirteen ounces. She wears casual, comfortable clothing: a breezy beige shirt, red boneframed glasses and a pair of brown linen pants with lots of pockets to keep everything at hand. On her feet are leather sandals; her dark blond hair is cut short so that it doesn’t need extra styling. Washing (shampoo and conditioner all in one) is good enough. Drying her hair would be one step too many.
“Yolla, Big Self,” she says cheerfully. “What happened to you? You look awful.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I grumble.
“What’s up, yo?” she asks. For some reason beyond my comprehension, she loves speaking in rapid-fire sentences peppered with slang, sounding like a street kid by way of Tucson.
“Oh, Little Miss Practical, you’ve got to help me,” I say.
“Nema problema! Help is on the way.”
“Did you hear the question Ms. Agaoglu asked me? I don’t know how to answer. Is it possible to be a good mother and good writer at the same time? Do I want to have kids? If not, why not? If so, when, why, how?”
“Hey, be easy, Sis,” she says as she pats her mouth dry with a napkin. “Don’t sweat the small stuff. One can be a writer and a mama, why not? All you need to do is to trust me.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll split your time into two chunks: writing time and nursing time.” She pauses with an impish smile, measuring my reaction. “That means you’ll have to start wearing a watch.”
“You know I never wear a watch,” I say. “Watches, the color white and wasabi . . . The three Ws I’d rather stay away from.”
“Well, there’s a W word you might welcome,” she says mysteriously. “Because it happens to be the answer to your problem.”
“What is it?”
“Winnowing!”
Seeing me draw a blank, she laughs. “Separating the grain from the chaff,” she remarks. “That’s exactly what you need to do.”
Again I look vacantly: Again she smiles with confidence as if she has the pulse of the world under her finger.
“Think of it this way, Sis. The human brain is like a set of kitchen drawers. The cutlery is placed in one drawer. The napkins in another. And so on. Use the same model. When you are nursing, open the ‘motherhood’ section. When you are writing, pop open the ‘novelist’ one. Simple. Close one drawer, use the other. No confusion. No contradictions. No fretting. All thanks to winnowing.”
“Wow, that’s splendid, but there is a small detail you left out: While I’m writing, who will take care of the baby?”
“As if that’s a problem,” she says with a snort. “Hello. The age of globalization is here. Snap your fingers. You can find a nanny. Filipino, Moldavian, Bulgarian . . . You can even choose her nationality.”
Little Miss Practical thrusts her hand into one of her pockets and produces a paper. “Look, I’ve made a list of all the information you’ll need. Phone numbers of the nanny agencies, babysitters, nursery schools, pediatricians. You should also get an assistant to answer your e-mails. It’ll make life easier. And if you get a secretary and a tape recorder, you can stop writing altogether, ya’ mean?”
With a heavy heart I ask, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, instead of writing your novels, you can speak them. The recorder will tape your voice. Later, your secretary can type up the whole text. Isn’t it practical? That way you can finish a novel without having to leave the kid.”
“Just curious,” I say as calmly as I can manage. “How exactly am I going to afford a nanny, an assistant and a secretary?”
“Oh, you’re being so negative,” she says. “Here I’m offering practical