Black Milk - Elif Shafak [62]
In late May, I am perusing the magazines in the waiting room of the Women’s Health Center while waiting for the kind, lanky gynecologist who has done all sorts of hormonal tests on me. Finally, the nurse calls me in.
“Here is an interesting case,” says the doctor as I walk into his office. “Feeling any better?”
“The same,” I say.
“Well, well, let’s see what we have here. . . .” says the doctor, inspecting the test results from behind his glasses. “Your hormone levels have come back fine, and so have the thyroid tests.”
“You are normal,” says the nurse next to him, as if she could not quite believe this.
“But, then, why don’t I menstruate anymore?”
“Under these circumstances there is only one answer,” the doctor responds. “Your brain has given your body the command not to.”
“Is that possible?” I ask incredulously.
“Oh, yes, it is very possible,” announces the doctor, squinting slightly, as if he were trying to peer into my soul. “You have to discuss this with your brain. I would, but I don’t know its language.”
“It’ll take us some time to learn Turkish,” says the nurse with a wink.
They chuckle in perfect synchronization—in the way that only people who have worked closely together for many years can manage. I, in the meantime, wait silently, unsure what to say.
“Could you tell me what you do for a living?” asks the doctor.
“I am a writer.”
“Ah, I see,” he says with brightened interest. “What kind of books do you write?”
This is a question I’d rather avoid. I don’t know exactly how to categorize my books, and I am not sure I even want to. In fact, this happens to be a thorny question for almost any writer who doesn’t produce within established genres, such as “romance” or “crime.” Fortunately, the doctor is less interested in my answer than in an idea that has just occurred to him.
“Think of your brain as a riveting, suspenseful detective novel,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
Then he lowers his voice as if revealing a terrible secret. “Your brain has kidnapped your body. . . .”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Now all you need to do is to tell it to stop. You can do this, believe me.”
“I am sorry, I lost the thread here. Is my brain a detective novel or the detective himself or the villain?”
He leans back, and heaves a deep, deep sigh. That’s when I realize, as nice a person as he is, the doctor is not good with metaphors. He tried to clarify things with a figure of speech, and ended up only complicating them more.
I don’t go looking for other doctors. Neither do I tell anyone about the strange diagnosis I have received. But I visit the Brain Tree regularly, searching for stoic serenity it cannot grant me. Caressing the sturdy, old roots that rise out of the ground, observing the leaves on its infinite branches, I renew my vow and watch my womanhood perish day by day.
Every morning I go to the library with Miss Highbrowed Cynic. We are as thick as thieves now. Everything progresses the way she and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian had planned. I’m always reading, always researching. Many a night I stay until the wee hours, hunched over books in an area flanked by two collections: English political philosophy and Russian literature. Whenever my eyelids droop, I take a nap on the brown leather couch that is situated between the two long rows of bookcases.
In my spare time I go to panels, which are plentiful in a place such as this: “The Plight of Women in the Third World,” “Feminism and Hip-Hop Culture,” “Female Characters in Walt Disney: Does Mickey Mouse Oppress Minnie?” and