Black Milk - Elif Shafak [77]
“There is nothing I can do,” I remark. “This pregnancy has changed everything. As of this moment the coup is over.”
First there was an oligarchy, then it was a coup d’état, inside me.
Now a monarchy has come to the Land of Me.
PART FIVE
Beautiful Surrender
Pregnancy Journal
Week 5
Today Mama Rice Pudding has ascended to the throne. She walks around with a crown on her head, and in her hand she carries a scepter no larger than a matchstick. To look taller, she has taken to wearing high heels. When she needs to go from one place to another, I carry her on a palanquin. The timid, rosy-cheeked woman I met on the plane has vanished. In her place is a tyrant.
Her Majesty the Queen’s first act has been to create a new constitution. The first clause reads: “Motherhood is Holy and Honorable, and it should be treated as such.” Unquestionable, untouchable, unchangeable.
As of now, even the tiniest criticism against marriage or motherhood will be punished by law. Simone de Beauvoir’s books have been seized and burned in a huge bonfire. Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Anaïs Nin, Zelda Fitzgerald and Sevgi Soysal are strictly banned. I am not allowed to read any one of them during my pregnancy.
There is only one book Mama Rice Pudding allows me to keep nearby.
“Read Little Women. It will remind you of the importance of familial ties and thus prepare you for motherhood,” she says.
“But I read that a long time ago,” I complain.
“Just go over it again, then.”
I understand that for Mama Rice Pudding there is no difference between reading a book and knitting a sweater. Just as you can knit the same pattern over and over, make the same recipe for years on end, you can also be content with a few books on your bookshelf and “go over them” again and again.
Week 6
This week I have learned that “morning sickness” need not be in the mornings. It can happen anytime.
“Mama Rice Pudding, I feel tired and sleepy all the time—as if I’ve been carrying a sack of stones,” I say. “How will I bear it?”
She hits her scepter on the ground with a thud so loud that the earth trembles under my feet.
“You will bear it just like our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers did. What of the peasant woman who gives birth in the fields after a hard day of work? She cuts the umbilical cord with any available instrument and without a single complaint goes back to hoeing the crop.”
Do I look like a heroic peasant woman? I can’t even tell barley from buckwheat, but I dare not remind her of this.
“Be grateful that you haven’t come to this world as an elephant,” says Mama the Queen. “If you were a female elephant you would be pregnant for twenty-two months! Thank your lucky stars!”
Sad for not being a peasant woman but happy for not being an elephant: That is the sum of my mood this week.
Week 8
I am not interested in food, only in snacks. And since most snacks are stuffed with calories, I am afraid I will end up like the plump woman on the steamboat.
In order to snack more healthily I do some shopping: low-fat biscuits, low-fat pretzels, low-fat milk, low-fat yogurt, low-fat cheese—and unsalted rice crackers. When I get home, Mama Rice Pudding jumps off her throne and inspects my grocery bag.
“What is this?”
“Nothing, just a few things to nibble on,” I say.
She catapults my bag out the window.
“For shame! You should be embarrassed! No salt, no sugar, low fat, no fat. What is this? Are we running a weight-loss clinic here? Is that Blue Belle Bovary messing with your head? Don’t you dare listen to that hussy!”
Befuddled and hurt, I consider how best—or whether—to answer her.
“Your only priority is to eat what is good for the child,” she concludes. “So what if your figure changes from size eight to size twenty, who cares?”
My cheeks burn with guilt. Could she be right? Have I put my looks ahead of the health of my child? Her Majesty the Queen teaches me a deep human truth—that motherhood has a pen name: guilt.
Just to be rid of this guilt, I go and eat a huge box of hazelnut cookies. And I don’t even like