P.s. We're listening to Kate Nash's Album Girl Talk. Is it just me, or is it a little tuneless and shouty? Reminds me of spoken word poetry. I find it hard to like, but my sister is bopping along visibly empowered, so Nash must be doing something right.
The Clockwork Women
We wait in a
room that smells of wipes and cleaned up shit. The heels of our painfully tight
shoes tap together as we cross our hands at the wrist. Every face is the same,
a little pale, begging a night’s sleep, but wide awake, eyes nervously ticking.
Mostly either a little too wide or a little too slim of face, but I’m pretty
sure the bone structure will melt over the days to come under a spurt of flesh.
I clutch my standard issue handbag tighter, the white on my knuckles growing as
I clench. It is all so horribly slow.
Finally we
are ushered in, a big messy clump of heels against the linoleum floor. The
freckled redheads, the corn blondes, the mousy browns, all stand straighter,
their individual strokes of colours lost amongst the scraped back buns.
Somebody attempts not to cough, but creates a sudden splutter, a ripple as
people step away, and in the centre of this she starts to viciously rub
anti-bac over her hands, eyes glinting nervously at them. They stand watching
us, with flint faces that don’t even flicker. We vibrate with anticipation, but
not a word is said, the air is filled with the humming of anxious female minds.
I flex my fist; I’ve bustled my way to the front, others eye my enviously.
Probably they think me a worn out hag with an overlarge nose. I’ve borne so
many times my breasts are beginning to sag and my lips purse. I know how this
is going to go.
Suddenly,
with the elegant finesse of practise and distaste, one of them lifts off the
copper lid to reveal the spewing red liquid, Dozens of tiny bodies float about
the froth, too static for comfort, tiny hands open, ready to be grasped. We
pause for a breath, dust hangs in the air, and then we surge.
I elbow, I
push, and I collide the various stick like parts of my body with those of other
women. There is a satisfying yelp as I storm up the steps, mine and the feet of
many others clanging like an angry beast from the time of Gods. I’m the first
up, receive a gratuitous nod, and plunge my hand in; I’ve singled him out. Blond,
healthy looking, guaranteed survival. But as I reach, another tiny body
collides with my hand, and with a shock I feel it impregnate me. At once four
hands and a clench of fingers wrench me back causing me to stumble. Uneasy am I
with the unknown infant newly placed in my abdomen. Nobody at the heaving front
pays me any attention, but a couple round eyes at the back watch me, like
snakes lustily watching a pregnant sheep. I am taken by this sense of colossal
fullness not unbeknown to be, but all I think is ‘you’re not the right one,’
tapping my handbag impatiently.
I pay my
money at the desk, precious coins that could feed a thousand street brats.
‘Congratulations.’ Says the girl at the till, pushing my receipt into my hand,
eyes already on the next woman staggering forwards.
The pregnancy
is hard, like always. I stumble from room to room in a daze, my thin hips
heaving and breaking beneath me. Finally it is born, a crop of black hair on a
cold blue body. This is the fourth time, and I don’t watch it be wheeled out
the room. Instead I look at my hand as I close another finger down into the
fist. ‘One more chance’ I think; a growing chain of lives that never were
wrapping around the depressions and wrinkles on my body. There’s nobody home to
watch me struggle back out to the shit scented rooms, ready and panting to do
my duty to our precious father land. Like a dog returning to the one who
brandishes the whip, I come for what I am owed by ancestral right, and what may
never be mine to possess.
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