Black Milk

by Elif Shafak

  “Hmm, makes sense to me,” he says, suddenly serious. “We will be like East and West Berlin, remarkably different and previously independent but now surprisingly united.”

  Little Women, Big Hearts

  One of my favorite fictional female characters as a young girl was Jo in Little Women. Jo the writer. Jo the dreamer. Jo the romantic, adventuresome, idealist and independent sister. When her sister Amy burned her manuscript-her only copy-in an act of pure revenge, I was horrified. It took me a long time to forgive Amy-even though Jo herself wasn’t that innocent; after all, she had not invited Amy to a play and almost drowned her while ice-skating. At any rate, the story of the four March sisters during the American Civil War was so unlike my life as the child of a Turkish single mother, and yet many things were familiar-absent father, struggling with financial ups and downs, nonconformity to gender roles… That was the power of Louisa May Alcott’s words, to create a universal saga shared by millions everywhere. It takes no little magic to “zoom” a story written in the late nineteenth century to readers across the globe more than a hundred years later.

  A woman ahead of her time, a writer who held Goethe dear, Louisa May Alcott, too, favored Jo and was a bit like her: full of energy, ideas and motivation. The stories told in Little Women were highly reminiscent of her familial life as the second of four sisters. She keenly observed the people she met, absorbed the dialogues she heard and then incorporated them all in her stories. Always planning new books, living the plots in her head and scribbling whenever the inspiration struck, she was determined to earn her own money from writing. “I never had a study,” she once said. “Any paper and pen will do, and an old atlas on my knee is all I want.”

  When Little Women was published it brought its author fame and success beyond her modest expectations. Alcott wrote intensely, sometimes forgetting to eat or sleep. That her readers and critics wanted to see a sequel to the story must have both motivated and limited her. She had originally planned that Jo would not get married, earning her bread by the sweat of her own brow, but her publisher was of a different mind. Under constant pressure from him and others, a male character was introduced into Jo’s life: Professor Bhaer. And the reader knew Jo was torn between two impulses-her sense of responsibility toward her family and her desire to nurture her individuality and freedom. “I’ll try and be what he loves to call me, ‘a little woman,’ and not be rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else…” Struggling with her family’s expectations of her, Jo eventually chose marriage and domestic life instead of a career in writing-a drastic decision Alcott herself would have never made.

  Alcott regarded the matrimonial institution with suspicion. It was clear to her that women who wanted to stand on their feet would have a hard time adapting to conjugal life. “Liberty is a better husband than love to many of us,” she said, insinuating that sometimes the only way for a woman writer to find freedom was to remain a spinster.

  Her sister May-a creative, prolific painter who had chosen to live abroad-was happily married. She seemed like a woman who had achieved it all-a successful career and a good marriage. Louisa Alcott compared her loneliness with her sister’s fulfillment, saying, “she always had the cream of things and deserved it.” Unfortunately, May died shortly after giving birth to a baby girl. Her last wish was to send the baby-named Louisa May after her aunt and nicknamed Lulu-to her Aunt Louisa to be raised by her.

  So it was that Louisa Alcott, who never married, found herself raising the daughter of her sister. She gave her full love to this child and even wrote short stories for her, thus creating what later was to be named “Lulu’s Library.”

  There is a wonderful passage in the second volume of the Little Women series, which was titled Good Wives, where Alcott describes Jo’s, and I believe her own, urge to write fiction. I think it is one of the best descriptions ever written about the creative process and I can’t help but smile each time I read it: “She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh.” [12]

  Always a hardworking writer and a Chekhovian by nature, she said, “I don’t want to live if I can’t be of use.” That’s how she died, when she couldn’t write anymore due to old age, in Boston in 1888.

  Mary Ann Evans, born on November 22, 1819, was a shy, introspective and emotional child who loved to read and study. The story of her life is one of transformation-a journey that turned her into the restless, headstrong and outspoken writer known to everyone as George Eliot. When she was thirty-two years old, she fell in love with the philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes. He was a married man, but his was an “open marriage”-even by today’s standards. His wife, Agnes, had an affair with another man, and when she bore his child, Lewes was happy to claim the baby as his own. Though the couple remained legally married, they had ceased to see each other as husband and wife. Mary Ann and George lived together. She adopted his sons as her own. It wasn’t unheard-of in Victorian society for people to have relations outside of wedlock, but their openness about their love was simply scandalous.

  At a time when women writers were few, she not only wrote fiction to her heart’s content but also became the assistant editor of the Westminster Review. She called herself Marian Evans for a while, molding her name, seeing how it felt to have a masculine moniker. In her attempt to distance herself from the female novelists who produced romances, she decided that she needed a male pen name. To honor her love for Lewes, she adopted his name, George, and then picked out Eliot because it fit well with the first name.

  In 1856 Lewes sent a story titled “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton” to his publisher, claiming that it was written by a “clerical friend.” The publisher wrote back saying he would publish the story and congratulating this new writer for being “worthy of the honors of print and pay.” Thus began a new stage in Eliot’s literary career. She wanted to remain incognito as long as she could, enjoying the advantages of being anonymous, and thereby unreachable. Her nom de plume enabled her to transcend Victorian gender roles, and carve for herself a greater zone of existence.

  One evening at a party, Lewes read aloud a spellbinding story by Eliot and asked his guests to guess what kind of a person the author was. All of them came to the conclusion that the story was written by a man-a Cambridge man, well educated, a clergyman married with children. (Similar reactions were received when Eliot’s stories were sent to other writers. Only Charles Dickens thought the author had to be a woman. Only he got it right.)

  I love to imagine this scene: in a high-ceilinged apartment, a dozen or so guests sitting comfortably on cushioned sofas and armchairs, sipping their drinks, eyeing one another furtively as they listen to a story by an unknown author, their eyes rapt in the flames in the fireplace, their minds miles away as they try to guess the gender of the writer, and fail.

  In her popular masterpiece Middlemarch, which Virginia Woolf famously described as “one of the only English novels written for grown-up people,” Eliot created an impressive character named Dorothea. She is intelligent, passionate, generous and ambitious-in all probability a representation of the author herself. It is a constant disappointment to feminist scholars that neither Dorothea nor Eliot’s other female characters ever achieved the sort of success or freedom that she enjoyed. But does a woman writer need to create fictional role models to inspire her female readers? Like all good storytellers, Eliot found pleasure in combining challenge and compassion. “If art does not enlarge men’s sympathies it does nothing morally,” she wrote. Contrary to the common belief, she wasn’t someone who despised all things deemed to be womanly. Though she had masculine features, a cherished male pen name, a certain bias toward women writers and chutzpah that was, at the time, deemed fit for a man, she also enj
oyed her femininity to the fullest. It was this unusual blend that mesmerized those who met her in person.

  After the death of Lewes, she married a man twenty years her junior with whom she shared common intellectual ground. Like Zelda Fitzgerald she fell in love with brains first; like Ayn Rand she could be imposing in her private affairs. She died shortly afterward in 1880, at the age of sixty-one. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery in an area reserved for religious dissenters-even in death, not quite fitting in.

  Louisa May Alcott and George Eliot, two contemporary women writers with a common passion for storytelling, one of them regarded as the voice of feminine writing, and the other known as a defeminized author-both equally unconventional in their ways. They remind me, across centuries and cultures, that there are other paths for a woman than conventional marriage and motherhood. Perhaps marriage is less a legal arrangement or social institution than a book awaiting interpretation. Every reader brings his or her own gaze to the text, and ends up reading the story differently.

  One Blue, One Pink

  Two years after saying “I do” in Berlin, I’m shaking like a leaf on the bathroom floor in Istanbul. The tiles on the walls are painted emerald and streaked with dark green ivies that suit your mood perfectly when you feel like a leaf.

  I had spent the last year and a half teaching at the University of Arizona as a full-time tenure-track professor in Near Eastern studies. Moving from chilly Ann Arbor to sunny Tucson required a radical change in my wardrobe, which, thank God, consisted of two suitcases. During this entire time I had been commuting like crazy between Tucson and Istanbul, and now here I am, sitting with my back to the bathtub, taking deep breaths to calm my thumping heart.

  In my hand there is a tiny object. It feels odd to attribute so much importance to an object this small and plastic, but that is how it is. On the back of the box it came in it reads: “If two lines appear on the screen it shows pregnancy. One single blue line indicates lack of it.”

  But at the moment I avoid looking at the screen, focusing instead on every other trivial detail, such as the date of expiration and the place of manufacture. It is made in China. That is why it cost me one-third of the price of the other home pregnancy test kits at the drugstore. I wonder how reliable it is. Doesn’t it say in the newspapers that Chinese toys can cause allergies? How about Chinese test kits, could they give false positives?

  More curious about the reliability of the product in my hand than my own physical condition, my gaze slides down to the small white screen. Relief. Oh, good. There is only one line. Blue. I wasn’t ready for the second line. I can go now. But there is a nagging suspicion at the back of my mind, and something tells me not to hurry, not so soon. Then, just as I feared, taking its sweet time, the pink line appears.

  Why doesn’t the pink line come first and then the blue one? Or why don’t they appear simultaneously? There would be less anticipation that way and far less apprehension. Have the Chinese manufacturers designed it this way to make it more exciting for women?

  It takes me a few minutes to stop quarreling with the Chinese manufacturers and acknowledge my situation. Slowly but surely my mind recognizes what my heart has already accepted: I am pregnant.

  Now what? I need to talk with someone but whom? The first thought that pops into my head is to consult with the finger-women. Yet I quickly abandon the idea. I can’t tell them anything yet. Especially not Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, who, I fear, will tear the walls down. Nor Miss Highbrowed Cynic, I definitely can’t tell her either. Even talking to Dame Dervish sounds like a lame idea. She will not give me advice to solve this predicament; instead she’ll want me to figure it out on my own. But I am far too panicked for that.

  Who can I speak to if I can’t speak to them?

  That’s when I recall Mama Rice Pudding. She is the only one among the Thumbelinas who knows anything about babies and pregnancies. But where is she now? How is she doing? I haven’t spoken to her since that night under the Brain Tree. I need to see her urgently. But will she talk to me? I’m sure she is still quite upset and will not respond if I send her an invitation. I guess I should go and find her.

  Once again, I take a flickering candle and descend into the labyrinth of my soul. Again, I find it very confusing down here, where there are no road signs, no traffic lights. I don’t know where Mama Rice Pudding lives and can’t imagine what her house looks like.

  After an hour of toiling I find her house. It is made out of a milk carton, complete with lace curtains and pots filled with tulips, carnations and hyacinths on its window ledge. I press the doorbell. It chirps a merry tune of singing birds.

  “What do you want?” she asks when she opens the door and sees me.

  She is wearing a rose-patterned dress and has her hair done up with multihued clips. She seems to have gained a bit more weight. On her feet are fuchsia-colored slippers with pompoms. She wears a red and white polka-dotted kitchen apron that has “Super Cook” written across the top. A divine smell wafts from inside the house. Something sweet and fruity.

  “I want to apologize for breaking your heart,” I say meekly. “I don’t know how to make it up to you, and I fear that now it might be too late. It is just that there is something urgent we need to talk about. May I come inside?”

  “Sorry,” she says frostily. “I’m kind of in a rush and don’t have time for you.”

  She looks over her shoulder toward her kitchen counter, as if she were about to slam the door in my face. Perhaps she is.

  “I have food on the stove,” she says. “I’m making beef kebab with artichokes. It is a special recipe that requires maximum attention. I’m also preparing strawberry marmalade. If it boils for too long the sugar will crystallize. I need to go back to my work.”

  “Wait, please.”

  Words get clogged in my throat, but I manage to utter an intelligible sentence: “Look, I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. I need someone to talk to, but the other finger-women won’t understand. Only you can help me.”

  “And why is that?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “Because I am pregnant.”

  The door springs wide open, a shriek of delight pierces the air and out runs Mama Rice Pudding, her face blossoming with life, her arms open wide. She jumps up and down with joy. I have never seen anyone receive news with so much glee, and for a second, I fear she has lost her mind.

  “Congratulations!” she yells, staring at me wide-eyed, like a child at a circus.

  “Listen to me, please. My mind is so confused I don’t know what to do or how to feel. I guess I wasn’t prepared for this, you know.”

  “Great! Fabulous! Oh, bless you!” she yells again. “Come on in, let me give you some food. You need to eat more now.”

  During the next hour I do nothing but gobble. Though she cannot convince me to eat meat, she makes me devour a generous slice of raspberry cheesecake, and then pushes into my mouth homemade pastries and spoonfuls of marmalade. When she is fully convinced that I cannot possibly eat another morsel she leans back, suddenly serious.

  “Well, well. So this is the way of things,” she says. “So you want my help?”

  I don’t like the change in her voice, but I nod all the same.

  “All right, I will help you. But there is one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  “There will be a change in the political regime. We are no longer living under martial law, is that understood? We are done with the coup d’état.”

  “Sure, of course,” I say like a good sheep. “I have always wanted the Choir of Discordant Voices to move toward a full-fledged democracy. This will be the beginning of a new era.”

  “About that…” she says, suddenly having a coughing fit.

  “Did something get stuck in your throat?”

  Mama Rice Pudding gathers herself upright. “I need to make something very clear,” she says. “I am not advocating democracy here. Actually, I want to go back to a monarchy again, except this tim
e I will be the queen.”

  She must be joking. I’m about to scoff but something in her eyes stops me midway.

  “Was there democracy when I was being oppressed?” she asks. “Why should I condone a democratic state now that I’m in charge? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Time to hoot my toot!”

  Suddenly I find her irritating, almost scary.

  “Go and make me a golden crown,” she says. “Those two crazies of yours are no longer in power. I’ll have them rot in Alcatraz!”

  “There is an Alcatraz inside me?” I ask.

  “No, but I will build one,” she roars. “Finally the tables have turned! Je suis l’état! [13]”

  On my way back, I stop by Miss Highbrowed Cynic’s house and break the news to her. She listens without a word, her face as pale as a white sheet. Together we go to Milady Ambitious Chekhovian’s apartment and warn her about the upcoming takeover.

  “You can’t just get rid of us just like that,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, the strength in her voice missing.

  “You can’t do this to us,” repeats Miss Highbrowed Cynic like a nervous parrot.

  “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.