Black Milk

by Elif Shafak

  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 hazelnuts.

  Week 12

  On TV Christiane Amanpour interviews AIDS orphans in Africa. The CNN crew has ducked into an adobe hut, placed their cameras on strewn straw. The landscape is harsh, unforgiving. With a napkin in my hand, I watch and cry.

  These days, all sorts of things bring me to tears. There is a pair of shoes-faded blue Converse sneakers-that dangles from the electric pole around the corner, and every time I pass by them I feel a sense of sorrow well up inside of me. I wonder who they belonged to. How did they end up there? Rain or shine, they are always there-by themselves, so vulnerable, so alone.

  It isn’t only the sneakers. Boys bullying one another at the playground, two stray cats fighting over a slice of meat in the garbage, the skinny Kurdish street vendor who sells chestnut kebabs with worms, the neighbor lady who beats her carpet out the window and showers the passersby with dust, the melting icebergs in Antarctica, the polluting of the atmosphere, the quagmire in Palestine, a piece of crushed bread on the ground. Everything, and anything, is so distressing. The world crumbles in my fingers like sandstone in the wind and my days are painted with melancholy.

  On the evening news they show a dog-a terrier puppy with brown ears and a white body. It has a huge, dazzling bow around its neck. Its owner is a retired chemistry teacher. As the lady chemist plays the piano, the puppy sits at her heels and begins to howl along.

  I watch the scene and my eyes fill with tears.

  “Why are you crying again?” asks Eyup, his famous patience wearing slightly thin.

  “Poor puppy,” I say, sobbing.

  “What is poor about that puppy? He is probably better fed than thousands of children who go to bed hungry every night.”

  “Thousands of children go to bed hungry every night,” I repeat, on the verge of tears.

  “Oh, God, I should never have opened my mouth,” Eyup says softly.

  He doesn’t understand me. How can I make him see that I feel bad for the puppy? I feel bad for all terriers with dazzling bows around their necks. Our lust for baubles of fame, our inability to cope with mortality, our expulsion from the Garden of Eden-my lungs fill with the heaviness of being a mere human. I can’t breathe.

  Week 16

  Mama Rice Pudding hands me a box of CDs. “Take these and listen to each of them at least three times,” she commands.

  I glance at the box and mumble, “But I don’t really like opera.”

  “They aren’t for you, they are for the baby,” she says as she starts the CD player and turns it up full blast. A second later Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers pours into the room and out into the entire neighborhood.

  The rug beater across the street pops her head out of her window and looks left and right trying to figure out where the deep male voice is coming from. Suddenly her face comes apart in terrible recognition that the music is coming from our apartment. Squinting her dark, piercing eyes, she peers through our window into my shivering soul.

  “Could you please turn the volume down?” I implore Her Majesty.

  “Why? The baby is getting her first taste of culture-and learning French. Do you know that babies can hear sounds while in the womb?”

  She puts on another CD. We hear the sound of rain hammering a tin roof, followed by the bleating of goats and the tinkling of bells in the distance.

  Aghast, I ask, “What is that?”

  “The peaceful sounds of Mother Nature,” says Mama Rice Pudding. “It is recorded specially for pregnant women. It has a soothing effect on them. A perfect nondrug sleep aid.”

  “I’m not having any problems falling asleep; actually I’m sleeping a lot,” I say, trying to reason, trying to stay calm.

  I don’t know about the baby, but these sounds are starting to piss me off. “Birds chirping in an Australian rain forest seem like the perfect sleepless aid if you ask me.”

  “What do you want to listen to, then?” she asks.

  “Punk, postpunk, industrial metal. This is the kind of music I always listened to while writing my novels. I could use a dose of Pearl Jam, Chumbawamba, Bad Religion-”

  “No way,” she says, scrunching up her face. “Forget all that vulgar noise. You are not making a novel. You are making a baby.”

  So the entire week, Kuzguncuk-one of Istanbul’s most peaceful, oldest districts-reverberates with the sounds of cows mooing, ducks quacking, owls hooting and French arias.

  Week 18

  I don’t cry as often anymore, but now everything smells st
range. Like a hunting dog that’s been released into the woods, with my nostrils flaring I spend the day trailing scents: a pinch of ginger in a huge pot of vegetable soup, the whiff of seaweed even when I am miles away from the shore, the odor of pickle juice on a store counter five blocks away. I walk around like Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick Suskind’s Perfume.

  Of all the scents there is one that makes my stomach turn and has me running in the opposite direction: coconut.

  Who would have ever guessed that Istanbul smells of coconuts! It’s like the city was built on a tropical island. Coconuts and their cloying aroma are ubiquitous: the sachets that dangle from the rearview mirrors in cabs, the liquid soaps used in public restrooms, the little white flakes that adorn the tops of bakery cakes, the heavy-scented candles decorating coffee shops and restaurants and the promotional cookies supermarkets give out to customers. When did Turkish people become so fond of coconut?

  Istanbul is one large coconut cut in half. The Asian side is one half, the European side the other. I can’t find anywhere to hide.

  Week 20

  We’ve found out the sex of the baby. It’s going to be a girl.

  I am happy. Eyup is happy. Mama Rice Pudding is thrilled.

  “It is much easier to dress baby girls, and far more fun, too,” she says, her eyes brimming.

  Female babies are dressed in pale pink, dark pink and fuchsia, while male babies are dressed in dark blue, brown and aquamarine. For little girls you get Barbie dolls and tea sets; for boys, Kalashnikovs and trucks. I wonder if I can raise my daughter differently.

  “What is the use of worrying your head over such useless things?” Mama Rice Pudding says when I share my thoughts with her. “Even if you dress your daughter in the color of sapphires or emeralds, the minute she starts school she will embrace pink anyway. She will want to dress up the way her friends and all her favorite characters do. Barbie has a pink house, Dora the Explorer has pink shorts, and Hello Kitty is actually Hello Pink! Why are you trying to swim against the current?”

  That same night in my dream I am swimming in a river as pink as cotton candy. I never see colors in my dreams, at least not to my recollection. I find it exciting to have a Technicolor dream, even if it is in pink.

  Week 21

  I secretly go to see Miss Highbrowed Cynic. There she is, as always, in a city as bustling with ideas as New York, behind an ornamented iron door, her walls still covered with posters of Che Guevara and Marlon Brando. She is wearing another one of her fringy hippie dresses. A necklace with large blue and purple beads hangs around her neck.

  “Your necklace is pretty,” I say.

  “Do you like it? It was made by the villagers living on the outskirts of Machu Picchu. I bought it to support the locals against the juggernaut of global capitalism.”

  I can’t help but smile. I’ve missed Miss Highbrowed Cynic-the only finger-woman I know who can go from talking about a simple necklace to analyzing corporate globalization in one breath.

  “So, how’s the pregnancy going?” she asks.

  “Good, I saw the baby in an ultrasound. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

  “Hmm,” says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

  “But I feel a little empty inside. I’m always sleeping, crying, eating or smelling coconuts.” My voice quivers slightly. “The truth is, I long for the depth of our conversations.”

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic looks down at her feet as if they are culpable for the situation.

  “You and I used to talk about novels, movies, exhibitions and political philosophy. You would bitch about everything, chuck dirt at everyone, criticize cultural hegemony… I’ve been disconnected from books. Except for Little Women, that is.”

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic lights a cigarette, but seeing my face, she puts it out immediately. She remembers I have quit smoking.

  “Did you really miss me?” she asks.

  “And how!”

  “I missed you, too. We would read together for hours and gossip about other writers. It was fun. We don’t get to do that anymore.”

  She weighs something in her head and then suddenly gives me a wink. “Come, let’s read Sevgi Soysal.”

  “But I can’t. She’s on the forbidden-authors list,” I say uncertainly.

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic flushes scarlet with rage. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she bellows. “That mama-woman doesn’t know her limits. No one can ban a book.”

  I agree.

  Opening a random page, Miss Highbrowed Cynic reads, and I listen to the lullaby of her voice.

  Tante Rosa believed that the day would come where an apple would be an apple, that a father would be a father, that a war would be a war, that the truth would be the truth, that a lie would be a lie, that love would be love, that to be fed up would be to be fed up, that rebelling would be rebelling, that silence would be silence, that an injustice would be an injustice, that order would be order and that a marriage would be a marriage.

  Week 22

  I don’t know how Her Majesty the Queen found out that I had visited Miss Highbrowed Cynic, but she did. Contrary to my fear, she doesn’t throw a fit.

  “So you missed reading books,” she says with a sigh, as if the thought has tired her. Then she pulls out a box from inside her coat.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “I bought you a present,” she answers. “I thought you might enjoy this.”

  When I open the package a book falls out: My Baby and Me. Apparently it has been read first by Mama Rice Pudding. Some sentences are underlined, some chapters are starred: “Preparing the Baby’s Room,” “Fabulous Mashed Food Recipes.” I thank her and put it down. I’ll read it sometime.

  My lack of enthusiasm doesn’t escape Mama Rice Pudding.

  “All right,” she concedes. “I might have overreacted when I banned your books and burned all the paper and pens in the house.”

  I remain silent.

  “You are someone who is used to expressing herself through writing. So I have a suggestion for you. Why don’t you write to your baby?”

  Smiling, I nod. That is the best advice I’ve ever gotten from Her Highness.

  Week 25

  Dear Baby (Since I don’t know your name yet, I hope you don’t mind me referring to you like this.),

  This is the first letter I am writing you. I once read that some

  traditional tribes sustain the belief that babies got to pick their

  parents. I had laughed at the idea, but now it seems plausible.

  I imagine you sitting in the sky with angels, skimming through a huge, leather-bound catalog that contains photographs of potential mothers. Under each photograph there is a short description. The angels turn the pages with utmost patience. You look at all the candidates with a buyer’s eye.

  “Not this one,” you say. “No, not this one either-”

  Doctors, engineers, housewives and businesswomen pass before your eyes. Even though there are many highly eligible candidates, women who do their jobs well and are very accomplished, you ignore them.

  Just then the angel turns another page and my picture pops up. It is not a very good photo of me, my hair is a mess-again-and my makeup is slapdash. I’m wearing my onion-clothes. Under my picture is a description: Head pickled, chaotic personality, prone to moments of irrationality, has yet to find herself, is actively searching for answers. Loves telling stories. Writer. Columnist. Litterateur.

  Pointing your tiny little finger at my face you remark, “This one could be fun. Let me take a closer look at her.”

  I don’t know why you ended up picking me out of all the potential mothers in the universe. Maybe you are a crazy kind of girl. You find the idea of a perfect mother boring. Or you already know me better than I know myself. Maybe you see the potential in me. Maybe you want to help me overcome my shortcomings. You can be my guide, my best teacher.

  Like I said, I don’t know why you chose me, but I want you to know that I am honored. I hope I will never make you regret
your decision and say, “Of all the moms in the universe, why did I pick this one!”

  Your loving mom who looks forward to your arrival,

  Elif

  Week 28

  Mama Rice Pudding insists that I go to prenatal yoga. She says I have to learn breathing techniques.

  “I can breathe very well, don’t worry,” I say.

  But she is persistent. She wants the birth to be as natural and wholesome as the ones she thinks our great-great-grandmothers had in the past. I don’t point out that our ancestors were hardly poring over yoga sutras before going into labor.

  Week 29

  There are ten women in the yoga course. Nine of them have their bellies against their noses. Either they are close to the end of their term or this course makes you puff up like a hot-air balloon. Maybe in her attempt to teach us breathing techniques the instructor is filling us up with heated air.

  The only woman in the room who isn’t pregnant is our instructor: an athletic and joyful Brazilian with long, curly brunette hair. Her pearly-white smile greets me as she introduces me to the group.

  “Let us welcome Elif and her baby into our circle of love,” she says and closes her eyes, already drifting away.

  “Hello,” I say to the group, but their eyes, too, are shut.

  “First we shall cleanse our chakras. We shall fortify our personal energies. Then we will practice the Pranayama breathing techniques. We will feel the rise from the Sushumna toward our head and then unite with Sahashara.”

  Having no idea what we are supposed to do but copying the others all the same, I sit cross-legged on the floor, close my eyes and try to concentrate on this new language.

  “Now let us feel the aura that wraps our bodies like a warm glove,” says the teacher. “Can you feel how delicate it is, almost silken?”