Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within

by Elif Shafak

  “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 so on. I attend all of them.

  In the evenings, I sit in front of the computer and write down notes and compose journal entries far into the night. I don’t socialize anymore, I don’t go to parties and I avoid brown-bag lunches, as strong as the urge is sometimes. I don’t allow anything outside of writing and books to enter my life.

  Mama Rice Pudding watches me from a distance with eyes that cannot hide their hurt. Whenever I try to communicate with her, she turns her head and stares into space, sitting as still as a marble statue. Some nights, in bed, I hear her crying.

  One day a major Turkish newspaper does an interview with me about my life in America. I speak to the journalist on the phone for about forty minutes. As we are about to hang up he asks me about marriage and motherhood.

  I tell him that I am miles away from both right now. It is a huge responsibility to bring children into this world, I say. But when I am old enough, that is, after many more novels, I could see myself becoming a foster mom or perhaps raising someone else’s children, helping their education and so forth.

  That weekend when the interview comes out, its title is as catchy as it can be: “I am Raring to Become a Stepmom!”

  Next to the revelation, there is a picture of me taken in Istanbul standing in front of the Topkap1 Palace. I am dressed head to toe in black, my hair a cuckoo’s nest due to a strong wind, my face etched with a grave expression. When my image is juxtaposed with the words, I look like a black spider about to jump on any divorced man with kids.

  I decide not to give any more interviews for a while.

  Approximately at the same time, as if a muse has fallen from the sky onto my head, I begin to write a new novel. It is called The Saint of Incipient Insanities. The story has sorrow cloaked in humor and humor cloaked in sorrow. It is about a group of foreigners in America coming from very different cultural backgrounds and struggling, not always successfully, with an ongoing sense of estrangement. I write about “insiders” and “outsiders,” about belonging and not belonging, feeling like a tree that is turned upside down and has its roots up in the air.

  PART FOUR

  Never Say Never

  Sweet Love

  There is a short, round Mexican cleaning lady, Rosario, who every morning at seven o’clock vacuums the northwest section of the library where I usually work all night. I can still dip into Spanish, albeit clumsily. Rosario loves hearing my funny pronunciation and correcting my mistakes. She also teaches me new words every day, blushing and giggling as I repeat them, because some of them are pretty lewd.

  When I fall asleep on the leather couch only a few feet away from the John Stuart Mill collection, it is Rosario who wakes me up. She brings me coffee that is so heavy and black my heart pounds for about three minutes after I take a sip. Yet I never tell her to make it a bit weaker. I guess I like her.

  “Why are you working so hard?” she asks me one day, pointing to my laptop and a stack of books.

  “You work hard, too,” I say, pointing to her vacuum cleaner and duster.

  She nods. She knows I am right. Then she takes out her necklace and shows it to me. There are four rings on her silver pendant. When I ask her what they mean, she says, smiling from ear to ear, “One ring for each child.”

  She is a mother of four. That’s why she works so hard. She wants them to have a better life than the one she has had.

  “How about your husband?” I ask. “Tu marido?”

  “Marido . . . puff,” she says, as if she is talking about gunpowder. I cannot figure out whether he has died or run away with someone else or never was. Oblivious to my confusion, Rosario smiles again and elbows me. “Children are a blessing,” she says.

  “I am happy for you.”

  She pats my shoulder with a touch so genuine and friendly, I drink two more cups of coffee with her, my heart racing.

  “You are a good girl,” she says to me.

  “Some of me are,” I say, thinking of my finger-women.

  She finds that hilarious and laughs so hard she almost loses her balance. When she manages to get hold of herself, she says, “When you finish your book you don’t need to send it to a publisher. There is an easier way.”

  “Really?” I ask, inching closer to her.

  “Yup,” she says, nodding. “Send it to Oprah. If she puts her stamp on your book you won’t have to work so hard anymore.”

  “In America they stamp books?” I ask.

  “Sí, claro mujer!” She rolls her eyes as if to add, “You don’t know how crazy these Americans can get.”

  I thank her for the advice. Then I go back to my novel and she goes back to her work, walking her slow gait, dragging her vacuum cleaner and rolling a bucket of detergents and soaps beside her. She disappears among the aisles of hardcover books. Puff!

  In the summer I visit Istanbul for a short while. I am here to pick up a few bits and pieces from my old apartment, to see my friends and my mother, to do some book readings and signings in the city and to seal a contract with my Turkish publisher for The Saint of Incipient Insanities, which I have just finished. Then in ten days, I will return to the States.

  However, life is a naughty child who sneaks up from behind us while we draw our plans, making funny faces at us.

  On my first evening back in Istanbul friends invite me to have a drink in Yakup, a well-known tavern that journalists, painters and writers have long frequented. Jet-lagged and slightly grumpy, I nevertheless agree to meet them.

  When I enter the place, the sound of laughter and chattering greets me, along with a thick cloud of smoke. Either there is a chimney inside the tavern or everyone is puffing on at least two Havana cigars at the same time. It is quite a change of scenery after my sterile life at Mount Holyoke.

  I walk up to my friends’ table, where I know everyone—except a young man with dark, wavy hair and a dimpled smile sitting at the end. He introduces himself as Eyup. It doesn’t occur to me that it happens to be the name of the prophet Job, of whom I have said not just a few critical things in the past. Once again in my life, the angels are pointing their milky-white fingers at me, giggling among themselves. Again, I am failing to foresee the irony.

  I watch him throughout the evening, cautiously at first, then with growing curiosity. The more I listen to him the
more I am convinced that he is the embodiment of everything I have excluded and pushed away from my life. Pure patience, pure balance, pure rationality, pure calmness, pure harmony. He is a natural-born fisherman.

  I don’t even think I like him. I simply and swiftly fall head over heels in love with him. But I am determined not to let anyone at the table, especially him, see that. In order to hide my feelings, I swing to the other extreme, constantly challenging him and frowning at his every comment.

  Hours later, as always happens in Istanbul when a group of women and men consume more than a carafe of wine and twice as much of rakı, people start to talk about matters of the heart. Someone suggests that we take turns quoting the best maxims about love that we know.

  One of my girlfriends volunteers to go first: “This one is from Shakespeare,” she says with a touch of pride. “‘Love all, trust a few.’”

  The quote is well received. Everyone toasts.

  “This one is from Albert Einstein,” says someone else. “‘Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.’”

  We toast again.

  His eyes sparkling, Eyup joins the game after a few rounds. “This one is from Mark Twain,” he says. “‘When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.’”

  Everyone applauds. I frown. But I join the toast all the same.

  Ten minutes later everyone at the table is looking at me, waiting for me to utter my quote. By now I have drunk more than my usual, and my head is swirling. I put my glass on the table with a kind of borrowed confidence and a bit more forcefully than I intended. I wag my finger in the air and say:

  “‘Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up.’ How stupid!”

  For one stunned moment nobody says a word. A few people cough as if they have something stuck in their throats and some others force a polite smile, but no one toasts.

  “This one is from Neil Gaiman,” I say, by way of explanation.

  Again silence.

  “The Sandman . . . Stardust . . . The Graveyard Book . . .” I add quickly. “You know, Neil Gaiman.”

  I lean back against the chair, take a deep breath and finish the quote: “‘You build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.’ . . . How stupid!”

  Everyone is looking at me with something akin to scorn on their faces. I have spoiled the fun and changed the mood from one of drunken merriment to somber seriousness. We can always go back to buoyant love quotes but it won’t be the same. Everyone at the table seems slightly confused and annoyed—except one person who regards me with an infinitely warm smile and winks at me like we share a secret.

  Madame Onion

  In my dream, I am walking in an opulent, vast garden. There are all sorts of flowers, plants and birds around, but I know I am not here for them. I keep walking, with a cane in my hand, until I reach a humongous tree. Its trunk is made of crystal, and leafy silver branches spring from its sides like Christmas ornaments. There are squirrels nibbling walnuts inside every hole in the tree. One of the holes resembles a cavernous mouth.

  “You look so beautiful,” I say, pleasantly surprised. “I thought it was winter. How did you manage to keep all your leaves?”

  “Winter is over now,” says the Brain Tree. “You can leave me be.”

  “But I took an oath, remember? I said my body should shrivel up so that my brain could blossom. If I don’t keep my promise, God will be angry.”

  “No, He won’t,” says the Brain Tree. “You don’t know Him.”

  “Do you? Have you seen Him?” I ask. “What does He look like?”

  But the tree ignores my questions and says, “Everything expires. So has your oath. Even I am about to perish in a little while.”

  As if in response to his last words, the winds pick up speed and pound with invisible fists on the Brain Tree. That is when I realize that its branches are made of the thinnest glass. In front of my eyes, they shatter into hundreds of minuscule pieces.

  “It doesn’t hurt, don’t worry!” the Brain Tree yells over the noise.

  Trying not to cut myself on the shattered glass covering the ground, I walk and cry, although I know I am not sad. I just can’t help it. In this state I walk away from the Brain Tree.

  When I turn back to look at it one more time, I am surprised to see that the mammoth tree has shrunk to the size of a bonsai.

  This is the dream I have the first night I spend with Eyup.

  Once the Brain Tree releases me, my body and I start mending fences. Again, I feel a speedy change commencing within—this time in the opposite direction. My skin becomes softer, my hair shinier. Now that I am in love, I decide to treat my body as best as I can. I begin frequenting The Body Shop, purchasing creams, powders and lotions I have never used before.

  Then one afternoon, just as I am placing the products I’ve bought on a shelf in Eyup’s bathroom, I notice something moving there. Aware of my stare, she quickly hides behind ajar of facial cream. In shock, I move the jar aside.

  Approximately six inches in height, twenty ounces in weight, it is a finger-woman—though she resembles none of the others. Her honey-blond hair is loose and hangs down to her waist in waves. She has penciled a mole above her mouth and painted her lips such a bright red that it reminds me of a Chinese lantern on fire. Her arms are encased in skin-tight black gloves that reach up to her elbows. She is wearing solitaire rings of various colors over her gloved fingers and has squeezed into a crimson stretchy evening dress. Her breasts are popping out of the décolletage neckline, and her right leg—all the way to her hip—is exposed by a long slit in her dress. On her feet are pointy red stilettos with heels so high I wonder how she manages to walk in them.

  Without sparing me so much as a glance, she picks up a cigarette holder. With practiced ennui, she attaches a cigarette to its tip. Then, fluttering her mascara-drenched lashes, she turns to me.

  “Do you have a light, darling?” she asks.

  My blood freezes. Who is this woman?

  “No, I don’t,” I say, determined to keep communication with her to a minimum.

  “That’s okay, darling,” she says. “Thanks anyway.”

  Opening her handbag, which looks like a tiny mother-of-pearl pillbox, she takes out a lighter and proceeds to light her cigarette. Then, pursing her lips, she starts to make perfect smoke rings and sends them, one after another, my way.

  With my mouth agape, I watch this strange creature.

  “You don’t recognize me, right?” she says in a half-velvety, half-naughty voice, like Rita Hayworth in Gilda. “Of course, that is very normal. When did you ever recognize me?”

  She leans forward, exposing the deep cleavage of her breasts. I avert my gaze, feeling uneasy. Has this woman no shame?

  “But, darling, I am not a stranger. I am you. I’m a member of the Choir of Discordant Voices. You expressed the wish to make peace with your body and I gladly took that as an invitation. So here I am.”

  “But who exactly are you?” It is all I can come up with.

  “My name is Blue Belle Bovary.”

  “That sounds so—” I say, looking for a word that won’t offend her.

  “Poetic?” she offers.

  “Well, yeah. It alliterates, sort of,” I say.

  “Thank you, darling,” she says with a wink. “My name is a tribute to Emma Bovary, the woman who did everything in her power to escape the banality and monotony of provincial life.”

  “Right . . . but as you may know, she is also a rather problematic character. I mean, if you consider cheating on your husband, telling endless lies and dying in agony by swallowing arsenic a problem.”

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Better to live with passion than to die of boredom.”

  She opens her bag again, takes out a
compact and deftly powders the tip of her nose. Then she throws a piercing glance in my direction. “I like wearing sensual perfumes, silk clothing, sexy underwear and satin nightgowns. Enchanté, darling.”

  I can feel my face grow hot. “Could you please stop calling me ‘darling’?” I say, my voice quivering. “I don’t and could never have an inner voice like you. There must be a mistake.”

  “Oh dear, you are doing that again! You want to cast me back down into the dark abyss of negligence,” she says after taking a drag from her cigarette. “I scare the hell out of you, don’t I?”

  “Why would I be scared of you?” I ask.

  “Otherwise why do you always pose like you do in photos? In every interview you give, you appear guarded and serious. Your face scrunched, your gaze dreamy and distant. The contemplative-writer pose. Ugh!”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I say.

  Yet even as I try to object, I remember an adept analysis once made by Erica Jong. She said it was not that hard today for women writers to finish or publish their works. The real difficulty for us was to be taken seriously. Jong believed that the biased attitude toward female writers became even more visible in literary reviews. “I have never seen a review of a woman writer in which her sex was not mentioned in some way.” I knew this to be true. In Turkey, a female writer can publish as many books as she wants, and yet it always requires a long struggle and much more work for a woman to be taken seriously by the conventional literary establishment.

  “Why not wear fire-red lipstick, flowery dresses, and show a bit of skin? Would your writing career decline? Would you be less a woman of letters? You’re terrified of being a Body-Woman. Tell me, why are you so afraid of me, darling?”

  Words desert me.

  “Unlike you, I am a great fan of everything bodily and sensual. I adore the sweet pleasures bestowed on us mere mortals. After all, I am a Scorpio. Hedonism is my motto in life. I enjoy my womanhood,” she raves on. “But because of those boorish Thumbelinas, I have been censored, silenced, suppressed!”