Q

by Christina Dalcher

I don’t know where the weekend went. They say time is constant, steady, always moving at the same pace. But that’s a bald lie. Any child knows time slows down in the days before Christmas; any bride knows time speeds up during a wedding reception. And any mother knows time flies in the years after she gives birth. Eight pounds become forty pounds become a hundred pounds.

There was a poster in my Latin class of an elephant who had just taken a dump with Stercus Accidit! at the bottom in bright yellow letters—the professor’s idea of a Latin joke. But now that I think of that poster, I realize the image was completely wrong. Shit doesn’t happen all at once; no invisible elephant unloads a pile right where you’re about to step. What happens is this: Some bunny rabbit lets a little pellet drop. Then another one. Then another. You don’t worry much because the bunny’s cute and the pellets are small, easily brushed away. Stercus accidit. A little bit at a time. Usually while we’re not paying attention.

Maybe all mothers are semi-insane. Maybe that’s part of the deal we make when we decide to let our bodies become hosts, when we lie with our legs spread and our insides knotted in pain and push and push and push until we think we can’t push anymore, when we hold vigil during sleepless nights in rocking chairs and recliners, sweating over the slightest changes in a tiny creature’s appetite, body temperature, weight.