The Nursery

by Szilvia Molnar

After almost ten years as a translator, my work was still mostly a struggle. Not necessarily the work itself, because there was pleasure in trying to get it “right” (a faulty concept that is still thrown around among fellow colleagues). Chameleoning my way forward was enjoyable, but the continuous fight for more money, grants, or God-forbid a royalty check was tiring. I wasn’t the kind of translator to care but needed money as much as the next. Being in the periphery of the industry was also fine—the peculiar competitiveness mostly amused me.

I’m not the competitive kind. Visibility is not my desire.

had been run over and pushed to the side through traffic, wind, and other forms of aggression. At the same time, a dissipating high told me that I could do it all over again. It was the body tricking me into thinking that giving birth made me invincible.

Liquids poured out of me, liquids were pushed into my veins, and a catheter was pricked into my urethra.

The day was on wheels, including us, and next thing I knew we were being carted around. This is just one example of how life is made, and in my case it was done brutally. But I’m not sure it’s possible to avoid brutality in birth. Brut, brutus, bruto…a man-made “beast” is not quite what I mean when wanting to describe the experience and yet it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

He said he was relieved that Button was born on the weekend, it helped him avoid taking time off from work, whereas I had no understanding of time, I only wanted to know where we were being taken.

The lower part of my body was numb from medication, and with my crotch awkwardly wet from an ice pack melting between my legs, I wanted to twist her head.

Button had been with me for a handful of hours, she had been silent for most of this time, and there came an urge, as direct as hunger. Let’s wring you like a wet cloth. The dark hospital room took my want and immediately threw it back at me.

Back then, we were often in a perpetual state of undress to dress and undress again, always helping each other wipe juices off of mouths and backs and stomachs, giggling while plucking tissues from their box, feeling younger than usual and forgetting what time it was. Now, newly married, I lie very still so as not to let any liquids drip out of me. My prenatal vitamins are taken regularly, and my ovaries are optimistic about the future.

In the meantime, our simple weekly routines continue. All while you are still a thought and I think about how I am going to resent you once you arrive. You will disrupt the peace. You will get in the way of my freedom. It’s possible you may one day ask for an apology, I’m just being honest. I want you as much as I fear you.

When I am with John, I am always myself. Sitting and listening to him makes me wonder if the word “compatible” is in any way connected to “compassion.”

The midday light and my weighted body suggest that a few days have passed since giving birth and I remain exhausted from beyond my core. This would probably be viewed as pretty bad writing if it were published, but it is the simple truth.

There’s hard and there’s hard. There are cement walls that are hard to break through and there’s a hard cock. There’s a hard night’s sleep and there’s a body that has hardly had more than two hours of consecutive rest and for how long? This is what “hard” does to the mind and that hard body is my body and my body is so tired it is losing me, walking away. My shadow lying underneath me is so slow you could catch it by the tail if I set off running, and there is no way I can set off.

I poke and push the excess flesh around. My fingers sink deep, disappearing in funny bulges of stretched skin. It doesn’t hurt; it is her absence protruding, moving awkwardly around like a water bed. My breasts tingle. A blood-filled pad between my legs needs changing. I can sense its weight against one thigh. I hope I haven’t stained the bed. It wouldn’t be the first time in this short amount of time.

the full, sober realization of Button not being attached to me makes me leap out of bed. I’m having a heart attack. I get down on the ground and roll around because I am covered in flames. My actions are not springlike, there are still places that I didn’t know could ache. But, yes, I am on fire if she is not with me. A slow flow of milk leaks out into my bra, staining it in big blotches. The metamorphosis from giving birth has left me unrecognizable to myself. I stand up and try to cover this new self, wrapping layers of clothing around my unshapely body. Some bone in me creaks, as harshly as an old wooden floor. Random and weird pains from my stomach emerge, then dissipate. I must hide this character, I must hide myself from John.

We need to get you more sleep he suggests so casually it should be an item I can pick up from a shelf in a store. The We in this situation sounds like a word taken from another language, not one that I can speak.

Once I get out of the shower and have dressed again, I put Button on my chest regardless of what she wants in this moment because I need her to play her role in this. It’s time to open the milk bar. She better give me some relief.

I’m not scared of the monster that presents itself in the mirror. I am scared of making a sudden movement in case the stitches will come undone, hips will pop. The body is in splinters. I’m too tired to bend over and clean blood off the bathroom floor.

With eyes still closed I put my hand in the water and snake it in between my legs. Short pricks of metal poke my fingertips. Stitches cover the inside lips of my vagina, lips so swollen I can barely open my labia, so I don’t. After a couple days of not shaving, the carpet of hair is steadily growing back, perhaps wanting to cover up Button’s exit.

It’s not only my lips that are swollen. In the water, my body floats like a plastic bag filled with air on the surface. With my breasts large and the hair between my legs overgrown, I am more feminine than I have ever been before in my life. My belly, still bumpy, and my feet, still puffy with fluids. Through the door, John tells me We need you out here and from this moment on I will never be alone.

They’re such a discreet plant, existing in plain sight and yet never asking for attention. Moss comforts, protects, and nourishes others—you can sleep on it, drink from it, stay warm. It’s a very selfless plant, soft and lovable. Moss is also a landscape, expanding when you take your eyes off of it, appearing when you least expect it.

I unhook my unapologetically maternal bra and watch my nipples leak. Small see-through white droplets drip down to the floor; my body weeps after Button. Like a busted faucet, it’s unstoppable and uncontrollable. I avoid my nudity in the mirror. I don’t need a reflection to show me that my stomach is still stretched after Button’s departure. The line that goes from my belly to my vagina is still long and dark, showing a path that makes little sense to me now.

I think she’s hungry again he indicates, because of course I have all the answers. He watches Button like she has told him something while I was taking a shower, but Button doesn’t stare back to confirm or deny his statement, because she is a baby.

Has there ever been a description of a mother holding her child for hours? Has anyone unraveled the little hours? My state might be a portrayal of the elasticity of time.

She forces me to go on. So, I go on. I must go on. But from where do you pull more of yourself after you have given everything? And yet you do, you do have more. From some core, you keep breathing. It is not the child that is at war with you, you are at war with yourself, and time is the referee. Unforgiving most times with the occasional mishap and vulnerable to persuasion.

don’t recognize the color of his company. Is this the moment when I let a violent psychopath into my building? Does he carry sharp tools in the box? Will he slice up Button before he comes for me? Primal mother alarm kicks in.

I gave birth and birth made me into a child. Button was out of me, I turned to the side, and my legs curled up in a fetal position. Never have I wanted my own mother so much.

Has there ever been a description in literature of what it entails to change an infant’s diaper? The horror of mundanity. I have yet to find the appropriate translation of the experience, but I am compelled to try. Where is the accordion to wash me out? Peter’s absence is felt in its entirety. When he is not here, I find myself aiming my thoughts and worries at him anyway.

and this is one night of many spent alone together on our simple couch, in our simple apartment, in the midst of living our simplest, most meaningless lives. This was before I understood that it was this exact simplicity that would be taken away from me.

There is a world outside of this apartment and I recognize that there is lots going on beyond this room. The act of breathing, sleeping, eating, shitting, are all insignificant to most, and still Button and I have entered into a dance, a kind of survival tango where we are clunky and at our most vulnerable. There is no detaching from this.

I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar. Both are quite solitary jobs and I can’t say that I’ve ever been much of a people person, that’s why the work of a translator suits me. I don’t mind standing in someone’s shadow. There’s a kind of masturbatory pleasure in producing a book that others can read and find enjoyment from on their own without the pressure to produce the original. However much I have wanted to produce something separate from someone else. And if a mother’s work is mostly work that is unseen, then translating is perhaps more mother-like than I have given it credit for in the past.

Before, I had rituals. Before, there was the luxury of getting lost on my walks. Before, there was the wandering of the mind. Before, there wasn’t the cliché “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

Before, I could spend time staring at letters. Before, I could choose between this word or that and settle on the third option, linger in the silence. Before, I could hide at the library. Remember libraries? The one place where no one asks anything from you.

The work was solitary, but it was never isolating. Was it all meaningless? I can’t bring myself to think that it was, and is the arrival of a baby any more meaningful? All I know is that the stillness wasn’t aching before. There was more peace, there was more control, there was more independence, självständighet—the self capable of standing steady on their own. There is nobody to teach you that motherhood is forever, so how is it not a shock to your system when you find out that it is, in fact, until forever? How can this even be called motherhood?

there’s no avoiding that I’m objecting to the state I’ve placed myself in. If that means that I am myself to blame then I am myself to blame. The fundamentals lie in motherhood, that is why it is vilified.

I can’t stand that everything John says is a quote, a handful of scripted words that are easy to say for the sake of saying something. I play out an entire fight between us in my head and watch myself shout the filthiest words I know at John. I see him crying at the end, which is exactly what I’m aiming for. This rage doesn’t understand proportions, but, like me, it is also a coward, it gives up too quickly and folds into sadness. It’s equally as tired as I am, and I can’t even go back to show him my disappointment.

why would a mother want to kill her baby how common is wanting to kill your baby

try to pee without getting urine over my stitches. If I lean forward enough it works some, but it still stings. Legs shake a little. It’s also been two days and I haven’t pooped. My anus pulsates into the shape of a cauliflower. Just the thought of the energy I would have to expel in order to take a shit frightens me. Instead I grab the tube of water and squirt it up my vagina. The freshness of the water provides temporary relief.

I can’t remember the last time I saw my vagina, closer to a year than less. A duo of blood clots drop into the toilet bowl, they remind me of raw chicken liver and in the water they leave an elegant trail of red behind. This is to signal: there is no going back.

Ultimately remaining clueless to what next year will entail and unaware that from now on, time will be the main character and culprit in our lives.

If it were in my hand, what would I be capable of? What would I do if I saw all of her parts chopped up on the table? A grotesque image appears and I have to shake it off straightaway. Motherhood might be about having lost my mind, and I am about to spend the rest of my life searching for it.

I can’t stop thinking about you. I walk around in the streets with my secret about you. I meet the occasional friend for a coffee but drink tea and don’t mention that you are the one thing that is on my mind. I don’t even mind that I’m not drinking coffee right now. I edit at my desk with a hand on my belly, although it is ridiculously early to be showing even a bump. I welcome John more affectionately when he comes home from work. The possibility of you is constantly on my mind. But I realize there is nothing exciting about describing the unknown or the potential. Conjuring up your existence is of no value to anyone else but me. How strange that this power is neglected in women, because it is witchcraft.

In the meantime, you continue to be a beating muscle. You are groups and groups of cells multiplying, expanding, shape-shifting, turning around, and stretching. Growing nails, eyelashes, a personality. You are possibilities.

Before we part ways, she passes on some unrequested advice, saying something about how once the baby arrives the key is to stop wanting things, and I have no idea what she is talking about.

This is your life and you’re so deep in it that you can’t unmake it, you can’t unbirth your baby because she wishes to be alive, you can’t remake your career,

love comes with sacrifices. The important kind of love does not exist without the existence of certain losses. It remains to be seen which loss is possible enough to bear, to endure, to relinquish.

The utter helplessness of a baby is infuriating. They can’t even consider how exposed their bodies are. What if I widen the exposure and drop her out of the window? What if I let a delivery man come and collect her? What if I turn away for a second and the things I care most deeply about are lost to me forever? The night protects her and yet, the night is my ruin.

You fail immediately as a mother. As a mother, you have immediately failed. And, for the rest of the day, I don’t get out of bed.