When Mother’s belly bloomed again, she pointed a french-tipped finger at the richest man in town. The accusation, though baseless, haunted him– it polluted his polished lawn, noosed his silk ties. This was a man shrunken, a spirit corrupted, a man of real stature driven sick. But the town was small, and Mother was only getting bigger, and so he wished her away with a lump sum.
Mother had two girls at home. The little one, blue-eyed and painted with the peachy, airbrushed skin of Jesus, thought she might’ve been born of dirt, like Adam, or rib, like Eve. The big one was old enough to know that she was half from mother’s tummy, she assumed the other half might be chipped wallpaper, or oil spills, or the pink in the faces of men at truck stop diners.
Even when it seems these things disappear, the rich man often thought to himself, a certain stain is left on a man, a certain debris accumulates inside the soul.
The girls had attached to their mother erratically. They sat sunny-side up, transverse, breech– had to be unknit by gloved hands, unzipped from the same scar on her belly. The births were emergencies– horrific blurs of fluorescent lighting and hospital blue. Mother requested a mirror for each procedure, glimpsing, in the fuss, creation– the whole red mess of it.
The rich man had three of his own.
On Sunday, terror among the parishioners. Mother and her girls arrived late, sulked into a front pew during the Nicene Creed. Wives’ eyes darted in horror between Mother’s belly and their husbands. Through their loyal recitation– Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen– they wondered: who made her a mother? Our fathers? Our sons? — God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God– Or worse, someone from out of town?
The rich man’s own voice shook at the pulpit. He thought, a man can assemble a kneeling congregation– He will come again in glory– A man can raise a town from dirt– His kingdom will have no end– and for what.
When Mother was young, she’d gone to a city.
She was a girl then: golden, freckled, life so everywhere in her.
It was a city from tip to toe: sparkling up into the clouds and carrying on a grisly, sticky version of itself underground.
Mother stood in the highest point of that city, over evry metal monument reflecting sun and blue, over every creeping thing that crept in concrete veins, over every clay creature men had sculpt from dirt, and, summoning the miracle machinery of her insides, spoke:
I will name this silver, and this river
This, beneath my rib, city
This, beneath my city, rail
I, blessed by the maker and the maker myself
Will tear trembling towns through mine divine route
In agony, I will bear the fruit.