Postpartum by Rion Amilcar Scott
Purple lips. Red-eyed. Skin, puke-yellow. Little lightskinned baby. His screams are a several times a day lobotomy. My disrupted thoughts beam into his Zombiebaby mouth to die. Zombiebaby. I haven’t given him that title because I’m a jokester. I’m not. See, pomegranate is an abortifacient and when my wife, June, carried him, the fruit became my God. I sprinkled it atop every meal I cooked. Pomegranate fish. Pomegranate peas. Pomegranate rice. Fed her fresh pomegranate as a snack between meals. Stocked pomegranate juice exclusively and told her it was because she needed the antioxidants. She’d smile at me with pomegranate juice dripping from her cheeks and juiceless strands of fruit between her teeth.
Charles, June would say, Fatherhood has destroyed all that selfishness in you.
Even then, she was slipping from me just as I knew she would totally when the baby arrived. I grinned in false joy and watched her belly plump. Her beauty stretched and distorted. She was now the reflection in a funhouse mirror. June became sad about her outsize and oblong dimensions and I told her she looked radiant, but I had redefined the word. Radiant now meant bizarre and circus-like. Somehow animal. Each time she cried out in pain, I became filled with hope. What a sinking I felt every visit when the doctor said June progressed just as she should. Then, undeterred, I’d double and triple her pomegranate servings. Eat! Eat! June. The baby, he needs the C and E vitamins.
There was a new hope in February, just after I had accepted my fate. She bawled in the middle of the night. Said her stomach was aflame. The due date was three months away. In my panic, I moved quickly to call the authorities. I didn’t, after all, ever want to lose her. Though, as we waited for the ambulance, I insisted she take a pomegranate pill. She screamed and knocked the bottle from my hand scattering the things all over the bedroom floor.
To everyone’s surprise, the baby slipped from June’s vagina out into the world as if all was right. The doctor had never seen such a thing. Excellent, Excellent, just remarkable health, he sputtered. Magnificent.
And if that was not enough, atop the baby’s head was a massive 1970s style afro. When he curled his fist, June called him her little Black Power baby and then she repeated the joke at least once a day. There were variations to it, but for the most part it was the same joke over and over.
Perhaps something is wrong with me. I don’t feel those pangs of love one is said to feel for their own. I never get the urge to protect the weak helpless thing. The Zombiebaby (I’m convinced he did die) is just more work for me. Every few hours he presents me with his relentless warm shit. The worst part is how June and the Zombiebaby have formed a family of two without me. As if he’s her lover now. His mouth right there on her breast where mine used to be. Her breasts, now misshapen from the greedy baby’s gorging, were what got me into all of this, really. They used to be so exquisite.
There’s a joke I tell myself, when I get frustrated; I pretend to forget the title of that Harper Lee book and I call it *To Kill a Mockingbaby. *And that reminded me of something my dad told me once: when I was a baby and I wouldn’t shut up he’d dab a drop of rum on his finger and stick it in my mouth and I’d sleep all night. We only have Tequila in the house so I did it with that and for a while he became Tequila Mockingbaby. Get it?
June did and she didn’t laugh. She screamed and threw things and left for the day. I didn’t mind losing the Zombiebaby, but June, June was the focal point of all existence. She loved my ideas and inventions, linguistic and otherwise. Made me feel like a genius. What an assault on the world, the two of us. How strong she was and how powerful she made me feel. Missing that, I sweet talked her and she returned. Zombiemother and Zombiebaby. She came back and left all that good stuff elsewhere. June said she forgives me, but she just doesn’t look at me the same now. When she talks to me, it’s all about him. She’s as cold as the Zombiebaby’s flesh should be. What a bond to break.
You know, she styled her hair just like his. She looks just like Angela Davis. AfroZombiebaby and AfroZombiemommy. I hate it now and I hated it back in the seventies when my mom used to shape my naps into an irregular oval. After that kid lobotomized me with his shrieking nonsense one night, I went down to the basement and dug up an old straight-razor, the kind they use for shaves at the barber. I was going to run right up there and snatch at their heads—first him, then her—cutting those stupid bushes right off, but it was a little dull so I sat right there on the floor and scraped the blade against the hard concrete until my arm got tired. That scraping sound once made me want to tear out my teeth. Now it makes me calm. It’s become a nightly ritual. Straight edge shaver in my left hand. A bottle of pomegranate juice in my right. What despair I found in a child’s cry, but hope in the shrieks of metal on concrete and when I’m ready, I will walk up the stairs razor-in-hand, douse them both with pomegranate juice and all will begin.
Rion Amilcar Scott has stories forthcoming or published in the pages of New Madrid, Fiction International, Pank, Ghoti, Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly and other publications. He received an MFA in fiction from George Mason University, where was the recipient of both the 2008 Completion Fellowship and the 2007 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award.
Charles, June would say, Fatherhood has destroyed all that selfishness in you.
Even then, she was slipping from me just as I knew she would totally when the baby arrived. I grinned in false joy and watched her belly plump. Her beauty stretched and distorted. She was now the reflection in a funhouse mirror. June became sad about her outsize and oblong dimensions and I told her she looked radiant, but I had redefined the word. Radiant now meant bizarre and circus-like. Somehow animal. Each time she cried out in pain, I became filled with hope. What a sinking I felt every visit when the doctor said June progressed just as she should. Then, undeterred, I’d double and triple her pomegranate servings. Eat! Eat! June. The baby, he needs the C and E vitamins.
There was a new hope in February, just after I had accepted my fate. She bawled in the middle of the night. Said her stomach was aflame. The due date was three months away. In my panic, I moved quickly to call the authorities. I didn’t, after all, ever want to lose her. Though, as we waited for the ambulance, I insisted she take a pomegranate pill. She screamed and knocked the bottle from my hand scattering the things all over the bedroom floor.
To everyone’s surprise, the baby slipped from June’s vagina out into the world as if all was right. The doctor had never seen such a thing. Excellent, Excellent, just remarkable health, he sputtered. Magnificent.
And if that was not enough, atop the baby’s head was a massive 1970s style afro. When he curled his fist, June called him her little Black Power baby and then she repeated the joke at least once a day. There were variations to it, but for the most part it was the same joke over and over.
Perhaps something is wrong with me. I don’t feel those pangs of love one is said to feel for their own. I never get the urge to protect the weak helpless thing. The Zombiebaby (I’m convinced he did die) is just more work for me. Every few hours he presents me with his relentless warm shit. The worst part is how June and the Zombiebaby have formed a family of two without me. As if he’s her lover now. His mouth right there on her breast where mine used to be. Her breasts, now misshapen from the greedy baby’s gorging, were what got me into all of this, really. They used to be so exquisite.
There’s a joke I tell myself, when I get frustrated; I pretend to forget the title of that Harper Lee book and I call it *To Kill a Mockingbaby. *And that reminded me of something my dad told me once: when I was a baby and I wouldn’t shut up he’d dab a drop of rum on his finger and stick it in my mouth and I’d sleep all night. We only have Tequila in the house so I did it with that and for a while he became Tequila Mockingbaby. Get it?
June did and she didn’t laugh. She screamed and threw things and left for the day. I didn’t mind losing the Zombiebaby, but June, June was the focal point of all existence. She loved my ideas and inventions, linguistic and otherwise. Made me feel like a genius. What an assault on the world, the two of us. How strong she was and how powerful she made me feel. Missing that, I sweet talked her and she returned. Zombiemother and Zombiebaby. She came back and left all that good stuff elsewhere. June said she forgives me, but she just doesn’t look at me the same now. When she talks to me, it’s all about him. She’s as cold as the Zombiebaby’s flesh should be. What a bond to break.
You know, she styled her hair just like his. She looks just like Angela Davis. AfroZombiebaby and AfroZombiemommy. I hate it now and I hated it back in the seventies when my mom used to shape my naps into an irregular oval. After that kid lobotomized me with his shrieking nonsense one night, I went down to the basement and dug up an old straight-razor, the kind they use for shaves at the barber. I was going to run right up there and snatch at their heads—first him, then her—cutting those stupid bushes right off, but it was a little dull so I sat right there on the floor and scraped the blade against the hard concrete until my arm got tired. That scraping sound once made me want to tear out my teeth. Now it makes me calm. It’s become a nightly ritual. Straight edge shaver in my left hand. A bottle of pomegranate juice in my right. What despair I found in a child’s cry, but hope in the shrieks of metal on concrete and when I’m ready, I will walk up the stairs razor-in-hand, douse them both with pomegranate juice and all will begin.
Rion Amilcar Scott has stories forthcoming or published in the pages of New Madrid, Fiction International, Pank, Ghoti, Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly and other publications. He received an MFA in fiction from George Mason University, where was the recipient of both the 2008 Completion Fellowship and the 2007 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award.
