Photographic artwork by Kris Saknussemm
The candy-filled feeling I got as a kid when the neighbors' dog had puppies. I got my butt over there so quickly—their jiggly joy, their pure fat. The drive towards understanding true beauty in the minds of the Instagram women I follow. Why they must scalpel their faces to a perfect oval. The drive to have this baby girl.
But this time it felt like it could really happen. And this time my joy kept growing, like a star in the east, like a Christmas ham. She just swelled in my belly, never got any smaller. My coworkers from the nursery gathered attendant and said, Could you believe it. It might actually be me.
Working at the nursery, we know how much it takes for an infancy to be successful. You need the comfy pillows and you need dimensionality, different textures and elements to the room. And even with all that we have, they can still turn tadpole so fast. How many times have I come back from break only to find a nice bassinet soggy, to morass my arms right into a sui generis bog, the baby underneath grown fins and flippers, the mattress ruined and floating? It can happen suddenly as that. They make their neotenic bogs, and we deal.
So when it looked like it could really work for the first time in years—and from me, biologically—don't you know my joy was a badly fitting dress, kept in the closet but not worn yet. Happening to me. Not Sheila, the chick with the gamma ray damage and unattractive knees, or Louise with the acne and known toxic housewares exposure. Me, who grew up on a farm. Like I could become someone else. Someone robust. And I could have her, and she would hold on and stay upright and not morph.
Most of our babies today do morph. The morphing (or "going aquatic") may cause great distress. They may even air-drown, if they grow their gills suddenly and are not transferred quickly to the big tank. We maintain the nursery with its direct access to the big tank for this purpose. I did not know before I began working here that sometimes they anticipate the morph on their own. It must be down deep in their infant bodies somewhere. Days or weeks ahead, they will begin to build bogs for themselves, claw out the bottom of a good bassinet, nudge sippy cups of water over to create muck. Suffice it to say there are a lot of false bottoms here in the nursery, not enough firma in the terra. These babies cause real issues for us.
Our job is supervision of the ones who have gone aquatic. We ensure to scrub the green gunk out of the bottom of their tank and test the iodine levels daily. And while formerly we did not host many births, we have begun to expand this service, as this is the safest place to do it. How many times have I guided a young mother-hopeful over to the big tank, viewable from the nursery through its heavy-framed window, where ex-babies drift and swim? The big tank is a whole city block, our birthing center just an annex off the side.
They can swim quite placidly in here for many years, waving with their gills and fins. Herbivorous, they digest plant matter.
You may catch glimpses of small, widely spaced eyes. Some females trail pretty threads of what looks like clothing behind. The seeming "clothes" are vestigial, a change thought to be instigated by—possibly—nitrogen oxide levels in air or other factors related to the specific hormonal changes that cause the morph in the first place. Though they may cause distress to viewers, it is perfectly harmless to let them float along attached there. They will fall off eventually. I make sure to point this out to visitors. Do not let it upset you or make you think they can reacclimate to terrestrial life.
Louise and Sheila guide me back on my pillows. This is of course the best and safest location to have chosen as my own labor site.
"I think she is really growing. I think she is really coming," Sheila says.
"Look at that, she is really coming," Louise says, nodding at me.
"Look at that, she is strong!" yells Sheila.
"She's pushing. Keep pushing. Just keep going," says Louise.
Do I push? I must be pushing. I must have pushed or been pushed by my baby girl. Pushed to the point where she dissipates.
They say, "Keep going, keep growing."
I feel little feet on the ground, dancing me along. In birth, that is what you do. You push. Enormously, into mine and yours and into the blue yonder.
But I see Sheila and Louise, their faces thinking through what is happening with me. And I see them change with the idea of her. As birth goes on, beholding the idea of her as it becomes and shifts. Their faces walk through each of her minutes inside the world. I see their faces change—this is progression—as she is rethought.
Or this is the nature of living things: they reverse, they progress, they evolve. They are a part of a larger system.
I know this feeling. I have my first glimpse of my daughter while she passes through Sheila's face as another type of presence. She grays the eyes and skin with ruin. She wisps through Louse's face, too. A substance, like lint. She is not here, no longer in my round-balloon belly, not even in the air.
We do not have this girl.
They remain kneeling beside me. Louise holds up the receiving blanket, wide-eyed. I sleep.
When I wake, I walk to the viewing window. It is old, has a heavy frame and peeling black paint. It is latched. Small pieces cross the window laterally, lines of weatherstripping that look like the ones in my own apartment. I realize I have looked at this window every day for many years. I did not know that I looked at the window itself every time I looked through the window.
She is there through the glass, facing me. Who is she? What is her form and her shape? The answer is: She is who I knew she was. She was in the world before she came into it. Wholly formed, womb-formed body. Complete as a doll.
Sheila whispers, "The fullest morph to date."
Louise narrates urgently, as if she must not forget for our records. "The clothes of the female born today seem the fullest expression on record. They present not only as wisps or 'seaweed,' but as a full and symmetrical garment. Well, what would you call it, a dress?"
Long hair floats around the girl's face, and indeed, she wears what appears as a dress, the bodice a whole methodology of crisscrossed fabrics. The womb forgot to form nothing. They look like gingham. A prairie dress. I feel like laughing. God bless her. I say, "She knew we are a farm family."
She hovers, her sleeves billow a bit. And of course two little rubbery hands stick out of the sides of her neck. Her extra part. Gills. Swimming her along. Why I could never keep her.
