Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within

by Elif Shafak

  Her husband rented houses near the various clinics she resided in so that he could still be close to her while he was writing. They spent the following years seeing each other only on visiting days, between pills and doctors and treatments. He died in 1940 from a heart attack. Eight years later a fire erupted in a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina. Among the patients who lost their lives in that fire was Zelda Fitzgerald.

  Faulkner once said that a writer’s obituary should be simple. “He wrote books, then he died.” But what about a woman writer like Zelda Fitzgerald: She sat on the edge, danced herself to heartbreak, painted the world in stunning colors, raised a daughter, loved with great passion, wrote stories, then she died.

  Scott and Zelda left a huge unanswered question behind: If they hadn’t worn each other thin, would they have lived longer, and produced greater works? I don’t know. Some days I feel like it would have made a big difference if they had made life easier on each other; then other days I suspect the effortlessness of daily life wouldn’t have mattered at all. The outcome would have been the same.

  Zelda Fitzgerald was not a “normal” woman who conformed to conventional gender roles. Neither modesty nor passivity was her cup of tea. But if she had been the opposite, if she had been capable of living a more settled and secure life, would she have written better books, more books? Would she have been remembered more highly today?

  As I write this now I suspect the opposite is true. Maybe through their constant wars and ups and downs, and their daring to swerve miles away from a conventional marriage, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald were able to write, love and live to the best of their ability.

  Brain Tree

  The Center for Women’s Studies at Mount Holyoke College is situated in a large, beige, three-story typical New England house, in which I occupy one room on the first floor that has a separate entrance. The second floor houses the offices of the faculty and other fellows as well. The walls and ceilings are so thin I can easily hear their conversations, and more than likely they can hear me shouting at my finger-women—explaining in part why I catch some of the faculty looking at me, at times, with concern.

  Connecting my room with the center is a door that is so flimsy, the first time I cook cauliflower in my kitchen, the entire department stinks for days. The smell seeps through the cardboardlike door into every nook and cranny. I try preparing other simple but less smelly recipes—always with the same outcome. In a place where everyone drinks organic, fair-trade, antioxidant herbal teas, even the aroma of my Turkish coffee is too much. And so, I abandon the kitchen altogether, and stick to fruit, crackers and water.

  In the evenings, when everybody leaves the building, I remain. There is something creepy about being alone in such a big house that suddenly becomes so quiet and dark. At night, when I try to sleep, I find myself disconcerted.

  But not tonight. This evening in my nutshell of a bathroom, in the faint glimmer coming through the open window, I watch snowflakes fall from the deep sky onto Mount Holyoke’s campus. The blanket of snow makes the world seem like a different planet, and I sit here feeling calmer and more composed than I have been in months.

  The bathroom may not be the most appropriate place to observe a landscape this romantic, but it is the only place in the entire building where I can have a cigarette—without the others, and, most important, the fire alarms detecting my smoke. The healthy-life-happy-minded feminists may forgive me for my cauliflower, but I don’t think they will pardon me for my Marlboro Lights.

  But necessity is the mother of invention. Shortly after I arrived here, I set up a mini ironing board in the bathroom as a desk and closed the lid of a storage bin, making it as comfortable as an armchair by tossing a cushion onto it. This is where I write my newspaper column and stories. I lock myself in here, and eat red apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner, smoking to my heart’s content.

  So on this snowy night, I am here again, looking out the window as I write, when a loud scream yanks me out of my reverie:

  “Help! Help! There’s a thief!”

  I put the cigarette out, leave the bathroom and check the clock by the corner of the bed. It reads 3:08. I grab the African mask on the wall and dash forward without thinking about what I am doing. Not that I am made of hero material. If I am brave at this moment it is precisely because I don’t have a clue what is going on. And there is no time to stop and be frightened.

  “There is a thief on the roof! Help!”

  Now I recognize the voice. It is Miss Highbrowed Cynic who is screaming. I find her perched on top of a vase like a wingless chickadee, hiding among Christmas flowers, her face as pale as a ghost.

  “What is it? Why are you yelling?”

  “I just got back from the library. I was walking alone in the dark and then I saw it! Her! Someone is walking on the roof!”

  “Maybe it is one of the other finger-women.”

  “No, it can’t be. All three of them are here, don’t you see?”

  I flick a glance over my shoulder. It is true. Having rushed out of bed, they are all lined up behind me—Dame Dervish in her long nightgown, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian in her dark green commando pajamas, Little Miss Practical in her comfortable sweatpants. Straining our ears, we listen to the strange sounds echoing from somewhere else in the house.

  “Yo, let’s call the police,” says Little Miss Practical. The day we moved here she wrote down the numbers for police, fire and ambulance on a piece of paper and stuck it on the fridge.

  “Wait, don’t rush. Let me go and take a look,” says Dame Dervish.

  But Milady Ambitious Chekhovian doesn’t approve. “No way, you are the last person to do this.”

  “And why is that?” Dame Dervish asks calmly.

  “I know you. Whoever you see on the roof, you’ll say, ‘God must have sent us this thief for a reason,’ and you’ll end up inviting the thug for dinner! You are too soft-hearted for the job. It’s best if I go.”

  She has a point, I admit. Milady Ambitious Chekhovian has always been the bravest of the Choir of Discordant Voices. But since she masterminded a coup d’état, her audacity has tripled.

  “All right, you go, then,” I say.

  Fully focused on her mission, she grabs a plastic fork as a weapon and goes off into the dark.

  Milady Ambitious Chekhovian has no sooner disappeared than a commotion erupts on the roof, piercing the night’s stillness. The squirrels inhabiting the trees around the center stick their heads out of their holes, trying to understand what is going on. A few of them jump down and vanish.

  We hear Milady Ambitious Chekhovian’s voice crack as she shouts at someone. The perceptible alarm in her tone is quickly replaced by anger and aversion. Whoever the other person is, she doesn’t seem to quarrel, doesn’t retort.

  Ten minutes later Milady Ambitious Chekhovian comes back downstairs and attempts to stab a tangerine with her fork, fuming and furious. We all watch the fork break into two pieces.

  “What is it? What happened?” I ask.

  “See for yourself,” she says. Then she turns toward the door, almost hissing. “Are you coming or not?”

  Slowly, shyly, as if willing herself to disappear into the thick night, a finger-woman walks in. I recognize her immediately. It is Mama Rice Pudding.

  “Hello there!” I pick her up and place her on my palm.

  “You two know each other?” Milady Ambitious Chekhovian asks.

  “Well, hmm . . . We’ve . . . m-met once,” I stutter.

  “Oh, yeah? When was that?” Miss Highbrowed Cynic asks, frowning. “And how come we don’t know about it?”

  Deciding that the best defense is a good offense, I snap: “In fact, I should be asking that question. In all this time, why didn’t you ever tell me about Mama Rice Pudding?”

  Milady Ambitious Chekhovian briefly considers the notion. “What do you think would have happened if we told you? What good would it have brought?”

  “I have a right to know that
I have a maternal side,” I insist.

  “Great, just what we needed,” says Miss Highbrowed Cynic, grumbling to herself. “We crossed an entire ocean to get rid of this sticky miss. Alas, she found us here as well!”

  Suddenly it dawns on me. Does my leaving Istanbul in such a hurry have anything to do with this?

  “Wait a minute, hold on,” I say. “Is this why you brought me all the way here to America?”

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian cast guilty looks at each other.

  “Time for some real talk! Let the cat out of the bag!” says Little Miss Practical, shrugging nonchalantly.

  “Okay, it might as well come out,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. She turns to me, her eyes blazing with fire. “I don’t know if you recall, but sometime ago you were traveling on a steamboat and this plump woman with two sons sat beside you.”

  Of course I remember. I nod my head.

  “Well, you might not have realized it, but you were profoundly moved by your encounter with that woman. She was young and pregnant with her third child. When you looked at her you lamented the opportunities you lost. You almost wanted to be her. If I hadn’t acted at once and made you write “The Manifesto of a Single Girl,” God forbid, you were going to get trapped in your dreams of motherhood.”

  “So I wrote that manifesto because of you?”

  “Yes, of course,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, as she paces up and down. “I thought that would be the end of the story. But when Mama Rice Pudding noticed you were curiously watching pregnant women and mothers with their babies, she decided it was high time for her to come out of hiding and introduce herself. We tried to reason with her, and then we threatened her. But she didn’t budge. She was going to upset the status quo, so we performed a military takeover. We forced you to leave Istanbul, but apparently Miss Nuisance followed us here!”

  “But, if she is a member of the Choir of Discordant Voices, she should have an equal say in all matters,” I venture.

  “Thanks, but no thanks. We can’t let that happen,” Miss Highbrowed Cynic says, rubbing her temples as if on the verge of a migraine.

  “We are not a democracy, okay? We were always a monarchy, and now we are a tight military regime,” roars Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. A spark flickers in her eye as she turns to her chum. “Let’s have an emergency meeting.”

  As the chairpersons of the High Military Council’s executive committee, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian and Miss Highbrowed Cynic move to a corner, whispering in fierce tones. After what seems like an eternity, they walk back, their footsteps echoing their determination, their faces grim.

  “Follow us outside,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian.

  “Where on earth are we going at this hour?”

  “Move!” she scolds me, and then calls out to the others: “All of you! On the double!”

  At three-thirty in the morning, under the watchful gaze of the braver squirrels, we march in single file in the snow. Our teeth chattering, our fingertips numb, we pass by the library and the dormitories.

  “How serene the universe seems tonight,” mumbles Dame Dervish as she takes a deep breath.

  How she’s able to find something positive to say even under the most stressful circumstances is a mystery to me. I pick her up and put her inside my sweater so she doesn’t catch a cold. We move along in this fashion until we arrive under a massive tree.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic delivers the answer: “I discovered this tree when we first arrived here. On sunny days, it’s a perfect place to read. I would have much preferred to show it to you in the daylight, but I need to do it now. Pay attention to the tree trunk. What does it look like?”

  Oddly enough, a mammoth balloonlike lump bulges out of the tree’s thick trunk. It looks like a giant shriveled-up prune or a huge wrinkled walnut with ridges. Or else—

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic gives me a sidelong glance. “Tell me, what does that mass resemble from afar?”

  “Well, I don’t know. . . . It’s almost like . . . like a brain. . . .” I say.

  “Bingo! It is a Brain Tree,” says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

  “So tonight we have all gathered under the Brain Tree,” Milady Ambitious Chekhovian says, launching into a speech. She has climbed onto a branch, where she pouts like a dictator assessing his people’s intelligence before starting to lecture them.

  “This is a historic moment,” she bellows. “The time is ripe to make a choice once and for all.” She points an accusing finger at Mama Rice Pudding. “Do you want to be like her? A forlorn housewife? Or would you rather live your life like a majestic arboreal brain?”

  I can’t take my eyes from the tree. In the velvety dark of the night, surrounded by all this snow, the tree looks fearsome and impressive.

  “Please don’t listen to them,” whispers Mama Rice Pudding as she clings to my legs. Tears have formed in her eyes. So fragile she is. So little I know about her. I’ve seen her only twice while the others have been with me for years.

  “We can make a great team, you and I,” says Mama Rice Pudding.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  A strong wind blows in fitful gusts, swirling the flakes. I feel like I’m on the set of Doctor Zhivago. This is not Russia and there isn’t the slightest possibility of a Bolshevik revolution on this campus, but there are still profound emotional changes under way.

  Finally, I muster the courage to answer. “If I have to make a choice, I’ll certainly choose the Brain Tree.”

  “But you made me a promise!” Mama Rice Pudding bursts forth.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, unable to meet her eyes.

  Milady Ambitious Chekhovian jumps down from her branch and Miss Highbrowed Cynic grins at her, shouting, “Give me five!”

  Partners in crime. They do such a complicated high five, with their arms and fingers passing through each other’s, that we all watch with awe.

  When the show is over Dame Dervish sighs heavily, Little Miss Practical takes off her glasses and cleans them nervously, Mama Rice Pudding cries silently.

  “Now you have to repeat after me,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. “I’ve traveled wide, I’ve traveled far—”

  I do. On the snow-covered Mount Holyoke campus, under that breathtaking Brain Tree, I swear these words to myself:

  “I’ve traveled wide, I’ve traveled far, and I’ve placed writing at the center of my life. At last I’ve reached a decision between Body and Brain. From now on I want to be only, and only, Brain. No longer will the Body hold sway over me. I have no want for womanhood, housework, wife work, maternal instincts or giving birth. I want to be a writer, and that is all I want to pursue.”

  In this moment, one of the many things I realize is that this is a turning point in my life, a sharp one. While I veer fast, I don’t know what awaits me around the corner.

  “May the Body rot and may the Brain glow. May the ink flow through my pen like oceans to nourish the novels that shall grow within.”

  I repeat this oath three times. When it is over, I feel numb inside, almost anesthetized. Perhaps it is because of the cold. Perhaps the gravity of what I have just uttered has started to sink in.

  A Mystery Called Brain

  Before two weeks have passed my body starts to show signs of change. First my hair, then the skin on my face and hands, dries out. I lose weight. My stomach flattens. Then, one day, I realize I have stopped menstruating. I don’t get my flow the next month, or the one after that. At first I don’t pay any attention to it—in fact, I am even relieved to be rid of womanhood. Wouldn’t it be liberating to free myself of femininity and sexuality, and become a walking brain? I feel like a crazy scientist who is experimenting with all kinds of unknown substances in his murky laboratory—except I am experimenting on myself. Not that I seem to be turning into a green, giant, humanoid monster. But I am transforming into an antisocial, asexual, introverted novelist, who, perhaps, is no less s
cary than the Incredible Hulk.

  In late May, I am perusing the magazines in the waiting room of the Women’s Health Center while waiting for the kind, lanky gynecologist who has done all sorts of hormonal tests on me. Finally, the nurse calls me in.

  “Here is an interesting case,” says the doctor as I walk into his office. “Feeling any better?”

  “The same,” I say.

  “Well, well, let’s see what we have here. . . .” says the doctor, inspecting the test results from behind his glasses. “Your hormone levels have come back fine, and so have the thyroid tests.”

  “You are normal,” says the nurse next to him, as if she could not quite believe this.

  “But, then, why don’t I menstruate anymore?”

  “Under these circumstances there is only one answer,” the doctor responds. “Your brain has given your body the command not to.”

  “Is that possible?” I ask incredulously.

  “Oh, yes, it is very possible,” announces the doctor, squinting slightly, as if he were trying to peer into my soul. “You have to discuss this with your brain. I would, but I don’t know its language.”

  “It’ll take us some time to learn Turkish,” says the nurse with a wink.

  They chuckle in perfect synchronization—in the way that only people who have worked closely together for many years can manage. I, in the meantime, wait silently, unsure what to say.

  “Could you tell me what you do for a living?” asks the doctor.

  “I am a writer.”

  “Ah, I see,” he says with brightened interest. “What kind of books do you write?”

  This is a question I’d rather avoid. I don’t know exactly how to categorize my books, and I am not sure I even want to. In fact, this happens to be a thorny question for almost any writer who doesn’t produce within established genres, such as “romance” or “crime.” Fortunately, the doctor is less interested in my answer than in an idea that has just occurred to him.