Sisters of the Revolution

by Ann VanderMeer

  Six trees crashed into the wall, crushing it to the ground. From a thousand places inside the breathing forest, trees sighed, cracked, and yawned open. Men wearing polished breastplates and leafy tunics crawled through the gaps, scurried over the sides and leapt from the leaning branches.

  “Run,” her husband to be yelled as he ran. He turned, his broad face slack and slick from fear before a blade sliced him first in the thigh, then at the chest, then at the neck. He crumpled in a dappling of red and green and red, red, red. Carmina knelt beside him. Men with knives and spears and clubs ran by. Somewhere, a bell rang. And another answered it. And a third. These bells only rang in case of catastrophe, and Carmina had only heard them twice in her life—once when a man escaped from the penal colony, and once when the men who live in trees swarmed into her house and killed her father.

  The man who would be her husband lay, face up, on the ground. His mouth ran with blood, and his breath was harsh and shallow. Carmina took his hand. She picked up a leaf and laid it on his chest wound. She laid another on his thigh. She laid another at his throat. He blinked. His breathing slowed and became easy.

  “Once,” she said, “there was a man who journeyed to the center of the wide world to find his fourteen fathers.”

  He looked at her face. Slowly, he brought his other hand to hers and squeezed weakly.

  “Once, there was a man who was good and wicked at the same time. He loved a tree. He loved her so much, he thought he’d die.”

  Eight more trees fell over the wall. Carmina looked around and instead of a courtyard, they sat in a forest. Nineteen trees grew up through the house, their canopies piercing and arching over the roof. One of the Molaru men went by wearing her aunt’s boots and carrying her favorite fan. Carmina did not move.

  “Once there was a man who was not a man. Once there was a man who was me.” The man who would be her husband shuddered and sighed and his hands dropped away from hers and onto the ground. Carmina stood and walked to a gap in the wall and climbed through. Forty trees stood with their middles slit open. Carmina approached the nearest tree and laid her hands on the exposed wood. It was yellow, veined with green and brown and smelled sweet and sharp with sap and dust. She found two handholds and lifted herself up and inside, finding that she just fit. Finding that she was quite comfortable. And when the bark closed behind her, she did not cry out. She was not afraid. And she did not look back.

  HIROMI GOTO

  Tales from the Breast

  Hiromi Goto is a Japanese-Canadian writer and editor of novels, poetry, and short fiction. She has written for both children, young adults and adults. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the Sunburst Award, and the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award. Darkest Light is her latest novel. “Tales from the Breast” is a fresh, perhaps darkly twisted, look at the roles and responsibilities of new parents. It was first published in absinthe, winter 1995, then reprinted in Ms. Magazine.

  The questions that were never asked may be the most important. You don’t think of this. You never do. When you were little, your mother used to tell you that asking too many questions could get you into trouble. You realize now that not asking enough has landed you in the same boat, in the same river of shit without the same paddle. You phone your mother long distance to tell her this and she says, “Well, two wrongs don’t make a right, dear,” and gives you a dessert recipe that is reported as being Prince Charles’s favourite in the September issue of Royalty magazine.

  Your Child’s First Journey, page 173:

  Your success in breastfeeding depends greatly on your desire to nurse as well as the encouragement you receive from those around you.

  “Is there anything coming out?” He peers curiously at the baby’s head, my covered breast.

  “I don’t know, I can’t tell,” I wince.

  “What do you mean, you can’t tell? It’s your body, isn’t it? I mean, you must be able to feel something,” scratching his head. “Nope, only pain.” “Oh.” Blinks twice. “I’m sorry. I’m very proud of you, you know.”

  The placenta slips out from between your legs like the hugest blood clot of your life. The still-wet baby is strong enough to nurse but cannot stagger to her feet like a fawn or a colt. You will have to carry her in your arms for a long time. You console yourself with the fact that at least you are not an elephant who would be pregnant for close to another year. This is the first and last time she will nurse for the next twelve hours.

  “Nurse, could you please come help me wake her up? She hasn’t breastfed for five hours now.”

  The nurse has a mole with a hair on it. You can’t help but look at it a little too long each time you glance up at her face. She undresses the baby but leaves the toque on. The infant is red and squirmy and you hope no one who visits says she looks just like you.

  “Baby’s just too comfortable,” the nurse chirps. “And sometimes they’re extra tired after the delivery. It’s hard work for them too, you know!”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course. Oh, and when you go to the washroom, I wouldn’t leave Baby by herself. Especially if the door is open.” The nurse briskly rubs the red baby until she starts squirming, eyes still closed in determined sleep.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we have security, but really, anyone could just waltz in and leave with Baby.” The nurse smiles, like she’s joking.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Oh, yes. And you shouldn’t leave valuables around, either. We’ve been having problems with theft, and I know you people have nice cameras.”

  You have endured twelve hours of labour and gone without sleep for twenty-eight. You do not have the energy to tell the nurse of the inappropriateness of her comment. The baby does not wake up.

  Your mother-in-law, from Japan, has come to visit. She is staying for a month to help with the older child. She gazes at the sleeping infant you hold to your chest. You tell her that the baby won’t feed properly and that you are getting a little worried.

  “Your nipples are too flat and she’s not very good at breastfeeding,” she says, and angry tears fill your eyes.

  “Are you people from Tibet?” the nurse asks.

  Page 174:

  Breastmilk is raw and fresh.

  You are at home. You had asked if you could stay longer in the hospital if you paid, but they just laughed and said no. Your mother-in-law makes lunch for herself and the firstborn but does not make any for you because she does not know if you will like it. You eat shredded wheat with NutraSweet and try breastfeeding again.

  The pain is raw and fresh.

  She breastfeeds for three hours straight, and when you burp her, there is a pinkish froth in the corners of her lips that looks like strawberry milk-shake. You realize your breast milk is blood-flavoured and wonder if it is okay for her to drink. Secretly, you hope that it is bad for her so that you will have to quit breastfeeding. When you call a friend and tell her about the pain and blood and your concerns for the baby’s health, you learn, to your dismay, that the blood will not hurt her. That your friend had problems too, that she even had blood blisters on her nipples, but she kept right on breastfeeding through it, the doctor okayed it and ohhhh the blood, the pain, when those blood blisters popped, but she went right on breastfeeding until the child was four years old.

  When you hang up, you are even more depressed. Because the blood is not a problem and your friend suffered even more than you do now. You don’t come in first on the tragic nipple story. You don’t even come close.

  “This isn’t going very well.” I try smiling, but give up the effort.

  “Just give it some time. Things’ll get better.” He snaps off the reading light at the head of the bed. I snap it back on.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think things are going to get better at all.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic,” he smiles, trying not to offend me.

  �
��Have you read the pamphlet for fathers of breastfed babies?”

  “Uhhhhm, no. Not yet.” Shrugs his shoulders and tries reaching for the lamp again. I swing out my hand to catch his wrist in midair.

  “Well, read the damn thing and you might have some idea of what I’m going through.”

  “Women have been breastfeeding since there have been women.”

  “What!”

  “You know what I mean. It’s natural. Women have been breastfeeding ever since their existence, ever since ever having a baby,” he lectures, glancing down once at my tortured breasts.

  “That doesn’t mean they’ve all been enjoying it, ever since existing and having done it since their existence! Natural isn’t the same as liking it or being good at it,” I hiss.

  “Why do you have to be so complicated?”

  “Why don’t you just marry someone who isn’t, then?”

  “Are you hungry?” My mother-in-law whispers from the other side of the closed bedroom door. “I could fix you something if you’re hungry.”

  Page 183:

  Engorgement

  The baby breastfeeds for hours on end. This is not the way the manual reads. You phone the emergency breastfeeding number they gave to you at the hospital. The breastfeeding professionals tell you that Baby is only doing what is natural. That the more she sucks, the more breast milk you will produce, how it works on a supply and demand system and how everything will be better when the milk comes in. On what kind of truck, you wonder.

  They tell you that if you are experiencing pain of the nipples, it’s because Baby isn’t latched on properly. How the latch has to be just right for proper nursing. You don’t like the sounds of that. You don’t like how latch sounds like something that’s suctioned on and might never come off again. You think of lamprey eels and leeches. Notice how everything starts with an “l.”

  When the milk comes in, it comes in on a semi-trailer. There are even marbles of milk under the surface of the skin in your armpits, hard as glass and painful to the touch. Your breasts are as solid as concrete balls and the pressure is so great that the veins around the nipple are swollen, bulging. Like the stuff of horror movies, they are ridged, expanded to the point of blood splatter explosion.

  “Feel this, feel how hard my breasts are,” I say, gritting my teeth.

  “Oh my god!”

  “It hurts,” I whisper.

  “Oh my god.” He is horrified. Not with me, but at me.

  “Can you suck them a little, so they’re not so full? I can’t go to sleep.”

  “What!” He looks at me like I’ve asked him to suck from a vial of cobra venom.

  “Could you please suck some out? It doesn’t taste bad. It’s kinda like sugar water.”

  “Uhhh, I don’t think so. It’s so … incestuous.”

  “We’re married, for god’s sake, not blood relations. How can it be incestuous? Don’t be so weird about it. Please! It’s very painful.”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t.” Clicks off the lamp and turns over to sleep.

  Page 176:

  Advantages also exist for you, the nursing mother … it is easy for you to lose weight without dieting and regain your shape sooner.

  “You look like you’re still pregnant,” he jokes. “Are you sure there isn’t another one still in there?”

  “Just fuck off, okay?”

  Your belly has a loose fold of skin and fat that impedes the sight of your pubic hair. You have a beauty mark on your lower abdomen you haven’t seen for five years. You wonder if you would have had a better chance at being slimmer if you had breastfed the first child. There is a dark stain that runs vertically over the skin of your belly, from the pubic mound to the belly button and almost in line with the bottom of your breasts. Perversely, you imagined it to be the marker for the doctor to slice if the delivery had gone bad. The stain isn’t going away and you don’t really care because, what with the flab and all, it doesn’t much make a difference. You are hungry all the time from producing breast milk and eat three times as much as you normally would, therefore you don’t lose weight at all.

  “You should eat as much as you want,” your mother-in-law says. She spoons another slice of eggplant onto your plate and your partner passes his over as well. The baby starts to wail from the bedroom and your mother-inlaw rushes to pick her up.

  “Don’t cry,” you hear her say. “Breast milk is coming right away.”

  You want to yell down the hall that you have a name and it isn’t Breast-Milk.

  You eat the eggplant.

  Page 176:

  The hormone prolactin, which causes the secretion of milk, helps you to feel “motherly.”

  Just how long can the pain last, you ask yourself. It is the eleventh day of nipple torture and maternal hell. You phone a friend and complain about the pain, the endless pain. Your friend says that some people experience so much pleasure from breastfeeding that they have orgasms. If that were the case, you say, you would do it until the kid was big enough to run away from you.

  The middle-of-the-night feed is the longest and most painful part of the breastfeeding day. It lasts from two to six hours. You alternate from breast to breast, from an hour at each nipple dwindling down to a half hour, fifteen minutes, eight minutes, two, one, as your nipples get so sore that even the soft brush of the baby’s bundling cloth is enough to make your toes squeeze up into fists of pain, tears streaming down your cheeks. You try thinking about orgasms as the slow tick tick of the clock prolongs your misery. You try thinking of S&M. The pain is so intense, so slicing real, that you are unable to think of it as pleasurable. You realize that you are not a masochist.

  Page 176:

  Because you must sit down or lie down to nurse, you are assured of getting the rest you need postpartum.

  You can no longer sit to breastfeed. You try lying down to nurse her like a puppy, but the shape of your breasts are not suitable for this method. You prop her up on the back of the easy chair and feed her while standing. Her legs dangle but she is able to suck on your sore nipples. You consider hanging a sign on your back: The Milk Stand.

  Your ass is killing you. You take a warm sitz bath because it helps for a little while, and you touch yourself in the water as carefully as you can. You feel several new nubs of flesh between your vagina and your rectum and hopefully imagine that you are growing a second, third, fourth clitoris. When you visit your doctor, you find out that they’re only hemorrhoids.

  “I’m quitting. I hate this.”

  “You’ve only been at it for two weeks. This is the worst part and it’ll only get better from here on,” he encourages. Smiles gently and tries to kiss me on my nose.

  “I quit, I tell you. If I keep on doing this, I’ll start hating the baby.”

  “You’re only thinking about yourself,” he accuses, pointing a finger at my chest. “Breastfeeding is the best for her and you’re giving up, just like that. I thought you were tougher.”

  “Don’t you guilt me! It’s my goddamn body and I make my own decisions on what I will and will not do with it!”

  “You always have to do what’s best for yourself! What about my input? Don’t I have a say on how we raise our baby?” he shouts, Mr Sensible and let’s-talk-about-it-like-two-adults.

  “Is everything alright?” his mother whispers from outside the closed bedroom door. “Is anybody hun—”

  “We’re fine! Just go to bed!” he yells.

  The baby snorts, hiccups into an incredible wail. Nasal and distressed.

  “Listen, it’s me who has to breastfeed her, me who’s getting up every two hours to have my nipples lacerated and sucked on till they bleed while you just snore away. You haven’t even got up once in the middle of the night to change her goddamn diaper even as a token fucking gesture of support, so don’t you tell me what I should do with my breasts. There’s nothing wrong with formula. I was raised on formula. You were raised on formula. Our whole generation was raised on formula and we’re fin
e. So just shut up about it. Just shut up. Because this isn’t about you. This is about me!”

  “If I could breastfeed, I would do it gladly!” he hisses. Flings the blankets back and stomps to the crib.

  And I laugh. I laugh because the sucker said the words out loud.

  3:27 A.M. The baby has woken up. Your breasts are heavy with milk but you supplement her with formula. 5:15. You supplement her again and your breasts are so full, so tight, that they lie like marble on your chest. They are ready.

  You change the baby’s diapers and put her into the crib. In the low glow of the baby light, you can see her lips pursed around an imaginary nipple. She even sucks in her sleep. You sit on the bed, beside your partner, and unsnap the catches of the nursing bra. The pads are soaked and once the nipples are exposed, they spurt with sweet milk. The skin around your breasts stretches tighter than a drum, so tight that all you need is one little slice for the skin to part. Like a pressured zipper, it tears, spreading across the surface of your chest, directed by your fingers, tears in a complete circle around the entire breast.

  There is no blood.

  You lean slightly forward and the breast falls gently into your cupped hands. The flesh is a deep red and you wonder at its beauty, how flesh becomes food without you asking or even wanting it. You set the breast on your lap and slice your other breast. Two pulsing orbs still spurting breast milk. You gently tug the blankets down from the softly clenched fingers of your partner’s sleep, unbutton his pyjamas, and fold them back so his chest is exposed. You stroke the hairless skin, then lift one breast, then the other, to lie on top of his flat penny nipples. The flesh of your breasts seeps into his skin, soft whisper of cells joining cells, your skin into his, tissue to tissue, the intimate melding before your eyes, your mouth an “o” of wonder and delight.

  The unfamiliar weight of engorged breasts makes him stir, restless, a soft moan between parted lips. They are no longer spurting with milk, but they drip evenly, runnels down his sides. The cooling wet becomes uncomfortable and his eyelids flutter. Open. He focuses on my face peering down and blinks rapidly.