The Loneliest Time
On Boulder and pregancy.
No one that I know wants kids. Ok, that’s not true. In ten years, maybe, just like we used to say ten years ago. My friends and I discuss the pregnancy of a high school acquaintance like the departure of a wounded soldier, in hushed voices. I guess that’s what they wanted, we say, swallowing globs of saliva so thick we might as well choke on it. We try to avoid the big bump stretching her bedazzled t-shirt like a plague bubo. Who knows, maybe it’s contagious. We are 27.
I have always loved babies. Their bread-smelling head and soft and plush peach cheeks and their tiny dimples in place of their knuckles. I like their laugh, thick and juicy like syrup. I have always wanted to be pregnant myself. Lacking a green thumb, I like knowing I am meant to be good at growing. I imagine the strange feeling of sensing something move inside me, my love as deep as Mariana Trench once that little astronaut comes out, tied to me by flesh and blood, breathing my air and living through me.
However, I am not ready. At my age, my mum was pregnant with her second child, me. I have been dating my lovely boyfriend for five years, I have a stable job. To be completely honest, time is ticking. But I pop my birth control pill religiously every morning and rejoice at the sight of red splotching my underwear every month. Is our generation broken? Or is being pregnant completely antithetical to everything we have been taught a woman should be?
In Boulder, the main character watches her lover go through pregnancy with a turned-up nose, disgusted by her humanity. She loves to idealise her women, to see valleys and hills in their sinuous bodies, drawing maps about who they are, never bothering to listen to a single word.
In a few sentences, Boulder voices all my fears:
I don’t know where she’s gone to; I touch her and she’s not there; she has become the thing inside her; she is pliant, subject to a constant manufacturing process that outstrips and unravels her.
Who would, in their sane mind, volunteer their body to a parasite? A living being that strips us of everything we have worked for. Brick by brick, tearing down our walls, gnawing at our skin, while erecting their home on our remains, a temple to themselves, our spoils laying at its feet. Sacrifice.
Being pregnant means losing control. Losing control of our bodies, something we have been taught how to domesticate and manipulate since we were 13, standing naked in the bathroom waiting for the glowy green numbers to dictate our worth. Losing control of our careers, so carefully crafted because we know rules don’t apply the same to everyone, so we stay late and we grab drinks, and we cry in the bathroom and master subtle yet elegant make up looks. Losing control of our relationship, revealing the needy and whiny monster we’ve tried to hide under our lacy lingerie for all these years. And we are tired, actually, and not in the mood, actually, and how could we be if this is what it’s done to us? Losing control of our femininity, because if being a woman has always meant smooth legs and full lashes, a tight flat stomach under round and soft breasts, how can it also be blood and stretch marks and hair on our tummies and puke and farts and back pain. How can being a woman be so gruesome, if my whole life I have been told it’s about pink lipstick?
What does it say about society that the very thing that is necessary to keep it alive and thriving is the worst thing that can happen to a woman?
She doesn’t feel like a woman anymore.
And yet, isn’t that what womanhood is all about? Blood, gush, tear, scream. Clawing at the side of the hospital bed until our knuckles turn white. The weaker sex and yet going through hell and back, coming out bloody and bruised with a brain engineered to make us want to do it again. The lesser men and yet he’s fainting and I’m pushing and tearing my body in two. Community-focused and yet pregnancy is the loneliest time, nine months of solitary confinement inside my body. It takes two to tango, but one to create life, I guess. The gentle sex and yet I can lift a car or stab someone or poison your tea if the tiniest scratch appears on the soft, perfect cheek I took nine months perfecting. Maybe we never knew what a woman was.
On the beach, I see a little girl run around in a pink bucket hat, with little fishes printed on it. She has sand in her hand and her hair is matted with salt water. Her eyes are green, like my boyfriend’s. She’s laughing and stumbling through the waves, getting to know the world, tumble by tumble. I see it in the corner of my eyes, the loneliest time, staring at me like the Angel of Death. Waiting for me to surrender, to open myself to understanding why on Earth do we put us through this, just like generations of women before me opened their legs and I am the living breathing proof that it must be worth it. It will be like falling in love, I think. A lot of it will make sense after the fact. I am sure I will read these words back and shake my head at how much I didn’t know, once I have been through the loneliest time and came back with a little girl with green eyes to call my own.
I check my bag for the silver blister of little round white pills. Tuesday is empty, the hormones floating around my body feel like relief. Not yet.
Boulder
Five Discussion Questions
What is your opinion on Boulder's relationship with women?
Do you believe the depiction of Samsa's pregnancy was accurate? Why or why not?
Do you think Samsa and Boulder's relationship could have been salvaged? Why or why not?
What are your thoughts on Boulder's relationship with Tinna?
Did the ending of the book surprise you? What do you believe the book's message is?
This was so beautifully written Linda! You voiced perfectly all of my fears