NAMING BABY: a flash published a few years ago by defunct Pendeldyboz

 So I used to write "realism," but rarely.

Naming Baby

by Carol Novack

Betty's baby bounces frenetically in her backyard playpen, pointing and gurgling at the obese Abyssinian cat on our side of the picket fence. I watch the baby from my second floor window, through the haze of Henry's old lady beige curtains. The cat rubs his cheeks against the face of the humming planet, oblivious to the baby. I don't know why the couple next door named her Shitake. When I pointed out the obvious nickname the kid would acquire for life, Betty simply shrugged. 

"Shit, I've been called worse," she responded. "Try Betty Boobs on for size," she said, thrusting them at me to accentuate the point. 

"Don't you think Shitake's real cute?" Betty drawled. "Reminds me of something good for you but kind of exotic too." She always laughs so loudly, makes my head hurt. 

We had that conversation soon after Betty had returned from the hospital, belly emptied of baby and already on Atkins. I hadn't had much to say to her since then, what with Henry's leaving in a narcissistic rage and as soon as I could breathe, Bill's moving in, and then my losing the job and contending with the rough preambles to divorce. I'm lucky Bill is making enough for both of us, but of course a woman should stand on her own. 

So much has changed in my life. It's hard to believe the baby is only seven months old. I watch her every clement late spring morning and feel disgust rising like bile, imagining other mothers like Betty, mothers who can't possibly love their children, mothers who are dooming their children to lives of misery. Naming a child is more than a symbolic act and one should take care, just as one should take care with life insurance and the choice of lovers. One should take great care in everything one does, even paring cucumbers and choosing local officials. But one doesn't. One lets oneself choose beige curtains because everybody says they soften glare. That's what Henry said, and he was always right. Better safe than sorry; makes me sick. 

At least, Bill is a great provider. He believes he saved me from mad Henry and he's foolishly raring to continue saving me from anyone or thing that threatens me. I have to keep that in mind as the tiny embryo inside my belly grows, silent to everyone but me, a whispering creature, tiny morsel of self, heaving and sighing. My belly aches as I sit hunched on the toilet adjacent to our master bedroom. I try to memorize the pink, grey and white tiles and the names of the silly subtitled fish swimming inside the shower curtain Henry put up. My tubes hurt. I hear the growing seed ululating in the dark. 

But I am so fortunate. When I stand up, I look in the full length mirror and I see what men are supposed to want to see: long, lithe limbs; firm breasts; and full, "bee-stung" lips. My hair shines with new life and my own youth, yet I can't find my self in the mirror. And I think so what; should I be proud when this body is an accident of birth? Only I know that the secrets of my body are conspiring against me. 

I am gazing at Betty's baby when the pains seize me like alien monsters assuming my identity. My name is now Pain. I imagine the embryo as a tumor that is only the clone of the beginning of a baby. The tumor has invaded so much of me I will never know hope, creation or the rudiments of wisdom. I imagine the room overfilling with my blood, the blood overtaking the planet like an epileptic ocean, swallowing Baby Shit and dragging her deep within its maw. I clutch Bill's fat goose feather pillow and inhale his robust scent, but I can hardly breathe.

I grasp the bedpost, reach for the phone, and let Bill save me, just this once. I will not have this baby, this baby without a name.

3 Little Love Poems/Flashes (Draft)

Any comments, critiques? This will be up for a day or two then gone. I hope you enjoy!

3 Little Love Poems


Relations

Auntie was prone to say: “Cheese is best when sliced thin just like life.” She always bit off a lot of less than she could chew, and avoided more than a mot of mirth, even with dessert and a spot of port. “Take little and relish it, and you will be sufficient. But that’s just my opinion.”

When I was little, I ate too fast and choked at birthday parties. Then I grew up a little and married the first man who’d overcome me, big with an eloquent tongue. I nearly lost my breath till death might do us part.

At Auntie’s funeral, a weeping man hugged me so brutally he caught my breath. He was the man called Happy Henry Auntie had left at the altar. As the attendees gasped, Auntie reversed herself with deliberation and panache, floating down the aisle towards the door. “So sorry, I made a little mistake,” she spoke politely, waving her white-gloved hands.
_______________

His Heart

Carla wore his heart under her sleeve. The heart he’d carved said “Carla and Carl forever,” as if her arm were a tree he’d planted on his property. An arrow with angel wings pierced the dead center of the heart, “a darling, thoughtful touch,” she exclaimed, turning as red as the heart’s aorta. When Carl left for Majorca with Mabel, the wings turned black and blue.

______________

Nostalgia

Short, plump Lili longed for the man on the other side of the square, the one who sat on a bench reading Sonnets to Orpheus. Everything about him was grand and aquiline. Atop the man’s mane of white hair perched a black beret. A black tie always relaxed on his lavender silk shirts; he seemed to have a menagerie of them. Was he always going to a Ball?

The man she called “the one” reminded Lili of what she wished to remember of her childhood: a blueberry sundae with dark chocolate chips. She wondered what color his eyes were. She was an expressionist who loved Kandinsky.

Lili took to wearing a black hat to cover her dull gray hair and a long black silk scarf to adorn her parade of lavender blouses. She started to make a habit of walking by him, winking her hips. Then she added an accessory, a book of poems by Rilke that poked ostentatiously from her mini-tote bag. Lili did this for weeks, months, years, oh what is time? But he never even glanced her way. He was too busy mouthing poems, looked as though he were eating them. Yet he was ever gazing up at the sky, into the sun, with his eyes closed. Lili tried wearing spiked heels to create noises to awaken him from his Rilkean reveries. Nada. Niet. Rien du tout. She tried tripping and ripped her purple stockings on several occasions. Nada. Niet. Rien du tout.

One day, Lili set up an easel in front of the patisserie opposite “the one’s” bench. She brought her most luxurious colors and began to paint him. A crowd soon gathered to exclaim her praises in most colorful words. When the crowd dispersed, “the one” walked cautiously up to the painting and asked Lili if he could suggest a “minor touchup.” “Although I cannot see, I can smell the color you used for my eyes,” he said. "They are in fact absent of color, but perhaps I should say they were, as you’ve made them blush. I can feel you are a warm woman of wit and refinement, the one I’ve awaited to take to the Ball.”

And so they went and that was only the beginning.

Reading next Wednesday in the East Village

NEW Reading Series!!

Friends of Tuesday Shorts now showing monthly at the Boxcar Lounge (http://boxcarlounge.com): Our FIRST phenomenal reading is November 28, 2007, 168 Avenue B, East Village NYC. 8 - 10 pm.

Please join us and forward to anyone you know. We wanna see your shorts there too!

Hosted by Shelly Rae Rich, writer (see http://blog.shellyraerich.com) and co-editor of Tuesday Shorts (http://myspace.com/tuesdayshorts), the series kicks off with an eclectic group of talent.


And here they are…..(in ABC order)

Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in journals like Pindeldyboz, Post Road, and Red Rock Review. After editing fiction for the Beacon Street Review (now Redivider) and Zoetrope All-Story Extra, he co-founded Night Train, a recently reinvented literary journal, which has been featured in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio. Sunnyoutside Press published a collection of his flash fiction, Breaking it Down in November 2007.

Linda DiGusta is a freelance writer and artist. Active in the NYC theatre for more than a decade as a director, designer and performer, the inventiveness of acting and collaboration on a screenplay re-kindled her early interest in fiction, and she has had several short stories published in print and online. In the fine art world, she currently has 2 still-life drawings in the exhibition "Lineal Investigations" at the Housatonic Museum of Art, and her assemblages and drawings have been seen in group exhibitions in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including at Art Gotham in Chelsea this month. Integrating art and writing, Linda also writes for and serves as Executive Editor of Resolve40.com, an online publication created by artists in 2005 to present the art world from a fresh point of view. She lives in midtown Manhattan with artist Mark Wiener and their multi-species family. More at: http://www.lindadi.com and http://www.resolve40.com.

Anne Elliott has performed her poetry, with and without ukulele, at the Whitney Museum (with the Beats show), PS122, Lincoln Center, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, Woodstock '94, and other venues in and out of NYC. Her poems have appeared in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, Verses that Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets, and other anthologies. Her fiction has appeared in Hobart, Pindeldyboz, FRiGG, Ars Medica, and others, and she blogs on the writing life and feral cat management at http://assbackwords.blogspot.com.

Carol Novack, a former criminal defense lawyer and Australian government grant recipient, is the author of a chapbook of poetry, play, collaborative CD and two collaborative films. Writings may or will be found in many publications, including American Letters & Commentary, Action Yes, Del Sol Review, Diagram, 5_trope, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Fiction, La Petite Zine, LIT, Notre Dame Review, and the Star*Vigate anthology of best online writings. Carol publishes the multi-media e-journal Mad Hatters' Review (http://madhattersreview.com), curates a reading series at the KGB Bar, and runs lyrical fiction writing workshops. She'll be a resident at The Vermont Studio Center next year. For additional details, see her blog (http://carolnovack.blogspot.com).