My baby is ugly. 

It may be the swelling of resentment in my chest, the sight of it floating there, stagnant and lifeless, but my baby is ugly. It is ugly and it is an extension of me. 

I want to vomit. I’m about to, I can tell. That feeling of nausea is pushing its way up my throat and burning the inner walls. My mouth is wet, then dry, then wet again. Saliva builds and builds, and then I expel my lunch on the floor next to the toilet. 

Now that I’ve vomited, processed feelings, and cast judgment upon the thing that I have birthed, I am ready to focus on the pressing issue at hand– I have stained my light pink prom dress with deep red blood. It’s rapidly turning into a rusty brown as it dries, and I suck in my breath. We spent so much money on this dress. It was special made to both compliment and hide my figure, and my mother had shelled out the cash to raise the collar of the dress an inch. I’d been told that the pink of the dress complimented my hair, and that’s why I’d settled on that particular color. I’d always loved pink. 

My baby’s skin is pink, a fleshy pink, slick with wetness. Even after being in the water for minutes on end, it’s still covered in some viscous liquid, rose-tinting the water it’s floating in. There’s pink everywhere now. I can’t tell where the bathroom ends and my dress begins, except for the bloodstains. Just the shimmer of the water and the glimmer of the fabric. 

I look at my baby, unmoving in the water. It bobs at the top of the surface. It has fingernails. I heard somewhere that babies had fingernails. With my baby’s amorphous appearance, I didn’t expect it to have fingernails. It does anyway.

My baby opens one bright blue eye and looks at me. I startle, only slightly. How it’s alive in the water, I have no idea. It uprights itself, using its nubs to tread water. It looks pathetic. I retch again. Open tubes on its neck open and close like mouths, coughing up water, sucking in air. It looks like some unfortunate Play-Doh creation, nothing like a person. “Mom?” It chokes out. 

“Don’t call me that,” I mutter. 

“I’m drowning.” 

“You’re fine.” 

“Can you please help me?” 

I look at my baby. What does it expect me to do, touch it? Hold it close to me? I hesitate. In my hesitation, probably sensing it, my baby hoists itself over the bowl of the toilet, clawing at the porcelain with its nubs. It props itself up, supported by its gelatinous body. Its other eye hasn’t opened yet, just the singular blue one. It’s so bright blue that it almost makes me uncomfortable to look at it. I cringe and shift my weight from foot to foot. “Are you angry?” It asks. 

“You ruined my night.” I whisper. “This was my night and you ruined it.” “You don’t look like you were having a very good night.” 

“That might have something to do with the spontaneous birth.” 

“Before that.” 

“Of course I was having a very good night. It’s prom night. They had shrimp at the dance.” 

“Shrimp?” 

“Yes, with cocktail sauce, and crystal glasses for the punch.”

Leal 3 

“Punch.” 

“And I was trying to dance, and you interrupted me.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Well. You should be.” 

My baby adjusts itself. More liquids drip down the side of the bowl, and I look away, down at my shoes. They’re white and sparkly and red and rusty brown now. “Can you go back out and get punch and shrimp?” 

“Not now. I have blood on my dress and shoes.” 

“Can you clean it?” 

“No. My shoes were white. My dress was a light color. I can’t just rub out the blood with soap. It’s going to stain.” 

“Do people care?” 

“Everyone cares.” 

“About you, or about your dress?” 

“My dress. You can’t just go out to the dance floor covered in blood.” 

“I don’t see what’s stopping you.” 

“I don’t want to be judged.” 

“That’s cowardly.” 

“What would you know?” 

My baby falls silent. 

I push out of the bathroom stall, stumbling over to the sink. My legs are still trembly and weak, but I make my way across the room anyway. Catching myself, I glare up at my reflection. My mascara is everywhere but my eyelashes. My foundation has started to lift because of the sweat and stress. My hair has fallen in my face. My lipstick is smeared. I grunt frustratedly at myself. 

“Can we go back to the dance?” My baby asks, still propped up on the toilet seat. It shifts, squelching into a comfortable position. 

“It’s your fault we can’t. I already told you this.” 

That single blue eye looks back up to me. In the sea of rose-tinted water, the eye is a diamond, shining so bright that I want to pluck it up and put it in my pocket, saving it for trade in case of apocalypse. The eyes are reminiscent of mine, I’m sure. Mine are blue too, but not nearly as wide and bright. I can see myself in their reflection, and I look just as bad as I did in the mirror. My baby blinks. 

“I could be a dancer.” My baby reasons. “I bet your friends would think I was cool.” “They would not. They would think you were disgusting.” 

“Am I disgusting?” 

“Yes.” 

“How come?” 

I look at it. “You’re amorphous and unnatural.” 

“I’m natural. I came from you.” 

I shake my head. “You’re not real, though. You’re just some thing. Some thing that came out of me. And you’re grating. Grating on my ears and grating on my eyes. And if you went out and danced, you’d grate on everyone else’s eyes too. And everyone would know you were mine! They’d know you were mine, my thing, because I have blood on me and you’re bloody and wet. I’d never live it down. I don’t want anyone to see my abomination. You’re an abomination!”

“I’m a part of you!”

“You are nothing.” I seethe. “You are nothing, and you will never be anything. You will not be a dancer, you will not be seen.” 

The blue eye shines with tears (I can tell it’s not the perpetual mucus-y film that my baby seems to produce from its pores, because it’s liquidy and clear, rather than thick and pink). My baby cries ugly tears, and I watch it. I try not to vomit again. Swallow it down. “I could be a dancer.” It cries, pathetically. 

Looking at my baby makes me miserable, but I can’t look away from the display of vulnerability. Its fingernailed nubs fly to its face, swiping at its one eye. My teeth clench together so hard that I think I might chip one. My chest seizes. When the blue eye meets my own, I share in the vulnerability, angrily allowing the tears to slip from my eyes, my own dull blue diamonds. “I don’t understand.” My baby whispers. 

“I know.” I whisper back. “There’s nothing to understand.” 

“Can you hug me?” It says. 

I don’t want to. I don’t want to, and I’ll ruin my dress. I reach out and I pick up my baby, holding it close to me. Its fingernailed nubs paw at me, trying to find something to grab onto. Its fingernails are so tiny. 

This close, I can hear the gasps of breath from the holes on my baby’s neck, the squelch of its movements. It’s nuzzling into me, and it’s almost hard to stomach. I stomach it anyway. The gasps are wet and breathy, sticky and desperate. Can it even breathe out of water? It’s not as if it’s a sea creature. 

“Can you breathe out of water?”

There’s no answer, just labored rasping. Sticky gasp after sticky gasp. Squelch, squelch. Paw, paw. I hold it tighter. It’s delicate, I realize, now that it’s under my touch. Tiny and delicate, and disgusting and perfect. My grip almost tightens, but I force myself to relax. My baby. 

Gasp. The breathing is getting slower. I sway from side to side, trying to wake up my baby. It's not saying anything, it’s just slowly moving in my arms, twisting from side to side with sluggish movements. I shush it and do a spin. Dance with my baby. My baby who wanted to dance. It is so small. 

“I think I could’ve loved you.” I whisper to it, still swaying and spinning. Sway, spin. It doesn’t answer. No more sticky gasps. 

“I wish you’d come later. I wish you’d come anywhere other than prom. It’s fitting, though. We can have a dance, right? You can’t dance in a hospital. That’s a much too serious place to dance. They’d probably look at me weird if I danced in a hospital. No one’s looking at me at all in here.” 

Gently, carefully, I place my baby back in the toilet, pressing a gentle kiss to its mushy head. My kiss doesn’t leave any mark, all my lipstick has rubbed off. I have red and pink running down the front of my dress, causing great wet spots. I’m covered with evidence of the night, slime and blood and shrimpy pink punch vomit. I don’t feel dirty anymore. I love pink. I flush my baby down the toilet.

Leal