Sound and Stone
Whitney Lee Four billion years ago the earth burst into being. I presume burst because babies burst from vaginas, because lightning bursts from air, because lava, tephra, and gas burst from volcanic vents. I believe this momentous burst transpired on a Monday because that would be a lovely way to start a Monday. But on Tuesday and for three million Tuesdays, the lithosphere split and slipped over the planet’s molten surface at the same velocity my thumbnail grows. Did you know a fetus’s thumbnail forms eight weeks after conception? Though such an appendage is of little use to a baby––a thumbnail. Though such an appendage is of little use to anyone. Thumbnails and imperceptible tectonic shifts are mere details when, in Chicago, chocolate saturates the wind on the corner of Milwaukee and Halstead. Stealthy planetary shifts or the collection of keratin at a finger’s tip are forgotten when Lake Michigan reeks of rotting yellow perch, largemouth bass, bowfin, and trout. Who thinks about stability’s relentless deception when raccoons spill slimy banana peels from my trash cans? Who questions the ground’s fidelity? Especially when a question about the utility of baby fingernails lingers in your consciousness. And my voice careens over a mile in 4.862 seconds. Sonic waves emanate from my chest and displace particles forcing millions of imperceptible inconsequential collisions––a bit less dramatic than burst of lightning. Yet, sometimes my own words tear shreds and scraps of flesh from my bone in a room, sterile, cold. A room with a devastated mother, furious father, terrified grandmother. Confusion––Spanish-speaking, English-speaking, matters not because “dead” and “baby” are two words that are not mistaken, are not confusing, yet welded together make no sense. Instantaneously, my voice, with the force of a cold 45-caliber bullet penetrates the air, impacts a mother’s chest, then erupts through her heart. Shrapnel slices her soul, leaving wounds a thousand miles deep, too far to fathom. But mine, my soul, is worn down, like a canyon, rifts, sharp at the edges, vast, layers of the earth exposed, cut by momentous waters where babies swim, feet kicking, bodies dying. Have you seen a mother when she learns of her baby’s death? Her face, the skin and muscle of every devastated mother’s face, contracts and stretches into the same expression––eyelids gape, forehead narrows, mouth breaches. She grasps my wrist with pink painted fingernails and a diamond engagement ring. Then again her fingernails might be bare, or chipped, or long, or short or perhaps without marriage ring. But it’s all the same. She begs for clarification. She prays for misunderstanding. But the sound of my voice, a mere breath, rises and falls and rises and falls, over my tongue, beyond my lips, slips into the ethos and finds her ears, where the drums will resonate though the deepest parts of her, “Your baby is dead.” Have you heard the sound of a mother when her baby dies? It is not a cry, or scream, or protest. It is a primal guttural yell, like a wounded wild animal. And everyone and anyone who hears that sound feels the earth shift. |
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About the Author: Whitney Lee is an obstetrician who received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Numéro Cinq, Huffington Post, Women’s eNews, The Rumpus, and Crack the Spine. She lives in Chicago with her husband and four children. Currently, she is working on a collection of themed essays.