I Have Tried to Write this Story Seven Times
They're out of turkey and egg white baguettes at her favorite cafe. | Witch Craft Magazine
by Ella Fox-Martens
1.
I miscarry the embryo on a Tuesday, which is the same morning the barista at my favorite cafe tells me they are out of turkey and egg white baguettes. At the time, one of these seems like a greater tragedy than the other.
No, I tell the barista. You cannot be out of turkey and egg white baguettes.
I’m so sorry, she says. She has the sweet, stupid eyes of a baby cow on an abattoir conveyor belt. But we are.
No you’re not.
Yes we are.
You cannot be out of turkey and egg white baguettes, I want to say, because if you are, I will kill myself. I will crush my head in the smoothie machine. I will single-handedly ensure every person in this store is entitled to a lifetime of free small drinks to compensate for the immense trauma I’m about to inflict on them. I will be the source of several lawsuits which will be taught in first year classrooms of mediocre law schools for decades to come.
Oh, I say instead. Well I guess that’s okay. I guess I’ll have a croissant.
2.
It is an embryo, not a baby, because that’s the only way I can think about it. The pink plastic stick told me I was going to be a mother only two weeks ago, and I nearly called Planned Parenthood on the spot. There’s no way, I told Helena, I can ever have this baby.
Sure, she’d said, leaning in closer to the mirror to apply another coat of mascara. I mean, that’s what I would do.
But at night, when Helena was snoring in her room and Jack was out somewhere reading their slam poetry to a group of eight people in a dive bar, I looked things up. I learned that inside of me was a blob more or less the size of a baked bean, with small dimples where the heart and head would be. I learned my breasts were growing, preparing, and the nausea I felt was human chorionic gonadotropin flooding my bloodstream, courtesy of my newly-formed placenta. And if I broke down in tears at the sight of diapers in the supermarket—the round little face of the photoshopped baby! their gummy lack of teeth!—it was only because of the estrogen and progesterone now being produced double-time. I was a particularly efficient factory: my lazy body kicked into gear by the ultimate foreman.
A few times I thought about ringing the person who was listed in my phone as DO NOT, the person whose sperm had swum up me and created a baked bean, the person who told me, specifically, never to talk to him again, and also that I’d ruined his life and his relationship and cost him the only woman he’d ever loved.
I thought about it. It’s important you know I thought about it.
3.
Once I realized I had an embryo in me, I started seeing pregnant women everywhere. I feared maybe I had entered into a strange dystopia where everyone was pregnant. I would stare at their taut bellies and try to guess what fruit their baby best resembled: a mango? An apple? On a sticky Tuesday in May I called in sick at work and went into my local Barnes and Noble and bought every single copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
I have a lot of pregnant friends, I told the cashier through a mouthful of baguette. He did not care.
4.
In the movies when miscarriages happen, the bass is always going and the camera is zooming in on a panicked face and somebody is clutching their stomach going oh god oh no oh god. Or they look down and see a puddle of blood and a sexy doctor is saying things like stat and two CCs and hand me the scalpel.
There were no hot medical personnel present at my miscarriage, so I guess that’s why it failed to register as one. I was fine, and abruptly my stomach was cramping like I had to shit, so I went to the toilet and for about five minutes I thought I was going to produce the world’s biggest collection of fecal matter. But that didn’t happen. Instead I shut my eyes and sat there for a long time. I knew I should probably go to the hospital but I didn’t want to. I only wanted breakfast.
5.
I was going to schedule an abortion anyway, so there is a way to interpret all this as a bad case of over-punctuality.
6.
Once I took a yoga class where they told us to locate the temporal center of our being — the seed from which we germinate. We were supposed to grow our roots and stalks then bud ourselves outwards into a flower. But I couldn’t find my center, so I just copied the instructor’s movements and tried to pretend I was having a spiritual orgasm like the guy next to me, who was twisted into a grunting, euphoric pretzel. I thought nobody noticed, but after the class the instructor came up to me and looked me up and down and said I’d do better next session. I never went again because I was too afraid she might be right.
7.
Nobody will teach you this in a creative writing seminar, but every story ever told, including mine, can be summarized like this: For a very short time, you are not alone. Then it is Tuesday.
about the author
Ella Fox-Martens is a writer living in London.
"For a very short time, you are not alone. Then it is Tuesday." This is fucking immaculate.