What I Carried to Term
In the photo from last year I’m six months pregnant, or at least it looks that way. You wouldn’t have seen my bulge earlier because I had a fleece vest on, but the room was too hot and sweat had broken out all over my body, so the vest was no longer an option. With or without child I had to take it off and the photographer caught me.
Caught me is a funny phrase: it implies exposure of a shameful secret. Which isn’t applicable here, or not exactly. I call my belly a secret but of course it’s not. Every time people look at me they see it. But now with this photo I’m reminded that they see it, and that’s where shameful comes in. My bulge shouldn’t be shameful but shame is what I feel.
* * *
Before we go on, I should make introductions.
This is an essay with a bio, so I won’t introduce John further. But you simply must meet the girl version of me. She’s the one who landed me in the Q of LGBTQ+. Adjectives don’t do her justice, but if they did, exuberant, vivacious, and saucy would be a good start.
I keep her name a secret because she’s not ready to divulge it, or I’m not. And besides it feels sacred somehow. I can’t say it out loud: its beauty leaves me speechless, like when you see a newborn for the first time.
* * *
I’ve seen other photos like this one, but back then it was all fat. In one of them, taken half a century ago, rolls of flab cascaded off my sides. The camera caught me slouching in a powder blue shirt and aviator glasses and — well, my version of thirteen, with all the gawky that implies.
Or the photo from the South Africa trip I took in my forties. I always thought my secret was safe from those who saw me head-on, but no: the camera was looking straight at me and my belly lolled over my belt. King size. There’s something so first-world white oppressor about it: the fat American come to condescend to hungry Africans.
There aren’t many of these photos, thank God. But enough of them exist to create a narrative: a body prone to put on weight, living in a culture that says fat and thinks disgusting. Except this time it’s different. I may be fat but I’m also pregnant.
* * *
You could say the fat shouldn’t be an issue.
Years ago, when she was in college, my wife caught a glimpse of Senator Abraham Ribicoff on a dais somewhere. She told me how charming she found that pooch above his belt.
Every year in Ethiopia, certain Bodi tribesmen spend six months in their huts, drinking cow’s blood and milk, in a competition to become the tribe’s fattest man. The prize is a lifetime of fame and honor. There’s a reason it happens where it does: many Africans consider girth a symbol of wealth, happiness, and success.
But Africa is far away and Senator Ribicoff is long gone. It’s hard to hear them in the supermarket checkout line, above the shouts of Men’s Health and Us and Cosmo and every other magazine cover with today’s weight loss secret in bold type.
* * *
I am terrified of finding out my pregnancy is false. If I’m carrying nothing, who am I really?
We all know the traditional answer. I look between my legs (when I can peer over my belly) and see a penis. Look like a boy you’re a boy. End of story.
Nowadays we know that’s bullshit. But old habits die hard, and they still have the power to threaten. If this is just fat, if there’s no pregnancy of any kind, what separates me from the middle-aged guy on the ninth hole, putter in hand, paunch overhanging his shorts? What keeps the girl version of me from disappearing?
I hear myself ask these questions and feel something else in my belly.
A fire.
Girl Version will have none of it. The pregnancy was her idea. In all of this she’s saying you may see John but I’m here too. Round, proud, without secrets.
* * *
As evidence of her presence she points to the Bodi. Not their bulging stomachs or thighs or the way they almost topple over when they walk.
No, she points to their ears. Actually their earrings.
All the men in the competition wear something shiny and dangly from their earlobes. The jewelry comes from whatever the men can find: the bottom of a jerrycan, or a hunk of sheet metal. One fellow wears CDs from his ears.
With these earrings, the story goes, the men believe they look like their cows. Note the wording: not bulls, but cows.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but Janelle doesn’t care. Yes, that’s her name, and she’s finally out, we both are, the culmination of what I carried to term: the fragile embrace of a round belly, and inside something waiting to be born.
