Mother of the Blues
The first time I felt it, I knew it was old as ancestry: the feeling some women chase with words; some feel out the flesh of their mouths or stomach with moans and growls you would’ve thought was warfare. The child conceived of heartache, our evidence of loving. I was with child before I ever lay with a man—an ill-mannered girl who made a language of feeling. She rattled my insides, making songs of heartache and lonely. I carried her for years— thought I got rid of her with words fishing round like a hook. She only grew heavy as any baby fat with emotion, the weight I carry like any mother, like any woman who has mothered herself while a child clawed out her throat. A boy left me by the side of the road, heart in hand like a beggar. I hadn’t known I was with child until she came naked on my tongue, a cry so much my own and so separate from my body. Words crashed through my mouth like I was a master rapper, cursing him and his mothers and his house and his . She kicked and burped and gassed like any almost-baby, ready to taste air for herself. Mad as Mary, as any woman who saw God and left, mouth filled with babble, I pushed out the wail like a kegel, and the child came, blue. No breath. I pushed my air out, and filled the hollow where her mouth should’ve been. People saw me wail and writhe, until I laughed, in awe. I heard the echo of ages in her single song, and witnessed her feel her own self out. How good it felt to raise her from my tongue. She threw her whole-bodied voice about me like a whistle. Passersby heard her, too, but to them, I was a foolish girl with no manners, hollering and calling it singsong: a godless prayer. I held her as long as I could, calling on her again and again, willing her to life: mama’s healing baby. She took all my hurt and made it dance before me. Her cry, my own. I gave birth to sound I ain’t never heard before, and she was soft as woman parts and hard as loving. I kept willing my breath and heart to hear her, mama’s tender baby, a child of myself.