The Pudding Club

After watching an interview with rapper 2Short, in which he doles out “fatherly advice” to help young boys learn to “turn girls out.”

If they label you soft, featherweight and white livered,

if the locker room tosses back its sweaty head and

laughs at how quiet your hands stay,

if they come to trample the dandelions roaring in your throat,

you tell them that you were forged inside of a woman

who had to survive 15 different species of disaster to bring you here

and you didn’t come to piss on trees.

You ain’t nobody’s thick-necked pitbull, boy.

Don’t need to prove yourself worthy of this inheritance

of street corner logic, this blood legend, this index of cat calls,

300 ways to turn a woman into a three course meal.

This legacy of shame and man

and pillage and man

and rape and man.

You, boy.

You won’t be some girl’s slit wrist dazzling the bath water.

Won’t be some girl’s I didn’t ask for it but he gave it to me anyway.

The torn skirt panting behind the bedroom door,

some father’s excuse to polish his gun.

If they say take what you want tell them you have everything you need.

You come from scabbed knuckles and women who never stopped swinging.

You come from men who drank away their life savings

and men who raised daughters alone.

You come from love you gotta put your back into.

Elbow grease lovin like slow dancing on dirty linoleum.

You come from that house of worship.

Boy, I dare you to hold something like that.

Love whatever feels most like your grandmother’s cooking.

Love whatever music looks best on your feet.

Whatever woman beckons your blood to the boiling point,

you treat her like she is the god of your pulse.

You treat her like you would want your father to treat me.

I dare you to be that much man one day

that you give up your seat on the train to the invisible women

juggling babies and groceries.

That you hold doors and say thank you and

understand that women know they are beautiful

without you having to scream it across the street.
The day I hear you call a woman a bitch,

is the day I dig my own grave.

See how you feel writing that eulogy.

And if you are ever left with your love’s skin trembling under your nails,

if there is ever a powder blue heart left for dead on your door step

and too many places in this city that remind you of her tears,

be gentle when you drape the remains of your lives in burial cloth.

Don’t think yourself mighty enough to turn her into a poem

or a song or some other sweetness to soften the blow.

Boy, I dare you to break like that.

You look too much like your mother not to.

I’m just gonna go on ahead and say it. I’m scared. At 25 weeks pregnant (a few weeks shy of the 7 months mark and the beginning of the third trimester) I am terrified that I’m not going to be very good at this.

The other night I dreamt that I was giving birth on a beach and all was going peachy keen- like, surprisingly delightfully considering there was a massive head peering out of my vagina- when a wave of tsunami proportions appeared on the horizon. I couldn’t move because I was too busy ya know, trying to catch my lil sea monkey and whatnot, and just as the wave was over my head, out he plopped, only for us both to be swallowed up by the sea before I could reach out and grab him. Once beneath the wave, I couldn’t see a thing so I reached between my legs, grabbed the umbilical cord (which I could actually feel in the dream, for God’s sake. Ew) and slowly reeled in my son like a hooked rainbow trout. There we were, the two of us, underwater, and somehow even in my dream, I had the presence of mind to know he had potentially taken his first breath and eventually would be needing another. I gave him mine, knowing eventually I would need it too. It was a helpless, horrible feeling.

Lesson: Don’t eat ice cream immediately before going to bed.

Everyone keeps saying not to worry. He’s coming regardless and I’m going to be ready when he gets here, even if I’m not. I just keep getting rounder, my feet keep getting more swollen, life goes on every day, closer to that moment. I still don’t completely believe that in a couple months, this kid that I’ve only gotten to know through kicks and turns (FYI: MJ’s “P.Y.T.” really gets him going these days) and his strange nocturnal sleep schedule, is going to squeeze his way out of me and no one can tell me what it’s going to feel like or if I’m going to be able to handle it. And then he’s gonna be here and he’s gonna need a name and milk and more milk and diapers and clothes and sneakers and Christmas presents and homework help and girlfriend advice and money for college and…I can’t breathe.

(In this act, your protaganist runs away from the keyboard in tears, finds a Snickers bar smushed in the bottom of her purse, eats it, feels bad, watches an episode of Basketball Wives and returns to finish her Tumblr post.)

This. Is. Happening. I can’t make it stop coming.
Also, my boobs hurt like hell, so there’s that.
But seriously? A baby? Eboni Hogan with a baby? And he’s supposed to live here with me and my boyfriend in this idiotically small studio apartment in Chinatown?Who let the dogs out? Who let the llamas loose? Who rubbed the fertility dolls? Who’s idea of a cruel joke is this?

Everytime I’m eating, he dances. Thee. Blackest. Thing. Eva.

…and all I can do is eat and pee.

Ahhh, the Lower East Side Community Healthcare Center. That beatific wonderland which I affectionately refer to as The 5th Ring of Hell for Colored Girls Who Have Considered Childbirth When Medicaid Has To Be Enuf. This week, I decided it was time to move on. I do love the midwife who has been caring for me there. She’s honest (“Yeah, you’re gonna leak all over so just get used to it.”) And she has an adorable daughter named Georgia who faked sickness at school seemingly so she could be present, eating Cheetos while her mother checked my vulva for signs of The Angry Yeast. Yes, I think my midwife is the cat’s pajamas but the center as a whole is a filthy den of confusion. The nurse who does my vitals speaks only in incomplete sentences (“Prenatal vitamins? You have bleeding?”) and last time I was there the bathroom reeked of marijuana and there was urine on the sink.

Pause. Let’s discuss.

Pee. On the sink. And the stench of weed. Are we at a frat party? Is having to go to a clinic where people leave URINE on the sink supposed to be some sort of sick hazing ritual? I’d prefer a hearty paddling myself. I understand that making a urine specimen can be messy business for some. I, myself, have become a bit of a Stream Master. If filling pee cups was an Olympic sport, I’d be China. And whoever left pee on the sink would be some small eastern European country that no one has ever heard of. Who are these vikings that leave pee on the sink?! I’m better than this.

So, for the last few months of pregnancy that remain, I’ll be seen at the Brooklyn Birthing Center which is also where Squirrel will be unearthed from my lady parts. Yes, sir. In a luxurious whirl pool with mood lighting. It may not be as convenient to get to but gosh-darn-it people know how to keep a bathroom clean. The midwives there have been catching babies for a lifetime and I felt calm and safe within moments of being there. They answered all my questions in complete frickin sentences and assured me that I was making the best decision for myself and my son by committing to a drug and intervention free birth.

I’m going to miss Georgia, The Cheetos Elf. May she go forth unto the world and bring joy to other bloated women. Amen.