Written by Mary Ann McGuigan
Sometimes she’s called Mary, but mostly they call her Mama. She doesn’t know my name. She doesn’t know I exist yet. I can’t tell up from down, right from wrong. I just am. I’m cushioned, like a tiny potato in loamy soil. It’s comfy and mostly I sleep, except when the deep voice says her name that scary way, and when he calls her those other names. He lets out harsh sounds that make her muscles tighten and my heart race. I can tell she doesn’t like when he yells. I don’t either. But there’s no escape.
He’s different when he talks to her about hits and strikes and someone named Joe DiMaggio, not scary at all. Sometimes I smell smoke when he’s near, the ashy scent she breathes when they’re quiet, when she’s still.
Lovely times come in between. Loud melodies with a pounding beat that rises and falls as she bounces and spins me around. I love when she makes those beautiful, dreamy sounds, when all her muscles soften and her breathing deepens and her heart pumps evenly, lifting me like great waves. The ones who call her Mama ask her to do it again and again. “Sing another one,” they say. And she always has another. Some that make them giggle. Some that make them pound the floor. Some that make them hold her close, their arms around her tummy. I recognize almost all of them now, all the tunes. And the voices of each of the darlins. That’s what she calls them, her darlins.
I’m hungry a lot. She doesn’t eat much. She feeds the darlins first. I’m taking up more space every day, and I worry that she’s figured out I’m here. When she rubs her tummy hard, I feel the vibrations. “Please, god, no,” she’ll say. So I try to stay very still, because I don’t want her to know I’m here.
She doesn’t want me to be here. She talks to her sister about what to do. She has five darlins and after the fifth one was born, another one started growing just a few months later. “Not yet,” the doctor told her. “You won’t survive it.”
She told her sister how she talked to the priest, explained what she had to do. “You’ll be excommunicated,” he warned, “banned from the sacraments.”
“But who will take care of my children?” she said.
“God will show you the answer.”
But he didn’t. So she made it go away. She cries when she tells this story. So does her sister.
But that was more than a year ago and now I’m here. And I don’t want to go away. I want to hear the tunes, be one of her darlins, so I keep very still. I sleep most of the time, but I’m growing fast, and there’s no room. I stretch and push because it’s so hard to be still. And now the big voice is angry again, so her muscles tighten, and sudden, hard movements toss me around. Her rapid breathing makes my pulse race. The darlins are crying, calling, “Daddy, no!” Then I can’t hear them anymore. A high-pitched wailing takes over, and speed and jostling about. Voices talking about blood. And loss. And hurry, hurry.
Stillness returns, but I’m shaken, afraid. I kick and turn and thrash about. I must let her know I’m here. Maybe if she knows I’m here, she’ll be more careful. Maybe he’ll want to be careful too.
Then she speaks. “Feel that?” she says.
“He’s a busy one,” someone tells her. It doesn’t sound like her sister or a darlin. It’s a sing-song voice. “Won’t be long now.”
“Yes,” Mama says. She rubs her tummy, firm easy circles that help me be still. Then everything’s quiet, and the crooning starts. “For it was Mary, Mary, plain as any name can be.” But I don’t hear the darlins, so who is she singing for?
Her voice is very soft, very low, as if these words are secrets. “Though in society, propriety they say Marie. But it was Mary, Mary long before the fashions came.”
All the tightness has gone away, and her breathing is deep and regular and I want to sleep, but she starts again. “My mother’s name was Mary, she was so good and true. Because her name was Mary, she called me Mary too.”
She moves her hand across her tummy, causing ripples again, keeping me awake. I think she knows I’m here. I think she knows my name.
FIrst Published in Ellipsis Zine in Nov 2023.
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Mary Ann McGuigan’s creative nonfiction appears in journals such as SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, and The Rumpus. Many journals publish her fiction, including The Sun, Massachusetts Review, and North American Review. Her collection Pieces contains stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net; her second collection, That Very Place, was praised by Kirkus as “a literary tour de force.” The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s novels as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a finalist for the National Book Award. She loves visitors: www.maryannmcguigan.com.