Not even I know where Ellen would want to begin this story. Maybe she’d start in the cemetery, with her face pressed against Marjean’s gravestone. Or she might be in the Slimes, lying flat on her back in the long blond grass with a black guinea pig, a notebook, and her lunch. She’d be looking up at the sky, talking.
Certainly she wouldn’t begin at the dinner table with her big angry parents, or in the green van with her three siblings. She never liked to feel cramped, anxious or put upon, which unfortunately is the way of the world. The most obvious test of personhood is to weave through all that cramped anxiety with yourself intact, touched but untouched. That way, you will return to me recognizable.
I usually place people in the world to learn or teach things. Poor little Ellen, I had it in mind for her to do a bit of both. I gave her very odd eyes, as clear and confusing as glass. I wanted people to feel like she could see right through them, and I gave her the ability to do just that. She wore no mask of her own and easily saw through those of others. I also gave her ordinarily troublesome hair, a thin nose, and lips like a cupid’s bow. When I said goodbye to her, she looked up at me with those enormous knowing eyes and what I could see was myself, which was exactly how I wanted it.
She said, “Don’t be sad. I’ll be right here all the time.”
But she was wrong. I knew that, of course, and so I was sad. I was going to miss her.
She slipped into the world through a cut in her mother’s belly. The mother’s cervix refused to open up and release either of her two girl babies; this condition had resulted from earlier childhood trauma, which now affected the mother’s thoughts on femininity and girlhood. She couldn’t let the girls pass through. The two boys had come roaring out like trains, even the one with wide shoulders. She could not hold them back.
Ellen exited the womb very upset. Until then, she’d been happily sucking her thumb and thinking, This is not so bad, not so scary at all. She enjoyed the dark red glow, the sound of the mother’s voice, and wondering about who was its source. Luckily I’d told the mother to stop drinking coffee about two months into the pregnancy, and she listened. I knew Ellen could be excitable, and caffeine would only make it worse. Therefore, although the baby was upset, she was not as irritated as she would’ve been if the mother had ignored my message.
I think Ellen would have preferred to come out the natural way. She was an extremely affectionate child who loved hugs and massages, so starting life by rotating through a nice warm stretchy vagina would have suited her better than the sudden slash of artificial life greeting her on that cold Sunday in February. The flash of light, then gloved hands pulling. She didn’t like waking up in such a way. It was too bad, but you know, I can’t control everything. I have to leave many things up to the people – free will and all that.
It was so cold on her birthday that the snow appeared bright blue. Everyone commented on it; all you could see was blue snow alight with yellow sparkle. Ellen didn’t see the weather; she was safe inside the Howey Bay Hospital, crying. She cried for much of the first period of her life, which surprised me, since she’d seemed so resilient. Then I realized she must be crying for both of us, since I can’t shed tears, not really.
The mother tried for two weeks to nurse the baby. Ellen didn’t take to the breast as readily as I’d hoped; it would have given her comfort. But she could taste the bitter anxiety in the few droplets of milk that did trickle out. In fact, the first time she opened her crystalline eyes and looked at her mother, she saw what was awaiting her. The mother had three other children under five years old at home. The father was unenthusiastic about anything except money and being angry and being angry about money. The family lived in a trailer that stank of snot and pee and ground beef. There was a lot of screaming.
So, while the mother had mostly enjoyed the pregnancy, she was keyed up with the tension of unsupported caregiving and humourless partnership. She saw the girl’s name in lights, called it out with love and eagerness upon the birth, and prayed constantly for hope and companionship so that she could do a proper job of loving her children.
I did give her the blue and yellow weather that afternoon; it was a celebration, a marking of a very special day for all of us up here who noted Ellen’s going to earth. But the mother did not notice the colours or take much comfort from them. I suppose she needed something more human than that.