Postpartum is Forever
an excerpt from Rios de la Luz's An Altar of Stories to Liminal Saints
I’ve been a fan of Rios de la Luz even before I read her fiction, when I met her over a decade ago. But her writing is so damn good. She’s one of the best writers out there and I think many here are primed to become big fans. Her stories have a wildness to them that I’ve really only ever found in Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This wildness sends her sprawling across genres but always remaining fully embodied, which is all too rare a quality in a writer. You can buy her books directly from her or on Amazon.
I cannot wait for you all to read this book so go do it now.
If you’d like to submit your own writing for a future Guest Post, please see the post here.
The Botánica Flashback
The Curandero says he can raise my chances of getting pregnant from forty percent to seventy percent. His hands are adorned with gold rings and tattoos. His eyes are big and brown and honest. He points at my crotch and tells me he sees a dark triangular shadow around my uterus. A force of evil. We’re in the back of the Botánica and the room smells like Florida water, incense, and melted wax. A gigantic Saint Michael portrait hangs on the wall in a gaudy gold frame along with what I assume are Curandero certificates of credentials. A robust and intimidating muscular statue of Archangel Michael watches from the corner. His sword shines above his head and Satan looks annoyed that he’s being stepped on. I make direct eye contact with the Curandero. I tell him in broken Spanish that I could guess why the shadows lurk around my, como se dice, vagina. My guess is years of bodily trauma. I point between my legs and tell him there’s been a lot of bad news in there, but he shakes his head NO.
It’s not that I wanted to get pregnant. I never thought about bringing someone earthside before. The thought of a creature swimming inside my belly made me feel vulnerable in the worst way. It made me nauseous. It made my belly itchy. My body, making lungs, creating a placenta, a vibrating heart, and passing down the depth of ancestral love, but also the traumatizing bullshit. Bringing something to life means it eventually has to die. I didn’t say this to the Curandero. I let him rub the egg I handpicked from the baby blue carton on my stomach and my chest. I closed my eyes and saw myself in a pastel pink room with fleshy walls, soft, and dripping iridescent liquid onto my hand. I licked at my palms and the walls quivered and vibrated. Moans came from under my feet. I trembled, my body pulsating into a deep trance. My body twitched and my belly buzzed with warmth. I opened my eyes and I was back in the Botánica. The Curandero kept praying over me and I don’t remember getting on my knees, but I was kneeled in front of him, and the wall filled with crosses, marigolds, and a painting of the Mexican version of Jesus with a six-pack, blue eyes, and a head dripping with glittering blood. Sweat dribbled down my temples. My clothes stuck to me from my fever visions. I heaved in and out. My heartbeat was thunderous. I was sobbing. I was confused. I was euphoric.
The Curandero claimed he saw my baby on the other side as he performed the cleansing. A healthy baby boy with the attitude of a bull. My love for him would be an inescapable and beautiful bond. He put his right hand on my forehead and then over my heart. I fainted in slow motion and he placed me on a comforter with a La Virgen de Guadalupe design, doting on me as I thrashed around on her. You have to understand, this isn’t how my cleansings usually went. I would go in, feel some tingling at the tips of my fingers and toes, but that was it. With this vaginal aura cleansing, I felt like those gyrating Evangelical sweaty people on TV. Something overtook me. The Curandero played along, and we both got so into it, I really fainted, and he really saw something on the other side, I just don’t know if it was my son.
In the backroom of the Botánica, I napped in a corner as other clients came in. No one seemed to mind. Some of them gave me small tokens. Flower petals. Coins. Smooth rounded rocks from their pockets. I had vivid all-consuming dreams. First, in a room with white glossy walls, bright lights surrounding me as I gave birth to a gigantic baby with a full set of teeth. I was tied down to the bed with white leather straps. My hospital gown was ripped apart and bloody. A glowing faceless entity untied me from the bed. The baby looked up at me and smiled with all its teeth and I could not bring myself to hold him. In another dream, I was on the beach, my pregnant belly soaking in the sun, and exquisite green quetzals with shining ruby bellies flew past me. My eyes followed as they flew into the cloud forest. I tried to trail them, but the forest was dense and thick with fog. Eyes watched me from the trees. I looked down at my belly and could see my son kicking hard. I touched the outdent of his foot. I looked down at my palms and eyes blinked at me from the center of each palm. I rubbed my belly and my palms could see inside. I was going to give birth to a quetzal. In the third dream, I met myself as a child. She wore our favorite floral printed dress with a side ponytail in a red scrunchie. Her wrists were adorned in neon beaded bracelets. Her sneakers were bright white and her socks had tiny ladybugs on them. She was excited to meet me. She shook my hand and smiled with her cute little front gap. Curly baby hairs stuck out of the front of her head as though they were impala horns. She skipped as she led me to a small cave where she buried flash cards of her favorite words she just learned in English. Rompe Cabezas: Puzzles. Respirar: Breathe. Arcoíris: Rainbow. She looked up at me and I wanted to turn away so she couldn’t see what would hide behind her eyes in a few years. She pointed up at the sky and there were three suns. Orange. Yellow. Purple. The clouds were swirls. The air smelled like roses and burning wood. Albino crows yelled and chased each other. I wanted to thank her for meeting with me. As I looked down at her, her eyes were gone. Blood lined her small face. I tried to hold her, but she disappeared into ash.
A Memory
When I was five, my mom slapped me across the face because I walked in on her hiding bricks of marijuana in her bedroom closet. It was the early nineties and she met a man who promised her a new kind of life if she worked for him. My tía Alicia believed the same thing and she ended up in a Zacatecas prison. My tía got caught smuggling drugs minutes before she was about to cross the Mexican border into Texas. Mom grabbed me by the chin and told me to stay out of her room and to mind my business when strangers came through the apartment, especially Uncle Nestor. Nestor was a pervert. He was rude and told nasty jokes. He pinched my ass at any chance he got. He blew kisses at me when no one was looking. I flipped him off when no one was looking. My cheek throbbed. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. I was furious. I wished I could slap my mom back until her lips split open.
You know how I knew I was pregnant with you? On the first day of spring, seven ladybugs landed on my belly. There were huge swarms of them all over the city that year. If you opened your mouth to yawn, a little ladybug could fly down your throat and get lost in your gut, but seven meant new life. It meant you found me in this new life.
Then, she explained that tía Alicia was a murderer in her prior life, but the worst kind. She was a serial killer. She didn’t want to terrify me with the details. Tía Alicia was repaying her debts in this life. I remember a long bus ride and the cobblestone roads on the way to the prison. It wasn’t a family visit, it was a business meeting. My mom showed up to inform my tía of the financial debts she would owe after she was released. My tía spit on mom and mom brushed it off saying it might take my tía two more lives before that man in her soul can repent for what he did. I wondered if this was Nestor’s first life. He was a bad man. He didn’t even try to disguise it. He was the man who taught me that sometimes my soul and my body could detach. For survival.
My Son Introduces Himself
It was after work. It was evening and the pink sky was fading. My mind was preoccupied with a man in the office. He looked like a human version of a pug and he put his hands on me. He grabbed me by the neck and squeezed until I started to panic, then he called it a joke. This wasn’t the first time he touched me. I could tell he was testing his boundaries. Pushing, little by little. I wanted to smother the pug man. I wanted to rip out his tongue and feed it to the hawks. If he dropped dead, I would celebrate.
After washing frustration tears off my face, I looked into the mirror of my tiny bathroom, and I heard a whisper in my right ear. The air was warm.
I’m ready.
I’m ready to be born.
I want to be born.
It didn’t scare me. I just knew it was the truth.
There’s a superstition that says if someone is calling your name as you’re falling asleep, not to follow the voice because it’s a trick. An entity is trying to gain your trust and then take advantage of you. If it’s a Catholic, they’ll say it’s a demon. If it’s a witch, she’ll say it’s an enemy. I don’t know what the advantage is, maybe giving you a night terror so intense you vomit or maybe a tall shadow figure to choke you as you writhe in bed, helpless and numb. My method of protection is to acknowledge the voice and then curse at it. I shout a stream of consciousness string of curse words, tell it I am not afraid, and end the conversation by telling it to fuck off.
This voice was different.
This voice knew my name and then told me theirs.
A Burrowing Owl Shows Up
Being pregnant made me morbid. I wanted to know all the ways I could die. I consumed as many true crime stories as possible. I read the tabloids, listened to podcasts, watched documentaries. It all made me sick to my stomach, but I thought of it as building an armor. A thicker skin for understanding how unfair the world can be to a child. These stories made me see the world in a color palette of grays and burnt yellow. Every single day, real people face this despair. Some of them disappear without a trace. The existential dread made me see faces out of the corner of my eye, but I needed to know what kind of sadistic people were out there. How could someone rip another person limb from limb and then bury them in their backyard? How could someone hide a body in a barrel? How could someone keep another human locked in a small coffin under their bed? How could they do these things and move on with their days, with their lives? Who are these people that lurk in the shadows? It’s rarely strangers. Statistically, pregnancy upped my chances of death. I was a waddling vulnerable member of society, a sciatic nerve away from collapsing. Who was most likely to murder me? Always the partner. Whether, asphyxiation, drowning, a bullet, he would be the first person suspected. That sits in the back of my mind. My partner could kill me if he wanted. Who was most likely to get blamed if anything goes wrong with the baby? Always the mother. Mommy. Mami. Mom. Mama.
My mom says she saw the aftermath of a murder while she was pregnant with me. It was coincidental. A synchronicity of bad luck. She was craving chips with hot sauce and lime. A burrowing owl swooped through the automatic doors and hopped at her swollen feet as she entered the grocery store. While feeling for smooth limes, an unassuming man in khakis and a white button up shirt waited at the register. The cashier waved to him as he waited for her to finish ringing up the person ahead of him, her smile faded as the man got closer. The little owl hopped at my mom’s feet and then flew toward the back of the store. She decided to follow the owl. As my mom trailed behind the owl, the man in khakis held a pistol to the head of the cashier and pulled the trigger. She fell forward, onto the conveyor belt, and her blood slowly poured down to the scuffed-up tile floor. People screamed and scattered in panic. My mom was in the backroom of the store where she frantically found an exit. She was so shocked and afraid, she climbed up a ladder stacked against the back side of the grocery store and hid behind the ledge of the roof. She peeked over and watched as the khaki man walked out of the store slowly. He walked to the payphone booth, made a call, then shot himself. My mom held her face in her hands and screamed. She watched as the little owl hopped around the booth.
It was a father and daughter. The khaki man will come back as a garden snake in his next life and then a cricket in the next. She told me the cashier’s mother kept some of her daughter’s teeth, hair and her ashes in a locket as an offering she planned on leaving to a generous god. Her daughter’s name was Genesis.
Genesis will come back as a human again. A child destined for love from a happy family. Genesis will grow old and watch as her grandchildren bloom into kind people.
Labor
I had to be induced because my obstetrician was concerned that I had too much fluid in my womb. It was poly-something. I never looked up the rest of the word. Going online is a curse when you’re pregnant. The first nurse was nice enough, but she was new. Her hands trembled as she searched for a vein in my wrist. She missed at her first go and a line of blood trickled down my forearm. Induction meant Cytotec. It had to be inserted vaginally. I was on bedrest from thirteen weeks on. This meant no sex, no orgasms, no penetration. Nice new nurse had large hands. Even with the lubricant on her blue gloved hand, it was excruciating to have her fingers inside me. She couldn’t get the pill to stick the first time. She had to try again. She shoved what felt like her entire hand into me and I couldn’t help but let out a yelp. I held my partner’s hand and squeezed to give him an indication of the pain that jolted up my body. As calmly as I could, I took in a deep breath, and I told myself I was going to be okay.
I was about to be in labor for thirty-two hours.
I had a suspicion that my birthing experience would be difficult. Call it intuition or a curse. I was meant to be in the stiff and sterile hospital room. A little bloated science experiment. It made sense for my body story. Contractions feel like period cramps with the volume turned up so high, you feel like you could throw up, but you don’t or can’t because the next wave of pain is going to make you forget to breathe. Breathing. You have to think about breathing more than ever because this is the key to easing a baby out. Or that’s what I read, but it wasn’t true for me. I was never one with the pregnancy cosmos. I read plenty of pregnancy blogs with women who were in their element. They loved being pregnant and more than anything, they were ready to give birth. I was not exhilarated to tear myself apart. I was not ready for the inevitability that is birth. I was scared. I wasn’t ready, but I had no choice.
After eight hours of contractions, I wanted my body to do what it was supposed to. I wasn’t dilating. Nothing was happening except for the induced contractions. There was no indication that I had made any progress at all. I was frustrated and in pain. So, I asked for epidural. I waited for the anesthesiologist as the nurse explained that I had to sit very still so the needle would go smoothly into my lower back. I nodded and breathed through more contractions. Because I would be numb from the waist down, the nurses would have to help me move and I would need a catheter. I nodded and waited. As the needle pricked my back, I felt a sense of relief and once I was numb, I was euphoric for a couple of hours.
My mom takes it upon herself to show up at the birth of each grandchild. I think it was around 12 hours into my labor that she showed up uninvited. I was numb from the waist down; my pain was gone, so I didn’t mind her there on the sidelines. My relationship with my mom is complicated and distorted. It’s hard to explain if you weren’t there. We love each other, but most days, we cannot stand each other. I finally dilated to two centimeters, and then to three centimeters. At this point, my doctor recommended for my water to be broken. With my legs open and lifted in stirrups, she manually broke my water. I imagined myself as a giant water balloon. Through my numbness, I could tell that liquid was spilling on the bed, it was very warm, it was abundant. I thought of myself as a blue whale landing on a shore and blowing out my womb water.
24 Hours
My mom says I was born to spite someone from my most recent past life. I was pregnant in that life. I used to live somewhere with a lot of snow. Mountains lined the skyline. Two giant statues stood at the edge of the town. I died buried under snow. I died before giving birth. My old bones are still out there, so are my sons’. This is what she tells me as the epidural starts to wear off and my back feels like it is being ripped open. I want to pull out her hair. I want to shove her into mud. I want to tell her to fuck off. My partner pulls her away from me and asks her to please leave the room.
I let out helpless whimper after whimper. It’s automatic. I am no longer in control of how I manage the pain. It is the entirety of my body. I don’t want to be in it anymore. The nurse does not believe me when I tell her I can no longer stand the pain. I grab the vomit bags next to me and throw up Jell-O and broth. It has been over twenty-four hours and I want to give up. I sob into my hands and ask the nurse to please help me with the pain. From outside my room, my mom overhears the commotion, so she takes matters into her own hands. She goes to the lead nurse and tattles on apathetic nurse. The lead nurse comes in to check on me, different nurses come in to check on me. I get more epidural. I go numb again from the waist down.
The first time I saw my son, he was a lone bat. He was a spastic little Mexican free-tailed bat in the desert sky. He jolted in a zig zag and then disappeared. The second time I saw him, he was a buckeye butterfly. He landed on my shoes and in my hair over and over. He followed me and my partner and fluttered around us while we sat and birdwatched at the park across the street from our apartment. This is the third time I have caught a glimpse of him. The nurses prop a mirror in front of me so I can observe what is happening. I watch as his head barely pokes out of me and then slides back in. Over and over. His hair is much lighter than mine, but I can tell he is just as stubborn. I am in extreme exhaustion. I pass out between each push. My eyes roll back as though I am under a spell. The nurse continues to yell PUSH! I wake up over and over to push and then promptly pass out.
I see bats hanging from the hospital ceiling. Scattering around and then huddling together into one of the corners. I see a small child waving at me with an eye in their palm. I smile at the child and the child playfully sticks their tongue out at me. I see curved galaxies swirling in the walls of the room. Buckeye butterflies swarm my body.
Then, there he is.
As soon as my son is placed on my chest, he coos and grunts. As he lets out his first earthside cries, I feel relief. Then, what I imagine giving birth to the head of a jellyfish feels like, the placenta that nourished him slides out and the doctor plops it into a blue bucket next to the bed. I rock my son gently as the doctor sews me up. He is six pounds, one ounce. He is pink and wrinkled perfection. As I look into his eyes, I know I would do anything for him. I would come back life after life after life just to hear his raspy cries.
Go buy An Altar of Stories to Liminal Saints!
And now, for some less than good news:
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