Girl Imagined by Chance

Author:Lance Olsen [Olsen, Lance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781573668637
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Published: 2015-11-21T21:00:00+00:00

You begin to live off your savings and Genia is born, for all intents and purposes, almost two weeks early.

On the first of April, naturally.

The delivery goes without a hitch.

This is what you write on your PalmPilot.

This is what you tell your friends.

Seven pounds, three ounces.

What is left of your savings and Andi’s small salary.

Genia arrives purplish-red as if she’s been bobbing in a hot tub for days, wrinkled as a cold scrotum, slathered in cream cheese.

Her head almost as big as the rest of her body.

Lopsided as a winter squash.

Andi and you design an announcement on your computer that highlights the color pink, cartoonish flowers and balloons, and the photo of Andi served up like a fish at some European market in the birthing room.

You send nearly forty copies to your friends back east.

Some parents save the placenta as a keepsake, Andi says.

Some parents save the placenta as a keepsake and some parents bury it and plant fruit trees over it or smoosh it on paper to make bio-print art.

You practice baby talk for hours on end.

In 1851 there were fifty-two photographers in Britain.

In 1861, more than twenty-five hundred.

Assuming, of course, the book Andi read is accurate.

Assuming there could be some way to know.

Each time you phone, Grannam asks you to put Genia on the line.

Andi holds the mouthpiece in your direction and you perform.

Some people store blood from the umbilical cord to yield stem cells for future medical procedures.

Others put a dried hank of it in a pouch to wear around their necks.

To wear around their necks or to wear around their wrists.

The mysteries of the tribe.

Grannam calls to let you know she received your cute announcement and that Genia is a dead ringer for Andi as an infant.

Is she a sleeper or a crier? Grannam asks.

A sleeper, answers Andi. She does nothing but eat, sleep, and wet on no particular schedule.

That’s you exactly, sweetheart. Your mother didn’t know what to do.

You pick up the other phone.

We’ve counted, you say. For every twenty-four hours, she sleeps nineteen. Nineteen or twenty. When she’s really perky, she wakes for maybe half an hour, then it’s lights out again.

Sometimes we think about waking her just so we can play with her, Andi says.

She thought you were sick, says Grannam.

My mother? asks Andi.

I don’t do my exercises, Grannam says. Isn’t that terrible?

You should, Andi replies, effortlessly adjusting to the conversation’s realignment. They’ll make you feel better.

You refused to do number two. I told her you were just too much of a lady. Has the cord dropped?

Saturday, you say.

The water jets in the jacuzzi are too hard. I think my skin’s going to fall off. This is what they call medicine.

Did you make a note and hang it on your refrigerator?

What?

That’s what I do sometimes to remind myself of things.

What?

A note. Did you hang. A note. On your fridge?

When are you coming to visit me?

Soon, you say. Andi’s still recuperating.

When you were young, we didn’t think twice about putting you in the backseat of the car and just taking off.

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