Motherhood by Sheila Heti

Author:Sheila Heti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

The next card is the Ten of Swords—the most painful card in the deck. There’s something … chunks of you … are falling down. But look! Strangely, the bleeding is going up, not down. It’s not coming out of your vagina or going down your legs. It’s going up! Why is the bleeding going up? Softening your brain? This is a hard one … I have to feel the card.

* * *

As she felt the card, her eyes closed. I thought, Maybe blood that goes down is period blood. It softens the lining of the uterus. And bleeding that goes up is thinking blood. It softens the lining of the brain. When I was thirteen, the year before I first got my period, I often woke in the middle of the night and felt a tickle of blood at the back of my throat, just as it was beginning to drip down. I would rush to the toilet, head tilted back, and push a wad of toilet paper to my nose as it grew wet and red, replacing it, and replacing it, sitting on the toilet through the long night, endless hours of thinking nothing at all.

* * *

Okay, I’ve got something in my mouth. Has it got to do with your voice? Were you able to ask for what you needed from your mother, as a little girl?

I don’t think so.

What about what you ate as a girl?

Cheddar cheese and chicken soup?

Pardon me. I’m not understanding. Maybe I need to look in the crystal ball now. Okay, hold on. Turning on the ball … I’m slow at this because it’s new, so it might take a minute … Okay, now I see it! Something’s dangling, and it is making me feel a little bit sick. You’re sitting in front of a computer … what does that have to do with it?

That’s what I do all the time.

Pornography?

No. I think it’s just writing.

Is there something about your back being to the room when your boyfriend’s there, and you’re sitting at the computer?

Well, we did argue the other day, and I was at the computer and he was standing behind me.

Okay. I know this sounds very weird and silly, but it’s coming into my mind, and I find it’s best to say the things that come into my mind. The man I’m involved with—I find it very strange that he often pees sitting down. I think it’s not very manly. He says, That way I can talk to whoever’s in the room! But it’s very weird that he does that. I don’t know why I’m connecting that to your story, but there’s something about a person whose back is turned … because your boyfriend is wanting to be connected to you—he’s sticking his connection things out, but yours are only going to be present if you’re connected to yourself. So I think the central method of improving your relationship is to connect it to yourself on a very deep level.

Okay …

And … I think I see a pregnant belly again.

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