wunderkammer

Don't Call Me Mother: I'd Only Be a Breeder if Kim Deal Asked Me to Join the Band

by Sadie Pfannkuche

Illustrations by Justin Graham

In second grade I desperately wanted a Baby Alive doll. I don’t remember why-I didn’t play with dolls as a rule-and the only other doll I had ever requested was a Wonder Woman action figure. I had the biggest crush on Wonder Woman/Lynda Carter in the history of girl crushes.  Some secret part of me wanted to touch her and change her out of the drab utilitarian uniform of her public life into the glamorous metallic and silky costume of her secret life. Yes that’s right, in short, I wanted to touch and possibly fondle Wonder Woman’s boobies. And that desire hasn’t completely disappeared. To this day when I see her on television hawking mail order contact lens I have this urge to grope her. 

But back to the Baby Alive (she never had a proper name; I only called her by her product  name.) She was a facsimile of the real thing- made of soft plastic; she had a permanently pursed mouth, ready for a bottle or the plastic feeding spoon full of fake baby food that was included with her.   I dutifully fed and bottled her only to realize within seconds that Baby Alive was much too much like the real thing. The food and water that went into her mouth, exited her bottom almost immediately. Now I know that as an adult, this makes sense, but at the age of 7, I hadn’t grasped even the most basic points of Newtonian physics. So it never occurred to me to question what happened to the “food” that Baby Alive ingested. Within seconds of feeding her, her diaper was full of creamy fake baby food, green, if I remember correctly. 

I refused to feed her again and, instead, carried her around for a few days out of obligation even though I wanted nothing more than to have Santa Claus take her back to the demented toy workshop from whence she came.  

When I no longer felt guilty, I stopped paying her any attention at all and relegated her to the shelves with the unloved stuffed animals. 

Even when I see an actual live baby, no matter how cute, my heart does not flop about like some emo boy’s bangs. I don’t make cooing noise and my body continues to run as normal, without the faintest  tock of a biological clock. What am I thinking instead, you ask?  

Don't Call Me Mother: Extrapolating Motherhood

by Krista Franklin

Outside, at two in the morning

I say "motherfucker" for the Columbians

to teach them how to cuss the way only

an American can. "Drop the 'R'," I tell

these men who roll 'Rs' as pretty as some

of my friends roll joints. We are five different kinds

of drunk, high off the promise of summer

and a white, pregnant moon. I think of Paulette,

years ago at the Christmas Party, newly

pregnant with a boy named Gabriel,

pissed off at everything she could not

have: the bottle of vodka the Russian broke out,

the stinky mushrooms sneakily circulating.

This is the story Gabriel will never know;

the first night he stood in the doorway

of his mother's true nature. How she departed

abruptly to grapple with his arrival. How many

women never speak of this.

A DJ leans in my passenger's side window

to spin a yarn about Babymama Number One,

how she'd show up at his gigs swoll up with

the best track he'll ever lay or play, and perch

up on top the speakers. This was supposed

to tip me bout how wild she was. Forgive my

vulgarity: when a woman pushes a person

out her pussy, it transforms her. This is what

I'm telling you. It's not always good. When I

was just a girl, my mother made this clear

while feeding every child in the neighborhood,

dragging every unwanted kid off the street.

There are so many children, but mothers

are scarce. Or scarcely sane, plowing their

seed with every insecurity they dream up. There

are multiple narratives to every story. Why not

those of mothers?

I marvel. These women who defrag to DNA

expand like magic, quell wails with their breasts.

I don't begrudge that. Nor the exquisiteness 

of a six month old cheek, the charisma of a toothless

grin. Fact is, being a kid is more appealing

than having one. Only a woman no one calls

mama should stand outside at two in the morning

teaching how to say "motherfucker."

These are vulgarities one should not

reproduce. Some folks don't get that, and have

kids anyway. It's one of the reasons my mother

fed them. There are times those children

and I lock eyes. Being a child like them,

I cannot tell you what they tell me. 

Don't Call Me Mother: Motherhoodlessness

by Miki Howald

I

What is it like to be a woman who knows she doesn’t want children? It means to have everyone doubt you, and to doubt your ability to know your own desires. It means to always be second-guessed by family, friends, lovers, doctors—to be told how it is, what you don’t know. It means to disappoint your loved ones: You’ll never understand how I feel, how much I love you, my mother says, unless you have children of your own.

I work in family support services, and all day we promote children as the future, families as the foundation of society. All day I hear women say: I’m a mother first. I don’t even know what that means. Is she a person second? A woman third? Where does she consider writer or friend or lover? I always think to myself, but I am me first. Do I just lack the motherhood desire? Is that so unnatural, so unheard of? 

II

Sex and babies occupy completely separate spheres in my head, and I hate to be reminded that sex—that wonderful, exhausting, addictive thing I love—can produce children. Recently a friend posted pictures of her newborn on Facebook with the status line update: We made this from scratch! and with that one line my favorite activity was tainted, turned into something I’d rather avoid. I reminded myself to call the doctor the next day and make an appointment to discuss an IUD. 

I’d like to ask the doctor about tying my tubes, but I’m afraid of hearing the paternalistic advice that I might change my mind later. You’re still young, you might meet a nice man and fall in love. I wonder if doctors ever warn women who are eager to have kids: you might meet a real asshole who hits you and uses your children against you. I hope they do. 

Don't Call Me Mother: Mother

by Krista Franklin

(for the Lucilles)

. . . is the name for God in the mouths and hearts of all children.

- The Crow

I. Progeny

Queen (of hearts & promises),

with Your wildcard womb & wanton ways,

Your mouth, like Eve’s,

forever pressed into the flesh of what’s forbidden,

(teeth marks perforating covenant).

Your desire is a stone

Even a crowning head can’t crack.

II. Genesis

Listen,

Time is a ring

wrapped around my finger,

Freedom, a jewel dangling

from my neck.

Afterbirth ejects individualism,

and “Mum” is both noun and verb.

Inside, a scale teeters with the weight of want;

wishes throb like stars in motherhood’s blue black night.

In my arms, you were a receiving blanket of giving,

around my ankle, a shackle –

10 tiny digits 

squeeze.

Don't Call Me Mother: Auctions and Archives

by Ellen Placey Wadey                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

To this day, when I sit in writing workshops, I feel the anxiety cranking under my sternum. As we discuss other writers’ pieces -- their characters and plot lines and epiphanies and listen to them explain the complex details of the rest of the story: intricately woven events and reversals and awe-inspiring denouements, I think, “Jeez, I wish that I knew what was going to happen next.” All I have are broad sketches of incomplete characters who have compulsions they can’t articulate. They aren’t really sure why they have been rendered in the first place let alone what they are supposed to be doing. Most times, I don’t have anything past what is on the page and a belief that over time more will be revealed – both to me and any readers who stick around long enough to find out. So, I keep bringing my poor characters – faint, disoriented and reluctant as bats – into the workshop sunlight to be dissected, so that I can see them better, so that they can tell me what they want to do next. The closest thing I have to a plot line is a hunch.

Not having a child dawned similarly for me. There were times in my life when I was sure that I would have children. It was expected, anticipated even. Many of my friends from college got married right after graduation and started their families right away. My mother said what most mothers say, “When you have your kids…,” and I went along with the daydream. 

I can’t point to a day or a discussion when my husband and I made the choice not to be parents. We didn’t debate over-population or our sketchy gene pools – something that probably could be used as a very effective means of birth control for a host of people – or even the more mundance concerns about our limited resources or the clamp children would put our freedom. It might sound lame, but having children just never made its way to the top of our list. Other things kept getting bumped up in priority – both of us working on degrees, paying off debt…then acquiring new debt, spending lots of hours building careers, even a health concern – but any of that could have been negotiated with having children, but none of it was.

Don't Call Me Mother: FETAL ALCOHOL JESUS

by Allison Gruber

The Onion once ran an article whose headline read, “Like Having Big Boxes Of Shit In Your House? Get A Cat!”

I think about motherhood similarly. Want to be plagued by feelings of inadequacy and incessantly reminded of your own mortality? Tired of having your own needs met? Be a mom!

While I’m certain motherhood has its rewards, I’m also certain that so to do lobotomies, high colonics, and root canals.

When I think of motherhood, I think oppression. But this is coming from someone who finds her cat a little too demanding; in my estimation goldfish are too needy; I get bored quickly; the novelty wears off fast; I don’t want anything that can’t be returned; In relationships, “liking me too much” is a deal breaker; I don’t want a perpetual condition; I hate the question, Do you want to hold the baby? -- because it’s not really a question; I hate the sight of toys strewn about a room; the first time I babysat my niece, while changing her diaper I got shit on my hand and reacted as though I’d been shot.

I am simply not cut from maternal cloth.  

Truth be told, even as a kid, I wasn’t so fond of kids. I remember one morning in 1984 when my mother, pregnant with my sister, tried to break the news of the impending sibling by asking me, “What if God wanted me to have another baby?” 

I think she expected that by virtue of my being a girl, and by presenting the pregnancy as a mandate from God, I would have no choice but to be agreeable. 

Nevertheless, all of eight years old, I looked her square in the face and said, “You tell him ‘no.’” 

And so my sister became my very first lesson in “that which is out of your control.”  

Don't Call Me Mother: Mrs. Peck

by Kelly Kleiman

The only time I ever had any doubt about my decision not to have children was in the eighth grade, when I discovered that Ellen Peck was also unalterably opposed to having them.  Ellen Peck was my eighth-grade English teacher.  She was young and gorgeous and wore miniskirts and a peace symbol and all the boys were in love with her, so she promptly wrote an advice book called “How to Get a Teenaged Boy and What to Do With Him When You Get Him.”  Of course she got the assistance of her girl pupils in writing it–me most conspicuously not among them.  Hell hath no fury like a schoolgirl scorned and so I hated Mrs. Peck and disdained everything she favored, including straight blonde hair, freckle-covering makeup, and the McCarthy campaign.

But during her book tour for “How to Get a Teenaged Boy”--she got a book tour!--Mrs. Peck announced that her next book would be called “The Baby Trap,” and started getting quoted saying things like, “People ask when we’re going to start a family, and I tell them, ‘A husband and wife ARE a family,’” and “People have children for all kinds of reasons, most of them bad."  I couldn’t have agreed more--except that it was Mrs. Peck. 

Don't Call Me Mother: Mother/love

by Krista Franklin

For Danay Valencia

Swallowed in cocktails, crack, cardiac arrest, Mami is dying. Her body distilled to machinations, her bones protrude into finality. Tubes pump her life in and out like the hips of the man who poisoned her. I scramble between three page papers and public housing, As long as they don’t know she’s gone, we’ll have a home. Her eyes are closed to all of this, her mind immune to mothering. We are nothing if not her daughters. Smiling, our hearts filled with hopelessness, hustling a couple more hours. Each of us under a narcotic comforter, we scrape mercy from God’s bowels. Praying she’ll surface from the rabbit hole of her body, we chisel at the asphalt of time.

Don't Call Me Mother

a Wunderkammer theme week curated by Ellen Placey Wadey

The language of classification – unless it’s of the objective scientific variety – isn’t one that we accept readily. We resist labels because they never get the full picture of who we are: complicated, contradictory, often confused people. Resisting a label is even harder when you purposefully stand outside one of the most beloved human conditions: motherhood. In a world filled with constant options and increasing tolerance, one would think the choice not to be a mother wouldn’t be a big deal. But the reactions tell a different story. When you answer, “No,” to the question, “Do you have children?” the responses vary from pity – the assumption being that you’re infertile – to judgment – the assumption being that you don’t like children because you’re too self-absorbed. The number of men and women who won’t be parents is significant – some studies calculate as much as 25% of the population and growing. Then why are we still so suspicious of women who have chosen not to have children? The reasons for the choice are as varied as the women who make it. The following is just a sample of those voices. Part of an ongoing project, “Don’t Call Me Mother,” seeks to open a space for the stories and poetry of women who have decided that mother won’t be one of their labels. If you’d like to participate in this project, please contact Ellen Wadey at ellen.wadey@gmail.com with the subject line: Don't Call Me Mother.

Image by Trinette Mura

Wunderkammer News

This week, Wunderkammer welcomes guest curator Ellen Wadey. Take it away, Ellen!

Image: peregrine blue / constanza via Flickr