Alexandra K*
Translated from the Greek by Hannah Kent
Things Virgin Mary Thinks While Smoking in the Bathroom
Motherhood is the nature of females. Nature makes females aggressive when pregnant. There are cats who kill in this condition. And lionesses and some lady kangaroos. Human females do not kill during pregnancy. Rather, pregnancy makes women Mother Marys. Some of these Marys get up at night, lock themselves in the bathroom, and roll a cigarette so they don’t kill somebody. While smoking, they note:
During pregnancy, a woman’s breasts grow in preparation for breastfeeding, wherein the Mary becomes an absolute dimepiece. This might delight the pregnant woman but can often cause feelings of confusion in her partner. The attitudes of men vary according to their geographical coordinates. For example: each evening at sunset the Tolcatecans of East Yuerva place the ripening women of the tribe, bare-breasted, in the middle of a circle, where the men are free to caress their breasts. In Vienna’s Museumsplatz, expectant women may show off their engorged bosoms in public, but if and only when they are to be captured in paint by accredited professionals. In Aristotelous Square of Thessaloniki, the attractive breasts of the pregnant woman should be covered by dresses with ruffles and bows, for it has been proven that bows act as a suppressant to male disorientation. On the equator, where temperatures are high and ladies tend to walk around buck naked, the Holy Mothers are sequestered to nearby female-only encampments. There, they rub each other’s lower backs, strained by the weight of their breasts.
Although breastmilk will not make its appearance before childbirth, there have been cases where, in a moment of passion, it has. In the event that the partner consumes the colostrum before the infant, it’s been observed that the chance of rivalry between the two increases. To avoid this, some novel breastfeeders make sure to offer their product equally to both members of their family. Nursing mothers never run out of milk. Nature, following the laws of the free market, planned accordingly: the greater the demand, the greater the supply. And with the invention of the electric breast pump, an essential purchase for every modern mother, breastfeeding has been streamlined so everyone involved feels one hundred percent satisfied. While Mother Mary finds herself hooked into the breast pump, she has the opportunity to peruse her favorite women’s magazines. So, although she is now in her Fourth Trimester, she does not lose touch with her femininity.
Pregnant women are prohibited from chemically altering the color of their hair. Thus, their ages become more and more apparent as gestation progresses. This is an excellent opportunity for the community to open a dialogue regarding the life choices of the women in question. For a smooth incubation period, then, the Virgin Mary ought to have prepared early on a PowerPoint presentation justifying her decision to give birth at this particular point in time. Nonetheless, the fact of the matter is, thanks to childbearing and its subsequent nutritional supplements, hair acquires natural volume and shine for about one year. This is worth including in the presentation as an argument in favor of.
A few weeks before giving birth, the expectant woman will notice a dark line spanning her abdomen, starting from the pubic bone, extending to the middle of her sternum. Since the beginning of time nature has drawn this line to show the infant the way to the milk. But as that function has fallen into disuse, the modern mother can use it to note on the two columns of her abdomen the pros and cons of her condition. When, long after birth, the line fades, nothing will separate one column from the other. This is called maternal instinct.
In cases where the knocking up is consensual, free from complications, and neither of the partners have internalized Virgin Maryfication, nature gives the pregnant woman the opportunity to experience a transcendental dimension to the physical act of love. Just as it has been observed in female cheetahs of the Tundra, who during pregnancy copulate continually with the males of the herd in order to ensure the greatest possible concentration of collective sperm, so too do human females experience a rapid increase in sexual desire, the magnitude of which can reach levels of frenzy. While the aim of the human female before she is pregnant is not to catch the everyman’s sperm (but rather to avoid it), after she conceives and can put her mind at ease, she is likely to desire anything, from the rustling leaves to the tall, dark trees. She may even start rubbing up against railings or a wet blanket. If she fulfills her desires, nature rewards her with a Big O that surpasses the pulsation continuum of her usual climaxes, that reaches a
frequency so intense it exceeds all human perception and hoists the orgasming pregnant woman up into the mouth of the Garden of Eden. The cumming duration for an impregnated woman may not reach two hours like that of the female elephant, but may be up to ten times longer than usual, whether it has been induced by masturbation, copulation, or by means of mechanical aid. This is also worth including in the presentation as an argument in favor of pregnancy. Though medical science has not examined the matter in depth, it is established that the fetus cannot under any circumstances sustain visual or tactile contact with such activities.
In the few recorded cases where the fetus has managed to fracture the pregnant woman’s ribs from inside, there has been no research on whether or not it is caused by the mother’s lifestyle choices. About this, religion and science are at odds. However, it is widely accepted that the fetus, at the age of seven months, cannot yet have developed the ability of critical thinking. Widely, but not entirely, accepted.
A topic that frequently preoccupies pregnant women is what else but the irreversibility of time. If a Holy Virgin thinks too much about it she risks irritability, irregular breathing, numbness and/or tingling in her extremities, and feelings of suffocation. At the average hospital, one such related visit costs around nine hundred euros per night. The tests to which the patient will be subjected are mainly hematological. Yet the anxiety about the irreversibility of time cannot be captured in any diagram. Thus a Holy Virgin can agonize as much as she wants, free of the fear of exposing her dread to the hospital staff or the other Mother Marys in the unit.
One quandary which will consume the with-child woman, her partner, her family, and her social circle from the moment of conception is whether she will choose to give birth by labor in the maternity ward/at home/in water/at the office or whether she will have a cesarean section. The semiotics of this choice are pivotal to others’ evaluation of her as a mother and definitively indicative of her priorities, which is why her decision should be supported with argumentation in a relevant appendix of her presentation. Her argument should be strong enough that no one can refute it with counter arguments such as “C-section industrial complex” or “tear down there.” Regardless, the expectant woman should be aware that an epidural causes a sort of euphoric delirium which can make doctors and nursing staff look like absolute darlings wherein she may accidentally make a pass at one or more of them during labor. It might be best to avoid the presence of a significant other in the delivery room so they are not traumatized by this scene.
As far as the Breastfeeding vs. Barbarism Dilemma is concerned, it has been answered by breastfeeding specialists more specialized than each breast of the woman feeding. With the widespread use of the internet, no Holy Mother can pretend to be oblivious to the benefits of breastfeeding. What’s more, due to the democratization of information, everyone around her is extremely abreast on the subject and vociferously proud of their knowledge. In Euripides’s partially preserved work “The [. . .] Women,” we learn just how much the subject of breastfeeding preoccupied, in ages past, the preeminent Argives, who went so far as to wage war on the Thebans, only after the general Argomenea and the seer Thebeus fought a masterful agôn logôn, debating what rights the non-men may or may not have over their breasts. Featuring a women’s chorus. The fragments of this work formed the foundation for Sigmund Freud’s canonical study on the same rights.
(What is little known even to the greatest connoisseurs of the subject is that the breasts of the nursing mother respond equally to the cries of all of nature’s hungry. Whether it be the cry of her own infant, the cry of the infant of another, or the cry of the infant of another species in the animal kingdom. If, for example, a Holy Mother hears a baby cat mewing under the streetlight, her breasts will overflow with milk.)
Among the other metaphysical phenomena the new mother will encounter in those first sleepless months at home with the child is the apparition of phantasmal figures from her past. These are the feminine, translucent; they hover a few centimeters above the floor and look eerily similar to the women in her family, known or unbeknown to her. These are mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great-great grandmothers, governesses, wet nurses, silenced mistresses, dead sisters, murdered girls. Without words, they give instruction with their eyes. Some stand hushed, clandestinely behind the curtains, some lift the baby onto their shoulders to soothe, some change the sheets, some clench the throat of the Mother with all their might, some offer a breast when the Virgin cries. Some reach deep into their wrinkled floral robes and pull out from their pocket a rolled up cigarette for the newest member of their pack.