FOR A BABY NEVER BORN

You began like most—made from two people holding onto one another, whispering I love you, not thinking about making anything other than love. You happened before the world turned upside down, before words like pandemic or quarantine. Your presence was made aware when a second pink line slowly emerged on a stick, like I’d been moving toward you in misty woods. You were my little secret, my joy in times of uncertainty and grief when I’d lost my grandmother to COVID-19. A promise was growing in me, and even when I couldn’t move from the couch, sleep on my back, or sleep through the night because of an urgent bladder, I told myself my body was no longer my own. I was working for you.

Easter came, and I saw blood. The spotting stopped later that day. When I had an ultrasound a week later, you were smaller than I thought you’d be, but your heart beat strong, 145 little beats. The doctor said we were safe to tell others about you. But the spotting returned. First, light brown and pink. Then, bright red.

In rural Tennessee, just across the state border, your father and I sat in a waiting room with our faces covered, next to seats roped off with yellow tape and social distancing signs. We sat twelve feet from a woman with a swollen belly.

You looked bigger on screen, I even said so out loud, but the doctor kept silent, dragging and clicking to measure you. She moved the wand more, and I could hear her frustration in her breaths.

“I’m not seeing a heartbeat. I need another look.” I turned to my husband’s stunned face. He gently nodded, his way of telling me I was okay. I couldn’t stop the tears as I went to the bathroom and removed my pants and underwear, wrapping myself in a thin paper sheet. I climbed back onto the table as the nurse gently guided my feet to the stirrups. The doctor switched the machine to 3D.

She called you a missed miscarriage. Missed, as in my body didn’t know you’d died; miscarriage as in I would never carry you to term.

This was the Thursday before Mother’s Day. The only thing I wanted was for you to be alive. For there to be some mistake that I’d become more tomb than womb.

I wept for you. I bargained for you.

But I saw death everywhere. In the light peeking between the blinds, shining on the curtain like a heartbeat’s flat line. In the maternity clothes delivered the day after that first scan for a body already beginning to shrink. In the final ultrasound picture of your tiny body in my body, a hemorrhage line encasing you.

I went to a new doctor the day after Mother’s Day, the doctor who’d perform the surgery. This time, in Kentucky, I had to go in alone. The nurse stopped me at the door to check my temperature, asked have you had a fever recently, have you had a cough, have you traveled out of state? Then, Are you pregnant? I paused, took a breath, and said “Technically.”

Later, when I was weighed and told to pee in a cup, this nurse asked Do you know why you’re here today? She handed me a tissue when I struggled to answer. She said I’d need another scan, but not to jump to any conclusions. God is the God of miracles. My leg wouldn’t stop bouncing.

In the ultrasound room, there was a jumbo screen on the wall where I saw you, my still baby, floating like a miracle mirage.

A few days later, you were taken from me, scraped and sucked out of my body. I was sent home with pain medication and sanitary napkins. When I checked my phone later that night, I read a sale’s ad from Motherhood Maternity. The subject line: “Gone in a heartbeat.”

I don’t know where you are anymore, but I know you happened. I feel your absence as I pull on my old jeans, see your baby blankets tucked up high in the closet, the notes scribbled with what we may have called you. I don’t know if you were boy or girl, but I know you were to be born in December. Winters feel long and cold and I feel the loss of expectation. Not even in my sleep do I reap the reward of hearing your cries.

There will be no rainbow baby after you, no announcement righting this wrong. You will forever be the end of my childbearing years, the story I tell when asked about children. My voice doesn’t catch anymore when I speak of your loss, but my chest tightens. Some days I imagine you toddling through the house, our dog barking and guarding your footfalls. Others, I can almost feel you in my arms: the weight of your body, softness of hair, swirl of earlobe. But always, I long for a voice I’ll never hear, a beginning that doesn’t quicken to an end.

INHERITANCE

Great Grandmother Barnett’s back wasn’t straight. I never knew her as an unbent woman.

The first time I saw my stoop, I was eight, just leaving the tray dumping line at lunch, and turned the corner to the bathroom. The sinks and mirrors were open to the hall, and I caught a glimpse of my rounded shoulders. I looked like I was becoming primal. Like I no longer wanted to be bipedal. I jerked upright, ashamed.

My father and one of his siblings have it, too. Is it coincidental that we three have the most selfish tendencies? We all like to win. We want to have nice things. We may even hesitate to give the shirt off our humped backs.

I know Great Grandmother must have been somewhat domestic—there is her yeast-roll recipe we all make, quilts and afghans hanging on the backs of chairs, tucked high in tops of closets. But what I remember is the heat of summer, her thin house dress and straw hat. White buckets filled with strawberries. Wanting the wind chimes to sing so we could cool off. Harlequin romance books, Guiding Light. First edition Zane Grey’s, porcelain knickknacks. The way her voice pitched. Her green shag carpet that looked more like mossy steppingstones. Sunday afternoons at Cypress Primitive Baptist, funeral parlor fans and off-key hymns. Stories of her time as mayor, a widow raising five children, her earning a college degree in 1929. Her asking me to write another story.

I don’t remember hugging or kissing her, which doesn’t seem odd to me, even now. She talked to me like an adult, didn’t fetch a glass if I were thirsty. I was big enough to do that on my own. Mamaw once told me that when she or her other siblings were sick in the night, her daddy would tend to them, not Great Grandmother.

What is mothering, but a way to tend in our own ways? I tell myself this when I lie awake at night, thinking about hurts I can’t wipe away. My kids need more of me than a pan of hot brownies or a brush against the cheek. Do I share who I am or give what I don’t have?

I know this to be true: my shoulders still round—it hurts to stand tall.

FLIGHT HOME, KOREAN AIR

Hour 10

I held him on the sticky, metal floor of Korean Air while model-perfect stewardesses reapplied blush and refilled booze. Bottles trapped in the airplane’s sides rattled. My stomach gurgled, and I squeezed it, praying the twelve-hour flight would be over soon. Min-su must have felt the same. He squirmed out of my arms, glancing back with a questioning look I then knew too well.

Who are you?

Hour 1

When we boarded, we walked past stairs leading to the plane’s second level. We showed our pass to the front attendant, who motioned us to the right first row of three bulkhead seats. I took the seat closest to the window. Min-su sat in my lap, tapped the glass. Pressed his nose against it. As soon as I placed our carry-on on the floor, a man with the airlines approached us, asked us for our boarding passes. He looked over it, scribbled something onto a notepad, wiped his brow. He spoke Korean to a stewardess. In English he said, “I’m sorry, but this flight has been overbooked. We need to reseat you.”

I wish we would have protested, demanded to extend our moment of good fortune. Instead, we gathered our belongings and followed him to the center of the plane, to two seats in the middle of a set of three rows. People were all around us, stuffing bags into the overhead bins, squeezing past aisle-seated people to get to theirs. As soon as I sat down with Min-su, the man came to us again, saying he had found us an extra seat further back. We followed, but this time Min-su began crying. I bounced him in my arms, asked B.J. to grab a bottle out of the bag. I wanted badly to sit somewhere, fetal, so my stomach wouldn’t betray me. I could feel my heart pound, beads of sweat form on my brow, Min-su’s twenty- six pounds in my untrained arms. Something in my belly shifted. Just when I thought the last twenty-four hours were behind us, I felt it slipping away. He arched his back while I struggled to mix the formula in room temperature water. A Korean lady in front of us offered to help, and Min-su lunged into her willing arms. For a moment, I wondered if this were a good idea, but where could she go? How was she any more a stranger to him than I?

Hour 11

Baby fat rolled out from Min-su’s white flight outfit, ending at doughy toes. He crawled to a stewardess and sat in her lap, latching onto her as if they belonged together. They could’ve. Same fine dark hair, same round face, same almond-shaped eyes. I closed mine, leaned back against the liquor cabinet.

I heard him say, “Ah,” and then saw his smile for the first time in twenty-four hours. He tapped the stewardess’ hand that covered an overturned cup. When her hand didn’t move, he tilted his head back to her. She spoke several words in Korean, lifted the cup to reveal a small bouncy ball. Min-su clapped, handing her the cup as if to say “again.”

I traced the floor’s bumpy grooves, eyed my Picasso-like reflection on the metallic surface. I’d always wondered what the hidden parts of an airplane looked like. I’d imagined them much bigger, more luxurious than the budget- saving area in coach, but like the seats, leg room, and bathroom, the galley was small and stripped of comfort. Five stewardesses shuffled in and out of this area the size of my guest bathroom back home. There were cubbies lining the walls filled with snacks, food, and gifts that they so desperately tried to sell. My head was pressed into one of those cubbies. There was a dull ache, but a much bigger ache brewed in my belly. I searched my pockets for more Imodium and popped one in my mouth.

Two flight attendants whispered and gestured toward me. I didn’t need Hangul lessons to get their nonverbal: Another clueless American. I guessed that my presence in the back wasn’t really allowed, and babysitting wasn’t in the attendants’ job description. But, then again, who wanted to hear a screaming infant for twelve hours?

Hour 5

Min-su’s fine hair fluttered as he bopped up and down on a female attendant’s back. Her arms wrapped around his legs like backpack straps, and her jutted elbows brushed passengers as she made her way through the tiny aisles.

She wasn’t the first to pack him. After the first three hours, the flight attendants stepped in when the first woman couldn’t carry him anymore. Part of me worried about what these women thought of me—if they thought I were weak. I was weak. I’d been up the night before with vomiting and diarrhea, and my stomach still felt inflamed.

Hoping my sickness would pass, I ate crackers and sipped water. As soon as I closed my eyes, the stewardess appeared. “Do you have more clothes?”

I dug through his blue Holt bag, past Immigration forms, Hanbok, and toy cars. I handed her a onesie with snaps, and they were gone again. Behind the back curtain.

Hour 12

The back was quiet except for the dishes that jingled and the plane’s hum. It made for its own white noise. My fingers loosened around my sides and my breathing slowed. I could have been anywhere. Floating in water. Sleeping in bed. No thoughts of where I belonged or what I was missing.

“We so tired,” the stewardess said. I nodded before my eyes opened. The stewardess held Min-su in front of her.

I pushed myself up and swallowed a yawn. I extended my arms, opening my palms. My fingers flexed come here. Min-su’s smile dissolved, and he turned to the stewardess, howling. He crawled up her arms. The stewardess bounced him. Patted his bum. Click-click-clicked her tongue, ticking-like. I had heard this sound when first meeting Min-su. His foster mother used it during our first meeting because he’d been scared. Now his cries grew louder. I shifted, but not enough to matter.

Within moments, other women appeared through the curtain. Korean mothers and grandmothers, speaking in their native tongue to the attendants, all with a concerned look that said, What’s wrong? How can I help?

I knew what was wrong. I was the third mother. No amount of legal papers or people could soften this reality: I was a mother Min-su didn’t know.

One grandmother began to look angry as the stewardess spoke. I braced myself as she moved closer, then looked down to Min-su, pointing her finger.

“This your umma,” she said, pointing now at me, and smacked his face.

His became still for a moment when he looked at this stranger. He looked back to me and then to her. My movements were just as stunted. I blinked and could feel my heartbeat, but I couldn’t move. Min-su was crying now, but he wasn’t hiding his face into me to escape danger. He turned one way, then the other, looking for someone to come to his rescue. His mother.

Jamey Temple is a writer and professor who teaches English at University of the Cumberlands in Eastern Kentucky. Her poetry and prose have been included in several publications such as River Teeth, Rattle, Appalachian Review, Bending Genres, and Literary Mama. You can read more of her published work through her website (jameytemple.com).

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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