The Girl Who Birthed a Moon

It came out of her quickly, a heavy, gray being pushed out of her thick walls. It was dark, rough,

sharp in places, and she howled as it left her body. When the doctors looked at her ultrasound

and told her it was a moon she was birthing, not a little boy or girl, she thought a bundle of light

would come out. She forgot that without the sun, the moon was just a plain gray rock orbiting

Earth. She lay in her hospital bed, weakened, in the days that followed the birth, taking two

showers a day where she washed the torn, red skin of her core in lukewarm water.

She was sent home a week later, her moon safely buckled into his car seat in the back of their

camouflage green Toyota. As she drove home, she sang to him, her rich voice filling the silence.

You are my sunshine, my lovely sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray… How ironic,

she thought, smiling to herself. At every stop sign, she would look at him through the smudged

rearview mirror, chuckle at the taut seat buckles pulled over his chubby, rotund body. Every

evening after bathtime, she would read to him, holding him close on his baby blue comforter.

She learns to wear long sleeves so his sharp edges don’t puncture the skin of her forearms, that

the third page of Goodnight, Moon is his favorite, that there is only one section, the extra-large

kids, where she can find clothes for him at Nordstrom’s. After they read each night, she presses

her chapped lips gently to his craters and crevices. “Goodnight, moon,” she whispers, and counts

down the hours until morning when she can scoop him up again.

She teaches herself to ignore the looks, the whispers and giggles as she lathers sunscreen onto his

gray body and then pushes him down the electric red slide at the local playground. Julia’s

mother, Atrice, visits a month later, drives up in a bright blue Honda to the green bungalow. She

is thrilled by her grandson, claps her veiny, pale hands as he rolls down the soft carpet towards

her. The sagging skin of her forearms bleed when she hugs him, but Julia tells her where the

band aids are: on the chestnut table in the front hall, for easy access.

When all the kids on the street are babbling words like ‘mama’ and ‘nap’, Julia knows her moon

is just a bit slow. Atrice expects it’ll take eighteen months, Julia predicts slightly longer, maybe

twenty-four. When it’s been thirty months, they both agree their moon may be mute. They decide

to talk enough for the three of them, and Julia fills afternoons with chatter, telling moon stories

about the weird cashier at the Giant grocery store or the letter she sent to an aunt in Sweden.

Moon sits there, in his extra large high chair with his Adidas shorts and electric blue shirt

squeezed around his round body, silently watching his mother slice the knife into a thick

watermelon core, the flies swarming the fruit basket. Julia worries her moon is lonely, as she

watches through the window flocks of kids playing four square and hopscotch on the slabs of

concrete baking in the heat. Moon doesn’t go out much, prefers to stay in the air conditioning of

their living room, basking in the warm patches where the sunlight hits the couch.

She brings him to preschool in September, but when the teachers laugh and call her a fool, she

decides to teach him herself, pushing together a nightstand, a kitchen stool, and a blackboard

from the garage’s wicker basket to create a classroom. He can’t write, but she teaches him the

alphabet anyway, etching the letters on the board with a stick of pale green chalk.

Later in the year, moon stops rolling out of bed. He spends the day in his room, his craters

pressed against the blue sheets. When moon doesn’t get out of bed for four days straight, Julia

calls a family friend, a doctor, worried. She tells him her son is chained to the bed, perhaps by

depression or anxiety. The doctor tells her he’ll be right over and then hangs up. There is

knocking on the door fifteen minutes later, the brass knocker banging three times against their

yellow door. She lets him in, a graying man wearing a white coat and jeans. They talk as they

walk through the house, up the stairs, to his bedroom. As they reach moon's door, the doctor says

he knows just the trick to get lazy little boys out of bed. Julia is thrilled.

The doctor pushes open the door gently, nears the bed. “Where’s your little boy?” he asks.

Julia nods towards the bed, where her moon lies on the pillow, staring glumly up at the chipped

ceiling, “Right there, of course.”

The doctor widens his eyes towards her, and a smile flickers briefly across his face, “Julia, this is

a rock. Where is your son?”

Why is he so confused? “You’re out of your mind,” he says.

“This is my son,” she tells him, her voice angry. Moon was right there.

“You need medical help. I’m going to suggest some psychiatrists you can talk to.”

“No,” she says, quietly. Then louder “No. No! This is my son.”

“This is a rock. This is silicon and magnesium. There is no beating heart, no pumping blood, no

lungs, no breath.” His voice is calm, unbearingly calm.

“No!” she yelps “He wears clothes and sleeps in a bed. He watches Tom and Jerry and eats

macaroni and cheese.”

“These are not the things that make us human,” the doctor’s voice is low, “Has he ever told you

he loves you? Has he ever looked into your eyes as though he’s seeing something past the iris?

Has he ever created drawings with mountains and suns and rivers and everything possible on one

page?”

Julia sits beside her moon and caresses the crevices and craters on the body.

“You shouldn’t have to put on gloves to touch your son,” the doctor murmurs.

Julia whips them off, bitterly “I don't need the gloves,” she snaps, but when she strokes the body,

her finger pricks on the rough surface and blobs of blood pop onto her skin. She pulls her hand

away, tears springing to her eyes.

“How many miscarriages have you had?” He asks her softly. “Four before moon,” she mutters.

He nods, as if this explains everything. She doesn’t understand the correlation. No. No.

She begs the doctor to leave, shoving curling green bills towards him for the visit and pushing

him towards the door. He hands her a note card with phone numbers, tells her he’ll make a call.

She sobs as he leaves, throwing her body over her moon.

She isn’t wearing long sleeves or gloves, and the skin on her forearms and hands bleed, rivulets

of red down his cratered body.