Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(71)

I consider my egg; its speckled pattern, its curves, strange weighting, and remarkable calcium formation that’s both delicate and robust.

More conundrums are hidden within. Viscous birth fluids designed to be consumed. The yolk, rich in unfulfilled life.

It hurts but I’m determined. I put my egg inside me. Its tip nestles into my cervix. Not for nine months. That would be ridiculous. Just long enough for my trembling DNA, fearing extinction, to permeate the shell and scramble the genes within.

Once retrieved I hold it up to the light but can’t see the outline of a child inside.

Egg and I embark on a course of antenatal education. I read her Machiavelli and Chomsky. I play her Debussy and Chopin. We watch French films and listen to Cantonese language tapes. Egg will be more equipped for life than I.

? 222 ?

? Priya Sharma ?

Then finally.

Here she comes.

The shell cracks, the tiny life thumping its way out. Fragments come away, tethered by membrane. I pick up my featherless chick, who’s pink from her labors. It is a girl, goose-pimpled skin as if plucked. I rub her and swaddle her in a warm towel. Her ribs are exquisite curves. Her nails miniscule and pliable.

Small for her age. Little Chick.

The hag’s right. She said I’d have a mammalian response. My breasts engorge and leak. Chick’s mouth puckers as she tries to plunder nourishment but she can’t latch on. I prepare formula milk in a flap, fearing she’ll starve. It dribbles down her chin as if it would poison her to keep it in.

I sit through the night, exhausted, waiting for the flood of love, the tugs of blood that will sustain me while she cries with hunger, but nothing comes.

Chick has dark, bulbous eyes. Her hands are drawn up before her like useless appendages. I cry as I hold her, this culmination of all my wishes, and I know that she’s not right.

I go back to the hag.

“You lied.” I’m not so astute. I’ve been duped.

“You wanted a child. I gave you one.” She peers into the bundle of blankets in my arms as if to see if Chick is a child after all.

“What’s her name?”

“Eloise.”

The hag makes a noncommittal noise.

“She’s not . . . ” I struggle with the word normal.

“Life’s a lottery,” she shrugs, “you can’t swap her.”

“I can’t bring up a child like this.”

“One that requires sacrifice?”

The clouded corneas don’t conceal the mockery in her eyes. I can’t stand her crowing and I won’t concede defeat to a mad old crone but something makes me swallow my indignation.

? 223 ?

? Egg ?

“Help me.” I hold Chick up. “She won’t feed.”

The hag beckons me over with a curled talon.

There’s nothing for it. I cradle Chick in one arm and dig with my free hand. My manicured nails break. Earth clogs my diamond rings.

I hate worms. Eyeless, skinless, boneless, they inch along the ground. My excavation brings one up. It writhes in protest, clamped between my thumb and forefinger.

The longer I look at it, the harder it becomes. Chick’s screams have faded to a mewl. She’s fatiguing without food.

I put the worm in my mouth. Then I’m sick. I find another, this time gagging as it flails against my palette. I manage to keep it in despite the spasms of my throat. I chew.

I put my mouth to Chick’s and drop the masticated mess in. Her eyes brighten with excitement. She all but sings.

More. More. More please, Mummy. Chick gulps it down, her mouth open straight away in readiness the next portion. She won’t be tricked by anything mashed up with a fork. It must be from my lips. I search for the bugs sheltering between the stones of the garden wal s, for earthworms hiding in the flower beds. I hunt by torchlight for slugs that brave the paths by night. I retch and vomit. My little gannet’s insatiable.

“Where was your daughter born?”

“Abroad.”

The new pediatrician seems satisfied with this answer.

“How old is she now?”

“Seven.”

“And she doesn’t talk at all?”

“No.”

“Toilet trained?”

Couldn’t you have read her records before you cal ed us in? I want to snap at him for his indelicate questions but I’ve resolved to be less prickly. He’s here to help. Allegedly.

“No.”