Y by Mary Anne Griffiths

My father is packing his suitcase. There are six pairs of underwear mother has whitened to a crisp. He packs a rabbit foot my little sister Rajna had given to him on his birthday. He neatly adds a Penthouse magazine. He has also packed his penis. This, however, he will take as carry-on baggage. It fits well within the limits of travel but not as far as he’s concerned. He worries. His seed will be washed and sorted over many times just like we rinse and pick over the beans for fazol. Mama laughs at my comment.

“If it is like preparing this, Tata will starve himself! Every one of his beans will be discarded!”

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     I am the eldest of five daughters in a house that can hold no more femaleness. We are reminded of this by Tata every evening as we gather around the dinner table to watch him consume as much as he can. We are not allowed to scrape our forks against the China. Even this disturbs him. In too many languages the fork is considered a female pronoun. He eats only with a large knife.

We are unable to tell him that he is full of X chromosomes. We try not to even think this unless we are safely tucked into the two bedrooms we share. We sit close together in the musk of all the stages of a woman’s life in our small rooms while a large blue, unoccupied bedroom patiently waits across the hall. In there a tiny bed lies open like a wound that will not heal. 

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I try to imagine how Mama and Tata fell in love, what they looked like as teens when they first met. Him with his powerful voice and body. Mama furtive, rounded and ready. She appeared healthy, able to bear fruit like a fresh apple tree he would climb and climb again only to fall out of with the fruit of her likeness. Each year he would take to her blossoms like a mad hornet intent upon its work to smear her pollen across the many smiling flowers of herself. She put up with it. One does not swat away an angry, stinging insect. 

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     A woman who is menstruating is something beyond a man’s control. Tata is able to organize everything except our menstruation. Strangely enough, it has been effortless for those of us who do menstruate. He calls this a conspiracy. He tells us we shouldn’t  make the bread. The three of us, along with Mama retire to our rooms. Tata is very nervous during this time and in a moment may smile then yell ferociously.

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After Tata returns home, we spend our days now sitting around him like spokes emanating from the center of a wheel and listen to him craft a story about a little boy. He is brilliant and does not have to do a thing.  He is cherished. These stories go on and on. Elena and I wonder why he is so special. He has not won the regional piano recitals like Nika. Nor does he have the chance to compete in the International Art Competition like me. He cannot even execute a single pirouette like Petra who could dance all parts of Swan Lake around him. But we humor Tata by listening and smiling. Mama says we should since it’s the only thing he seems to be able to create properly. She smiles wearily. She has grown rich with the color of roses. She has thickened and prepares to leave us soon.

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I have accompanied her in the white room where she lays with her legs open in sharp angles like the greater than and lesser than signs I have learned about in algebra class. She is miserable and curses freely. I, too, curse mathematics. Tata waits in the other room with my four sisters, pacing like a confused ant. The doctors and nurses hum and exchange words, flitting in between the zero space on the axis line that rests somewhere amid her shaking lower limbs. At this point, a small arc crests the doorway of consciousness.  Just one final push that will thrust this beautiful soul into our earth.  The large hands of the doctor rotates the child’s head, gently coaxing it.  I hold my breath sweet with anxiety.

All at once she comes, with an exhale of veils and rubies.  She is perfectly robed in velvet purple silk and screaming.  I begin to laugh, hugging Mama in my giddiness.  We will make kruh by hand and care not if there is bleeding among us.  We will talk of wonderful things, We’ll spend all day working in the garden and singing.   We will hold our own party, tracking the moon in the sky as my father crosses our fortified threshold every night, him whispering the entire time, “Why, why, why?”

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MARY ANNE GRIFFITHS — Mary Anne (she/her) is a poet and fiction writer living in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. She shares space with a spouse, a tortie and tuxie and is presently working towards her debut collection of poetry and microfiction. Her work can be found in Dark Winter Lit Mag, Bright Flash Literary Review, Macrame Literary Journal, The Lothlorien and Your Sudden Flash.

Art by RURI KATO — Ruri is an artist based in Japan. She works in a range of medium, her most recent interest being calligraphy ink.