photo courtesy of Taiyo Na
Weeks in the Womb
For our unborn child in the belly of my partner Sarah, written during the COVID-19 pandemic
20 weeks in your mother’s womb, when she and her sister take a walk through the neighborhood park, a man calls them “fckin chinks" and spits towards them. Such occasions mark your beginning.
His hatred and delusion doesn’t notice the baby inside her, that there is life on top of life in her body, so if he had a knife or acid like some other lost souls in this city, he would have ripped you open or burned through twice the sanctity of my family. This marks your start.
10 weeks prior in the womb, we share momos and taro buns with Malaya who is visiting from San Jose. We talk Duterte, human rights abuses, the plight of the people, Rapsody, D Smoke. We satiate the meal, talk about the 20 years between us. When he leaves, we hug. I clean the plates, notice purple crumbs that smile.
10 weeks prior in the womb, your mother and I weep over the film Queen & Slim. We stand in the lobby of the theater, arms wrapped and sobbing, braced in the heartbreak of a fictional reality we know to be true. This is your first movie.
8 weeks prior in the womb, Annie and Mas have their baby shower for your neighbor baby buddy Dash. This is your first party. 8 weeks prior in the womb, my old bandmate Takenori plays his Wes Montgomery fingers over his hollow body guitar at Tomi’s. I know you heard that reverb by the way you now dance in the womb. This is your first concert.
Our friend Abraham plays drums, delivers lines and belts at the Signature Theatre like we’ve never seen him before, like audiences have never seen before. Cambodian Rock Band, this is your first play.
At a Day of Remembrance at the JA Church, you and your mother love the Inarizushi. You come from a long line of people who love Inari, across seas and ocean through barbed wire fences. The Lakers went on a run in March, only to be stopped by Brooklyn. We are on the couch. Your father watches the games on the TV while your mother naps. We rest while caressing you over your mother’s belly. These warm hands, your first blanket.
20 weeks in the womb, we are alive during a genocide through federal neglect. Over 10,000 dead, and no sign of the number slowing down. From Queens to Brooklyn, Detroit to Chicago, New Orleans to Newark, there aren’t enough beds, ventilators, masks, gloves, scrubs, care, compassion, generosity to adequately deal with this pandemic, in the richest country in the world.
20 weeks in the womb, those nurses, doctors, grocery store clerks, farmers, delivery folks on the frontlines continue to go to work. Their courage moves us. Your uncle, the baker, lost his job, like millions of other people in this country, especially in the food and hospitality sector. He, like all of them, did not deserve this. He's still baking though, making tutorials online. He makes a dough as tender and beautiful as his heart. His bread is waiting for you. Your mother persists, too, holds space for her team. Your father holds space for his students. As best we can in virtual spaces.
20 weeks in the womb, the earth is reshaping itself. We are breathing in an age where there is a shortage of breaths. You take your breaths amidst water, through a cord to your mother, underneath the cocoon of a belly, soft like milk bread.
21 weeks in, your mother starts experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions, brief cramps that are said to prepare her body for your birth. Nature, true to her programming, invites us into signals of what is to come before it is fully present.
The deaths have ballooned to over 25,000. 23 weeks in, and it's over 45,000. Over 80 public school staff dead, 80 MTA staff also.
Arundhati Roy once spoke about the era of New Genocide* as a byproduct of globalization. New Genocide occurs when human imposed conditions lead to mass death without people actually going out and killing other people. An example would be economic sanctions against Iraq when in 1997 and 1998 US sanctions on Iraq claimed more than half a million children's lives. New Genocide is created when there is a purposeful withholding of necessary resources for a population. This applies to the earthquake aftermath in Puerto Rico a year ago, and undoubtedly, this COVID-19 pandemic, the overwhelming majority of losses being preventable if contingency plans, available equipment and medical staff were deployed to people in timely and responsive ways.
You are in the womb during a New Genocide. Its capital is the city of your father’s birth. Your parents’ friends and colleagues are losing their fathers, brothers, uncles, grandparents. These are swift, pummeling deaths. Cleaved lungs and vocal cords, like Eric Garner, say their names: they can’t breathe.
Breathe. We breathe through masks, marking each of your beginnings, making sure we remember the firsts worth starting again. Life, warm blankets, bread, each other.
-Taiyo Na (Taiyo Ebato) is a writer, musician and educator based in Queens, NY.
* Roy, Arundhati. Halliday, Denis. “The New American Century: Speech to the opening plenary of the World Social Forum in Mumbai.” The Nation. January 22, 2004.