Read After Birth for Free Online

navy poncho in a low-key cotton/cashmere blend—unmistakably quality but appropriately pilled and loved. It’d look prissy new, and that right there’s the thing most women don’t understand about style: clothing must be worn, lived in, assimilated into uniform. Otherwise it’s mere costume.
    Six feet tall, I’d guess. Tattoos all up both arms, nose ring. Careworn. Hair in her eyes. Messy, artless, doesn’t give a shit. Not like trying to look like she doesn’t give a shit, actually does not give a shit. Probably the only comfortable woman in the room.
    I wore my dumb punishing pointy boots from way, way back when they were in style. Cat’s hair is dyed and shellacked a deep, awful magenta; Betsy’s panty lines have panty lines. In the kitchen the French-theory bitch with the Kabuki face teeters on idiotic spike-heel contraptions resembling staplers. Someone should offer her bunions a glass of wine.
    Mina meets my eyes. Bam . Yes. Energy transfer. We smile.
    Now poli-sci guy’s lecturing her about the influence of the Misogynists on a band he heard once in Brooklyn who were kind of lame but it was interesting how they appropriated your ferocious textuality, like Le Tigre but less cerebral and more melodious than Sleater-Kinney . She looks like she wants to stick a knife into her ear. Maybe I’m projecting. Poli-sci guy’s wife is riveted. Her wordless stare makes it look like she’s on acid.
    Mina sticks out a hand to me.
    Hey. Mina.
    We emailed about Crispin and Jerry’s. Ari.
    Oh, right. Hey. Warm, genuine. Emanating the ballyhooed glow. I never get over the wild spectacle of pregnancy. It’s so outside of time. So elemental. So (fuck it) sacred. Who’d really think twice about those Manson kids murdering Sharon Tate? Yet another slashed-up chick: next. Poor thing was pregnant, though, so bona fide atrocity forever.
    We’re gonna get some more drinks , Poli-Sci says abruptly. The wife follows.
    Jesus fuck , Mina whispers when they’re gone.
    I love her. Mellow people always seem slightly melancholic, don’t they? Whenever I stop grinning for five seconds in a social setting, someone always asks me what’s wrong.
    Cat breaks the spell to ask if we’ve seen the highbrow TV of the moment.
    Oh my God! Betsy hollers from the kitchen. I hear it’s amazing! Is it amazing? We just got Season One. I hear it’s amazing!
    It’s amazing.
    Okay, so I have to watch it. I’m really excited. Everyone says it’s amazing.
    It is. It’s amazing.
    This is as close as they ever come to talking about anything.
    But Mina’s looking at me.
    Is Ari short for something?
    Ariella , I say, with loathsome girly twist. In college, reading Plath, I unofficially changed it to Ariel, and felt immediately tougher, braver, like I might someday find the courage to kill myself. But the lie slid from grasp, as lies do. And I’ll never have remotely the courage to kill myself.
    Pretty , she says, and tries in vain to take a deep breath; no easy task what with fetus cutting into lung capacity.
    You must be thinking about names?
    She shrugs.
    When are you due?
    Last week.
    Wow.
    Yeah . She holds up her right hand and turns it slowly around, marveling at swollen fingers.
    I gulp wine, impatient to get where I’m going, wine-wise.
    Such a mindfuck, right? Can’t sleep? Weird dreams? Sciatica, indigestion? Peeing constantly, sick of being told to, like, “enjoy this time”? And people don’t seem to trust that you’ll let them know when you’ve had the baby, right?
    Oh my God, it’s like, people: I will let you know when I’ve had the fucking baby. You don’t have to ask me every motherfucking day if I’ve had the baby.
    I confess: Mine just turned one.
    Yeah, Crispin and Jerry told me. Midwife says I can try castor oil in the next couple of days.
    A midwife! My throat catches. She’s no fool.
    Listen, do you think I’ve done my duty here? I need to go home, like, ten minutes ago. My entire body is sort of throbbing. You