by Emma Day<\/p>\n
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My grandfather says he remembers being in the womb. He says he could hear muffled speech and his mother\u2019s thunderous heartbeat through the red walls of her body. He remembers being born, too- he says the nurse\u2019s hands were cold as she caught him. The lights were bright and the world was loud and he cried. We don\u2019t believe him, but it\u2019s a nice story anyway.<\/p>\n
My mother is pregnant again. Danny and I don\u2019t mind. Everything is progressing properly, the same as last time, but she\u2019s developed a window in her stomach where her navel should be. Its perfectly round and smooth, like a ship\u2019s porthole. We can see my baby sister\u2019s newly forming hands and feet, drifting and kicking at nothing. She looks like an alien, with her big black eyes and oversized head. My mother says we shouldn\u2019t call her an alien, because she might hear and become upset, and nobody should start out upset like that. We understand. We hear things through windows all the time.<\/p>\n
We went to the store with my mother, Danny and I, to buy maternity clothes. She wasn\u2019t expecting the window when she first bought clothes, she says, no more showing off this bump, people will stare. She buys loose dresses and blouses with empire waists while we hide in the center of the round clothing racks. It\u2019s soft and quiet behind the clothes. I wonder if this is what my grandfather remembers. I wonder if God wears clothes. I press my face hard against a red gingham summer skirt. My mother tells me to stop.<\/p>\n
On the drive home Danny and I sit together in the back seat. He has found a discarded straw wrapper, and is worrying the paper with his fingers. He twists it into a flower shape and hands it to me, proud of himself. I take it and put it behind my ear and he laughs. It\u2019s dark outside, and the road is winding, and Danny soon falls asleep in his carseat. I can\u2019t ever sleep in the car\u2014the shadows flashing through the windows never let me. We round a bend and are faced with a digital sign, bright as the sun to our night adjusted eyes. It flashes words and pictures, advertising the Baptist church behind it, but I can\u2019t make out what it says. My mother shakes her head. You\u2019d think they\u2019re trying to blind you, she says, it\u2019s like those church signs are so bright you can\u2019t see God.<\/p>\n
My grandfather says the window is a blessing. He likes to sit next to my mother on the couch when she falls asleep to late-night tv shows and watch the baby swim about. She likes commercial jingles and courtroom scenes of Law and Order, he tells us. My grandfather is sure the baby can hear him when he whispers to her, and he can\u2019t wait to talk to her about it when she\u2019s born. I can see my mother\u2019s expression when he says things like that. She casts her eyes down and strokes down her stomach, covering the window with both hands.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Emma Day is a dedicated student at the University of Alabama studying English and Spanish and looking forward to attending law school. She recently began writing poems and prose with the encouragement of friends and mentors and hasn\u2019t stopped since. Emma has published poetry through the University of Alabama\u2019s Marr\u2019s Field Journal<\/em> and the University of South Alabama\u2019s Oracle<\/em>. She loves reading books her dad recommends and hanging out with her conceited pet bird Reginald.<\/p>\n
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