Emily's First Portrait

Although I was not technically covered by insurance, when I was about five months along, Rick was able to hook me up with an obstetrician at the woman’s prison, some miles down the road from where he worked. They weighed me and prodded at me and pushed down so hard on my stomach that for a second I worried that the pressure would squeeze Emily right out of me. Then they put on these rubber gloves and reached up inside of me – much further than you’d think they’d be able to go - to see if they could feel her head and they rubbed gook on my stomach so that I could listen to the heartbeat. It was cool, but all that pushing and reaching around in there like I was some kind of animal hurt dreadfully. It was sort of humiliating, actually. But finally, they did an ultrasound and gave me a few copies to keep of the picture.

It was Emily’s first portrait – black and white, the baby herself contained in a sort of conical shape - a far cry from the weekday specials at JC Pennys, but it was my first real look at her. You could make out her two little hands, her mouth, nose, even two little black slits where you could presume her eyes to be. The picture was more conceptual than anything – there was a grainy, streaky quality to the image that left much wanting in terms of detail.

The interesting thing about it was that, if you held the picture up sideways, a scene suddenly formed. The narrow end of the cone (or the upper end of my womb), from which much light projected, suddenly became a window glowing with warmth. The baby herself in profile took on a sad, ghoulish appearance, with one arm raised as if to knock against the window while she herself hovered slightly above in the darkness, looking down. She seemed so alone in there, seemed to long for whatever it was she saw on the other side. Her lips were parted slightly, and I could tell from the distribution of shadow that her eyes were set deep back into her skull. Beautiful and unearthly; a child who was already a ghost.