A Detour on the Way to the World

A Detour on the Way to the World Dashka Slater (bio) Helen's cell phone rang while she was on the freeway, heading toward the airport hotel. She had the windows down and the radio on. The breeze was tangling her hair. On the seat beside her was a straw hat and her handbag, in which her phone bleated. Rage surfaced first, then guilt, then resignation. She fumbled in the outer pocket of her purse, her belly wedged uncomfortably against the steering wheel, and flipped open her phone. "What are you listening to? " her sister Margot asked. "Is that Eminem? " Was it? Helen didn't know much about popular music. She mostly preferred silence, or had, before. Now the urgency of the song spoke to her. She wanted to be listening to it, not to Margot. She wanted to be borne away by the tide that was carrying her down the Interstate. "It's just the radio, " she said and turned down the volume. "Where are you right now? " Margot asked. "Ted said you'd left for the baby shower, but I'm not ready for you yet. " "I have some errands to run. " Helen made her voice casual, even though her body was thrumming, cascading. "I'll be there at two, like you asked. " "Can you pick up some orange juice on your way? For Mimosas? I know you can't drink them, but other people might. " "Sure, " Helen said. "I'll see you soon. " She closed the phone and turned up the radio. Her body bloomed into her awareness. It filled the car, then tendrilled into the world. To her left was the blue and gray swirl of the Bay. To her right, the golden hills. The music from the dashboard radio pulsed, urging her onward. ________ She had not intended to become this person, this reckless, vibrating, Eminem-listening person. Not long ago, she had been a woman whose body had seemed beside the point, an innocuous assortment of limbs arranged inside khaki skirts and blue blazers. She had planned to do her pregnancy by the book. The book in question showed a pregnant woman in a red muumuu reading in a rocking chair. Helen had felt a kinship with that woman, who seemed sensible and down-to-earth, a modern woman of the dawning millennium. "You've got only nine months of meals and snacks with which End Page 127 to give your baby the best possible start in life, " the book informed her. "Before you close your mouth on a forkful of food, consider, 'Is this the best bite I can give my baby? '" So there went the glass of wine and the diet Coke, the pasta, the sourdough toast, the hard candies she kept on her desk, and the bag of potato chips she used to buy at the sandwich shop next to her office. Instead, she packed herself snacks of dried fruit, cheese, and carrot sticks, and when she went to the sandwich shop at noon, she complimented her turkey sandwich with a miniature carton of milk that made her feel as if she were back in elementary school. The milk was the first sign that something was amiss. It was, she suddenly understood, the glandular secretions of a cow. After taking a cautious sip, she leaned over and vomited into her wastebasket. All day, as she processed claims for a large home insurance company, the physical presence of her body bore down on her. It spoke to her of its concerns: a full bladder, an empty belly, a free-floating queasiness that jittered in her throat as lunchtime approached with all its required consumption. Around her were other bodies, exhaling, sweating, scratching, chewing. "My wife was just like you, " Al Durkee, her boss, told her. "Couldn't keep anything down the first trimester. She had a rough time of it. " Al was a nice man, a sympathetic man. He had four kids. Their pictures were lined up on his desk, four round-faced children smiling identical gap-toothed smiles in front of a powder-blue backdrop. He was an old-fashioned boss, the kind who was never in a hurry, and when. . .