Nonfiction by Ariana Eggleston
In her 1960 poem, “You’re,” Sylvia Plath described her unborn daughter as a “bent-backed Atlas.” Even in utero, this girl had immense pressure on her, bending her fragile, tiny spine before she had even begun to use it.
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The first time I remember being asked if I wanted kids, I was in first grade. My big sister asked me what I would name my babies. Every year, I was asked not who I wanted to be, but whose mother I wanted to be. My hypothetical son changed his name so many times, eventually he became my hypothetical daughter—I probably couldn’t handle a boy anyway. Gloria was her name for three years until I decided I probably couldn’t handle a daughter either. By 14 I was sure that I wouldn’t be naming babies, despite my mother’s continued effort to convince her teenage daughter that she needed to have a baby. I was so smart and kind, it was simply an injustice to deprive this nonexistent child of the gift of having me as a mother.
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On July 10, 2018, Sophie Thompson published an article for Glamour UK, titled “How Bras Can Cause Headaches and Chronic Back Pain.” She quoted a bra-fitting specialist as saying, “One size-D breast weighs 500 grams, so if you are a D you are carrying one kilo on your chest at all times.” Her research goal was to warn women of the dangers of wearing an ill-fitting bra. The weight of one’s own anatomy on her shoulders can weaken her spine, forcing her to bow, bent-backed through life.
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By 2018 I had already been fully-grown for several years. I learned how to find a proper-fitting bra and adjust my posture so the weight on my shoulders didn’t crush my spine. I was going to school to be a writer and I knew, more than anything else, that I wanted to live for only myself. The world, still on my back, had been slowly and meticulously turned upside-down, to my liking.
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Margaret of Austria, wife of Phillip the III of Spain, died while giving birth to their eighth child. Her daughter, Maria Anna, died near the end of her sixth pregnancy, on the same day as her mother.
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In 2014, Liberian nurse Salome Karwah and her colleagues were named “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine for their efforts to eradicate the Ebola virus in West Africa. In her work, Karwah contracted the virus herself but fought it and miraculously survived, immediately returning to work to continue her efforts. Two years later, Salome died from complications of childbirth.
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Since Medieval times, the fate of babies and children who die without first being baptized has been debated. Theologians adopted the theory of Limbo to answer the question of where infants who weren’t cleansed of the Original Sin went after they died.
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At age eight, during my two weeks at a Seventh Day Adventist Bible Camp, I learned of the dead babies rejected from Heaven. Far too young, I was taught that God punished women for not baptizing their babies. Every mother should know that if their baby wasn’t cleansed of sin, then God had no choice but to restrict their entry into heaven. As a mere theory of the afterlife, no one knows what happens in the world of Limbo or even where it is; I always imagined it was placed near every mother who lost her child; somewhere between her shoulder blades and the back of her neck.
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On July 13, 2018, Ariana Grande released her song titled “God is A Woman,” to much controversy; people were furious about her claim that God could be female. 56 days after the song’s release, her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller, overdosed and passed away. The world then demanded that Ariana explain herself, for she did not save him.
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In 510 BCE, the Roman noblewoman Lucretia was raped by the son of the emperor in an act of power and revenge. A group of soldiers had boasted about their wives’ virtue and, upon visiting every one of their homes, they found that Lucretia, Collatine’s wife, was the only one of the wives who had been doing her weaving instead of drinking and partying. In a jealous rage over Lucretia’s morality, Tarquin snuck into her room while she slept and raped her. Because she belonged to the Collatine household, her rape was seen as a defilement of property, rather than an act of violence against another human. In order to save her husband’s name and lineage, Lucretia committed suicide; her husband stood calmly by as she did so, knowing it was her only option. Moments after her death, her body was carried through the streets of Rome to spark a revolt against the empire, saving the Roman people from the monarchy.
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Centuries later, Shakespeare would recount the scene of Lucretia’s naked body that had enticed Tarquin, describing her breasts “like ivory globes circled with blue, / A pair of maiden worlds unconquered.” Later in this same poem, Shakespeare’s Lucrece plunged a knife through her chest as if to relieve the pressure of carrying those maiden worlds on her shoulders.
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On September 26, 2018, an older female coworker of mine asked whether I wanted a son or a daughter. “No kids for me,” I tried to respond lightheartedly, my shoulders still bracing themselves for her response. “Yeah, alright, come back in thirty years, once you have a husband, and tell me how that went.” I didn’t tell her that I was not concerned with finding a husband either. I let the comment knock the breath out of me and then stay, digging icy blades into my shoulders and pouring glacial water down my spine. My knees buckled just slightly to remind me of the physics of a perfect globe and that it’s just as heavy no matter which side it is lifted from.
