Giant Baby
by Ioana Barbulescu
It was Lauren Lukas who taught the group to manifest abundance.
“Don’t just ask for a million dollars,” she patiently instructed over dinner one night, “always ask for a million dollars or more.”
Lauren Lukas grew up on the algorithms and spoke in self-help quotes.
“Allow space for what you can’t even imagine.”
“Make sure not to block your own blessings.”
The others had learned to tune her out. They shared side-looks under the teeth of their forks, lifting food off their plates and into their mouths to distract themselves from the guilt of not being better elders to Lauren Lukas. For leaving the poor girl, for the most part, at the mercy of whatever new age, digital coming into queerness she could piece together for herself.
But during the house’s doughtiest months, long before harvest season, the women all found themselves secretly wishing for more.
Sofia and John joined hands and prayed silently at the foot of their bed every night for a healthy, sturdy crop, or more.
Daheuin started chasing angel numbers—but really set a daily alarm for 11:11—to make the same wish over and over, for a fertile land or more.
Tara cursed when a seagull blessed their windshield mid-flight, before deciding it was a sign that the house’s seed would blossom that year, or more.
Grace and Fellah accidentally cooked double of what was needed for weeks in a row and shared the leftovers as offerings with neighbors, who wished them plentiful returns. Or more, they mumbled the end of the sentence inside their closed mouths.
As for Lauren Lukas, she cheered whenever a substantial tip made its way over the counter, under the lusting gaze of a service top, or a power bottom, or whatever else was embodied by the dykes that particular happy hour.
This is all to say that, though the women of the house all feigned varying levels of shock when an enormous pair of buttocks arose in the middle of their cabbage patch one early autumn morning, they all felt responsible for manifesting it.
***
Sofia was the first one to wake up that day, which wasn’t unusual. At some point in her youth, she had decided to self-medicate with a daily half-marathon before the rest of the house even let the sun breach through their eyelids. In time, even John came to respect the benefits of this decision.
Sofia was flinging her legs up and sideways at the kitchen counter to warm up for her run, when she got startled by the sight of two plump butt cheeks having unpretentiously emerged alongside other cruciferous vegetables at the back of the garden.
She ran out and instinctively crouched to the ground, glued her left ear to the dirt right next to the buttocks, and listened, holding her breath.
At first, she heard nothing but the whimpering of bugs and worms that lived at the surface. It took a lot for her to keep listening, her ear flooded with earthly life that felt foreign and filthy to her senses.
But then it came to her, the nascent cry of something recognizing kin flesh, asking to be delivered from darkness.
The baby was alive.
Sofia’s heart leapt around the sun and back into her chest. She stood on her knees and grabbed the giant bum. It was bigger than all the cabbages piled together, big enough that her hands couldn’t cup it, but rather gripped, as if by love handles, at the edges.
Sofia pulled with all her might, careful not to pinch the child’s morning skin. Even as a couple of nearby cauliflowers rolled onto their backs, roots thrust out in the tiny earthquake Sofia had brought onto this garden patch, the baby didn’t budge.
***
John got alerted by this commotion and stood frozen on the balcony that bellied out of the house’s second floor, bewildered by the sight in front of Sofia.
“I can’t do this alone!” Sofia cried out feebly.
John was at her side in a heartbeat. Time stopped for a moment in the silence of their embrace.
Sofia and John had tried to grow a baby for longer than they wished to remember. Eventually, they made peace with the fact that together they harbored not one, but two sorrowful uteri, one poisoned by thyroid medicine that kept Sofia alive, the other filled with fibroids that had John howling on blood moon nights.
Nevertheless, they kept tending to their garden as if it could one day blossom as lusciously as it did in their wildest dreams.
John spun Sofia around and placed a soft kiss on the back of her neck, arms circling her waist. Sofia met this with a smile from the side of her eye, then pulled at the buttocks growing from the ground, as John pulled her back.
The baby budged a little, the earth letting go of its lower back now, pristine baby skin alive in the morning wind.
Sofia and John tried pulling a couple more times, panting from the effort, sweat dripping back into the ground. But the earth wasn’t willing to part for them further.
***
“We need help!” they eventually admitted and Daheuin came rushing out of the house.
Daheuin felt a whistle mount ancestrally through her chest cavity. As she let it out, her eyes gleamed with tears like morning dew, watching the baby grow from the earth with the pride of a gardener who had wrapped it under layers of snow through winter, watered it all spring, then kept it from scorching in summer.
Daheuin was already a parent, but this time she would be wholly a mother, a mother in all the ways, a mother from the very beginning. The joy she felt at this prospect was fresh in her bones.
She kissed Sofia’s belly first, then went behind John and wrapped her arms under hers, then back around to place her hands on John’s shoulders. The three of them pulled at this assembly line their bodies created, and now the whole back of the baby was out, its thighs giving way to knees tightly clutched against its chest.
***
“Is anyone else up yet?” they asked when the baby wouldn’t move further, and Tara ran out to join them.
Tara had never dreamt of becoming a parent. If anything, they had dreamt against it. This life they were living had been long fought for, one where they were the center of their own existence.
Tara saw far and wide in their future and thus knew they had yet to meet all their lovers and travel all their paths. Being childless seemed to fit the ever-flowing waters of their sea.
Except one day they fell for Sofia, and riding that wave had brought them to an unexpected shore. They found themselves endeared by how much Sofia and John wanted a baby. Delighted when Daheuin finally agreed to help them get one.
Tara felt a new kind of yearning, a deep urge to be an auntie to this child themselves.
Tara wasn’t one for marveling at miracles occurring in their backyard. They went straight to Sofia, kissed her, and told her she was doing great. Then they leaned their forehead against John’s for a second, before tying the belt of their robe to Daheuin’s, and stepping backwards, one foot at a time.
The four of them pulled and pulled until finally the baby’s legs were fully out of the ground.
***
“We need more people out here!” they yelled over the baby’s cry, now close enough to break through the crust of the earth.
Grace walked out of the house with a steady step and a throw in her hands. She paid no mind to the other women, but scolded them all the same under her breath for letting her child catch a cold, as her fingers wrapped the baby’s behind in boldly colored fabric.
It had been assumed Grace would be this child’s mother as she had been all of theirs, sacrificial duty loudly injecting purpose in her veins.
Grace had bought the house they all lived in before some of the women had even been born, not in any true sense. She had always planned to have kids later, when everything’s in order, only to find that nothing ever was fully in order.
When her wife left, Grace thanked the skies she had insisted on living with others like them. She had always preached that together they could afford more, and more, or more. In her bleakest hour, the house had brought her even more than she had imagined for herself.
Grace looked at Sofia, then John, Daheuin and Tara, love pouring out of her eyes when it couldn’t reach past her teeth. She grabbed hold of Tara at the back of the line and asked what they were waiting for, nightfall? before pulling and pulling, until one of the baby’s arms got freed from beneath.
“Come out!” they waved to Fellah’s pensive eyebrows staring out the kitchen window.
Fellah didn’t rush like the others. Instead, she put the kettle on and grabbed her slippers before leaving the house, with the wisdom of someone who had witnessed the earth parting with offerings before.
Fellah already had a child, a grown-up now, out in the world, a living time stamp of the love she had once shared with Daheuin, far from here, in another life where they were different people and a couple, now a couple of people loving each other in different ways, ways that meant that Fellah would make sure there was fresh tea awaiting Daheuin and the others back in the house on this day of great fortune.
Fellah was ready to hear child laughter fill her home again, to cook big dinners for a big family, to threaten murder on whomever dared stand in the way of this magic her family made happen.
Outside, she held Sofia and John in the same embrace, thrilled as she was in her heart for them. She placed her palm on Daheuin’s chest and smiled as she passed her by, blew a kiss to Tara and shared a knowing smile with Grace before lowering herself to grab her thighs, as if ready to tackle her from behind.
They pulled and pulled until the baby’s second arm was released.
***
“It’s time, honey,” they called to Lauren Lukas, who was unbearably pregnant.
Lauren Lukas was young enough to hold the impossible shapes of her widest imagination, conjuring planetary motion and bending reality on a whim, to make it all fit.
She didn’t want this baby, not as it had happened upon her bloodstream, not right now. She also didn’t want it gone from her life or her bones.
More than anything, she wanted this child to be raised in a home filled with the love and song and laughter of many mothers, the kind she never had. She wanted to be one of those mothers, perhaps one day, perhaps right away.
Lauren Lukas imagined a world where her child was safe and loved and happy, where she was safe and loved and happy, and where what this meant could be re-imagined over and over again.
She liked to believe she manifested Sofia and John, whom she had met at a sex party, and this house of wonders, where Grace had offered her shelter when she got kicked out of the ruins of her former life, by always asking for more.
***
Once Lauren Lukas grabbed hold of Fellah, who was hanging onto Grace, who grasped at Tara, who was attached to Daheuin, who held onto John, who was hugging Sofia, and they all pulled together, the baby’s head finally let loose.
She wobbled onto her buttocks, as did the women, and soon the garden filled with mesmerizing sounds. For this baby, it was easy to see, was truly giant, enormous even, and, in any event, more than the women could have ever wished for.
Ioana Barbulescu is an Eastern European lesbian writer, currently finishing her MFA at Columbia University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in tongue.etc, Blood+Honey, The Masters Review, and The Bullpen. She has also published a children’s book in collaboration with the illustrator of this story’s image, with translation rights in the works for multiple languages. You should absolutely offer her representation at ioanabarbulescu49@gmail.com and follow more of her work on Instagram @collectivequeerarts.
Picture Credit: Andra Manea
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