Baby Literature

[Tina Popielarczyk]

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The opening was timed for the anniversary of the first test tube baby. A facility erected as a milestone: five decades of obstetrical progress. The chosen ground was a frontier of Bangkok, itself a forerunner in the contest for medical tourists. It opened as Newbirth Centre Asia, but for its hospitality-trained staff would be known locally, and later infamously, as New Hotel.

In medical circles at the time, restrictions to gene therapy were being debated. Recombinant DNA, the technology for genomic editing, had come of age. It was possible to edit germ-line DNA (eggs and sperm) and therefore scientifically feasible to genetically augment (or diminish?) future generations of humans.

Perhaps when we abandoned family, we also lost sight of legacy, and therefore history. The last of the Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors had passed away, and despite the best efforts of schools, new wars were layered over old wars. 20th century eugenics was too far back to provide its cautionary tale. That history had fossilized; it was the wreckage of an earlier civilization.

Sims meanwhile had utilized her egg database to map polygenetic traits that could be marketed to intended parents. Polygenetic diseases had long plagued the scientific community. How to pinpoint the responsible genes, given how many different genes could influence, say, heart disease. Such diseases were not as easily isolated and snuffed out as monogenetic ones, like sickle-cell anemia. Germ-line augmentation was only as good as the traits that could be isolated. Many in the scientific community moved on to epigenetics, and the naysayers trailed those advances for a time.

In her experiments to perfect the human race, Sims held the embryos against a standard that could be traced back to the client questionnaires of the Hatchery. She wanted to create the ideal embryo, and by planting it her army of surrogates, begin the work of propagating a generation of post-humans. Ourselves, a little better.

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Electric Literature is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2009. Our mission is to amplify the power of storytelling with digital innovation, and to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture by supporting writers, embracing new technologies, and building community to broaden the audience for literature.

The first one is not so bad, hurts, grinding on the sticky floor with the others watching. He and she are drunk. Everyone else is drunk too, all the guys standing around and watching, all the girls in the other rooms.

Finally, she passes out, or passes into a daze where nothing seems real. The guy who picked her up lets her stay in his bed, and he gets in it too. Sometime later, she realizes his arms are around her waist and his knees t behind hers and he is snoring. The window is deep blue with approaching dawn.

The Pepsi clock still shows the same time as last night. She sees its cord dangling, unplugged. She thinks she remembers tripping over it on her way out of the bathroom, and number twelve catching her.

The college kids have brought their parents. They wear dress shirts and ties. One of them has a lawyer of his own. The surfers are just themselves, a bunch of guys in jeans, no women, no parents. The college families glare at them.

The boys say she stole a phone from them and that she asked for sex. She wanted it. They say the police humiliated them by pulling up with flashing lights, frisking them in front of neighbors. They insist they thought she was eighteen. They repeat that she stole a phone. And that she told on them, ratted them out like a crybaby.

Half an hour or so and her feet are covered in blisters from shoes not made for walking. Some of the blisters pop and stick to the vinyl. She comes to a bus stop with a bench and three plastic walls. It smells terrible, urine and alcohol and filthy bodies, but not as bad as she smells. She wishes she had panties. She wishes she could sleep, forget everything, start over. She sits down and calls her friend again, another message. Please, please get your sister to give me a ride. I have to clean up before my mother finds out.

She waves each bus away. She has no money to pay for a ride, she has only this thing to do with the phone. Over and over, waking up college girls in their dorm rooms and apartments, telling them to ask themselves what they really know about the boys they go with. She says, Take a minute and think about it. You sit there and think a minute, young lady.

There should have been an earthquake. Things should have been shaken off the bookshelves, the counter, out of the cabinets and off the wall. In the kitchen, the bedroom, the Citgo. Seven point five on the scale. It should have happened that way.

This is when a car stops. A red sedan slows in front of her, hesitates, starts again, stops. The driver, black guy, stares. The rear windows have been tinted, as if someone important rides in the back, or someone dangerous.

They were sharing a can of whipped cream. Passing it back and forth. He and his friends complimenting her skinny body, her young metabolism that can live off fat and sugar and not gain an ounce. They said she could be a fashion model. She put her head back, and number one shook the can and squirted airy wet whipped clouds into her mouth.

Fourteen makes herself very, very still inside and does not cry. The men are watching her. They say she fooled them into thinking she was older. She sings a counting song inside her head, numbers circling around the lump where her scalp got bruised on the kitchen cabinet.

It was bright, warm, a gorgeous day. Everyone else was at a mall but the three of them, Fourteen and Best Friend and Older Sister came to the beach. A big white sheet to lay across the sand, chips and sodas and gossip about the girls at school.

The seagulls ducked and dove and grabbed their food. Bird Rock belonged to the birds. The girls shouted and waved and kicked, wiggling on the sheet and the sand, protecting their Doritos and Twinkies.

Established in 2003, the Cincinnati Review draws together within its pages the finest creative and critical work from across the country. We provide a venue for writers of any background, at any point in their literary careers, to showcase their best writing. Each issue also features a portfolio of artwork from a local or national artist.

As a writing and literature coach, I teach my students not to just consume a diversity of good books, but also to critically unpack the literature they consume by asking: Do I identify with this? Why or why not? Whose perspective is centered in this book? What works? What could be different? How? I hope my students will know that their lives are worth being reflected back to them, that their stories are worth being told: stories about their Blackness, stories unrelated to their Blackness, and stories that reflect their cultural heritage. Ultimately I want them to find protagonists that they can hold in their hearts for a lifetime, just like I hold Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Claudia, Dawn, Mallory, Jessi, and Jade in mine.

Though really, boomers should probably be flattered that someone still considers us a target audience at all. But the underlying suggestion is valid enough: was there ever a time when the boomer generation could be defined by a common bookshelf? Certainly most people can, without much trouble, think of titles and authors and characters that serve as a kind of shorthand for readers who came of age in the '60s and '70s. Holden Caulfield needs no introduction. "Fear and loathing" is a catchphrase that won't die. Green eggs and ham are on everyone's menu. I haven't seen a copy in 30 years, but I can still remember the faux-hippie lettering on the cover of "The Greening of America," and the way everyone's copy of "The Medium Is the Massage" fell apart because the spines always cracked. I can see the Ballantine Books logo on the spine of "Lord of the Rings." "Soul on Ice," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and "Slaughterhouse-Five" were oversize paperbacks, so they got separate shelf space from the smaller books, while The Whole Earth Catalog and "Our Bodies, Ourselves" were always on their sides, because they were too tall for any shelf. If you went to someone's apartment, you surreptitiously scanned the bookshelves (wood planks, cinder blocks) to see what kind of person this was. When did this first start? Prekindergarten, most likely: She's got "The Cat in the Hat." OK, she's cool.

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