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Circling
Daffiama, Ghana
By Lisa Kahn Schnell
I.
There was a woman who died while I was in Daffiama; she was young and
eight months pregnant. I didn’t go to the funeral, but those who did
said you could see the baby circling around inside of her, like a hand
moving under a sheet. Later I felt bad that I hadn’t gone to the funeral,
but I was never sure if my motivation was guilt or disappointment over
missing such a spectacle.
II.
My own babies have died inside me twice now. The first one fell with
the Twin Towers, and as the clots of blood dripped into the toilet,
I said goodbye almost thankfully, glad not to bring a child into such
a world. This one is taking its time, and I have nothing more than my
intuition to tell me that it’s gone.
III.
I am haunted by this scene: the woman, the funeral, the baby circling
around. They cut the baby out in order to bury her, but only after it
had stopped circling and had died. I didn’t go to the funeral—my fiancé
was visiting, and I didn’t know the woman. But I should have gone. I
should have gone not just to support the family, and not just because
you never know when it’s going to be your turn to grieve or be grieved,
but because knowing what I know now about my own life, I see that there
are things I would have learned, maybe things I would have taken from
that funeral if I had the courage.
IV.
This time nothing is falling: no blood, no towers, I just know. Something
is different, something has changed, and I search my body for signs
that my baby is still there—check my breasts, my belly, the fluid in
the toilet, and back again to the breasts, wondering if the life inside
me has died. I’m still not completely sure, so I survey again, trying
to find the feeling that was once there, that still comes back in little
wisps, but seems mostly gone. There is something about the way the breasts
suddenly deflate, the way the body stops gurgling and humming, that
lets me know I will continue to chase after the symptoms of another
life in my body without ever finding what I am looking for.
V.
I am the color brown. Not just any brown, but the kind you make with
paint or too many layers of crayon when you’re a little kid. You mix
all the colors together—the good colors and the bad colors too, just
to see what will happen, and you come up with a muddy, greenish, sickly
version of the color brown, a sort of chaos and confusion of life and
lifelessness all blended into one, never to be separated into sky blue,
tangerine, and sea foam again. This brown, this color I am, it sucks
in the colors of crocuses, bananas, my husband’s eyes, and it holds
them tight, keeping them for its own but never changing, never brightening
to a rich mahogany or surrendering to black. That is what color I am
right now.
VI.
If I knew then what I know now, what would I have done? I would have
gone to the funeral and made them cut the baby out while it was still
alive, instead of after it had died. I would have taken the dead woman’s
baby for my own, as a guard against the possibility that either of us
would ever be alone, as a stone thrown in the face of death, as protection
against this circling, this looking for something we both need desperately
that is no longer there.
Lisa
Kahn Schnell was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana from
1998-2000. Her piece entitled "The
Things I Gave Her" won the 2005 Moritz Thomsen Experience Award
from PeaceCorpsWriters.org. Lisa lives in southeastern Pennsylvania
with her husband and two daughters. She is currently working on a book
about her experience in Ghana.
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