The Lamenting Samisen

The Lamenting Samisen

Simple people believe that sexual intercourse is the only way to create a child; this, however, is not so. I conceived after reading The Lamenting Samisen, a series of fourteen haikus written by a sage-like old hermit before my great-grandmother's great-great-grandmother's time.

I became suspicious after the absence of two menstrual cycles, and my concern caused me to visit my doctor. Consultation with him was a rare occurrence due to the fact that he reeked of cherry lozenges and was rumored to keep skin samples of his female patients, which is obviously and unquestionably bizarre.

"You're pregnant," he said to me. "Congratulations. Your husband will be very pleased."
"I'm not married."
"Then your boyfriend will be very pleased?" It was more question than statement.
"No. I've never even lain with a man."
Silence.
"Before you leave, I'll need a skin sample for the lab."

My stomach fluttered when I re-read The Lamenting Samisen, and my new, still-developing mother's intuition informed me that I was carrying the child of fourteen haikus. The idea seemed utterly ridiculous to me, but perhaps Mary had thought it was utterly ridiculous when she learned she was carrying the son of God. I imagined the semen that had contributed to my fruitfulness to have been words rather than tiny, white, tadpole-like cells, words like "Blossom," "Firefly," "Rice," and "Kappa" that had crawled up into my womb. I wondered which had won the egg. I still wonder.

Then there was the dilemma of choosing a name. The doctors couldn't figure out the gender of the baby, claiming that my child was timid and shy because it always faced away from the camera. This was difficult for me, not only because its scrambling about put knots inside me, but because I would have to choose two different names rather than one. I wanted a Japanese name in honor of the origin of the child's honorable paternal origin, and thought about plucking one of the words from a haiku and using it; however, I decided against this, seeing as how the vocabulary was much too literal. I could never put a child through a lifetime of torture by naming him or her "Cicada" or "Lantern." The meaning of a name is important to me, as it is to poetry.

It is unfortunate that I never had the chance to decide. Contractions began four months too early, and my legs were in stirrups for fifteen hours; I watched them turn a rather harsh shade of purple caused by pins and needles, and I believe I pleaded for mercy (if not death) several times. It was a long and difficult labor, and when my body finally expelled the child, the nurses didn't want me to hold or even see it. But I managed to coax them into letting me do both by stating that, after such a long and difficult birth, I had the right to see what the child I produced looked like. They were correct to have hesitated; my offspring was in the shape of a baby, but it wasn't a baby at all, but rather, a doppelganger that looked like an inflated transparent bag filled with flower petals. I stared at it, unable to fathom what this...this thing was. All was silent until I, in what I perceive as an act of wisdom, took a bobby pin out of my hair and stuck it into the infant's chest. It popped, and the flower petals fell onto my bosom, as if apologizing for the absence of my own flesh that was supposed to be in their place.

I didn't mourn. In truth, I was quite relieved. When I arrived home from the hospital I burned The Lamenting Samisen in my fireplace. As I inhaled the perfume of burning paper, I knew I had indeed done a good thing.