Peach Baby by Sarah O’Connor
2024 Winner
My baby is a poppy seed. My baby is a sesame seed. My baby is a lentil. My baby is a blueberry, a raspberry, a grape, a date, a lime, a plum, a kiwi. My baby is a peach. My baby is a pear. My baby is an avocado, a naval orange, a pomegranate, a grapefruit, an apple. My baby is a coconut. My baby is an eggplant. My baby is a papaya. My baby is a pumpkin. My baby is a honeydew. My baby is a watermelon.
That’s what Peach Baby says, the app that our doctor recommended I download so I can see what size our fetus is, so I can visualize it inside of me. Richard is afraid that I’m unhappy with the pregnancy because I keep using words like “it” when referring to the fetus, or I use words like “fetus” instead of baby. He says “them” would be better for me to use, more gender inclusive. We both think gender reveals are ridiculous, have toyed with having a surprise “It’s a Baby” party but then we think that might be insensitive to any of our friends who are secretly barren. Still, I prefer calling the baby it, prefer calling it a fetus. There’s a woman on TikTok who called her fetus spawn and continues to do so now that it’s outside of her. Another calls her baby concrete. I don’t think “it” is insulting, and technically “it” is a “fetus.” But I’m trying to say these things in my head more so that I can say the correct words out loud. Them. Baby. It makes Richard happy, which is all I care about.
But saying them feels like I’m speaking “them” into existence, more than one. I understand pronouns, I respect all the theys and the thems and the theirs, but I’m pregnant now and I don’t want “them.” Or I do, I’m not against having a them for a someday baby. I’d never shun it for that. Never. I’d love it if they were a them, but right now they are an it and it is a fetus. But when I say “them” when I talk about “it” I can’t help thinking that I’m going to have “them,” as in more than one. Twins. Triplets. Them. That when I say “them” the zygote inside of me will replicate, mutate, double, triple, so that my feet are more sore than they already are, my stomach stretched and swollen so far out that it, them, they look like they’re protruding from inside, like they’re waiting for their chest burster moment. Leave me a husk on the hospital bed as they are plucked out and cleaned and brought up to my breasts to eat whatever’s left of me. There’s this old Flintstones episode when Fred is waiting for Pebbles to be born and the man in the waiting room with him tells him he’s afraid because when his wife ate two eggs they had twins, and when she ate a triple-decker sandwich they had triplets, and now she’s eaten a dozen donuts. Oh, me. Oh, my. Cue laugh track. But I haven’t felt like eating much until recently.
I made the mistake of telling Richard my fear of speaking “them” into existence and he asked me if that would be so bad. Twins. Triplets. His family has a history of it. They. Them. I didn’t know that, he never told me that before we got married. And so I told him no, of course not, why would I be upset about having twins? Triplets? Multiples in general? And besides it’s too late for twins now, or identical twins anyways. Unless I get pregnant while pregnant, some delayed twin. Which wouldn’t happen, of course, or is rare, at least, but not impossible. Nothing is ever impossible when it comes to pregnancy. I saw a TikTok of a pregnant person whose fetus, baby, grew inside of their liver instead of their uterus. They showed the ultrasound, you could see its fingers, its nose. It waved to the camera. The size of a grapefruit. The miracle of life. The horror of it. My baby is the size of a peach. Peach Baby.
I think that’s when Richard first started getting concerned about me and the pregnancy. I showed him the video and he asked if I was happy. And I told him that I was, am, really. Truly happy. It was just a surprise, is all. A surprise for both of us, really. We weren’t trying, but once we found out that we were then that was that. A surprise. I had all the tell-tale signs: nausea, light-headedness, moodiness, irritability. That’s what Richard likes to joke about when we tell people the story of when we found out, that I’m usually so easy-going when suddenly I started getting on his ass. Some of our friends say, how could you tell? Ha. Ha. Ha. I imagine grabbing the sharp, serrated knife I use for watermelon and stabbing it through our friends’ chests, cleave out and taste what’s inside. Only a thought though, never an action. Richard would get more concerned than he already is if I told him that, so I keep the thought inside like I’m doing with it and them, fetus and baby. We found out after the first month, when our baby was a worm. A maggot. A grain of rice.
Now our baby is a peach. Second trimester, a milestone, Richard says. It’s safe for us to tell the world now. I’ve started showing. Not hugely, but enough for me to see in the mirror as I dress in the morning, enough to feel the swell and stretch of my abdomen, to imagine a fist or small foot pushing until I can see an imprint, imagine its small appendage breaking through my stomach and reaching out into the world for the picking.
A peach, Peach Baby, like the app. A good omen for the baby, the fetus. It. Richard used to call me his peach because I bruise so easily. Often when we wake up together naked and tangled in our bedsheets, he’ll make a show of slowly unwrapping me like I’m something delicious to eat. A carefully wrapped pastry, a stuffed burrito, a fully packed submarine all nestled and wrapped securely in our sheets. He’ll unwrap me and then find the circle of bruises around my neck, along my hips and wrists. We’re always rough, I want to feel everything. But Richard has this annoying habit of seeing the bruises and looking guilty as if he’s spoiled me, as if I hadn’t asked for the bruises. Sometimes he’s dramatic and calls himself a brute and I kiss his neck, sink my teeth into his shoulder as if he’s made of marzipan and hear him gasp, watch him smile because he likes to feel everything too and we’ll go at it again. Or we did, we used to. Things are different now that I’m pregnant, now that I’m starting to show, now that my stomach has started to swell, now that it, them, the fetus, baby will start moving soon we have to be gentle. Richard wants to be “gentle,” is so incredibly gentle now. He doesn’t want to hurt the baby. Or me.
I’ve started having cravings though, which is a great relief to Richard. He was worried about all the vomiting, how I couldn’t keep anything down. Not even soup. He brought it up at one of my doctor’s appointments and the doctor said there was nothing to worry about. Yet. Richard wanted me to switch doctors, I told him we should wait, just until the next appointment. And lo and behold the cravings started, are continuing, and I’m eating. It tells me what it wants to eat and I eat it. A poppy and sesame seed bagel with a bowl lentil soup. A blueberry raspberry muffin, some grape juice with a wedge of lime. A date square with plum preserve, a spoonful of kiwi. A peach, the juice dripping down my chin. My baby is a peach. I am eating my baby. Or it’s not really me eating my baby, my fetus, it. It’s the one making the choice, it’s the one telling me it wants to eat that pear tart, that avocado toast. It wants me to peel that naval orange slowly during my shower so the juice sprits against my newly big chest and even larger belly. It wants me to cut up some pomegranate so those red-jewelled seeds bounce over the countertop, so its juice stains through the cutting board like blood that I lap up with my tongue. The fetus wants me to have a slice of grapefruit, a warm apple cider donut. It wants a sip of coconut milk, an eggplant lasagna, dried papaya slices I found in the exotic food section of the grocery store. It makes me bake a pumpkin pie from scratch and eat it whole while Richard’s at work, slice up honeydew with sugar, it makes me eat the watermelon, seeds and all, so something else will grow alongside it. So it isn’t so alone.
My baby is a cannibal. Or my baby, the fetus, them, it doesn’t realize it’s only craving itself. I haven’t told Richard yet, may not tell him at all. He’s just been so worried lately, so annoyingly present. He was so worried when I couldn’t eat that first month. Richard became my mother then. A surrogate. He was my mama bird and I was his chick. He blended my food and fed it to me by the spoonful, slow sludge down my throat. It was nauseating, disgusting, but I wouldn’t throw up in front of Richard. I could never. So I swallowed it down, kept as much as I could inside of me because Richard was feeding me and we eat what our mothers give us and I wanted what Richard had to give me. I want everything he can put inside of me. The sludge of his food, his salty seed. It. Them. A fetus. Baby.
But now I can eat, and Richard is so happy. Another milestone, he says, and he spoils me because milestones deserve to be celebrated. He’s started telling strangers on our walks about our baby. He buys me whatever I tell him I’m craving. He says it’s lucky that I have so many cravings, that I don’t have to starve anymore and it’s too much to explain that I’m really not craving all that much, only it, our baby. It’s too difficult to explain and something that would surely send him into a panic, make his eyes all clouded like when he’d notice the bruises on my neck, smell the vomit I tried to hide crusting the edge of the toilet seat. He doesn’t have Peach Baby on his phone. He doesn’t know our baby is a peach as I bite into one.
But it’s not like my cravings are all that alarming, if anything I think it’s a shared human desire we’ve learned to hide. A modest proposal. Cute aggression. It’s like so many say when they see something desirable. They’ll lean down over the crib, the bassinet, the car seat, sneak into the nursery just to smell that sweet newborn aroma, so brief. Milk and fresh bread. They’ll prod and poke the doughy flesh, coo and remark on the size and the look of the baby. What a sweet little peanut, cupcake, cutie pie, apple of my eye they are. They’ll count the babies ten little fingers, their ten little toes, assess that there are no missing parts and what a fine specimen the baby that sits or sleeps or blows out or weeps in front of them is. And then the mothers, the baby feverers, the curious young, the admirers will confess what a darling the little one is, and how incredibly cute they are. Cute enough to eat.
Sarah O'Connor is a writer and playwright from Hamilton, Ontario. Her plays have been performed in the HamilTEN Festival (A Spell for Schoolgirls, Beep), Mind Play Theatre Festival (Beep), Emerson Arts Fright Night: A Night of Horror (The End of July), and most recently Neruda Art's She Creates Festival (Pussy Killing). She has written book reviews for the Literary Review of Canada's Substack Bookworm. In 2022 her short story "On the Rocks" was the prose winner for Dawson City's Authors on Eighth Writing Contest. In 2023 her short story "A Guided Meditation for the End" was shortlisted for gritLit's writing contest. You can follow her on Instagram and Threads @notsarahconnorwrites and read more of her writing on her website: www.notsarahconnorwrites.com