Baby Stories
Daniel Wallace
My mother has spent most of her life in prison. And whenever I visit her, whenever my duties at Cornell allow, I ask the same questions: "Who was my dad?" "Where was I born?" "Who am I?"
I think I would be able to stop asking if she gave me a different story every time, but instead she only has three, each incompatible with the other two, each completely impossible.
Sometimes she says: “I saw you in a crowd in New Delhi. You had beautiful blue eyes, and I grabbed you from that woman’s arms, and I ran away with you, away from her screaming, my sandals flying off my feet as I escaped.”
If I point out that I don’t look Indian, she says, “That’s why I took you. That woman must have stolen you from someone else.”
Or she tells this story: “Your father was a pure gold genius. We met in New York on my last day working for Rolling Stone, and what was supposed to be a thirty-minute interview turned into cocktails and Spanish tapas and a hotel room with bloody Argentinean steaks laid on our bed by room service. His words kept burning, and his phone wouldn’t stop ringing with calls from his bitch wife. By six p.m. my stomach was swelling, and I missed the last minutes of that Scorsese movie throwing up in the theatre’s bathroom. By ten, everyone wanted to touch my big, tight belly, round like a ball. I gave birth to you at one in the morning. He already had gone back to his family by then. You've inherited his genius—those brats in the news are nothing. If you just write your novel like I’m always telling you, you’ll blow them away.”
But mostly, she just stares at a wall, saying, “Why’d you always ask that? You were born here, in the prison infirmary. Your dad was one of the guards—he could have been any of them. Thank god I don’t remember their faces.”
When my twenty minutes are up, I am led out through the grey corridors. All the guards who pass me seem to be holding back laughter.
- - -
Daniel Wallace grew up in London, but has spent the last seven years living around the world, with most of that time spent in Syria, Taiwan, and New Jersey. He speaks poor Mandarin, cooks an excellent Thai green curry, and is now studying an MFA at Rutgers-Camden.
Daniel Wallace
My mother has spent most of her life in prison. And whenever I visit her, whenever my duties at Cornell allow, I ask the same questions: "Who was my dad?" "Where was I born?" "Who am I?"
I think I would be able to stop asking if she gave me a different story every time, but instead she only has three, each incompatible with the other two, each completely impossible.
Sometimes she says: “I saw you in a crowd in New Delhi. You had beautiful blue eyes, and I grabbed you from that woman’s arms, and I ran away with you, away from her screaming, my sandals flying off my feet as I escaped.”
If I point out that I don’t look Indian, she says, “That’s why I took you. That woman must have stolen you from someone else.”
Or she tells this story: “Your father was a pure gold genius. We met in New York on my last day working for Rolling Stone, and what was supposed to be a thirty-minute interview turned into cocktails and Spanish tapas and a hotel room with bloody Argentinean steaks laid on our bed by room service. His words kept burning, and his phone wouldn’t stop ringing with calls from his bitch wife. By six p.m. my stomach was swelling, and I missed the last minutes of that Scorsese movie throwing up in the theatre’s bathroom. By ten, everyone wanted to touch my big, tight belly, round like a ball. I gave birth to you at one in the morning. He already had gone back to his family by then. You've inherited his genius—those brats in the news are nothing. If you just write your novel like I’m always telling you, you’ll blow them away.”
But mostly, she just stares at a wall, saying, “Why’d you always ask that? You were born here, in the prison infirmary. Your dad was one of the guards—he could have been any of them. Thank god I don’t remember their faces.”
When my twenty minutes are up, I am led out through the grey corridors. All the guards who pass me seem to be holding back laughter.
- - -
Daniel Wallace grew up in London, but has spent the last seven years living around the world, with most of that time spent in Syria, Taiwan, and New Jersey. He speaks poor Mandarin, cooks an excellent Thai green curry, and is now studying an MFA at Rutgers-Camden.
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