Beauty Thief - for my daughter

This is a pregnancy announcement.

I awaken to a real pillowcase changer of a zit. Standing aghast in the bathroom mirror, still processing a dream in which I am not just murdered, but sacrificed, my head is wreathed in clouds, each containing a treat from the last 48 hours: 

the caramel cream cronut

the plate of dark chocolate ! coconut ! walnut ! oatmeal ! cookies ! from Andrew’s mom

the Dove chocolates aplenty, shiny red wrappers littering my desk with quotes like “if you can believe it, you can achieve it!”

I believed I could get away with consuming more sugar in two days than most people eat in a month and I did not achieve it. The sugar demon wrapped its greasy tendrils around my left cheek, and I answer with a dab of Tarte concealer conspicuously too light for my skin tone. Your move, Dove.

It’s 4:15 AM, and I’m up to pee for the fourth and final time. I have slept enough, I decide, and give the day permission to start.

I had written in my journal a few days ago something to the effect of, “How can I romanticize my gym clothes waiting for me by the bed; the contact lenses, hair tie, and deodorant ready on the sink; the totally optimized self?” I shrug the question off as banal and rhetorical, and I am in Planet Fitness by 5:10 AM for three miles on the treadmill: four hard reps of 800 meters with 400-meter recovery jogs. Average pace: 8:27.

I massage my lower abdomen, hoping to stabilize my little lime. Already a runner against her will. Tomorrow, we’ll be 13 weeks, and she will grow into a lemon. “She’s in her citrus era,” I tell Andrew. I predict a bump by navel orange.

Somehow it’s 8:40 AM. I must be on my way to the robot factory! When I arrive at the train station, my train pulls up, and I hopelessly clomp from the farthest corner of the parking lot in strappy Mary Jane heels. It grinds off to Philly without me and I slow my pace, resigned to a fate of slinking into the office at 9:30, hoping no one sees me.

All the while, I’m digging through my bag for my sunglasses. The sun is a possessed orb of alabaster, illuminating all the hardest parts of commuting while pregnant. Everything aches. Everything stinks. I am squinting so hard. Even squinting takes more effort when you’re pregnant because why wouldn’t it? I remember all those years I refused to wear sunglasses because I didn’t think they made any that fit my nose.

Still rummaging feverishly, I pull my sunglasses out just as I reach the door. Useless. My 11 lines settle back into the space between my brows. It’s been 10 months since I’ve gotten Dysport, and I cannot get it for at least another six. Who knows if I gotta account for breastfeeding, too! I hope looking 25 forever loses its appeal by then.

So many things have already lost their appeal, like getting my nails done. I look down at the chip in my month-old dip manicure and remember I have an appointment tonight. This makes me want to cry. I remind myself that it will be worth it, you know, just to maintain something. I haven’t gotten a haircut since March. Plus, I can get pink to celebrate learning the gender. Because that will really translate to anyone but me, right? Pink nails MUST mean you’re PREGNANT and it’s a GIRL! Go on, ask me the name, stranger! Signed, sealed, delivered, bitch!

On the train with my big zit and my 11 lines and my chipped mani and my changing body flopped over my jeans, I recall the words of Andrew’s boss when he first told him I was pregnant. “They say when it’s a girl, they steal the mom’s beauty during pregnancy. It’s true, I watched it happen with [insert wife’s name].”

Could it be that just 24 hours after getting an unceremonious genetic testing notification (that I fully opted into), reading “sex of fetus: female” among words like “trisomy 21” and “low risk,” that my beauty started draining? That I only have another couple weeks of being pretty before I turn into a pumpkin? Is that what you become at 1,735 weeks old? And don’t these big titties count for something THEY MUST COUNT FOR SOMETHING? And my hair that’s grown a foot off the prenatals?

It’s 6 PM and I am in that dreaded chair, surrounded by white and marble and neon, destroying my posture as Kim holds my bloody cracked knuckles in her impossibly soft hands and files my nails to a point. Beauty is a knife, I think to myself. I gotta tell Sudana it’s a girl, I think to myself. I gotta tell her I surprised Andrew with leopard print baby sneakers and a bag of all pink Starburst.

At the station in front of me sits a mother and daughter. They’re speaking Spanish to each other. Mom gets her nails done while daughter keeps her company—daughter, with pink streaked hair and a septum ring, showing her sick DIY nails to the young nail tech, explaining that she does them herself because they get messed up playing basketball, anyway, and this one right here, with the crazy design, this took two hours alone. Mom looks proud. I wish my daughter was here with me now, I think to myself. And then I remember she is.

This is me telling you that I’m pregnant. 

That I can’t help viewing my life’s milestones through beauty’s fractured lens because it makes me laugh. And after a long day of sharing my body with another human, all I want to do is laugh.

That I will teach my daughter to find humor in these meaningless acts of physical devotion, the way they fail and leave us pimpled and soft on the subway for character development. The way they’re made special only by being in each other’s company, witnessing the people we become.

That I revere the privilege and responsibility of raising the next generation. And that if she just happens to be a gorgeous little demon… well, baby, we’ll cross that bridge.