Nonfiction November: “Naming Baby” from Fuse
He has my last name.
He has it because he’s mine—my fourth child and a last chance.
My name because of his puckish brutality and his milkweed tuffs of hair against my face in the dark.
The luxury of finding familiar skin, so close.
Because my name means power. Because of his first name, given after my uncle, who died at 58 of brain cancer.
My uncle, as a child, ran through the house calling to his mother:
You’re very nice, I love you.
(I love you, too.)
Because of sparkling idolatry; my baby’s eyes—they’re warm asphalt after the rain.
Because of sticky sweetness that chokes you; a handful of sun-soaked raspberries bleeding down your throat. Because I say it and it feels like home.
Because I’m lonely.
Because we all need to fatten our ghosts.
He has my last name because I’m the Queen of Warming Up, and it took three kids before it occurred to me to use it. My mental acuity was compromised by illness for so long that I didn’t consider the significance of nomenclature; how in naming something, you name your price. You spell out how desperately you long to hold, possess.
Me—someone who wants to belong to no one.
Because it took three kids for me to conceive of a connection to them. Before, I’d done what came naturally: I’d buckled. I gave my first three kids their father’s last name, which is a point of intersection between both of the cultures to which I belong—except in Iran, where it’s law, not waning convention.
Because his milkweed tuffs of hair are so pale and have nothing to do with me. And his brutality: pinching, hitting and biting us, his face set and eyes wide to absorb reactions, then belly laughing when we cry out—an ecstatic heave so absorbing we forget pain and laugh too.
Because who my children are is celestial mystery. And every time I look at them, I experience a recognition that’s primordial: They grew in my body, growing limbs, sparking cells, beating hearts, but also strangeness.
Where did you come from? How come I get to have you?
My name because it’s my family’s, and I can tell my father this now: I understand your drive to control. When you’re in control, you have less to fear.
The act of naming is about protection as much as possession.
My children; I’m more theirs than they’ll ever be mine. My name is our bridge back to each other.
Because my name means power.
—”Naming Baby” from Fuse by Hollay Ghadery. Published by Guernica Editions, MiroLand. © 2021 by Hollay Ghadery
Harvey Ali Ghadery-Samis
Fuse, a memoir of mixed race identity and mental health. (Guernica)
About Fuse:
Drawing on her own experiences as a woman of Iranian and British Isle descent, writer Hollay Ghadery dives into conflicts and uncertainty surrounding the bi-racial female body and identity, especially as it butts up against the disparate expectations of each culture. Painfully and at times, reluctantly, Fuse probes and explores the documented prevalence of mental health issues in biracial women.
Harvey and Hollay.