Unborn

Week 1 - 31st January.
I won a race today. I was the first among so many, hundreds, thousands, I think maybe even millions. All I knew was I reached the finish line before all of them! Sadly neither of my parents seemed to care. They didn't praise me, pat me on the shoulder, or even look at me. I think they don't even realise I exist.

Week 5 - 4th March.
I followed my parents to Universal Studios today. They didn't hold my hand, or buy me snacks to eat. I was a shadow, sticking to them like glue, without them realising. My mother didn't protect me during the scary rides either, didn't put her hand over me and assured my safety.

5th March.
I decided to give my mother some signs that I'm here. I made her threw up in a taxi, all the food she ate that day; her breakfast, dinner, all the snacks. I didn't like her stuffing her face like that anyway. It was unhealthy, and she didn't know it was affecting me as well. I couldn't take it. I hope she knows I'm here now, and that I care about her well-being more than she even realises I exist.

Week 6 - 15th March.
My mother has been on a road trip the past few days. She doesn't know she's not in the state to move around so much... Everything I do affects her, and everything she does affects me. I made her throw up so much of her food, and I imagine the retching itself was so uncomfortable for her. She wouldn't stop sticking her finger down her throat to force the vomit out; I couldn't see her suffering like that, so I tried to behave myself, but I failed. Maybe it's better I don't exist after all.

She fought with her mom, who hit her. Please don't hit her, I'm right here.

Week 7 - 17th March.
My aunt, my mother's sister-in-law, told her that I might possibly exist. My mother looked at me for the first time, but only for a second. She didn't believe it. My aunt gave her a bag with Watson's on it, and I wondered what it was... It must be really important, because my mother quickly hides it whenever someone walks into her bedroom.

18th March.
Whatever it was in that bag, it helped shine light for my mother. She now knows I exist. But my father calls her, and I hear her saying, It's negative. I see her choking back her tears while he says a prayer of gratitude, obviously happy to hear the lie that I am not existent.

Week 8 - 25th March.
My parents have been fighting a lot lately. I hate my father for saying all these mean things to my mother, not knowing the burden she has to carry. I'm glad I'm growing alongside her instead of him; I'm glad he doesn't know I'm real, I can't imagine what he'd do to me. It upsets me to see my mother going through this alone, but I know she's strong enough for it.

26th March.
She couldn't take it anymore, all his mean words and oblivion to her feelings and burden. She dropped the bombshell that is my existence on him. I don't understand why they both get scared after knowing I am here... Nonetheless, he holds me too, the few times I get to see him. He shows more kindness to her. He is scared on the inside but so brave on the outside; I am proud to call these two my mother and father.

Week 9.
My mother has been working really hard for me. She holds me more often than she used to, stroking my head and covering me with warmth whenever her hands are free. She works in a bookstore and one time I see her sneakily reading a book about how to raise someone like me. I can't wait for her to spend all her hard-earned money on me, all the sweets and toys I can have in the future, like a proper child.

Week 10 - April 8th.
She wouldn't stop crying, even on the bus with people looking at her. I could hear her sobs from here, but they disappeared like magic when she unlocked the gate to her home.
She has two houses, but none of them with him in it. Do they not live together? Aren't mothers and fathers supposed to?

Week 11 - April 19th.
Look at me... we can't have this baby. We don't have the money and we're not in the right place either. Trust me I want it as much as you do, but we just can't, not right now. We'll have another one in the future. I hear this, while he holds her and me at the same time.

Week 13 - April 27th.
She fainted at work, thanks to me... I followed her to the polyclinic, where she asked the doctor to confirm again whether she was pregnant. Of course she was. I'm right here.
Are you keen on this pregnancy?
A smile on her face, a shake of her head.

Week 14.
She's been showing her belly off to her colleagues and friends, but they all laugh at her. They take me as a joke, even say they're pregnant too, when they're obviously not. They ask her, How many months? and she answers truthfully, 3 months. and they laugh. I have no voice but I wish I can call out to them and prove I am really here.

Week 15.
She wants to keep me, I know it. The way she looks at children outside, the way her heart beats when her niece smiles at her.
But I also know her love for my father and grandparents are stronger. She would do anything for them, including raising the money for something she doesn't want; abandoning me. But I hope she doesn't.

I see her watching my grandparents cuddle my cousin, and I wish they'd hold me like that too. I know my mother also wishes they could love her child the same way as they love her brother's.

She has to carry plenty of heavy stuff at work. She has to carry this long heavy metal divider for the shutters. Doesn't anyone know she's having me right now?

Week 16.
They were supposed to see me today, my mother and father. But she fell sick, and try as she might she couldn't gather enough strength to bring herself to the hospital. Her best friend who has a gem for a name keeps telling her that it's dangerous to be sick while having me. It didn't faze her. She didn't want to eat, and she was too uncomfortable to sleep, and she keeps crying.

Week 18 - 2nd June.
She had to see nurses and doctors and counsellors, all constantly telling her to change her mind. Change her mind about what??? She's already working hard to raise me. They keep asking her where is her boyfriend, my father, why isn't he here today?

She goes to a dark room where a nurse rubs jelly on her tummy and moves a probe along it. On the screen above her is a monochrome shot of me; the nurse tells her where my head is. "Can you tell if it's a girl or a boy?", she asks so shyly.

I'm a girl. I feel my mother's happiness, which makes me bounce, and I hear the nurse telling her: "The baby is moving, it's moving!" And I think she wants to laugh or cry, I can't really tell.

Week 19 - 8th June - 1pm.
I feel her fear. She's in a hospital bed, surrounded by many other women. But not all the other women are pregnant: some already had their babies, some had lost them. She doesn't belong to either category and I can't imagine why she's here, is she okay?

- 3pm.
  The nurses keep hitting her hands and trying to poke a needle in her. Her hands look so fragile to me, and bruises start to show but she doesn’t resist. Finally they hook her up to a machine from her right hand and leave; the curtains are drawn and my father and the girl with a gem for a name show their faces. My mother starts crying and I can feel that something is wrong.

- 9th June - 2am.
They keep putting in pills at where I am. What are they doing? My mother has difficulty walking, but still she forces herself to the toilet because she keeps feeling a pain in her stomach, at where I am. She thinks it's her faeces wanting to come out, but I think it's me she's trying to get rid of.

- 3am.
  She keeps walking to and fro the toilet and her hospital bed by the window. Her bare feet on the cold floors, her brown-red gown hanging to her ankles and her hair falling out of the bun her best friend had tied for her. Is it strange that I still think she’s possibly the most beautiful woman in the universe?

- 3pm.
There's a stick like object holding her womb open.
Why?
It hurts.

- 8pm.
She doesn't want to eat anything and she just vomits out the painkillers. She keeps singing a song that goes "just close your eyes... the sun is going down... you'll be alright... no one can hurt you now... come morning light... you and I'll be safe and sound."

Doctors and nurses keep attending to her and my father says Look, there are so many people here taking care of you. I hear her say, just loud enough for him to hear, None of them are my parents.

When my father asks her to rank the pain she's feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, she constantly says 6. But in her mind, it's more than a 10. She wants to be strong for him, although her stomach is as hard as stone and she feels like all her organs might slide out of her anytime. Along with me.

- 9pm.
Visiting hours are over and my father leaves. I heard him telling her that he misses his mum. She doesn't want him to go at all but her hands are too weak to hold on to him anymore. She misses her own parents but she will never have them as visitors unlike the rest of the women in the ward; her own parents think she is at her best friend’s place, having a sleepover like a normal 20-year-old girl.

10th June - 2am.
The painkillers have lost their effects and she's woken up. She keeps clawing for the emergency button. The nurses tell her that pain is a good sign, that the fetus is starting to slide out. They're referring to me.

- 5am.
I feel it.
She screams like an animal getting slaughtered.

- 5.32 am.
I'm between her ankles. She doesn't want to look at me. Slippery, bloody, I am. Gone, I am. I hear something about burying it in a Muslim cemetery. I thought she was working hard to raise me. We all thought wrong.