She Had a Book In Her by Alice Kinerk

After her divorce, Marie began to suspect she had a book in her. She lay on her back and poked at her stomach. The book was small, like a board book for teething. When she pressed it, the book floated away and bumped against her other side. She was curious as to how long the book had been in her, and curious as to what it said.

Marie told no one. Theirs had been a sudden divorce. Friends were still choosing sides, and likely would choose his. Because while her ex had been kind and outgoing, Marie was kind of quiet. A person who would smile despite her marriage crumbling, divorce, and then oh look, there’s a book in her.

How did it get there? Google was no help. She was afraid to tell her parents. She had yet to tell them about the divorce. Marie was their one-and-only, pushing thirty, childless.

In the following weeks, the book grew. Now the edge caught her ribs in the mornings while she put on nylons. When Marie lay on her back and pressed her finger to her belly, the book no longer floated away. It was no longer a teething book. It was a big, fat novel.

How would it get out? Would she expel it? Marie pictured amniotic fluid splattering. What if she grew a dictionary? Was she incubating the OED? A big book could do damage. 

She saw a doctor. The diagnosis came as no surprise. “Congratulations,” the doctor said, snapping off his gloves. “You’re going to be an author.” He handed her some pamphlets and left.

Marie didn’t feel her situation warranted congrats. She was confused. She was eager to know how her book would be extracted. On that, his pamphlets offered nothing. Marie went home, lay on her back, and poked away at her book until purple spots appeared on her abdomen.

Soon, Marie could no longer risk going to work without coworkers noticing. In the bathroom mirror, she observed a rectangle inlaid on her blouse. She called her boss and told him she was having a literal emergency and she’d need to take some amount of time off now. 

“I understand,” he said. It was something he always said. 

That night, Marie dreamt she was lost in the forest and seven dwarfs walked up all hi ho, hi ho swinging their axes. They took turns holding her down, and chopped her book out. Then carried it off as she lay there bloodied up and screaming.

Marie didn’t believe dreams held meaning, but this made her feel as though she was being flung into something for which she was ill-prepared. So she grabbed her phone, ordered a bookshelf, a lovely bookmark, and a reading light. Afterward, she felt better. She daydreamed about holding her book in her hands. She wondered what the book’s title would be. She hoped it would be set in bouncy white script. That’s how she’d had their wedding invitations done, way back when. 

Soon she’d put together the bookshelf, plugged in the reading light, and laid the bookmark out. The work was a pleasant diversion, important as her apprehension plus time off made for long days in which what began as a sort of balmy happiness had, by late morning, morphed into boredom. And then, as the hours wore on, as the afternoon sun projected slow-moving parallelograms across the carpet, a sadness enveloped Marie completely, a sadness that felt so amorphous as to make it impossible to defeat. 

Marie longed for a diversion. So took a photo of her bookshelf and texted her ex. Look what I’ve been up to! She did it all at once. Photo. Text. Attach. Send. Any slower abs she’d chicken out.

Her ex texted back full of invectives, like she’d sent him a nude and asked to meet up.

It’s just a bookshelf, Marie texted.

Just a bookshelf, my ass. I should have known better than to do it with a creative writing/journalism major. Text me when your book comes out.

After that she played Wordle on her phone, watched Netflix, and tried to sleep.

That night, as she lay on her side, somewhere south of conscious, Marie felt a give. It was almost imperceptible, like the popping of a bubble. Her book had begun to move. She felt it in her abdomen, sliding vertical. She panicked. She did not know what to do. 

But then, as the corners of the book jostled against her internal organs, knocking her breath away at unpredictable intervals, a serenity overtook Marie. It was indescribable. Magic. 

Marie shook off her blanket and rose to her knees. She breathed in, hoo-hoo, and out, ha-ha. The book itself changed shape, tightening. Her book was curling itself into a tube. She thought of the miracle of it all, the ingenuity of this little object which had chosen her womb in which to develop. Her own womb! Out of all the myriad potential nesting locations in the whole world. 

Marie hoo-hoo-ha-ha’d, and dripped sweat. She thought of all the millions of books that already existed in the world, and said to herself If those authors could do it… Her heart pounded doubletime. She pushed. 

But nothing happened. It was not enough. 

Perhaps the book had derailed somehow, lodged itself between organs? Perhaps it would remain there forever, hot with infection. She pictured her body calcifying around a book that remained inside her when it should have been out long ago.

No. Marie thought again of her ex. The way his face looked when he knew that she knew and there would be no more games, no pretending. That dumb, blank look of his. It infuriated her then. It did now. It would go on infuriating her forever.

Marie thought about all of that, and then she bore down just as hard as she could.

Alice Kinerk spends her free time attempting to make complicated desserts, most of which are tasty failures, such as the time she tried to make a croquembouche.  She’s published dozens of stories. Read more at alicekinerk.com.