There was once a woman, with her brain tucked in her head, and a heart between her breasts. Her mind was hers, and her heart as well. So she thought, anyway. If one could really be sure, whatever she wanted, was truly what she wanted, not what the world taught her to want. She walked with her head, letting her mind take her to places, where she thought she would want to be. She had travelled, across the oceans and lands far away. The destination was always out there, at the far end of the horizon, and the wanting was so great, so all-consuming, it never ended.
Then one night she had a dream. It was the most outrageous dream ever, something she had never dreamed about dreaming. She dreamed of being empty, a barrel; she dreamed of a journey that no longer led to endless paths, but an inward descent, to the core of the emptiness. Awake from the dream, she was not quite sure if the dream scared her, or intrigued her. The wanting and needing became such a murky puddle, she couldn’t swim her way out of it.
The day after, something started to grow inside her. She had indeed become a barrel, inch by inch, day by day; she was filled with an entity that moved, kicked, and had a heart of its own. Her gaze no longer towards the farthest point under the sun, and her heart yearned no more for the greatest unknown. She was consumed by the idea of the contents inside her barrel; nothing was so curiously unknown as the living thing inside her: a pure possibility, where all the harms and hurts, irreparable traumas, and broken dreams had never happened, needed to be mended.
When the harvest night came, she was unprepared. No one had told her the brutality of the process, and how much it felt like death itself, though it gave life, too. As much as she could imagine, she was giving birth to a being; she had not prepared to give birth to something else, and again, how much it felt like death.
It’s a baby! She cried out: " It’s a baby!" As if she was surprised, after all this time, it’s really here: a living thing, a human, looking back at her with those hazel eyes, a tint of smile at the corner of the mouth, as if it was also surprised in a most unsurprising way, oh it’s you! It’s you!
She bled and bled and briefly fell into the darkest emptiness inside her, as if she was in the barrel too, and filling up that comfortable chill of unborn for just a while, until she was born too. A mother! A mother! She looked back at the baby and mirrored its knowing smile. It’s you! It’s you!
The woman gave birth to her child, her heart and brain, and in many ways, her self, too. Her brain no longer tucked inside her head, and her heart no longer between her breasts. They were outside of her, just like her baby and her self. She became empty, an empty woman. Since now forever, she was not her own but belonged to all those parts of her, and they belonged to the baby, who had its own brain and heart, and would walk the earth with that tucked tightly inside itself. And whatever journey it will take, part of her should go too.
This is the story of how a woman became empty, an empty woman. No longer full of herself, her parts belong to the world, and the world belongs to her. She made no longer journeys, for every journey was a homecoming. She was no longer driven by longing and wanting, for she was one with all that she wanted. She had become complete, for she allowed herself to be empty, an empty woman.
I wrote this little story to accompany the textile artwork I made during our mothering in the city sessions. An exhibition to present those artworks was always the end plan, but the journey there was a long and slow one. Textile art is a labor-intensive art form. Week after week, we sat together, shared our lives, our stories, and stitch by stitch, we sew into our own pieces, with the intention to tell a true story. We were told, arpilleras must tell the truth, and that's what we were trying to do, to tell our very true story of motherhood. I want to tell it as it is, the brutality of the labor, the blood, the milk, the pains, and all the struggles. But it was also a wonder, a joy, and something truly magical. I still can't make sense out of it. All I can do is give up explaining, and tell it as it is. This is what it is. A very true story, according to me.
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