Magnolia

The transition is gradual. For the first few months she’s a machine, denying any connection with the seed that is blossoming within. She jokes with her husband that she’s a farmer, Farmer Greta, and that hers is the most expensive crop in the San Joaquin Valley. And then one day the crop moves, like butterfly flutters that she explains away as gas bubbles until she can no longer deny the thumps raising the skin on her stomach. She watches with curiosity as the sonographer smears the wand across her naval, producing grainy images of elbows, shoulders, feet, a spine that looks like a worm caught midcrawl.