OUT TODAY: Perfect Mother (MetaStellar)(reprint)

Okay, when I posted last week about having a story out at GigaNotoSaurus, I truly did not expect to be back this fast with more news, but I do have a reprint up at MetaStellar today. My story “Perfect Mother” first appeared in FlameTree Press’s Lost Souls, part of their Gothic Fantasy anthology series, in 2018, and I’m thrilled to get this one back out into the world. I’ve got a little more to say about it below, too.

This is a really special story to me, because it’s the first one I wrote that eventually got published. It’s also one of the most personal stories I’ve ever written. In my head, every time I think about this one, Kermit the Frog announces, “it’s the miscarriage story, everybody!”

No, no, come back, it’s okay, I promise, just stay with me for a second.

I’ve been pregnant twice, given birth once. Both pregnancies involved occasional confusing and terrifying moments of ambiguity and “oh no, what the hell have I done.” “Perfect Mother” is about all of that, especially the pregnancy loss stuff.

Miscarriage has a lot of shapes and sizes, and so do people’s reactions to it. If you know someone who’s had any kind of personal dealings with human reproduction, there’s something like a one in three chance you know someone in Miscarriage Club. My story is a pretty common one. I was actively trying to get pregnant, so I caught the hormonal change that trips a pregnancy test really early. In my case, though, whatever little bit of cellular matter that tumbled down my fallopian tube just didn’t have the software installed to go full embryo. If I hadn’t been watching my cycle like a hawk, I probably would have experienced the whole thing as an absolutely awful three-week-late call-into-work period. They did check my hCG levels a bit later to be sure I didn’t need a D&C, but there was no ER visit or anything. Just a teary call to a healthcare provider and a lot of Tylenol.

Here’s the thing, though. When I miscarried, Obama was still president and it would have never occurred to me as even a passing possibility that I could be criminally prosecuted because of what happened, let alone that Roe might fall.

I’ve been wondering how this story might have been different if I’d written it post-Roe. For example, if my elderly ass managed to get itself pregnant today in my red state, there is no way I’d be on the phone with a healthcare provider about it until I was at least pretty damn sure the blastocyst had stuck the landing. I’d also be completely terrified for my own safety the entire nine months in a way I just wasn’t seven years ago, and this isn’t hypothetical. None of this – delaying healthcare out of fear or massive anxiety about not receiving lifesaving care if needed – is exactly conducive to a healthy pregnancy, you know?

(also, not that any of you beautiful readers would do this, but just in case you’re tempted into some “red state troglodytes deserve it” fuckery, please read every word of this article about how fucking hard Arkansans worked to do something about the abortion ban)

So all of this has been on my mind with this story coming out right now and right after the weekend’s Hands Off protests, as well as the absurd amount of affection I feel for this particularly nasty piece. Yes, it was inspired by a record-setting low moment in my life, but it was also the first complete story I wrote since graduating college, with a beginning, middle, and end, and everything. It also felt entirely emotionally honest about something I had really struggled to talk about in real life (how do you start a conversation with, “well, I got pregnant, but before you get too excited…”).

Last thing I want to say about this story – it came about in an absolutely magical situation involving a workshop in the Stanley Hotel taught by none other than Stephen Graham Jones that somehow accepted random out-of-state moms in addition to the University of Colorado undergrads it was presumably intended for. And when SGJ returns a critique to you that ends in, “clean it up and send it out,” you have a near panic attack in a haunted hotel room and then you clean it up and send it out, right? One of those clear life-direction-impact moments for me.

So there’s backstory and context for you. I hope you enjoy it. Also, go read some Stephen Graham Jones.