In the grey zone between accidents and non-
accidents are situations that involve carelessness,
poor decision making and neglect
— Anne Smith, “Nonaccidental injury in childhood”
My oldest friend—the newest mother I know—tells me
her baby has a blue spot too. She does not say
“like yours did”. Or even “just like us”. It’s common
among our people. I tried to tell her—take photos,
document it early—but she said it was the midwives
who found it. Beneath coats of cream and red, vernix and blood,
lay a livid bloom, sacral blue-grey: “They knew,”
she said, “what they were looking at.”
※
let me stress from the outset / one of nature’s oddest whims / THE BIRTHMARK
—in Latin NAEVUS— / an excess of pigment / on any part of the human body
※
Those early months—motherhood, our locked world—
opened up by routine appointment. All the better to bear
the folding-in—noises rendered colour crying
purple static white. I longed for an institution—
trusted, believed
in the primacy of order: maternal
and child health.
※
among untutored speakers we find / numerous confusions / on the basis of shape
and colour / mothers and nurses are better informed / yet in some instances /
the semantic shade / ‘wound’ / has been arrived at by a sorely deficient power of
observation
※
At four months, the nurse asked—
“You see these marks?”
Faint shadows, dappled on baby wrists, shoulders,
ankles, feet. In the afternoon light, they were there
then gone, the silvered ripple of tiny fish
glimpsed from a jetty—
“Here,” she said, “and here?” Insisting,
finger pointed, on closer scrutiny. “Do you know how she got these?”
I tell her about bath time: dusky hands and feet;
a shivering lip, mouth ringed blue—
“But they would go back
to normal,” I said, “once we dressed her.” Under the nurse’s gaze,
these livid marks do not warm to my touch.
※
it is undeniable and inexplicable that / the mother’s experiences and beliefs / bear
signs / on the bodies of their children / the abused knowledge of / a mother’s fit
of terror / acquires structural significance / and even / stigma / the full wealth
of their ramifications / its special bearing on mothers and infants / manifests itself
in diverse ways
※
The nurse hands me a folder, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
Referral Reasons: unexplained bruises
a cyan shell. Between the lines—
Mongolian blue spots on her sacrum
as noted at 2 weeks of age
in clinical ink-jet and white paper—
Mother and baby had a 5 day stay
for sleep and settling support
the story uncoils
Mother cannot recall any incident
currently taking Zoloft
beneath a plastic veil of blue
in contact with a Psychologist
for support with anxiety and depression
※
Two tanka for Mongolian blue spots:
the mother’s tears fall—
late blooms, atypical marks
stain her newborn’s skin;
stirring, in the wake of doubt,
sudden snares of scrutiny
questions, suspicions—
her child’s own inheritance—
turned to proof of fault;
the unmet mother ideal
held against her till it sticks
Notes
The epigraph is from Anne Smith’s “Nonaccidental injury in childhood”, Australian Family Physician 40, no. 11 (2011), 858.
The second, fourth and sixth sections are found poems, constructed from Karl Jaber’s “The Birthmark in Folk Belief, Language,
Literature and Fashion,” Romance Philology 10, no. 4 (1957), 307-342.
The seventh section reclaims lines—written about me and my child—from our own Emergency Department referral.
