Thursday, 04 December 2008

• Currently Reading 84, Charing Cross Road By Helene Hanff see related

  Jonah's Whale

  "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."

  ~ Holy Bible, The Book of Jonah, Chapter 2

  And then there was Jonah- and there had always been the whale, of course- since the beginning, but particularly since they had built the harbor, and he had found he was hard pressed to leave- Jonah, whose mother was drenched in sweat equally from having nowhere to put the baby insomuch as intense labor pains, arrived at four twenty-seven one angry Monday morning. Angry, for it was raining torrentially and was uncharacteristically cold for early April; something which Claudia, Jonah's mother, would forever swear had everything to do with her daughter.

  This was perhaps due to the fact that A) Claudia was a devout Wiccan, former hippie, and firm believer in all the proper sorts of Olde Magicks, and B) Jonah, much like the morning that had preceded her birth, had been more like a baby implied iceberg than an actual fetus, from the moment of conception until, ten months later, she was wrenched screaming from her mother’s womb. Claudia could pinpoint the manifestation of her daughter down to the second, as it had felt like she was being injected with a turkey baster full of ice water, whereupon she immediately rolled off and checked for a pulse from her partner whose post-coital stupor prevented him from answering even the most basic of questions. Which is quite possibly why Claudia never learned his name.

  Jonah, for her credit, had always been content to refer to him- at her mother’s eager urgings- as ‘the sperm man.’ Which, even at the age of twelve (with full knowledge of all the intricacies of the male form), she still believed to be a prefix akin to the likes of sperm whale. Claudia (being Claudia) was very pleased with her daughter’s strength in character and clear ability to overcome obstacles even in spite of the fact that she had been deprived since birth of one half of her rightful caregivers. And being as how she was Claudia’s daughter, at the age of two Jonah knew the proper names of all the folds and flaps of her ‘down there parts’ as well as those of her friend Daniel’s.

  Three years later the two of them were encouraging their entire kindergarten class into the belief that clothes were pointless, because nude was beautiful. Mrs. Henderson, who had left the class for no more than fifteen seconds to get hot water for her tea, opened the door to a magnificently naked Jonah executing an equally spectacular jackknife launch from Mrs. Henderson’s desk and into a virtual moshpit of similarly nude five year olds.

  And so, on Monday, April seventh at four twenty-seven a.m., well sheltered from the sheets of freezing rain outside, Jonah was pulled forth into the world, yowling at the top of her voice. Three days later she and Claudia made their way out into the streets of Boston, followed by the collective sigh of exhausted hospital personnel.

  And so, then there was Jonah.

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