Black Milk

It is dark and foggy down here. With its labyrinthine alleys and secret passages, my soul is a perfect setting for a gothic novel or a vampire movie. As I look left and right, I realize that I am completely disoriented. So many times I have walked these cul-de-sacs and dimly lit side streets, and yet I still get lost.

Far ahead there is a crossroads from which four separate paths spill. Blinking repeatedly, I lift the candle up to eye level and peer into the thick, uninviting fog. Which way should I go? I try to think of a giant, round machine, something between a compass and a wheel of fortune. This is a mental exercise I visualize when I am indecisive, although I am not sure if it really helps. In my mind’s eye, I spin the wheel as fast as I can until it slows down and comes to a stop at the letter W. I quickly determine that this means West, and dutifully head in that direction.

There, in a city as neatly organized as Brussels, in a chic and modern flat furnished minimalist style, lives Little Miss Practical. She is the side of me who has great common sense and even greater pragmatism. I press her doorbell and, upon being screened by a camera, hear a buzzer that lets me inside. She is sitting at her desk, looking sprightly and sporty. On the plate in front of her is a sandwich of goat cheese and smoked turkey on wheat bread. Beside the plate is a thimbleful of Diet Coke. She has been watching her weight for as long as I can remember.

She is four and a half inches tall and weighs barely thirteen ounces. She wears casual, comfortable clothing: a breezy beige shirt, red boneframed glasses and a pair of brown linen pants with lots of pockets to keep everything at hand. On her feet are leather sandals; her dark blond hair is cut short so that it doesn’t need extra styling. Washing (shampoo and conditioner all in one) is good enough. Drying her hair would be one step too many.

“Yolla, Big Self,” she says cheerfully. “What happened to you? You look awful.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I grumble.

“What’s up, yo?” she asks. For some reason beyond my comprehension, she loves speaking in rapid-fire sentences peppered with slang, sounding like a street kid by way of Tucson.

“Oh, Little Miss Practical, you’ve got to help me,” I say.

“Nema problema! Help is on the way.”

“Did you hear the question Ms. Agaoglu asked me? I don’t know how to answer. Is it possible to be a good mother and good writer at the same time? Do I want to have kids? If not, why not? If so, when, why, how?”

“Hey, be easy, Sis,” she says as she pats her mouth dry with a napkin. “Don’t sweat the small stuff. One can be a writer and a mama, why not? All you need to do is to trust me.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll split your time into two chunks: writing time and nursing time.” She pauses with an impish smile, measuring my reaction. “That means you’ll have to start wearing a watch.”

“You know I never wear a watch,” I say. “Watches, the color white and wasabi… The three Ws I’d rather stay away from.”

“Well, there’s a W word you might welcome,” she says mysteriously. “Because it happens to be the answer to your problem.”

“What is it?”

“Winnowing!”

Seeing me draw a blank, she laughs. “Separating the grain from the chaff,” she remarks. “That’s exactly what you need to do.”

Again I look vacantly: Again she smiles with confidence as if she has the pulse of the world under her finger.

“Think of it this way, Sis. The human brain is like a set of kitchen drawers. The cutlery is placed in one drawer. The napkins in another. And so on. Use the same model. When you are nursing, open the ‘motherhood’ section. When you are writing, pop open the ‘novelist’ one. Simple. Close one drawer, use the other. No confusion. No contradictions. No fretting. All thanks to winnowing.”

“Wow, that’s splendid, but there is a small detail you left out: While I’m writing, who will take care of the baby?”

“As if that’s a problem,” she says with a snort. “Hello. The age of globalization is here. Snap your fingers. You can find a nanny. Filipino, Moldavian, Bulgarian… You can even choose her nationality.”

Little Miss Practical thrusts her hand into one of her pockets and produces a paper. “Look, I’ve made a list of all the information you’ll need. Phone numbers of the nanny agencies, babysitters, nursery schools, pediatricians. You should also get an assistant to answer your e-mails. It’ll make life easier. And if you get a secretary and a tape recorder, you can stop writing altogether, ya’ mean?”

With a heavy heart I ask, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, instead of writing your novels, you can speak them. The recorder will tape your voice. Later, your secretary can type up the whole text. Isn’t it practical? That way you can finish a novel without having to leave the kid.”

“Just curious,” I say as calmly as I can manage. “How exactly am I going to afford a nanny, an assistant and a secretary?”

“Oh, you’re being so negative,” she says. “Here I’m offering practical solutions for material problems and you see only the downside.”

“But money is a material problem,” I object, my voice cracking. For a brief moment neither of us says a word, mutually frowning and sulking.

“Besides, even if I had the money,” I say, “I still couldn’t do what you suggest. It goes against my sense of equality and freedom. I can’t have all those people working for me, as if I were a raja or something.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense,” snaps Little Miss Practical. “Don’t you know that every successful female writer is a raja?”

“How can you say that?”

“How can you deny that?” she asks back. “Remember that wolf woman you adore so much.”

Just when I am about to ask what wolf woman she is talking about, it dawns on me that she is referring to Virginia Woolf.

“Do you think that lady of yours had only a room of her own? No way. She also had a cook of her own, a maid of her own and a gardener of her own, not to mention a butler of her own! Her diaries are full of complaints about her many servants.”

Laden with curiosity I ask, “Since when do you read about the lives of novelists?”

Little Miss Practical’s readings are based solely on two key criteria: efficiency and functionality. How to Win Friends and Hearts, The Key to Unwavering Success, Ten Steps to Power, The Art of Knowing People, Awaken the Millionaire Inside, The Secret to Good Life… She gobbles up self-help books like popcorn, but never reads novels. Fiction, in her eyes, has no function.

“If it’s useful, I’ll read it,” she says defensively.

“And what is the use of the wolf woman?”

She turns a disparaging dark gaze on me. “That lady of yours used to write orders to her servants on scraps of paper. What chores needed to be done, what dishes needed to be prepared, which dresses needed washing… She would write them down. Can you imagine? They lived under the same roofbut instead of talking to them, she wrote to them…”

“Well, we don’t know her side of the story,” I say meekly.

“Everything was her side of the story. She was the writer, Sis!”

I don’t feel like quarreling. With a ruler in her hand, a calculator in her pocket and plans in her head, Little Miss Practical is used to measuring, calculating and planning everything. I take the list she has prepared for me and leave in a hurry, still feeling uneasy.

I spin the wheel again. It stops at letter E. This time, I walk east.

There, in a city as spiritual as Mount Athos, beyond a wooden door, sits Dame Dervish-her head bowed in contemplation, her fingers moving the amber prayer beads. On the tray in front of her there is a bowl of lentil soup and a slice of bread. Her thimble is full of water. She always makes do with little. On her head is a loosely tied turban that comes together in the front with a large stone. Patches of hair show from beneath the turban. She wears a jade dress that reaches the floor, a dark green vest and khaki slippers.

Seeing she is in the midst of a prayer, I sneak in and listen.