Femmixx.com Manly Blue

Manly Blue
By Stacey Tolbert

To be able to feel is the worst numb one could ever imagine. The haunting death of the living makes me wonder if I was ever even alive. "Saints" tell me he is with God. But I say he is still here. Buried beneath warmed over amniotic fluid and covenant blood.

We fought over yellow or blue. Blue or Yellow. Nelson says Yellow is not a good color for a strong boy (although he is not a chauvinist) and Home Depot has the perfect manly blue he and his mother had ever seen. I pictured Malcolm in a Yellow room, then a Blue room, then a Yellow room and then agreed, Blue is the color of the cleansing ocean. He comes from a line of prim and proper pink vagina's angels…Blue it is.

We got the nursery room set up in 10 ½ hours—the exact amount of time of my labor. Family and friends assisted us, they came in shifts…grannies, nanas, aunties, (blood and not blood), uncles (real and unreal) neighbors, pastors and mortuary owners. Some painted, some told stories, some ate, some drank and some prayed. I'll never forget when my great grandma told me not to do any of this kind of "baby-braiting" until Malcolm was in my arms and at my breast—I told her that I respected the old traditions, home remedies and even the myths but that she was being ridiculous—she told me to pray.

My husband keeps telling me I need to "let him go" I tell him to go to hell. Let him go? Let him go? How do you let love with lungs I carried for 9 ½ months go? This Malcolm, manly blue room, savings account started, grandmas baby…let him go? But he is here. I won't let him go.

We tried for 3 years to get pregnant. Doctors never found any reason why conception wasn't occurring. Their medicine was making love constantly. We did. Amidst 10-hour corporate 500 days, church, family, church, family, we did. Eventually love made us him.

Let him go? He seems like he is just waiting for the nighttime to cry. I wait. No crying. I listen. No breathing. I watch. No blinking. I smell him. But he smells alive. No crying. Nelson tells me I have to physically let him go as in pry my fingers off of his buttermilk shoulders. I tell him to go to hell. He weeps. Big strong "pick the manly Blue" Nelson weeps. I tell him I'm sorry and to leave. I stare at the body everyone says has no life—

" He's got the whole world in his hands, he's got the whole wide world in his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands."