Gigsa

      The 6^th of August is her birthday. She turned 26. The 27^th of June is her daughter’s birthday, and when Gigsa celebrated her 26^th year, her daughter was celebrating her 40^th day.  She has no other children. I first met her before she was pregnant, but it is a vague memory. I really got to know her when I went to work in a community about a 3 hour truck ride away from the main town, where she was living and working as a nurse. 

     While staying in her health post I was at first nervous that she would feel like I was encroaching upon her space. But she welcomed me, and spoke to me that first night, us lying on our separate beds, as though we’d been friends for years. She rested on her side, her belly firm, large, perfectly round resting on the bed. My own belly was considerably smaller and softer and less perfect. I spent much of the week comparing her thin legs and arms to my ample ones, unable to shake the thought that my body would be better prepared to house and give birth to another human. 

       That night, she told me of how she came to be pregnant. There was a young man who lived across the street. His mother cooked the daily meals for Gigsa and the doctor of the moment (the doctor in the health post changed often), so he was known to her on a personal level before they became intimate. He was kind to her through the courtship, but while they were dating he starting seeing other women, so she broke it off with him. And then missed a period. 

        In addition to having a clashing blood-type with the fetus inside of her, she was terribly anemic throughout her pregnancy because almost everything she ate, her stomach forced her to throw back up. It was a terrifying sight, her tiny bones wracked again and again and again and again by the heaving expulsion of anything from tortilla to soup to meat to juice.

         Gigsa comes up to my chest - almost - but her bust size would be more fitting on somebody my height. She has dark, dark eyes, they look like bullets, and she is almost always smiling, even when she is crying, showing crookedly attractive teeth. Her family has chickens and pigs and 2 dogs and 7 children and a mother and a father and a beautiful garden in the back. They only have cotton curtains for doors because they are well known and loved in the community and don't worry about being done wrong. 

        "I know I'll love the little girl," she said to me in between complaining about the father and talking in a tearful voice about how she'd almost had an illegal abortion. Part of the reason she was tearful was because she already did love the little girl. The other part of the reason was that she still didn't want to be a mother. 

         However, the little girl (whose name changed from Neylgin to Natalia to Gisela to Nineth and finally landed on Neylgin Natalia) was born. The labor was intense, Gigsa unsurprisingly weak due to the life-sucking pregnancy. She and many of the health center workers were certain she wouldn't be able to finish the job... She did, though, coached along by the director of the health center.  She is now the most devoted of mothers, falling in love daily with Natalia's chin, nose, feet, and gurgling noises. My boyfriend and I visit her, and after the customary coffee I spend an hour on Gigsa's hard bed staring at her sleeping miracle or cuddling her throughout the house while she and Leonel do all the talking.

         Gigsa cannot keep a secret to save her life, energized as she becomes by passing on the latest chisme but you tell her everything anyways because she is always quick with a witty or raunchy reply. She is also the best listener. She looks right into your big eyes with her infinite night-sky ones and you know she wants to understands you, even when she can't quite.

         Her family bakes and decorates birthday cakes for the town to make extra money. For Gigsa's birthday, they made a chocolate cake with pineapple filling. It was delicious.