Inconvenient Prophecy
written by: Margaret Camille Berliant
I am the first-born daughter, of a first-born daughter, of a first-born daughter. I cradle my belly, wondering what I have already passed down. Sweat trickles between my breasts. This pregnancy is measured in temperatures. The hot of uncertainty and the cold of dread, with nothing in between.
Looking out the window, as winter exhales its last gasp of breath, the trees are bare, and sleet falls on the frozen ground. The earth is a black and white photograph. I will meet my child as the buds green on the trees and the flowers lift their sleeping heads from the earth. Nothing stays buried. I wonder what will the baby inherit of mine?
I have a mole in the shape of a heart above my left knee, just like my mother. I have her voice, too. I never knew you could inherit a voice, but on the phone, my mother and grandmother were indistinguishable. My grandmother and I smell band aids before we get a headache. We all hate velvet and the taste of mushrooms, it’s like eating dirt when they’re raw, squeaky and slimy when cooked.
And then there’s the name, Bridget. My grandmother is called Birdie; my mother Bee, and I am Bridie. But what’s in a name? It doesn’t prophesize anything, or does it?
I stumbled upon a revelation while touring Ireland shortly after my grandmother’s death. My pregnancy was still a secret nestled, like a crocus, in my belly. My curiosity about my grandmother called me to her home.
The rectory of my grandmother’s church was connected to the boys’ and girls’ school, a short walk by a dark passageway and across the dirt lane from the pub. The stone rectory was positioned close to the road in front of the cemetery, as though shielding a passerby from the inevitability of death.
The parish priest opened the rectory door and led me to the glass-fronted oak bookcases burdened with volumes of leather-bound registers: births, marriages, communions, christenings, deaths. I found the date of my grandmother’s marriage, written with a fountain pen in a flourishing script. The date indicated that my grandmother’s marriage to my grandfather took place a month before my mother’s birth. The timeframe was a jolt to my chest.
A week later, I stood at my mother’s door, my suitcase full of unanswered questions.
Excited to see me, my mother screwed the top off a bottle of wine and then another. I knew this was my opportunity to bring up Gramma’s Birdie’s pregnancy. I told her what I had discovered.
Looking down into her glass, my mother said, Gramma Birdie rarely shared stories of her life in Ireland. I can imagine how ashamed she must have felt back in the day.
I waited, almost afraid to hear the rest.
I learned that her pregnancy with me had predated marriage only after Gramma Birdie died.
After she died? So, you knew all these months, and you never told me? I pushed away the thought that I was keeping my own secret from her.
Was it possible to be the inheritors of recurring patterns? Was it possible to inherit secrets?
I didn’t want you to think it was your destiny, like it was for Gramma Birdie, like it was for me. An inconvenient prophecy.
My pregnancy was more than inconvenient. It was morning sickness. Bone-aching fatigue. The financial stress of doing this alone. I had never imagined myself a mother.
What do you mean, like it was for you? I asked.
Oh, honey, that was a long time ago. The wine smoothed and rounded my mother’s words at the edges. I was pregnant when I married your dad. But we lost that baby, on our honeymoon of all times.
Once my secret was evident, family and friends would ask, do you want a boy or a girl?
As long as it’s healthy, I would respond. Even I could hear the false tone in my glib response. I wanted to say, anything but a girl, who would be burdened by the same prediction of a mother by accident. I was determined to break this cycle, this circle of unwed pregnant women.
I began to read articles on ways to increase the likelihood of having a male baby, and I tried them all. I ate foods with a high salt content. I ate bananas, lots of bananas. My diet consisted of leafy greens, avocado, and almonds, anything that was high in alkaline. Anything to tilt the odds in my favor.
Weeks passed. The ground warmed and the days swelled, long and sunlit. Windows were thrown open to let in the spring air that smelled of fresh-cut grass.
On a misty evening in June, my mother accompanies me to the hospital. She wipes my forehead and squeezes my hand and offers words of reassurance in a cadence that sounds like a nursery rhyme. She strokes my hair and gently delivers ice chips to my parched lips. The legacy of care between a mother and daughter.
My mother stays through the long night and most of the next day. When at last my child makes its way from the cocoon of darkness into my arms, I am somehow euphoric, through the pain and exhaustion, to realize none of the tricks worked. My child is a girl.
The wail of that tiny new life echoes in the room. Is this what an untethered cry of joy sounds like? My soothing words create a harmony of exaltation as they combine with the baby’s sweet voice.
Lying in the hospital bed, inhaling the milky smell of the baby’s head, my mother’s hands soft on my arm, I think, this is my prophecy.
And to the baby, I whisper, You are the first daughter, of a first daughter, of a first daughter of a first daughter. And I will name you Bridget.
- Inconvenient Prophecy - June 12, 2026
