"Pregnant Women are Smug" by Marian Hollinquest

(Author’s note: This is based on the song “Pregnant Women and Smug” performed by
Garfunkel and Oates)
     I sat in the garden in the backyard of one of my acquaintance’s home. It was blanketed
with a beautiful, bright green, pseudo-looking lawn of grass. The perimeter of the house was
fostered by an army of long pots, planted with the most surrealistic daisies you would have ever
seen. I am sitting alone at the table on the slightly dirtied plastic lawn chair at her baby shower.
Most of these women I have never even seen before, and I don’t care much to talk to them. I’ve
known her for years, she was one of my closest friends at one point, but time went on, she just
annoys me to the, James Hunter’s “Breaking Point”. Instead of just sitting out here alone like
Lennie, I made my way over to talk to the bell of the ball. I delayed over by the side, waiting for
her friends to move over; their faces resembled tomatoes, red and round, gushing about the
women as if she were a puppy, showering her with gifts and advice as their cankles danced
gracefully around the strap of their heels. They eventually cleared the way, making my once
close friend accessible to me. Not sure of what to converse about, I haphazardly began it about
the baby.

“So, what do you want the baby to be?” She smiled sweetly at me. I think I already
know the answer. “Oh, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s healthy.” Wow, really? Because it’s not
like those two things are related at all. I mean, it’s not like one or the other! I cannot contain
myself for the day that a mother says ‘I don’t care if it is braindead, limbless, and-‘ God Forbid,
‘has a penis.’ I swear to high heaven you only speak in clichés now. This little world you are
enjoying is making you really annoying. I bid her goodbye, as I could not take any more of her
B.S. The loneliness acquainted with being alone at a party for moms has not eluded me like any
child the mother forces to go. I soon found the patience to speak with another women, who
also happened to be expecting. Not the great converser I am, I ask about the baby once again,
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Oh we know, but we’re not telling.” She coyly answered.
“What are you going to name it?”
“Oh we know, but we’re not telling.” I raise my brow.
“Whose the father?”
“Oh we know, but we are not telling.”
B***,  I really don’t care. I don’t know if you noticed, but I
was only being polite, because now you have no life. Don’t these women see? I am only twenty-five
and they are supposed to be too! The holy and bloody affliction between my legs still
remains consistent, though I do miss more periods than William Faulkner (and I admit that this
joke was not of my own), and I see no celebration for that, do I?! I may go to the bar once in a
while, and tell a man ‘Hey bae, I get more metaphysical than f**** John Donne.’, but I do not
throw myself into matrimony and curse myself for my upcoming middle-aged years. I wish I
could regress back to my younger years, when I could go to church and not have to get more
confessional that Sylvia Plath, but what’s done is done, and at least I am not as done as these
girls. These women may be giving birth, but it does not give them the right to refer to
themselves as ‘mother earth’. As I retake my seat, I can proudly say:
Pregnant women are smug.