Ella Baxter

Short Fiction

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A new piece from Issue Three Featured Writer Ella Baxter. Read a conversation with Ella here.

I was given a grant from the Australian government to write my third book, but I have no time to write it because I had a baby. But it’s not really because of the baby. Right now, I sit at a café reading The Prince and drinking coffee while my baby plays somewhere in the bushes nearby. I don’t write because I have a stalker. I receive ultra-violent letters and am watched carefully at night by someone who stands outside my window even when it rains. I have found comfort through these frightening, semi lucid, milky times by splitting in two. One part of me is here, mothering, applying sunscreen, and administering snacks etcetera, and the other part of me is more subterranean. She dwells below the surface. Her legs rest inside my own. Her arms thread through mine and wear my body like a loose coat. I ask her; how does he always know which room I am in, even with the curtains drawn? And she tells me what I have started to suspect, he follows the sound of the baby crying.  

Being stalked and being pregnant were virtually the same although the stalking lasted longer. Both made me run to therapy. Both included never being alone. I cried when I saw each of their faces for the first time. The police station was the inversion of the hospital. The midwife and the private investigator became two professionals in a tug of war over my attention, over my money. The midwife, at five thousand dollars, was significantly cheaper. Eventually I will find the courage to tell the Arts Council that this is where all my grant money went. Nary a conceptual novel was made. Thousands of dollars haemorrhaged from my savings account to pay the investigator to sit in his car and watch a strange man, watching me. I attended birth classes where I visualised my body opening effortlessly, back to back with self-defence classes where I practiced how to escape from someone trying to rape me. Hauling my huge pregnant body around a mixed martial arts studio while the instructor yelled at me to kick like I meant it. Fear or pregnancy, or both, made the whites of my eyes turn yellow. The beginning of a metamorphosis or a reckoning, my subterranean woman and I both agree.

The night my baby was born, the stalker hammered down the door to my house. He touched all my precious, clean things, and then lay on my bed – while at the hospital, two doctors took too long to untangle my baby from the rest of my body. I must have psychically known, because the roar that came out of me, and the blood that came out of me, and the way my fingers bent backwards against the metal frame of the bed looked exactly like fury, although it was pain. I returned home clutching my newborn and opened the front door to an upturned home. Piss and shit, smashed glass, blood, another inversion of my own birthing experience. A while after that the stalking stopped. And a while after that, the private investigator broke protocol by passing me a piece of paper with the stalker’s home address written on it. Do with this information what you will, he said.

I tell anyone that stands still long enough that birth made me fear less, but I don’t say that it made me feel nothing. Perhaps people suspected it, and perhaps this is why I keep being gifted the Body Keeps the Score. I have four copies, all from close friends. But there is a gap in my stomach from where I was cut and I still can’t feel anything around it, or beyond it. I take my baby to play groups, and sit on the mat, and sing songs, and point at birds, and talk about feeding schedules and sleeping, and I drive my car, and bleep my horn, and eat my dinner and I get in the shower and can barely even feel the water. The only time I felt anything was when my internal woman sat me down and made me write this. Imagine if I wrote this to be provocative to my stalker. Imagine if he read it and became incensed. Imagine if I had become, over the space of only one short year, obsessed with being disobedient to any expectation of how to respond to being stalked, or to becoming a mother.

The subterranean woman inside me is rigorous. She found the layout of the stalker’s house online from when it last sold, and we sat together, her stacked into me on the computer chair, dutifully clicking through photos of each room. She said, where would you hide in that house? I used our index finger to point to the base of the staircase. She used the other hand to point to the bathroom off the main bedroom. A universe where I was inside his home slammed open with ease. My woman suggested I put the sleeping baby in the car so that we could drive past the house. We parked outside and sat in the dark listening to the baby’s puffy little snores. My woman insisted, I’ll wait while you go in. She told me to look under the door mat and pot plants for a key. Then she emptied out of me and into the car, and perhaps this is normal considering the circumstances. And perhaps this is where I leave my baby with my subterranean woman, find the spare key, and enter his house.  

His staircase would be wooden, noisy. I wouldn’t necessarily creep up the stairs, but rather accept the squeaking by taking them three at a time in long, striding lunges. I would swing around the top banister, painted gloss white, and then I would pause at the doorway of his bedroom. If I had the upper body strength, I would roll him out of bed by his arms, flipping him out and onto the floor. He would pivot in the air before landing with a clatter but remain asleep. I would crouch down and crawl over his body, balancing my whole weight on him like a naughty cat. Creeping up his shins, his knees, his thighs. When I am face to face with him, my stalker opens his eyes.

Ella: I assume you don’t read, so you won’t know this-

Stalker: God you’re rude.

Ella: But Machiavelli once wrote, if you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.

Ella: I’m curious if you hate women or fear them.

The answer is both. 

Stalker: This is unbelievably loose.

Ella: Admit that you are less obsessed with me since I had a baby.

Stalker: It became complicated. Many women are reborn when they become mothers. Maybe you were too, but it was in a way that was uninteresting to me.

Ella: They had to remove my organs. A student nurse slipped on all the blood. I smelled my intestines and heard them slosh against each other. I will finish with: The horror of birth makes new parents into perfect demons.

This sentence came to me once and since then I’ve said it maybe twelve times to as many people.

Stalker: You should have this conversation with other mothers.

I will use my finger to hammer my response into the side of his head: It’s misogynistic (poke) to (poke)  disqualify me from anything (poke, poke)  post birth (one long poke).

He will tell me to get off him and I will refuse. It’s comfortable for me like this. There’s no timeframe on it, it feels totally natural.

Stalker, looking: Ah. You dressed up for this. 

Ella: These are just my black pants. 

Ella: Why did you write constantly about stallions in every letter you sent? Rutting stallions this, fucking stallions that, I’m curious why you felt such a connection with a domesticated animal.

Stalker: And we also match shirts. I think I already know the answer, but are you flattered by my attention? 

Ella: The stalking?

Stalker: The attention.

Ella: My therapist thinks you’re narcissistic and compulsive. 

Stalker: Is that why you’re here? 

Ella: We think you seek control by being threatening. 

Stalker: Is that what my star sign says? Is that what you intuit?

Ella: I am intuitive. If you tell me what time you were born I will – 

Stalker: I don’t hate women, I love them. They’re my whole world.

Ella: Aries. 

Stalker: I said I love women. Some women.

Ella: Is it scary for you, a stallion, an animal of labour, to be ambushed by a feral, free roaming brumby like me?

Stalker: It’s your own view of yourself that’s terrifying. 

I’ll be offended.

Stalker: Even though you installed curtains I can still see you whenever I want. There’s gaps and certain angles. 

Ella: I put gravel under the windows so I could hear you. 

Stalker: But I can still see the back of you when you work at your desk, and you can’t hear me if I’m in my socks. 

Ella: Do you read what I write?

Stalker: I don’t want to. Fiction is embarrassing. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. 

Ella: I write non-fiction too.  

Stalker: You missed a big opportunity to ask me what I think about when I watch you like that.

Ella: What do you think about while you stand there in the dark in your socks?

Stalker: I think that too many people have let you think that you’re interesting, including me. 

Ella: My therapist said it’s provocative to question you like this. Her concern is that I’m seeking answers that don’t exist.  

Stalker: Did your therapist mention it was dangerous. 

Ella: She said I’m being oppositional.

Ella: The other day I found a camera in a tree facing the house.

Stalker: It’s not mine it’s your neighbour’s. It actually faces down their driveway toward the road. I bet I know what you’re going to ask next.

Ella: What?

Stalker: You’re going to ask if I’ll go to your book launch.

Ella: Will you?

Stalker: More copies of your book would sell if I went. 

Ella: I hadn’t thought about it. 

Stalker: Your therapist was wrong; this is not provocative – it’s what the Buddhists call

Māna. You’re here to marinade in your own ego.

Ella: Are you going to turn up to my book launch in a balaclava? Are you going to cause a scene and frighten me so badly that I turn mad and ruin everything good in my life?

Stalker: You wish.

Ella: Let’s talk about your childhood.

Stalker: Why don’t we talk about yours first.

Ella: Single parent. Nine different schools. Not many friends. Poor.  

Stalker: You weren’t poor if you had food.

Ella: That’s not a general measure of wealth.

Stalker: It kinda is.

Ella: And you?

Stalker: Your friends will be hurt that you minimised their effect on your life. 

Ella: How often have you been inside my house?

Stalker: Only once.

Ella: Would  Buddhists call that trespassing?

Stalker: It felt like I was right between your lungs in the middle of your chest. Like I was inside a part of you that was beautiful and bad. It was rotten in a good way. 

Ella: Were you not scared that I would come home and find you?

Stalker: You were giving birth for three days.

Ella: You want to know how scared of you I’ve been? I carry multiple knives. I have learned how to crush a windpipe with the heel of my hand. 

Stalker: Scared, provocative, intuitive, and clever.

Ella: I’ve appeared on several literary panels. I am clever. I wrote a book.

Stalker: One literary panel. 

Ella: [Recoils]

Stalker: Where’s your baby?

Ella: During birth, I felt my skeleton warp and crack like it was trying to move out of the way. I died in a kinesiological sense, but I don’t think I got reborn. 

Stalker: It became obvious that the birth affected you.

Ella (repeats): Birth turns new parents into perfect demons.

Stalker: Where’s your baby?

Ella: Sleeping in the car. During pregnancy I grew another whole set of molars. My dentist said he had never seen that many teeth in a mouth before.

Stalker, ruthless, extremely close: It’s freezing outside. 

And then: Far too cold for a baby. 

Ella: [silent]

We will both hear my baby cry downstairs in the car. 

Stalker: Your baby needs you.

I will perform a motion, a summoning or something like two quick claps, and then my eyes will roll back in my head and there will be the sound of a car door slamming shut which will be her, my woman, coming up to help me. I’ll tell the stalker that I used to be scared of everything, failure, success, gluten, leeches, but I don’t feel anything anymore. I will say it like a joke, like, har har, I don’t feel a thing, even though I just that minute acutely felt fury, guilt, shame, fear.

The stalker will hate the sound of her footsteps on his staircase. He’ll be completely agitated by it. I’ll tell him, relax, relax. 

Ella: Let’s circle back. Was the horse you? I need answers. 

Stalker: No, it was you.

It was me.

Stalker: If you leave now– He’ll say this like an offer, like he will allow me to leave, but I interrupt. 

Ella: Imagine stalking a novelist! Imagine thinking you could frighten a perfect demon. Imagine thinking that after giving birth to a baby the size of a catfish I would be intimidated by anything ever again.

Stalker: You need to go.  

Ella: Imagine thinking I didn’t save up all the fear you gave me and then feed my anger with it until I had the energy of a thousand blazing suns coursing through my body. I’m never leaving.

I’m never leaving. I have been in this very scenario with him for almost a year now. I have been sitting on his chest having variations of this conversation, rehearsing, rewriting. I am never going to leave. I live here. This is my home now. 

My woman stands in the doorway. 

Stalker, growing frantic about it: Who is here with you? 

I’m too strong for him to tip off. I am not ashamed to say that every day of postpartum I have practised choking out my red yoga bolster. I am ready to engage in some moves. 

My woman takes a few steps into the room. She looms over us. It’s magnificent. I love her. 

Stalker: Get the fuck out. 

Ella: Nah nah nah.

Stalker: What do you want?

He’ll say: I am not interested in you anymore.

Ella: I know, but that’s not really the point.

He will look dead in my eyes and tell me to stop. As if I could. As if I would want to. This is my favourite loop. It feels so good to me. I am smiling. I can still hear my baby crying, but I’m smiling. I actually love this part.

He’s frightened. Rattled. I’m turning him inside out here, I’ve excavated his being. So, I drive it home. Land the plane. Crowds cheer. Gods descend. 

Ella, very softly, very close to his face: Imagine if Machiavelli was talking about me.

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Ella Baxter is a writer and artist. Her debut novel, New Animal, was published in Australia, the UK, the US, and France. Her second book, Woo Woo, will be released with Catapult next year.

Photo Credit: Tracy Whiteside is an award-winning, Chicago-area photographer specializing in fantasy and dark art. Her work has been published internationally in fashion, literature, and fine art books and magazines. Exhibited in galleries worldwide, Tracy is inspired by the darkness in our souls and the need to escape it. Most of her creations are based on women’s issues and mental wellness. https://www.tracywhiteside.com/

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