Free Memoirs of a Bitch by Francesca Petrizzo, Silvester Mazzarella

but I didn’t care, strong in the conviction that my heavy body belonged to Achilles. Meanwhile nature held her breath in a year that refused to behave as men expected it to, though there was no premonition of disaster in that immobility, only a slow patient waiting for a gentle goddess to finish her work. Nature was there in every blade of grass, in every cloud, and knew where she was going. I had not grown heavy in vain. My sealed corolla would open to the light of a new summer.
    It was a day of solemn ceremony and empty halls. Menelaus was performing the sacrifices he had agreed to reinstate after months of complaints from the council, and the whole court was with him in the temple. I was alone with my slave girls when I felt a gush of warm water flood my thighs. I nearly cried for help, but changed my mind. No, I didn’t want them burning oils and holdingmy hands. No, Helen of Sparta would give birth alone on the stairs like a stray cat, gripping the balusters so as not to cry out. Helen, stupid and obstinate, would be alone, only her own tranquil ghost with her in the only battle she would be allowed as a woman to fight on her own, with that body born to be bought and sold. Be alone, Helen, but don’t cry out, break your nails on the stone stairs; breathe, Helen, but don’t think about the one who should be here but is far away beyond the sea. Only you yourself matter now, you and your own strength, Helen made of stone and fire. Rip yourself apart like new linen to release this kicking and breathing weight, this weight that is your own on these empty stairs.
    The tension in my legs gave way with a great contraction to one final push, and the only cry that escaped my otherwise sealed lips and mingled with the shrill cries of the mortal creature just born, screaming like a calf to open its lungs. Beginning to die from the moment when, eyes closed against the light, it opened its nostrils to breathe for the first time. A small screaming creature at the top of the stairs. Like a wild bitch I bit through the cord that joined us and dragged myself toward her with my hands. For it was her; a female on the stairs, between legs draped with placenta the cleft of her sex that would one day make her, like her mother before her, merchandise for barter. But not now; today I couldtouch her with my hands and she was mine. My baby girl on those stairs, eyelids still obstinately shut, on her head a thin tuft of hair stained with blood and fluid. I pressed my baby against my painfully swollen breasts, among the stained folds of my dress. I murmured to soothe her. Sleep, baby girl, sleep with me. I rocked us backward and forward together. Ignoring a thin rivulet of blood running from my ankles on to the floor. A trivial sign of my victory in this war without witnesses. Sleep, baby girl, sleep. She did not sleep, but stopped screaming and opened her eyes. Blind eyes barely capable of distinguishing vague shadows in the dazzling light. But no matter. It was my shadow those glaucous orbs were seeing. And I already knew what color they would be when they cleared. Halfway between green and blue. Unbearable.

17
    What Achilles had not foreseen was the boredom. A boredom that consumes without burning, without hurting, enclosing us in cages without bars or walls, eating away at the substance of our days and taking over so that we cannot be aware of it before it is too late. This is what happened to me. They took Hermione away to be suckled by a wet nurse, leaving me alone with my swollen breasts in empty rooms that smelled of sadness.
    Menelaus kept his distance, disappointed at his failure to produce an heir. He no longer came to my rooms, and began solacing himself at night with beautiful young slave girls with bodies as yet unstretched by childbearing. His old kindness gave way to a general indifference toward his lawful wife, and I no longer felt any pressure to conceal my hatred for him. His absence from mylife was just an