Free Not a Fairytale by Shaida Kazie Ali

visits, with Jimmy squirting his DNA into test tube after test tube, and me, legs in stirrups, the undignified recipient of his lab-cleansed sperm. The romance of it all makes me want to weep.
    What a twist of fate. We’d always been so keen on not getting pregnant, arming ourselves with pills and rubber and implants, and now, sans contraception, nothing is happening! Always, regular as clockwork, blood on the toilet seat, every full moon for a year. Jimmy says it’s time to move on, it’s time to adopt, but it doesn’t feel right yet.
    One night Jimmy’s up watching American football, surely the most mind-numbing of all the dull sports men have developed, and I’m reading a book on spells – research – when it hits me.
    Six weeks later, I’m pregnant. Jimmy says there’s no way it was some flaky spell; it’s the trips to the hospital that have paid off. But I know better.

    Spell for a Baby Girl
    1 ovulation kit
    1 gold candle
    1 red candle
    1 silver candle
    ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
    1 red rose in full bloom with thorns matches
    Once you have read and followed the directions on the ovulation kit, and you know it is your most fertile time, prepare each candle carefully. Massage the oil gently into each candle from base to wick.
    Next, arrange the three candles in a triangle. The top should be the red candle, the bottom left silver, and the bottom right gold. Prick your thumb with the thorn of the rose and squeeze three drops of blood onto the petals. Place the rose in the centre of the candle triangle.
    Chant the following words: “Sweet as rose may be, powerful as thorn, a healthy baby girl from me shall be born.” Picture your child’s spirit rising to meet your body, like the rose germinating in the earth’s rich soil before unfolding to the sky. When you are ready, snuff out the candles and place the rose under your mattress before making love. Remember to remove the rose the next day, because sleeping on a withered flower will make you grow old before your time.

Manifestation
    I’ M TWENTY-SIX WEEKS PREGNANT AND ALL I DO IS vomit and think of Ma and Salena and home, until I find myself packing my bags and booking a ticket to Cape Town at 3 am one humid morning.
    Jimmy thinks it’s sweet. I want to be near my mommy for the birth of my daughter. But I know it doesn’t make sense, that it’s purely hormonal. Ma only likes me now because I live far away from her and have a wealthy white husband. And Ma’s useless in a crisis. She says she can’t stand the sight of blood. I find this highly suspect. Any woman who says “I faint at the sight of blood” is talking utter crap. I mean, what about all that blood that flows out of your body every month for about forty years?
    Of course it makes sense for me to be near Salena. She knows all about babies, and she’s a natural-born mother. Ma made her look after me when she was barely ten. I often speak to Salena on the phone before I fall asleep, as her day is dawning. After these talks my dreams are filled with our imagined adventures together. I wonder if we would have been as close if I had stayed in Cape Town. Maybe the distance has forged a stronger friendship.
    Jimmy drops me off at the airport and we have a long lingering goodbye. We’ll be apart for six weeks, and I’m ambivalent about the absence. Part of me wants him to suffer the thrills of my half-hourly trips to the toilet, and another part of me is delighted to be free of his endless talk of foetal development. If he brings home another baby magazine with a happy smiling pregnant woman on the cover I may have to commit mariticide.
    As the plane takes off, the sun lights up the cabin, warming it. I feel like a biscuit in an oven, browning to perfection. A gingerbread girl. Is this what my baby feels like, cooking away inside of me? Suddenly the nausea that was supposed to stop at twelve weeks, according to those cheerful magazines, hits me. OH MY GOD . I vomit in my sick bag, and then in