Free Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong Page A

as I had never yearned before.
    â€œPut a tuft of wool on our front door,” I ordered the midwife.
    â€œBut your husband?” she asked.
    â€œMy husband has nothing to do with this,” I said.
    Cercylas came in to worship at my throne.
    â€œShe looks like me!” he cried. “The little darling.”
    She’ll have more brains, I thought.
    As soon as I was well enough, Praxinoa and I went to give thanks to Artemis for my survival and the child’s. We left the goddess a beautiful purple chiton and a purple cloak with a wavy blue border that looked like the sea.
    At the temple of Artemis, I watched the mother of a woman who had died in childbirth dedicating an entire chest of golden treasures to the goddess. Was she mad? The gods had taken her daughter and she was still attempting to pacify them!
    â€œThere is as much carnage in birth as in war,” the woman said. “At least the goddess spared my granddaughter.”
    How do women give up their babies to the midwives to be set on rugged hilltops? I will never understand it, any more than I understood the savage rites of Baal. We pretend to be civilized, but only blood sacrifice quiets the murderer within.
    And tell me why Artemis, who never lets Eros loosen her thighs, should be the goddess of childbirth. She, who is a virgin hunting on the peaks of solitary mountains, holds the fate of all pregnant women in her hands. Is this just? Is this fair? Zeus of the thundercloud who rules the world has plenty to answer for!
ZEUS: Blasphemy!
    APHRODITE: Philosophy! You never could tell them apart.
    I was astonished by the love I felt for my baby. This little lump of flesh, with the blurry blue eyes and the pink fingernails that resembled the translucent shells of undersea creatures, remade my view of the world. I was less than before—now merely a mother—and much, much more: the maker of this marvel. I knew how the gods felt creating life.
I have a beautiful daughter who is
    Like a gold flower. I wouldn’t take
    All Lydia or even
    The whole lovely island of Lesbos for her.
    Contemplating my daughter, her pink fingers like the dawn, her transparent skin, the perfect bivalve of her sex, I fell in love with life all over again. I would even trade her for my songs. She was my best creation.
    During the time when Cleis was a small baby, I played Penelope, sitting at my loom but weaving my own wiles. The baby lay in a basket at my feet. When Cercylas appeared, I seduced him with my impersonation of traditional womanhood. Of course, I didn’t nurse the baby myself. Two wet nurses did that on different shifts, day and night. And my share of household slaves increased.
    Cercylas fell in raptures over the baby. He was already saving up a dowry for her and planning her nuptials. But more and more he had to travel to Egypt for the wine trade with my brother Charaxus. They stayed for months at a time in Naucratis, where the Greek traders could worship their own gods while enjoying the Egyptian prostitutes and luxuries. Good riddance! I was happy to be the queen of my own household.
    Because Cercylas was so advanced in age, both his parents were dead. I had no wretched in-laws to obey like most young wives. That was another blessing.
    Before Cleis was born, I had been terribly impatient with my mother. Now that began to change. What I had once seen as her obstinacy, I saw as her protectiveness. No woman can understand her mother until she becomes a mother. I would have given anything to see my mother now.
    Repeatedly I sent messages to her through traders plying the seas between Syracuse and Lesbos. She sent greetings back—together with a beautiful sea-green cloak, emblazoned with gold, for baby Cleis. Of course, it was big enough for a five-year-old child, but I draped it over the baby in her crib and said, “Your grandmother wove this for you with her own beautiful fingers just like yours.”
    Then my mother arrived. She came by