TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Red Afterbirth by Eileen R. Tabios

Thursday, October 2, 2025

Red Afterbirth by Eileen R. Tabios - Love Stories Series #

From Cecilia Brainard: I am proud to share EILEEN R. TABIOS' short story, RED AFTERBIRTH. This is part of my Love Stories Series featured in my blog. This was first published in a literary journal and then a short story collection. All articles and photos are copyrighted by the individual authors. All rights reserved. This is featured in my blog with permission from the author.

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BIO

EILEEN R. TABIOS has released books of poetry, fiction, essays, art and experimental prose from publishers around the world. Forthcoming books include a poetry collection, Engkanto in the Diaspora, and a children’s book (with Mel Vera Cruz and Jeannie E. Celestial), Tata Efren’s Forever Laughter. Recent releases include the novel The Balikbayan Artist; an art monograph Drawing Six Directions; a poetry collection Because I Love You, I Become War; an autobiography, The Inventor: A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography; and a flash fiction collection collaboration with harry k stammer, Getting To One. Other recent books include a first novel DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for Our Times which was subsequently translated by Danton Remoto into Filipino as KalapatingLeon and two French poetry books, PRISES (Double Take) (trans. Fanny Garin) and La Vie erotique de l’art (trans. Samuel Rochery). Her story “Red ‘Afterbirth’” was first published in dis*Orient. Translated into 13 languages, she has seen her writing and editing works receive recognition through awards, grants and residencies. More information is at https://eileenrtabios.com

RED "AFTERBIRTH"

Even this very act of tracing words on paper in order to arrest the expediency of not remembering constitutes a polemic whose expositions and explications have, as their sole purpose, that of convincing myself that this tale's elements, in their intensity and extent, are contained in my own history.

—from "Identifications" by Clinton Palanca

Manila, several years ago:

In the beginning, I thought to dissuade him because I thought him only a boy. But the sun's red stain on his cheeks made me linger, made me feel the sun wish to implode to continue caressing the flesh pulled tightly over his angled cheekbones. Later, I would hear from others in his village that his complexion was considered unusual. The sun never darkened him, only deepened the ruddiness on his skin until it evoked an ember of coal flickering its last breaths. Then he pushed up his sleeves and his forearms made me pause. In that moment, too, I noticed other muscles rippling under the weak camouflage of a thin shirt. The first time I looked into his eyes, I heard a radio come to life and a woman start to whisper, I forgot the horizon is far, is near, is what you wish but always in front of you.

I forgot one can choose always to face the horizon … He spoke slowly but I couldn't understand a word, hearing only the whispered song and a faint buzzing. I looked towards the open door, expecting to see bees inebriated with pollen. A dryness in my throat, I let Mama deal with him and walked away. Mama asked him to stay for dinner. I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't. Perhaps I would have stopped, turned and been the one to ask him to stay for dinner. Perhaps I would have kept walking as I did towards my studio in the garden. Later he would tell me that he watched a strand of my hair fall as I left, that he watched it slowly coil itself over the back of a chair and that he picked it up when Mama wasn't looking.

The canvas on my easel heightened my restlessness. It hadn't yet immobilized my hand, and I reached once more for the brush. When I looked at it again after two hours, the green strokes were completely obliterated by swaths of blood red stains. Mama was calling me into the house for dinner. As I walked through the kitchen door, I said I needed to wash myself clean of the paint. I could feel the paint clinging to my hands, my arms, like lovers' palms reluctant to let go. Mama said Noel was taking a nap on my bed as he had driven all day to bring news from my grandmother. That's how I choose to recall first hearing his name, “Noel”—in the context of his sinking onto my bed, his hair falling against my pillow and his eyes seeing what I, too, see when I lie back on my bed: a sketch I once drew of a desert's infinite expanse, the limb of a cactus plant on the foreground and the moon tiny but undeniably full in the distance of background.

THE NEXT TIME I ALLOWED HIM ON MY BED, I MOSTLY HAD MY EYES CLOSED. I OPENED THEM ONLY WHEN FINALLY I LOST ALL CONTROL.

I told Mama I'd wake Noel. In the hallway bathroom, I ran my hands under the faucet and thought of blood and afterbirth while the water gathered in the sink. When my hands were clear once more, I looked at myself in the mirror. I placed my wet palms against my cheeks, but the fever remained. I wanted to commit an act of violence. I wanted this same urge to abate. But Mama called once more. So I went to where he laid on my bed.

I closed the door behind me as I stepped into my bedroom. I let the dimness fall like a cloak as I walked to where he slept. He had taken off his shirt. A streetlamp flickered beyond the window and lit where he lay. My left hand rose to betray me and slowly reached for him. I felt the heat from his skin but before I could touch him, he opened his eyes. I thought to draw back but he immediately raised his torso to meet my hand. “Your name is sweet,” he said as my hand recoiled from his warm flesh. “No,” I said. He knew I meant something else when I said, “My name is Rose.”

I crushed garlic and dropped them in vinegar and salt. I liked dipping Mama's vegetable egg rolls in this make-shift sauce. He kept complimenting Mama over her beef sauteed with mushrooms and spinach, her crisply fried chicken, her pork simmered with eggplants in a fish sauce and her barbecued ribs. I arranged and rearranged the few pieces on my plate while he seemed inexhaustible. Mama was vibrating in delight at his fulsome appetite and compliments. He only looked at me once, at the end of the meal. He didn't hide the hunger still simmering in his eyes.

Mama offered him the living room sofa for the night. I didn't offer my bedroom, although I planned to sleep in my studio that night. I planned to paint over the canvas waiting for me. I wanted to paint over the red. When he asked to see my studio, Mama eagerly jumped in, “That's a good idea, Rose. It would be nice to get another person's opinion.” I muttered, “Why?” But Mama didn't hear me. He did and merely smiled.

WHEN I LOSE CONTROL, HE SMILES. THEN HE MAKES ME LOSE CONTROL AGAIN.

The painting mocked me as soon as we entered the studio. “The paint is wet,” he observed. “I'm still working on it. It's not finished yet,” I said. He raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the mattress against the wall. “I'll just sit there and watch. Don't let me get in the way.” I wanted to tell him to leave but shrugged instead. I turned back to the painting, even as I felt him drop to where I had slumbered for a few hours earlier that day.

I reached for a brush, then stopped my hand in mid-air. “Name me,” the painting ordered. It was done. For the first time, I tried to fight against the work and railed back, “Not yet!” This dialogue must have taken but a few seconds and in silence. But Noel was immediately by my side, clasping my bereft hand left clutching at air. “It's flawed, but perfectly so,” he said.

My hair fell loose from where I had pinned them. I snatched back my hand and kept shaking until he used his palms to still my face. We looked at each other like this for a long time.

Finally, I whispered, “I am much older than you.” He placed his lips on my cheek, just barely touching the corner of my lips. He whispered back, “By a year?” Because I felt him silently laugh, I didn't explain.

WHEN I LOSE CONTROL, HE SMILES. THEN HE MAKES ME LOSE CONTROL AGAIN. ONCE, HE SAID HE LOVED TO WATCH ME OPEN MY EYES TO HIS WATCH.

He's in New York now, attending the Art Students League. He is a sculptor, but I didn't know this until it was too late. I thought he was just a farmer who would return to a village I had never seen and did not anticipate visiting in the future, as later I would in an attempt to recreate him in my mind. When I asked, he said, “I like sculpting air into what I feel because air is stubborn and makes me question, too, what I feel. I like the process of achieving certainty.”

I had left New York after my first solo show at one of the city's most prestigious galleries. I received rave reviews, and my dealer sold everything from the show. She wanted more of my paintings, but she said, “I want more of the same as we hung in your show. Extend this series. I can sell whatever you produce.” I couldn't have obeyed her, even if I had wanted to, even if I hadn't taken a left turn and veered off the road. Even if I hadn't veered off the road, I would have wanted to go explore.

Certainty is an ambitious goal, I thought, but decided to remain silent. I was distracted, too, by my hands' betrayal. Pressed against his chest, they began to seek, aching to feel what I only had sensed behind fragile cloth. He didn't move, his palms still holding my face as he watched me breathe through parted lips. Finally, my hands opened a button and reached for the skin over his heart. At the touch of my fingers where his heartbeat, he whispered, “I have always known you.”

My mother and his mother were best friends during their high school days in the Philippines. My mother renewed their acquaintance when she left the United States to retire in Manila. Mama showed them catalogues of my paintings when they visited her. He said he admired everything he saw, but was most appreciative of my progression as he tracked my works over time. He said, “I like the way you think.”

Through the Art Students League, he obtained a student visa to go to New York City. I told him about my former dealer. The first time he wrote after leaving me in Manila, a year had passed, and he enclosed a catalogue my former dealer put together for his first show. He also said his art requires him to remain in the city I had left.

The catalogue showed he had created eight sculptures, each comprised of a single black rope interacting in angled patterns against the gallery's white walls. All began from a point nailed against the wall, then looped around several nails before ending under a nail piercing the floor in front of the wall. The catalogue's photos showed the shadows the ropes cast, and which became integrated into the works. The pieces were all titled, "Rose" with the numbers "1" to "8" after my name to differentiate one from the other. In the note he enclosed with the catalogue, he wrote, “The first time we met, you turned your back on me. And a single strand of hair separated itself from your receding presence. When I picked it up, it clung to me. It clings to me still.”

WHEN I LOSE CONTROL, HE SMILES. THEN HE MAKES ME LOSE CONTROL AGAIN. ONCE, HE SAID HE LOVED TO WATCH ME OPEN MY EYES TO HIS WATCH. ONCE, I ASKED, ARE YOU ALWAYS SO CONTROLLED?

It might as well be yesterday.

Manila, today:

Mama visited New York last month and returned bearing a catalogue from his latest and fifth show. “Isn't it sweet of him to name his works after you?” Mama asked. The numbers were "45" to "57." But this time, the ropes were stained dark red, like the color of blood after it has congealed. In the letter he sent with my mother, he wrote, “I have these dreams of sculptures formed from the soil where your studio stands. I think, with the right chemicals, they can create a compound like clay. And I want to mold them with my bare hands after my bare hands have done something else. Are you still there? I am no longer a boy.” It was his second letter, and it had been several years since he left Manila.

After reading his letter the first time, easily memorizing all of it with that one perusal, I raised my eyes from the words his heart felt, his mind created, and his hands physically formed on paper. I looked at the red canvas hanging by the door in my studio. I changed its title from "Wound" to "Afterbirth."

He arrives tomorrow. I am convinced it might as well be yesterday. Today, I work with the color green, like the clean leaves in the garden sparkling after a storm or the tears of a gentle rain.

WHEN I LOSE CONTROL, HE SMILES. THEN HE MAKES ME LOSE CONTROL AGAIN. ONCE, HE SAID HE LOVED TO WATCH ME OPEN MY EYES TO HIS WATCH. ONCE, I ASKED, ARE YOU ALWAYS SO CONTROLLED? HE TOOK HIS TIME REPLYING, ISN'T CONTROL PART OF BEING CERTAIN?

The green paint works easily with me, even as I think about other things besides my hand wielding the brush. I am certain I will love the result, though I don't yet know whether I will end up layering it with random flicks of paints from other colors—a thought I am still only turning over in my mind. It doesn't matter when the artist destroys an image. When an image is obsessive, it will reappear. When an image is forgotten, then and only then can it become a Muse.

In response, I wrote Noel that, in Manila, I still waited. I said:

An immediate experience is without value unless the essence of that experience already has germinated within the artist's mind. On each end of a relationship, anyone can react to a scene of an accident without necessarily understanding its cause. "La mesure humaine" defines the equation between an art object and the dimension of man. The difference between dimensions is optics. Before artists destroyed perspective, the proper scale for a painting was determined without any concessions to peripheral vision, unlike sculptures that require the viewer to move physically, retaining previous impressions in memory as momentum continues. History prevents space from becoming a void. There are questions to be answered in how to evolve a wall into a window. What surfaces will be the result of perfect alignment.

Beyond the open door, I noticed that the moon was a perfectly rounded pearl against the ebony sky, and that the sky remained perfectly still even as the Milky Way shifted. My lips parted as I concluded my letter, “Alignment is a paradoxical relationship between life and the space that life inhabits.”

~end~