Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid Page B

escaped through Nurse Eudelle’s lips, and a stench, a stinking smell so powerful it could kill anything, anyone, followed and it enveloped the room, which was all that made up the house, even to the four corners, and it stayed in the room, which was all that made up the house, but it did not leave the house and it did not leave the room, and the cry of Mr. Potter’s mother as she gave birth to him, a definition of pain itself, overwhelmed all in its presence, all that came near it, all that might hear of it, all that was in its vicinity, all in reality or all only imagined. And Mr. Potter came into the closed and complete world, the world satisfied beyond satisfaction itself, and to his very existence the world was indifferent, the earth spun in its eternal way, the tides of the sea swelled high and then receded, all the mountains everywhere remained majestic, the hills remained comfortingly modest in relation to the mountains, the rivers everywhere flowed gently sometimes, or sometimes in fits of capricious rage; and over time these changed landscapes define constancy itself, and this landscape can make a people; a people will know who they really are when seeing this landscape. And Mr. Potter was born, and all the world was indifferent to this.
    And the midwife, Nurse Sylvia Eudelle, took the newly born Mr. Potter, all naked and protected only
by his mother’s blood and mucus, and plunged him into the bucket of water that stood in one of the corners of that room, really the house, and the water in the bucket had once been hot, but when Mr. Potter had been plunged into it, just born he was then, the water was not hot and it was not cold; the water was indifferent as to temperature. And after removing his mother’s blood and mucus from him, the midwife, Nurse Sylvia Eudelle, wrapped him in a blanket and placed him next to his mother, Elfrida Robinson, who was lying in a bed made up of very clean, so very, very clean, rags, and the mother and her child, Elfrida and Mr. Potter, fell asleep exhausted from their common purpose, bringing Mr. Potter safely into the world, a common purpose but to what end? To no end at all. The thin shrill cry of the newborn lingered, it became an unending echo, in the ears of the midwife, Nurse Sylvia Eudelle’s ears, and it made her irritable to see them, the mother and her child, asleep, so innocent of everything, all that had just happened inside the room (that was the house) and that had happened beyond it and in its entirety, so much that even this midwife did not know about and could only suspect, could only sense, as if she were gifted to do this also: sense that there were things in the world other than easing the burden of bringing the despised into it.
    And in the first hours of his life outside his mother’s womb, the newly born Mr. Potter slept next
to his new mother, he was her first child and he would be her only child (she had no children besides him), his head next to her gently beating heart, her breathing so regular, so calm, so perfect, as if she had been made that way by God himself. He slept through all of that night and in the morning he drank milk from his mother’s breast. He slept through all that morning and then that noon he drank milk from his mother’s breasts, and for the first week of his life he slept and drank milk from his mother’s breasts and she, his mother Elfrida Robinson, slept and fed her son milk from her breasts. And at the end of that one week it all ended, the sleeping and then feeding, and it ended with such finality, as if it had never happened at all, as if Mr. Potter had never lain next to his own mother and he, her only son, had drunk milk from her breasts and was made so satisfied by this nourishment that he slept a sweet untroubled sleep, and he slept a sleep like that, untroubled, and such a sleep he would never in his whole life of seventy years experience again. How the innocence of Mr. Potter’s