The Sculpting of an Infant

(Journal Entry from Benin 2007)

The sculpting of an infant. He called it an art. Get a stool and go watch them in the next room. You should know how to do it. I walked over to the curtain of the bedroom and peered inside. There sat the grandmother with her frail grandchild on her knees. The old woman wore a wrap up to her chest, her calves resting on the edge of a large basin set under her bare thighs. The tiny, transparent-colored infant lay splayed on her smooth dark skin, about to receive her first bath. I sat next to the baby’s mother to watch. Watch and learn.

The grandmother worked with firm, experienced hands. She didn’t handle the newborn with that touch of someone afraid to break the delicate creature just out of the womb. At her side were three buckets of water. One steamed, one stood quiet, and one held a mixture of both. The woman dipped a piece of fabric into the lukewarm water and squeezed it onto the baby’s skin. She lay the tiny girl on her belly and spread her buttocks to allow a trickle of water to clean the crevice. This was done repeatedly. As her right hand dipped the rag back in the water, her left hand squeezed the two buttocks cheeks together. She re-opened them for the trickle. She turned the baby on her back and repeated the process from that side. Water ran through the baby’s genitals and her minute arms reached out with stretched fingers at the sensation. It is to render them more sensitive she said.

Next was the head. After wetting the soft skull with the rag, the grandmother took a fishnet sponge sopping with soap suds and rubbed it in circles around the baby’s cranium. Soap covered the entire head. It must be getting in her eyes. The baby cried at the sting; the rubbing continued. I looked up to the grandmother’s beautifully shaped head. She was well-sculpted. Her hair was cut short to a simple black fuzz. I marveled at her smoothness; her bare shoulders and jutting collarbones. She was a strong woman, making a strong baby. Every part of the infant was lathered and scrubbed with the fish net. Contact with the gritty texture forms a tough layer of smooth skin.

With amazing confidence, she took the baby by one arm and dangled her whole weight on it. One arm, and then the next. The infant with puffed up eyelids gave little shrieks of high-pitched surprise, per perhaps pain. The grandmother held the two feet together in one hand and dangled her upside down. Before another sound of shock could emit the baby’s mouth, she’d taken her by the head and was dangling her by the neck. Setting the infant back on her thighs, the woman turned the baby’s head so that the chin touched the shoulders. One side, then the other. I held my breath, thinking it would surely crack that tiny neck in two. But the head held on to the body. The motion was fluid, natural, easy.

Then came the body shaping. She squeezed warm water onto the tiny chest, pressing hard, one hand supporting her back. Then she turned her over and squeezed hard on the back, running her forefinger straight down the spine and rubbing in circles at the tailbone. She ran her hands down her back and up her thighs to the buttocks, cupping firmly to form a round rump. The grandmother looked up at me and flashed her white-gapped teeth. She must have nice round butt cheeks. She did the same to the calves, pressing the flesh upwards from the ankles to the knee-caps. I thought of the people’s legs here, how I’d always wondered at their shape; long and thin with such high-set calf muscles. They are a well-sculpted people.

Thus concluded the first bath. Lotion and baby powder was applied generously. The baby had the rest of the day to sleep, suckle and grow.

The following day, I watched the second bath, eager to memorize the steps. At the end, the baby girl suffered her first feminine sacrifice. Her grandmother pierced the shaking and sobbing newborn’s ears with her bare hands. Now you are a beautiful girl.