Mothering is Visceral: A Guest Post by Rachel Eve Moulton

Motherhood can be scary, and Rachel Eve Moulton slays with this darkly funny and thought-provoking maternity horror. When Thea gives birth to an actual monster, old ghosts return uninvited. Read on for an exclusive essay from Rachel on writing Tantrum.

The first time I held my daughter in my arms, I was thirty-three-years old. I’d held her in my uterus for forty-two weeks, and yet, her arrival as a fully formed, hazel eyed, curly haired human was a shock to me.

I’d baked her strong. And heavy. Violet was nine pounds and one ounce. Over the course of my pregnancy, I’d measured her strength against what I perceived as my own growing physical and mental weakness. Her hunger was monstrous, and it depleted me over those months. All that was left for me to feast on were feelings: hunger, fatigue, fear, and anger. I became convinced that her insatiability was personal. I didn’t realize until I held her skin-to-skin that, I’d been imagining her to be a parasitic monster. When we finally looked into each other and fell in love, I shrieked, “It’s a baby! It’s a baby!” I yelled it so many times that both nurse and husband shushed me.

TANTRUM comes from this very real moment of relief and connection.

Thea, the protagonist, is a mother of three. Her first two pregnancies took a toll on her mind and body, but with Lucia,, her first baby girl, the pregnancy was surprisingly easy. So, it comes as even more of a surprise when Lucia arrives with a penchant for violence.

It’s a mother’s job to learn how to mother their individual child or children. Parenting one should never be the same as parenting another, but Lucia presents Thea with a particular kind of hurdle. Can she love a child who is murderous? Should she?

One of the things I love most about modern horror is that it allows women to be all things, including ugly, angry, violent, and obscene. We are no longer pretty or perfect. Were we ever? We were portrayed as one dimensional, and if we weren’t, we were locked up in attics watching younger, more deferential women do a better job at pretending. My favorite novels of late are those that not only show women as authentic in their vulnerability but also dangerous in their power. If you aren’t already reading Rachel Yoder (Night Bitch), Helen Oyemi (White is for Witching), Sarah Rose Etter (The Book of X and Ripe), Ainslie Hogarth (Mother Thing), Alison Rumfitt (Tell Me I’m Worthless, Miranda July (All Fours), CJ Leede (Maeve Fly), and Oyinkan Braithwaite (My Sister, the Serial Killer), you have some gorgeous, female written/female driven work ahead of you.

Mothering is visceral. It is birth and bleeding and feeding. It is body horror from start to finish. Women are the most powerful beasts. Look no further than labor and childbirth. A feral event in which women drop their guard and roar. My hope is that TANTRUM shows readers a way to rage loud enough that it clears a more honest path for the next generation and the next.