Cutting Teeth(2)

“I’m only thirty-six weeks.” She clawed at the nubby hospital blanket beneath her. Copper and earth tinged her nostrils and she registered, impossibly, that the smell was her.

More people filled the room. She could suffocate. She wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. “What are you doing?” She panted. “What’s happening? Wait. You have to stop. Wait.”

The nurse, who’d at some point stabbed her with an IV, now buzzed around her head. “I’m going to slip this mask on over your mouth and nose. Nice and easy. Very gentle.” She adjusted the rubber band behind Rhea’s ears. “How’s that? Comfortable. Breathe normally.”

Pain lassoed her stomach. Another giant gush of blood. She screamed into the hollow plastic.

“The baby doesn’t have oxygen.” The doctor moved so quickly around her. It was as if everyone were paying attention to Rhea and also no one at all. “We have to do a crash section.” This didn’t feel right. Wait. Wait. “We have seconds, not minutes, seconds.”

Rhea could feel her body shutting down. She hadn’t even asked about her baby yet. The fire burned up and down her spine, tearing through her ass muscles.

“No time for an epidural or painkillers. Rhea, you’ll be put straight to sleep. Do you understand?”

No. She was trying to tell them. No. No. She’d miss it if they put her to sleep. She would miss this thing, she would miss everything, everything she was promised. She would miss him. Hers.

“Take a deep breath.” She gasped, more a death rattle than an attempt to cooperate, but the world dissolved around her anyway. Down she sank. Down, down, down, down. Into a deep, salty darkness. Into a rotting cavity with no bottom, a medically induced black hole, bitter-tasting, like Advil with the sweet casing dissolved; she was swallowed alive. Rhea was plunged into motherhood the same way a cat’s drowned in water.

Some days she feels like she went to sleep on that hospital bed and woke up where she is now, with Bodhi four years old. Her eyes travel his classroom as she waits impatiently for his teacher to join her.

When she woke up at the hospital, it was to find that not only was she no longer pregnant but that her heart had been extracted, taken out of her chest, and transplanted into this beautiful little boy. She now watches her heart play trucks with two other boys his age. Her moon baby. Her wildflower. Her ocean soul.

Around her, the classroom is a museum of enthusiastic art displays: colorful handprints, a kindness tree, a guess-the-smell chart on which one little girl answered “wine,” and tissue collages. The colorful rug at the center of the room has all the letters of the alphabet and ten wooden cubbies house ten individual lunch boxes—hearts, superheroes, princesses—each a little dingier than when they were so lovingly selected at the start of the year.

It wasn’t that long ago that Rhea’s experience at this school had been not as a parent, but as a nanny, though she doesn’t advertise that. To a little blond girl who, at just three years old, attended Kumon for tutoring, loved sloths, and hated the smell of yogurt, and Rhea thought, as she took in the sparkling school, slightly dumbfounded, slightly awestruck: If I ever have a baby, this is it.

This is Little Academy, a small, private preschool on the campus of RiverRock Church. Rhea’s not religious, but she sees the value in a strong moral upbringing at this age, good versus evil, wrong and right, and all that.

Over by the sink, Bodhi’s teacher, Miss Ollie, helps Noelle Brandt unscrew the top of an Elmer’s glue, then comes over to join Rhea.

“I’m glad we could connect finally,” says Miss Ollie, dusting her hands off on a bright yellow maxi skirt as she sits. The tails of a chambray top are tied at her waist. She looks like a Disney princess, with her candy-apple cheeks and pearly pageant teeth. “It’s been hard to reach you by email.”

Rhea runs her fingers through her long strands of inky black hair, interlaced with a few subtle streaks of mauve. A gorgeous willow tree tattoo with deep, intricate roots appears to sway on the pale inside of her forearm. It’s not easy to look dignified while squatting on a tiny chair made for tiny-assed children, but she’s making it work.

“I must not have gotten them,” says Rhea, which might be true, who knows. She gets hundreds of emails a week. Her burgeoning business, Terrene, a curated essential oil collection (super easy to use and accessible) is a one-woman show and she’s that woman.

“Or phone.”

“I’m here now.” Though only because Miss Ollie waylaid her at drop-off this morning.

There was a big fuss amongst the other parents when Miss Erin Ollie joined the staff of Little Academy. She has a PhD in child development and Rhea doesn’t have one clue what she’s doing here teaching toddlers like some kind of Preschool Poppins, but you do you.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bodhi pick up a toy bus and move out of her line of sight. She resists the urge to keep her eyes on him. The instinct to watch over him is nearly impossible to turn off in his presence. She missed his first cry, his first breath. She doesn’t know what the first thing her son experienced in this world was, but it wasn’t her. Maybe it’s because she was still asleep when the umbilical cord was cut that she still feels it tying her to Bodhi like a phantom limb.

“Bodhi’s looking a little thin,” says Miss Ollie. “For his age, I mean.”