The Burning Side(34)

Last time hangs like a weight around my neck, the memory of postpartum darkness ripping through me like labor pains. God knows why I thought it would be different, but it is nauseatingly similar, and I suddenly don’t have it in me to do all this again.

Post-birth contractions are still racking me when Leo smiles at me from beside the hospital bed, as though he is willing me to do the same. His pure devotion irritates me. His immediate love. His unmarred body and milkless chest. He takes my hand tenderly, making my blood run hot with shame. The bath of emotions after birth isn’t supposed to be a bath of anger. But my birth was wrong, my body is wrong, my feelings are wrong.

Taking Otto home is like traveling back in time. I had forgotten the exhaustion and clots of blood and cracked nipples. The piercing cry of an infant who just wants more milk.

Two things are different this time. First, I’m older. And if I thought my body felt foreign the first time, this time it’s downright grotesque. Skin is loose in places I didn’t know it could be.

Second, we have an older child who seems to be baby-blind. She asks me to get her a snack or tie her shoe when I’m half-dressed with the baby clamping his gums on my breast. She talks to me as if there’s no brother there at all, as if I’m merely standing barefoot in the kitchen waiting to serve Her Highness. She wants more from me now that my attention is divided.

During this pregnancy, the school reopened and Leo started working very long hours. I assumed he might scale back after the birth, but I was wrong. And we can only afford for him to take one week off. So he went from being trapped in this house to never being home, and I miss the parents I thought we’d be.

It’s not just Leo—it’s me too. I love my children with ferocity, but I’m nothing like I expected. Not with Sadie, and definitely not with Otto. I have no energy. I’m not doting or euphoric or baking treats in the kitchen or posing my children in sweet outfits. In fact, many days evaporate without us getting dressed at all, the same drool-wet onesie draped on Otto’s little body for far too long. My breasts throb, empty, fill, throb, empty, fill. I shower to get away from my kids, and I sleep to get away from myself. But it’s never quite enough. Leo is too gone, and I am too here.

I figure it out on my own: the thousand daily routines with two young children, when and how to manage naps, the positions in which the baby likes and doesn’t like to be held, all their changing idiosyncrasies. It’s exhausting. And Leo doesn’t know the intimate and ever-shifting minutiae of our children like I do. Watching him try is more exhausting than just doing it myself.

He does make a point to tuck Sadie in most nights. But other than that, it’s me and a colicky infant and a thinks-she’s-independent preschooler, a lone trio of domestic survival.

The worst thing about colic is its unfixability. Otto will be fed and dry and burped and warm and held and still crying and crying and crying. In this shrill isolation, I turn on myself, the easiest target. My self-loathing becomes an addiction: I need bigger hits to get the same results. I hate my stomach, breasts, thighs, face. I hate how I read, how I cook, how I mother, how I need.

Maybe this is only a season, but so is winter. And even one single winter day, if severe enough, is not survivable. This, of course, is an unacceptable thought for me to have. An unacceptable reaction to the happy season of bringing new life into the world. So I don’t share these thoughts with Leo, or with Mom, or with anyone.

One morning, I decide to broach Leo’s increasing absence.

Otto is nestled in my numb arm as I stir oatmeal with the other, because he cries if he’s put down. And don’t tell me about all the rocking and vibrating gadgets that work like charms. He knows the difference, and he cries. Sometimes I wonder if that’s half of what colic is: a refusal to accept a fake. I know his need is temporary, but it’s constant. I can barely slather peanut butter onto a piece of bread for Sadie. So I ask Leo if he could maybe come home earlier.

But he says tiredly, “You have no idea how hard it’s been in the schools.”

I blink. He’s right, I don’t. My old classrooms are distant lands. All I am now is a mother.

After that, Leo does come home earlier. Twice. Then the minutes stretch back into hours, and I won’t ask again. I won’t say that he has no idea how hard it’s been in the house.



* * *



After many tenuous weeks, I get a burst of motivated energy and make a quiche for breakfast one Saturday. The aroma of ham spreads through the kitchen like a promise.

I put on makeup. Mascara, even. I set out the latest Smithsonian for Leo, and I light a candle. The effort is extravagant for a woman whose nipples stand at attention and dribble whenever the baby makes a peep.

I smile when Leo comes into the kitchen, mirroring the days when we were newly married and I would try to cook like my mom, eager to impress him.

Sadie is crawling around the kitchen floor, meowing. We will have a good weekend, I decide. A good weekend as a good family. We have all the ingredients.

Leo, however, passes through the room like a phantom. He fills a travel mug of coffee, says he has a lot to do, and then walks out the door with no further explanation. Not even a perfunctory peck on the forehead. He didn’t notice the magazine or the candle or the hope pouring from my eyes.

I hear the car start. The engine is loud, faint, fainter.

He will stay gone all day, I’m certain of it. Still meowing, Sadie headbutt-hugs me and grabs a fistful of my belly. I blow out the candle and fight tears. It will be Otto’s witching hour soon, so I sit down with a slice of quiche and bring the warm weight of him to my breast, dropping bits of crust onto his downy head and trying to count those crumbs like blessings. I had a perfect childhood, perfect parents, my own perfect romance and perfect children. Unhappiness is a privilege I have not earned. And so I dry my eyes.