Far from the Tree(2)
Her dad, though. He could barely look at Grace. She knew she had disappointed him, that even though he still loved her, Grace was a different person now, and she would never be the same Grace again. He must have felt like they swapped out his daughter for a new model (“Now with baby inside!”), a Grace 2.0.
Grace knew this because she felt the same way.
Grace was forty weeks and three days when homecoming rolled around. Janie had kept asking her to go, saying they could go in a group with friends or something, which was probably both the dumbest and sweetest thing she had ever said to Grace. Her words were always tinged with apology, like she knew she was saying the wrong thing but didn’t know how to stop herself. It’ll be fun! she texted Grace, but Grace didn’t respond.
When school had started up that year, Grace hadn’t gone back with everyone else. She was too pregnant, too round, too exhausted. Also, there was the risk of her going into labor one day during AP Chem and traumatizing everyone in the junior class. She wasn’t exactly disappointed by this decision. By the time summer vacation had rolled around, she had grown tired of feeling like a sideshow freak, people giving her so much room in the hallways that she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched her, even accidentally.
Peach was born at 9:03 p.m. on homecoming night, right when Max was being crowned homecoming king because, Grace thought bitterly, boys who get girls pregnant are heroes and girls who get pregnant are sluts. Leave it to Peach to steal Max’s thunder, though. The first thing Grace’s daughter ever did and it was genius. She was so proud. It was like Peach knew she was the heir to the throne and had arrived to claim her tiara.
Peach came out of her like fire, like she had been set aflame. There was Pitocin and white-hot pain that seared Grace’s spine and ribs and hips into rubble. Her mother held her hand and wiped her hair back from her sweaty forehead and didn’t mind that Grace kept calling her Mommy, like she had when she was four years old. Peach twisted and shoved her way through her, like she knew that Grace was just a vessel for her and that her real parents, Daniel and Catalina, were waiting outside, ready to take Peach home to her real life.
Peach had places to be, people to see, and she was done with Grace.
Sometimes, when it was late at night and Grace let herself drift to that dark place in her brain, she thought that she would have been okay if only she hadn’t held Peach, if she hadn’t felt her skin and smelled the top of her head and seen that she had Max’s nose and Grace’s dark hair. But the nurse had asked Grace if she wanted to, and she ignored her mother’s worried eyes, her lip caught between her teeth. She reached out and took Peach from the nurse, and she didn’t know how else to explain except to say that Peach fit, she fit into Grace’s arms like she had fit beneath her rib cage, nestled there soft and safe, and even though Grace’s body felt like soot and ashes, her head felt as if it had been washed clean for the first time in ten months.
Peach was perfect. Grace was not.
And Peach deserved perfect.
Catalina and Daniel didn’t call her Peach, of course. No one knew about that nickname except for Grace. And Peach. They called her Amelía Marie instead. Milly for short.
They had always said that it could be an open adoption. They wanted it to be that way, Catalina especially. Privately, Grace thought Catalina felt a little guilty that Peach was becoming her baby. “We can set up visitation,” Catalina said one day when they met in the adoption counselor’s office. “Or send you photos. Whatever makes you comfortable, Grace.”
But after Peach—Milly—was born, Grace didn’t trust herself. She couldn’t imagine seeing her again and not taking her back. Right after she was born, Grace was flying on the sort of adrenaline that she imagined only Olympic athletes could experience, and she was half ready to jump up, tuck Peach under her arm, and run like a linebacker toward the end zone. She probably could have run a marathon with her, and what scared her was that she knew she wouldn’t have brought Peach back.
Grace didn’t remember giving Peach—Milly—over to Daniel and Catalina. One moment, her daughter was in her arms, and the next, she was gone, riding away with strangers, someone else’s daughter and lost to Grace forever.
Her body remembered, though. It had ushered Peach into the world, and it mourned her when Grace got home from the hospital. She locked her bedroom door and writhed in agony, one of Peach’s receiving blankets clutched in her fist as she choked into it, sobs pressing down on her chest, her heart, crushing her from the inside. She didn’t want her mother anymore. This wasn’t a pain that she or the doctors could take away. Grace’s body twisted on the bed in a way that it hadn’t during her labor, like it was confused about where Peach had gone, and her toes curled and her hands flexed. Grace had delivered Peach, but now it felt like she had truly left her. She was untethered, floating away.
Grace stayed in her bedroom for a while. She lost track after ten days.
After two weeks of staying in the dark, she went downstairs and interrupted her parents’ breakfast. They both stared at her like they had never seen her before, and in a way, they hadn’t. Grace 3.0 (“Now with no baby!”) was here to stay.
And then she said the words that her parents had dreaded hearing for the past sixteen years, ever since the day Grace had been born. Not “I’m pregnant” or “my water broke” or “there was an accident.”