Lies She Told(50)

My thighs tremble as I ascend the last step into a narrow park. The past five hours was more exercise than my body was equipped to handle. I am not in shape. The biggest pain, however, isn’t in my wobbly legs. The night without nursing has swollen my breasts into two water balloons. One of my nipples has already sprung a leak. A circular stain darkens the fabric on the left side of the tank top. I’m lucky it’s black.

It’s 6:30 AM when I ring my mother’s doorbell. She welcomes me in with a yawning smile. The circles beneath her eyes are darker than yesterday. Victoria still wakes up every two hours at night. Interrupted dreams are a form of torture.

“What are you doing here so early?” she asks, pulling me inside as though the summer air isn’t a balmy seventy degrees already.

I gesture to my top. “I need to nurse. The pump doesn’t work like the baby.”

My mom pokes my hardened breasts. A vein that I didn’t know existed bulges beneath the cleavage popping above the tank’s scoop neck. “That looks painful, Beth!”

She steps back into the house and gestures to the stroller. “I fed her a bottle about an hour ago. She likes it better in there than the Pack ’n Play.”

I lift Vicky from the bassinet. Her tongue protrudes from her petite mouth at my scent, though her eyes remain closed. I pull the right breast up over the tank top’s neckline. She latches on in her half-asleep state and pulls the milk from my body. It’s a release better than any I have ever known. I could fall asleep like this.

Milk dribbles down the tank from the leaking left breast. My mother asks if I need a towel.

“I hate this shirt anyway,” I say.

“It looks nice on you.” My mom tilts her head. “The pants aren’t right though. Maybe the waist is a bit boxy.”

Vicky starts coughing. I remove her from my chest and pat her back while the spray from the right nipple soaks whatever dry fabric remained on my top. “Sorry, baby,” I say as I hold her upright against my shoulder.

“Let me get you a towel.”

“It’s all right, Mom. You know what you could get me though? Something from my old closet. A T-shirt. Maybe a pair of old jeans.”

“Everything is from college.”

“I’ll squeeze.”

I put Vicky back into nursing position. She fusses as she drinks from one milk fountain and then the other, annoyed by the speed at which the liquid rushes from my body. When I burp her, there is a deep gurgling sound. Moments later, my clothes are coated in sour milk vomit.

Vicky settles down right after. Possibly she’d already been full and had only nursed because she wanted to be near me. More likely, there was something wrong with my milk. All the adrenaline in my blood stream probably poisoned the supply. I fed my baby rotten milk. Tears threaten to fall from the thought. I’d rather be a murderer than a bad mother.

As I’m placing Victoria back in the bassinet, my mom comes down the stairs holding a blue Columbia tank top and drawstring sweat pants, one of those college gym outfits that everyone lives in for four years. I probably left it here because I was sick of wearing it.

She wrinkles her nose as she looks at me. “Give it here.” She holds out one hand with my outfit and the other for the soiled clothing clinging to my chest. “I’ll wash it.”

I grab the hem of the tank and bring it up to my breasts, distributing the baby vomit. “It’s done, Mom. I’ll put it in the trash.”

“But—”

“It didn’t fit right, anyway.”

I ball up the top and walk it, near naked, to the kitchen garbage. As my mom protests, I push it deep inside the plastic bag with the other refuse: uneaten pasta and red sauce from the smell of it. “Really, Mom, that outfit was ruined.” I slip the shirt over my head and then go into the bathroom where I jostle into the oversized sweats. Colleen’s pants follow her shirt into the trash.

“I could have washed those.” My mom shakes her head at me as though I am the most wasteful woman in the world for throwing out perfectly good clothing saturated in human fluids.

“I need a favor.”

She eyes me. When I said these words yesterday, she ended up not sleeping all night. She quickly covers the distrustful look with a tight smile and nods at me to continue. I am her daughter. She’d do anything for me—even if she doesn’t like it.

“Jake cancelled on me last night and—”

“Oh, honey. I’m sorry. Was it work? Did you at least get to see him a—”

“I went out with a friend and spent the night. I’d rather Jake think I was here.”

My mom folds her arms across her chest, a perfect replica of my own skeptical stance—or, rather, the original version. I’m the imitator. “What friend?”

I lower my head as though ashamed. A normal person would feel that way. Clearly, something is wrong with me. “A male coworker.”

“Oh, Beth.”

“I was lonely and wanted the attention. Nothing happened. I just drank a bit too much. I’m not used to it now that I’m nursing. I passed out on his couch.”

My mother frowns. She hates cheaters. My father was a philanderer. She hates my father. Now I seem as though I took after him.

“I’m not proud of it, Mom. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again. I was disappointed that Jake canceled, and I’ve been a bit depressed, honestly, being home with Vicky all the time.” I’m playing the overwhelmed mom card. That always gets a bit of compassion. “Jake is always working late. I went out for a drink by myself and ran into this guy—”