The Push(14)

I tried to do better. Becoming a father had made you so beautiful. Your face had changed. Warm. Soft. Your brows lifted more and your mouth was always agape when she was near you. Goofy. You had become a brighter version of the man I knew. I yearned for those things to happen to me, too. But I had become hardened. My face looked angry and tired where life had once lifted my cheekbones and glowed through my blue eyes. I looked like my mother had, right before she left me.





17





Somewhere in our seventh month together, Violet finally started napping for more than twenty minutes at a time. I went back to my writing. I didn’t mention it to you—you always insisted that I sleep while she napped during the day, and asked me when you got home if I had. That was the only thing you cared about. You wanted me alert and patient. You wanted me rested so I could perform my duties. You used to care about me as a person—my happiness, the things that made me thrive. Now I was a service provider. You didn’t see me as a woman. I was just the mother of your child.

And so I lied to you most days because it was easier that way: Yes, I napped. Yes, I got some rest. But actually, I had been working on a short story. The sentences poured from me. I couldn’t remember words flowing this easily before. I’d been prepared for the opposite to happen; other women writers with babies warned of drained energy and brains that couldn’t function on the page like they used to, at least for the first year. But I seemed to come alive when my screen went on.

Violet would wake like clockwork after two hours, and I was deep in the zone every time—I felt physically and emotionally elsewhere. I got into the habit of letting her cry, promising myself just one more page. Sometimes I slipped on my headphones. Sometimes one page turned into two. Or more. Sometimes I wrote for another hour. When her pitch became frantic enough, I’d flip down my laptop screen and rush to her as though I’d just heard her for the first time. Oh, hello there! You’re awake now! Come see Mommy. I don’t know who I was doing this performance for. I felt deeply embarrassed as she pushed me away when I tried to soothe her. How could I have blamed her for rejecting me?



* * *



? ? ?

The day you came home early.

I didn’t hear you walk in over her screams and the music in my ears. My heart stopped when you whipped my chair around. You nearly tipped me over. You ran to the bedroom as though the baby was on fire. I held my breath as I listened to you calm her down. She was hysterical.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” you told her.

You were so sorry I was her mother. That’s what you had meant.

You didn’t bring her out of the nursery. I sat on the floor in the hallway knowing nothing would be the same between us again. I had broken your trust. I had confirmed every doubt you quietly held about me.

When I finally went in you were rocking her in the chair and your eyes were closed and your head was back. She hiccuped on the pacifier.

I walked toward the chair to take her from you, but your arm lifted to hold me back.

“What the fuck were you doing?”

I knew better than to make excuses for myself. I had never seen your hands shake with anger before.

I went into the shower and I cried until the water was cold.

When I came out you were scrambling eggs while she sat on your hip.

“She wakes up from her nap every day at three. It was four forty-five when I walked in.”

I watched the spatula scrape the frying pan.

“You let her scream for over an hour and a half.”

I couldn’t look at either of you.

“Does this happen every day?”

“No,” I said firmly. As though that would save my dignity.

We still hadn’t looked each other in the eye. Violet began fussing.

“She’s hungry. Feed her.” You passed her to me and I did.



* * *



? ? ?

In bed that night you rolled away from me and spoke toward the open window.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’m sorry.”

“You need to talk to someone. A doctor.”

“I will.”

“I’m worried for her.”

“Fox. Please. Don’t be.”

I would never have hurt her. I would never have put her in danger.



* * *



? ? ?

For years afterward, long after she began sleeping through the night, I would wake to the sound of her crying. I would clutch my chest and remember what I’d done. I would remember the cramp of guilt and the overruling satisfaction of ignoring her. I remembered the thrill of writing over the fusion of music and tears. How quickly the page filled. How fast my heart raced. How shameful it felt to be exposed.





18





My mother couldn’t be in small spaces. The pantry closet in my childhood home was unused, the shelves dusty and scattered with turds from mice that had come for the stale peanuts and an old, open bag of sugar. The backyard shed was locked. The basement, with its low ceiling, was boarded up with three two-by-fours and rusty nails from the garage that Cecilia had hammered in herself.

When I was eight, on a deathly hot day in August, I sat outside our stifling home and watched my mother smoke at the plastic table on the rough, yellow grass that covered our yard from one rotting chain-link fence to the other. There was silence in the air, as though even the sounds from the neighborhood couldn’t travel through the thickness I could barely force into my lungs. Earlier that day I’d been at the Ellingtons’ house and Mrs. Ellington had sent us into the cold, dank basement for a reprieve. We’d pretended we were having a picnic down there. She brought us a blanket and boiled eggs and apple juice in paper cups with balloons on them, left over from Daniel’s birthday party. I asked my mother if we could go down to our basement, too. Couldn’t we take the boards off? Couldn’t we use the back side of the hammer to pull the nails out, like Dad did to fix the front porch last weekend?