A Different Blue(120)

arms were back around us, and we stood that way for a very long time, propping each other up, as

gratitude and sorrow met and merged and silent bonds were forged. I found myself offering up a

prayer for the very first time. A prayer to the Great Spirit that Jimmy had believed in. A

prayer to the God that had created life and let it grow in me. A prayer for the child who would

never call me Mother, and for the woman whom she would. And I prayed He would take away my pain,

and if He couldn't do that, then would He, please, take away my love? Because the pain and the

love were so intertwined that I couldn't seem to have one without the other. Maybe if I didn't

love, I wouldn't hurt so much. I felt Wilson's arms enclose me and bear my weight as Tiffa and

Jack eventually released me and stepped back.

When I was discharged from the hospital, Wilson took me home, helped me into bed, and stayed

with me through the night once more. Never once did he complain or offer empty words or

platitudes. He was just there when I needed him most. And I leaned on him, probably more than I

should have. I didn't let myself think about it or question it. I allowed myself to be taken

care of and forbade myself introspection.

In the days that followed, Wilson gave me more and more space, and we fell back into a pattern

that resembled the days and weeks leading up to Melody's birth. I went back to work at the cafe

almost immediately and started carving again. In other ways, moving on was much more difficult.

Immediately after Melody's birth, I bound my breasts the way the nurses showed me, but they

ached and leaked, and I would wake up soaked, my sheets wet with milk, my nightgown sticking to

me. Washing myself was almost painful, my body felt like a stranger, and I couldn't bear to look

in the mirror and see the swollen breasts that were meant to nourish, the stomach that grew

flatter every day, and the arms that longed to hold what was no longer mine. Every once in a

while I would forget and reach down to caress my belly, only to remember that the swelling that

remained was not a child, but an empty womb. I was young and active, though, and my body

recovered quickly. Soon the only reminder that she had been part of me would be the faint

stretch marks that marred my skin. These marks became beautiful to me. Precious.

Correspondingly, I found myself unwilling to sand away the imperfections on a piece of juniper I

had been shaping and molding. The scars on the wood were like the marks on my skin, and I found

myself continually tracing them, as if removing them would signify a willingness to forget. I

ended up enlarging them, so the lines and divets became mawing canyons and shadowy recesses and

the gracefully stretching branches became twisted and tortured, like the clenched fists of empty

hands.

Wilson came to visit me in the basement one evening while I worked on the sculpture, sinking

down on an overturned pail, observing without comment.

“What are you going to call this?” he asked after a long silence.

I shrugged. I hadn't gotten that far. I looked up at him for the first time. “What do you think

I should call it?”

He gazed back at me then, and the sadness in his rain-grey eyes had me turning from him

immediately, shrinking from the compassion I saw there.

“Loss,” he whispered. I pretended not to hear. He stayed for another hour, watching me work. I

didn't even hear him leave.