The Goal (Off-Campus #4)(98)

“Suck!” I shout in triumph. “Suck is the other one!”

I lunge for the dresser in the corner, where all of Jamie’s paraphernalia is stored. The door bursts open and Nana comes bustling in.

“What are you doing to that child?” she yells over the baby.

“Told you she was going to fuck up.” Ray’s right behind her and can’t wait to offer his unwanted two cents.

“Ray, that’s enough. You go eat your French toast.” Nana pushes me aside. “What’re you looking for?”

“Pacifier.” I fumble through tiny onesies, blankets, and burping cloths until I find a paci.

“Thought you were breastfeeding,” Nana comments as I try to shove the pacifier into Jamie’s mouth. Her tongue is stronger than Tucker’s ninth grade girlfriend’s. I give up after she spits it out for the fifth time.

“What do I do?” I ask Nana in desperation.

“She wants the nip,” Ray says from the door.

Is he right? Panicked, I flip up my shirt, not even caring that Ray can see my bare breast. Jamie latches on almost immediately, her whole body shaking from the crying. Small hiccups interrupt her sucks, but at least the crying has stopped. I sag onto the bed in relief.

In the middle of the room, Nana shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have ever got her hooked on the boob. Now that’s all she’s ever gonna want.”

“I like it.” Ray gives me a smarmy thumbs-up. “Nice tits, Rina.”

“Get out,” I snap, letting go of my top. Jamie gives a little cry as the fabric falls over her face. “Seriously, just get out. Nana, please.”

“You should’ve used a bottle,” Nana chides.

“You should take your shirt off,” is Ray’s helpful suggestion.

I clench my teeth. “I need some privacy. Please.”

“How you going to feed her while you’re at class?” Nana asks.

Jamie starts crying again. I pull up the shirt despite the fact that Ray is leering at me. I send another pleading glance to Nana, who finally moves toward the door.

“You go on now, Ray. Your breakfast is going to get cold.”

“This isn’t going to work, Joy,” he mutters. “That kid can’t be attached to Rina’s tit all day.”

“Leave them alone.” Nana shoots him a dirty look before addressing me. “Babies cry.”

Even before the door shuts, I whip off my shirt. Jamie quiets as I direct my nipple into her mouth. When she latches again, the tension starts to leech out of me.

Holy shit.

I don’t know if I can survive this. Her little head is dwarfed by my giant boob, but when her eyes open and her hand starts kneading me, so much love floods through my system that I grow weak.

The whole feeding process takes less than fifteen minutes. It’s the only fifteen minutes of peace I have for the next two hours. I can’t put her down. Every time I try, she starts to cry, which sets off a bout of screaming between Ray, Nana, and me. So I end up carrying her around, learning to eat with one hand, changing her diaper using three diapers because I tear off the tapes of the first two.

By the time Tucker checks in at noon, I’m an exhausted mess.

“Your daddy’s calling,” I tell Jamie as she stares at me out of slitted eyes. I’ve collapsed onto the floor, holding her bundled frame in my arms.

“How’s it going?” he asks when I answer the phone.

“I’ve had better days.” I hitch Jamie a tad higher on my shoulder. Her face burrows into my neck. “But I think you’re right. We shouldn’t have left the hospital.”

“There’s no going back now.”

“You have no idea.”

“Tell me about your morning.”

And I’m so grateful to hear his calm voice, I nearly burst out in tears. Somehow I manage to hold it together, telling him about how Jamie’s going to win Olympic medals in weightlifting because she’s already strong as fuck or that she could be a magician because she’s able to wiggle out of every blanket I’ve tried to wrap her in.

Tucker laughs and encourages me, and by the time I get off the phone, I’m convinced I can do this.





34




Sabrina


September

Motherhood is hard. Harder than I ever imagined anything could be. It’s harder than studying for my SATs. My LSAT. More challenging than that paper I had to write for the Women’s Studies course in my freshman year that came back to me looking like two red pens had engaged in a murder/suicide all over my typewritten words. More tiring than working two jobs and taking a full load of classes for four years.

My respect for Nana is through the roof. If I had to raise one kid after the other, I’d be a little cranky too. But with her help and Tucker’s, I’ve fallen into a routine that seems to work, and by the time the second week of classes launches, I’m convinced I’ve got this. After all, I’m only in class three hours—at the most—a day. And I’m not working two jobs.

This is easy.

Easy.

Until I stumble out of my last class Friday of that second week, laden with my bottles, tubes, five pounds of books, and my computer with a class assignment of more than a thousand pages of reading for the weekend. They keep piling up. When Professor Malcolm announced we’d need to read the entire chapter on culpability and intent, I waited for someone—anyone—to object. But no one did.