I am watching my daughter nursing the baby. She is incandescent, my daughter, like a Renaissance Madonna. Her skin is alabaster and her hair haloes in the sunlight that slips through the kitchen window and slides off the bones of her face. It’s the gorgeous hair some women get while pregnant—mine grew six inches during my time—and it’s thick and softly wavy, like Elizabeth Moss’s hair in Handmaid’s Tale. They look alike—my daughter and Elizabeth Moss—wide eyes, prominent chin, glorious forehead. There are a few shots of gray woven among the gold and strawberry of her hair; she’s 34. The ends are a lighter blonde from an earlier phase of her life. Motorcycles and other cities were involved.
This baby is almost four months old. She is hungry, and her little fist has a strand of my daughter’s hair that she pulls while she sucks. When she’s nursing, my daughter’s voice is a chord, in thirds, like the tone that starts an Apple computer. She’s ethereal in her gestures, too, as if her hands are moving in a different time.
Today I stop by because I’ve been to Costco and I’ve bought extra shrimp trays—my daughter’s husband Gavin loves jumbo shrimp—and she is nursing, as always, in the aqua vinyl kitchen chair, and all but her edges have disappeared. She is more light than body, as if the cells that make up the skin that gives her shape have been absorbed, leaving a honey glow where once there had been freckles, scars, dimples, mosquito bites. She’s fuzzy. That’s how I would describe it later to my husband, Bill. Fuzzy. My daughter—Callie is her name, for Calliope, which is Greek because my husband is Greek (I am not)—is a shimmering mass. The baby was sucking, sucking, sucking, and my daughter, who is delicately boned, becomes more intangible with every pulse of the baby’s rosebud lips. The look on Callie’s face is joyous. Her eyes aren’t even blue anymore—they’re the pleasant non-color of fresh, clean water. She’s disappearing the way the top half of an hourglass disappears. This does and does not surprise me.
This moment feels like church, and I don’t dare speak loudly. Callie? I whisper, trying not to disturb the air. She looks at me and smiles. The baby sucks. My daughter shimmers. She nods hello. Or goodbye. The last I see of her is a pair of beautiful elbows holding the baby, then they waver, lighten, and slide into the baby’s mouth. I reach out for Callie but find the baby in my arms. She is kicking her little legs and moving her arms like windshield wipers. I look into the baby’s eyes and see Callie in them and I am filled with love. What a precocious pink mouth, a delicate wormy thing.
I pack up the baby and buckle her into the car seat we keep in the back of my Prius. I drive home. I tell Bill what happened. He asks me if he should warm a bottle. He keeps his eyes on the baby, who I jiggle in my arms. She, or rather, the baby and Callie both, smile up at me, find their thumb and flutter their eyelids. They’ll be asleep soon. So, Bill says, the baby swallowed Callie? Is that a thing in your family? He turns his back to me and twists the burner beneath a pot of water. Then he pulls out one of our spindle-back kitchen chairs and guides me and the baby into it.
Bill has a dry sense of humor and I can’t tell when he’s teasing me. But I consider his question. I think about how when I eat certain foods—Raisin Bran, for example—I feel my mother’s mouth chewing and it embarrasses me. In church I naturally gravitate toward the alto parts of hymns although I’m a soprano. Mom was the alto.
Callie’s husband comes by that evening to take the baby home and to ask if I know where Callie might have gone. She’s not answering her cell phone. He touches his beard a lot. She’s here, Gavin, I say, tipping the beautiful baby’s head up so that Gavin can look into her eyes. See? The baby blinks her precious lids and makes a funny shape with her mouth. Gavin gives me a quizzical look. So, you haven’t seen her? He holds his arms out to take the baby. I hold her tight. He really can be a little slow. Look again, Gavin, I say calmly. This time he takes a long look at the baby, who is balling her fists and swinging an arm as if she’s bowling. Gavin tries to make eye contact with my husband, who is now standing behind me, but Bill kind of shrugs and won’t look at him.
Ok then, well. I guess we’ll head home. She’ll turn up.
I won’t let him take the baby. She’s burned a hole in the crook of my arm and I feel that if I let her go it’s only a matter of a few hours that I’ll go dead like a flat tire. It’s awkward. I brace myself and hold tighter. Gavin wiggles his fingers into the flesh of my upper arm and I stare at the curled black hairs on the back of Gavin’s knuckles. His Fitbit. Gavin’s skin smells like supermarket grape leaves. His shirt, Downy fabric softener.
Bill takes the baby from me and hands her to Gavin, then hugs me so I can’t move much. I think Callie said she was helping out at the library tonight, Bill says to Gavin. She’ll be back around seven.
Oh, Gavin says. Oh. Okay.
Take care, Gavin, Bill says.
That afternoon I’m sitting on the Starburst quilt on our bed trying to figure out if I have the same color socks on and I catch myself in the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. I’m astonished at the width of my butt, all spread out like that on the garish purple and orange shapes. I stand and let my pants drop to the ground. I take off my blouse. The light from the window is not flattering but I let myself look. Some things are obvious—my mother’s ankles puff out above my sandals. When I lift my arms, the skin waffles in a way that makes me remember when I saw my mother—probably 60 by then—naked, and was shocked at the minute puckering of her thigh skin, like a thousand tiny dimples on a fleshy plain. It’s clear to me now that mother is inside my body, has been there all along. She’s stuffed my waist with rubbery pads and corded up the veins behind my legs. Why, Mom? I look into my own eyes and there’s an impishness in them. Mom is having a laugh at my expense. It’s kind of mean.
Don’t be judge-y, my mother says. She communicates easily now that I know what I know. The full disappearing takes decades, she says; Callie won’t even feel it. God, remember when that baby was born? Game 5, the 2004 World Series. No one slept. Seven wins in a row. It was incredible.
A raspberry age spot erupts right in front of my ear. Bill! I shout. He comes. Do I look older to you?
Older than what?
I’ve got my mother’s big fat veins behind my knees.
It’s ok. Lots of ladies do.
And this! I pointed to the angry-looking raspberry growing on my temple.
That’s new? Bill asks.
I want my daughter back. I need to hold her. I want to fit my granddaughter back into the burned-out space of my arms, to plug the hole. So, after Bill is asleep and well into his snoring, I take the spare set of car keys from the flour tin where I hide them (I’m not allowed to drive at night; cataracts), sneak out of the house and start the miraculously silent Prius. I drive to Gavin and Callie’s (my Callie!) and park. Their house is on a very pretty street with flowering pear trees on both sides. They have several azalea bushes in front of the house and it’s late spring so they’re flowering a lovely magenta. The roses will come next, which I always admire. There’s a light on in Gavin’s study. He’s at the computer. The nursery is also giving off a faint glow, which I know is the baby’s lamb-face nightlight. I hate that light. It looks like a goat’s head glowing orange in the dark.
I creep across the street to the rose trellis. It’s sturdy. I know because Bill built it and everything Bill builds is made to last 100 years. (Ask me about our kitchen sometime when I’m not busy. I can barely open the silverware drawer using both hands.) I take a good hold of the trellis, get a foothold, and lift myself. The nursery window is on the first floor; it’s an easy climb.
Mother is tssking in my ear. I tell her to shut up.
The thorns are a problem and my calves itch from the scratches and I can tell there are tiny beads of blood rising to the surface of my skin. I feel the weakness of my thighs as I try to lift my leg to a higher foothold. Sweat moistens my forehead. I nose a toe through the vegetation, test the next trellis bar under my weight, step and pull myself up until I reach the window and open it (don’t you ever lock up, Gavin?). I wiggle my body through the window, grab the edge of the braided nursery rug and pull myself inside. My elbows rest on the floor but my hips are jackknifed in the window. I rock my hips side to side until I can slide into the room. My thighs sting: I might have taken off a layer of skin. The Satan light stares at me.
That’s just hideous, my mother says.
The baby is sleeping on her back, her seashell-white arms raised above her head. Her lips blow little bubbles when she breathes out. Her eyelids are the most beautiful peach, and there’s blue movement behind them. I try to quiet what is now shouting coming from my mother. The noise coagulates in the area above my ears and I rub my temples to quiet it. Let me be.
The baby makes a sweet noise and kicks her legs. She knows I’m here. They know.
My darlings, I’m here. Mama’s here. My loves, my angelic nesting dolls—what a miracle this all is!—I am here.
She opens her eyes. I lift her, staring into those eyes, her kind, wise, loving, daughter/granddaughter eyes. I unbutton my dress and pull out my breast. It flops like a water balloon half-filled with warm water. Here you go, love. Mama’s here.
The baby goes for it but when her little lips latch onto me she makes a twisted face and gives a scream so heartrending that tears spring to my eyes.
No, baby, it’s alright. It’s alright. Ssssh, ssshhhh, I whisper. But the baby screams louder and louder until she’s bright red and sweating angry dew on her forehead and her mouth is an open rim of fury and damn, there are footsteps coming down the hall and there is Gavin in the doorway staring at me with a look like he’s just swallowed snakes and he yells, CALLIE!
And there’s my daughter, my Callie, in the doorway and she says Mom—Mom? She comes to me and takes the very loud baby and gives it to Gavin, and she buttons my dress. She’s being very gentle with me and talking in a calm, soft voice but I can feel the shaking of her hands as she touches me and moves me out of the nursery and down the hall to her kitchen to that aqua blue vinyl chair. Mom, Mom. Are you alright, Mom. Did you climb up the trellis, Mom? Mom?
And I’m thinking my god you have no idea how you lose your children from the moment they’re born, even though that’s not what you want, not what you ever want, ever, and every day there’s more loss and that is what motherhood is, and one day you’ll know this and it will break your heart, and I tell her all this without making a sound. And my daughter holds my hand and tells me it’s alright, it’s alright, and she smiles at me, as if she hasn’t heard.
LESLEY BANNATYNE received the 2018 Bosque Literary Journal fiction prize, the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award first place for fiction and theghoststory.com 2020 summer fiction prize. Her work has been published in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Pangyrus, Craft, and other literary magazines. Her debut collection of short stories, Unaccustomed to Grace, came out March 8, 2022 from Kallisto Gaia Press. As a freelance journalist, Lesley has covered stories ranging from druids in Massachusetts to relief workers in Bolivia. She writes extensively on popular culture, and her most recent non-fiction book, Halloween Nation, was short-listed for a Bram Stoker Award. Lesley’s master’s in Creative Writing is from Harvard Extension Studies and she lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts.
http://lesleybannatyne.com
https://independent.academia.edu/LesleyBannatyne
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DANZHU HU is an award-winning visual storyteller, currently specializing in illustration and fine art painting. After graduating with a B.E. degree, she received her master’s degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology, MFA Illustration program. Hu loves exploring the infinite possibilities of visual storytelling by experimenting with different media. For her, it’s all about playfulness. Her work is whimsical yet vulnerable, playful yet melancholic, with a touch of symbolism. Through her practice, Hu wishes to create a world where the most cryptic, subtle, and complicated emotions can be captured, translated, and cherished.