The Push

I was so disappointed she was mine.

I knew some of her behavior could be classified as typical. You wrote it off as being just a phase, toddler crankiness, the symptoms of a developmental leap. Fair enough, I tried to convince myself. But she was missing the inherent sweetness of other children her age. She so rarely showed affection. She didn’t seem happy—not anymore. I saw a sharpness inside her that sometimes looked physically painful. I could see it in her face.

We joked about toddler life with other people who had kids, as parents do, looking for reassurance. We would commiserate with the tables beside us as we all raced through early-bird dinners at restaurants with sticky high chairs. I would downplay how bad she could be, knowing you wanted me to. I would agree, as I was supposed to, that the moments in between the chaos made up for all the rest. But she was cyclonic. And I was increasingly scared of her.

I desperately wanted more time to myself. I wanted a break from her. These seemed like reasonable requests to me, but you made me feel like I still had to prove myself to you. Your lingering doubt, although it was silent, was so heavy that sometimes it was hard to breathe around you.

I could write only when she was asleep, but she never napped long, and so we’d fallen back into our secret routine, as much as I promised myself I wouldn’t do that to her again. I let it happen only a few days a week. And I always tried to make it up to her—a cookie on our afternoon walk, a nice long bath time.

I knew these days were numbered—she would soon be able to talk, to tell you what happened in her day, and then I would lose this power I so shamefully held. Perhaps this was part of my justification. My behavior was pathological. But I couldn’t stop punishing her for being there. How easy it was to slip on my headphones and pretend she did not exist.

One day was particularly tough. She became angry every time I went near her, kicking and slapping. She slammed her head against the wall and then looked at me to see what I would do. And then she did it again. She hadn’t eaten all day. I knew she was starving but she wouldn’t let food cross her lips because it was me who was offering. I had spent the entirety of her nap crying, looking up early signs of behavioral disorders on the internet and then deleting the history from the browser. I didn’t want you to see it, and I didn’t want to be a mother with that kind of child.

She gave up the fight mere minutes before you came home, as though she could hear your feet step off the elevator. I placed her on my hip while I cleaned the living room. She was stiff. Quiet. She smelled a little stale. Her sleeper was rough against my arm, the cotton pilled from too many washes.

I handed her to you, still in your nice office sweater. I explained how she got the red welt on her head. I didn’t care if you believed me or not.

“Honey.” You tried to laugh to quell your judgment as you tickled her on the carpet. “Is she really that bad? I thought things were getting better.”

I slumped on the couch. “I don’t know. I’m just so tired.”

I couldn’t tell you the truth: that I believed there was something wrong with our daughter. You thought the problem was me.

“Here.” You held her out to me. She was licking a piece of cheese you gave her. “She’s calm. She’s fine. Just cuddle with her. Show her some love.”

“Fox, this isn’t about love. Or affection. I try that all the time.”

“Just hold her.”

I put her on my lap and waited for her to shove me away, but she sat there, content, sucking on her soggy cheddar. We watched you unpack your briefcase. “Dada,” she said. “Baba.”

You passed her the bottle from the coffee table and she sank back into me.

“I don’t think you understand,” I said quietly, careful not to disrupt her. Her weight on my body was comforting, and I began to calm down. I felt like someone who’d been lost at sea having human contact again. I ran my finger along her forehead, brushing back her wispy fringe. She let me kiss her. She pulled the bottle away from her mouth and sighed—we were both so tired of fighting each other.

“Are you napping when she naps?” You spoke quietly, too, studying us.

“I can’t nap,” I snapped, the calm draining from my chest. She wiggled away from me. “There’s too much to do. Laundry. I’m trying to write. My mind won’t stop spinning.”

I tossed the bottle onto the coffee table and a squirt of milk sprayed on the pages I’d printed. I was thinking of showing them to you that night—it had been so long since you asked about what I was working on. I watched the beads of milk drip from the rubber nipple onto my sentences, blotting the ink.

You changed your clothes and came back and fell onto the couch beside me. Your hand patted my thigh. There was a time I would have asked about your day. The sadness of the distance that had grown between us again over the past few months was something we didn’t discuss. I was willing to let it fester in the background, and it seemed you were, too.

“What’s that?” You gestured to the wet pages.

“Nothing.”

“Confirm her day-care spot, if you want to. But only three days a week, okay? We didn’t budget for this.” You rubbed your forehead.

I tried my best for the rest of that week. But we fell back into our daily combat. She started day care the following Monday and I can still feel the enormous sense of relief that washed over me when I placed her down on the welcome mat. She stared at her yellow rain boots until the teacher came to take her hand. She didn’t look at me when I said good-bye and I never turned around as I walked away across the wet lawn and out of the gate.