“He looks just like Violet,” you said, peering over my shoulder.

But he didn’t look a thing like her to me. He was seven pounds of something so pure, so blissful, that it felt as though he might float away above me, a dream, something I would never deserve for as long as I lived. I held him for hours, my skin stuck to his, until they made me get up for the bathroom. The blood poured from me into the toilet and when I looked down at the mess, for some reason I thought of our daughter again. And then I stepped slowly back to my son in the glass bassinet outside the bathroom door.

I remember so little else about how he came into this world.

I remember everything about how he left it.

1969

Cecilia got her period when she was twelve years old. By then she had breasts larger than any other girl in her class. She walked with her shoulders rolled forward, trying to hide the new signs of her womanhood. Etta wasn’t speaking to her much at that point, let alone broaching the subject of puberty with her. Cecilia had heard from other girls about the bleeding, but still her heart stopped when she saw her wet, red underwear. She went through her mother’s cupboards looking for sanitary pads, but there were none. She doubled over in pain on the bathroom floor, saw the blood come through her pants, and decided she should tell her mother.

Etta didn’t answer when Cecilia knocked on her mother’s door, but there was nothing unusual about that—it was three o’clock and she slept most afternoons. She went to Etta’s bedside and whispered her name until she startled awake. Etta sighed when Cecilia told her what had happened—in pity or disgust, Cecilia wasn’t sure.

“What do you want from me?”

She didn’t answer because she didn’t know. Her throat tightened. Etta opened her bedside drawer and took out two pills from a small red makeup bag that she hid from Henry. She held them out to Cecilia and slipped her other hand under the pillow and closed her eyes.

Cecilia stared at the little white pills, placed them on the bedside table, and left the bedroom. She found her mother’s purse in the hallway and took whatever change she had to the pharmacy. Her face burned as she paid for the pads, looking away from the young man at the cash register. At home she ran a hot bath and Etta came in to use the toilet just as she sank into the tub. Etta peed with her eyes closed.

Later that afternoon, Cecilia stood outside Etta’s bedroom door. An unfamiliar rage crept up her chest. She charged inside and flipped on the light. Standing at the foot of her mother’s bed with tight fists, she realized that she wanted Etta to hurt her. Being smacked by her at least meant that she existed in Etta’s small, sad world. By then Cecilia had felt for months like she was dead to her mother. Etta stirred awake and looked at her.

“Hit me, Etta,” she said, shaking. “Go on. Hit me!”

She’d never called her mother by her first name before.

Etta’s expression was empty. She looked from Cecilia’s trembling face to the light switch on the wall and she sighed again. She put her head back down and closed her eyes. Henry’s footsteps traveled through the front foyer downstairs and into the kitchen. He’d been looking for dinner but there wasn’t any. Not today. The two pills Etta had given her were still on the bedside table. Cecilia wasn’t sure why she didn’t want Henry to see them. She took them and flushed them down the toilet.

“Is she not feeling well again?” Henry was filling the kettle when Cecilia came into the kitchen.

“Headache,” she said. They were all so good at lying for one another, at pretending things weren’t as bad as they were. He nodded and looked again for leftovers in the fridge. Cecilia turned on the radio to fill the room so that they didn’t have to say anything more.

37

I wonder if you ever noticed the things about him that I lived for?

The way he flung his arms above his head like a teenager while he slept. The smell of his feet at the end of the day, just before his bath. How he’d pop up on his arms when he heard the creak of the door in the morning, desperately seeking me through the bars of the crib. And so I never asked you to oil the hinges.

He’s been heavy in me today. Sometimes this just happens. Distinct, dense, aching days that make everything around me taste sour. I want only him, but the real world threatens to quiet his noises, his smells.

I want to breathe him in deeply and never breathe out ever again.

Do you feel this sometimes, too?

Those first days. Sour milk and body odor. Nipple cream staining the sheets. A constant ring of tea on the bedside table. I cried without thinking, without knowing why, but the tears were a release of love. My milk came in and my breasts were boulders, and I barely moved from that spot. I jiggled him to sleep on my naked chest. He startled every so often, throwing his skinny little arms right up, and then curling back into me. And then we’d start again. There was no day or night. My nipples stung at the thought of feeding him next.

And yet. I didn’t want that time with him to end. He was everything I had ever wanted. The connection we shared was the only thing I could feel. I craved the physical weight of him on top of me. So this is it, I would think. This is what it’s supposed to be like. I drank him in like water.

He would lift his head from between my breasts and wobble it around like he was searching, trying to find his mama, looking for the person he loved. I would put my cheek down to touch his and then he would rest again, safe and happy and full. Of milk, of me.