1975

Cecilia knew early on she wasn’t meant to be a mother. She could feel it in her bones as womanhood set in. When she would see a child with his hand in his mother’s, dragging his feet along the ground, she’d look the other way. This was a physical reaction for her, like wincing when the water was too hot from the faucet. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have that thing other women did—she didn’t feel nurturing or see the joy of a chubby little thigh. And she certainly didn’t want to see herself reflected in another living thing.

Her period had come every month since she was twelve, like a faithful friend reminding her: You bleed. You shed. You don’t need a baby inside you. Don’t listen when the world tells you that you do.

She had dreams and freedom. But then she gave it all up.

When the baby moved inside her, sometimes Cecilia wondered if her feelings were changing. Once she stood naked in the mirror and watched the lump of the baby’s foot move across the top of her stomach, tracing the arc of a crescent moon. She laughed out loud and the baby moved some more. She laughed some more. They were having a moment of fun, the two of them.

They sedated her for the labor. The baby didn’t want to come out, so they cut Cecilia three ways and used forceps that made the baby’s head look like a triangle. When Cecilia came to, the baby was already wrapped in flannel somewhere in the patch of newborns.

“You had a girl,” the nurse said to her, like it was exactly the thing Cecilia wanted to hear.

Seb wheeled her to the window and knocked on the glass to get the nurse’s attention.

“She’s that one.” Cecilia pointed right to the baby, three rows in, four to the left.

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

The nurse picked up the baby and held her high for them to see. She was wide-eyed and still. Cecilia thought she looked just like her old doll, Beth-Anne.

The nurse asked through the glass if she wanted to feed her. Cecilia looked up at Seb and asked if they could go outside instead. He took her out through the front doors of the hospital in her slippers and nightgown, the IV pole rattling on the cement. He gave Cecilia her cigarettes and she stared at the parking lot while she smoked.

“We could get in the car now and go. Just us.” Cecilia put out the cigarette on her knee.

Seb grinned. “Those painkillers must really be working.” He turned her around to go back inside. “Come on. We have to pick a name.”

They took the baby home and put her in a bassinet on the kitchen table of his parents’ house. Cecilia’s milk never came in. The baby grew fat quickly on formula, and Cecilia thought she looked like Etta. She hardly cried at all, even at night like other babies did. Seb said to Cecilia nearly every day, “Aren’t we lucky.”

83

Her brush was tangled in my long, wet hair. My mother sat on the toilet and pulled strand after strand from the bristles. I told her again she could cut it out—I was eleven years old and I wasn’t concerned yet about how I looked. But she insisted I wouldn’t like my hair cut short. I wondered why she cared so much about this, but not much else. I was quiet while she yanked at my head. The radio played in the background and the static cut in every few seconds. I stared at the faded rainbows on my nightgown.

“Your grandmother had short hair.”

“Do you look like her?”

“Not really. We were similar in some ways, but not in our looks.”

“Will I be like you when I grow up?”

She stopped pulling at my hair for a moment. I reached up to feel the tangled brush, but she pushed my hand away.

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

“I want to be a mom, too, one day.” My mother stopped again and was quiet. She put her hand on my shoulder and held it there. I arched my back—the gentleness of her touch felt strange.

“You know, you don’t have to be. You don’t have to be a mother.”

“Do you wish you weren’t a mother?”

“Sometimes I wish I were a different kind of person.”

“Who do you wish you were?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She started pulling at the knot again. Static filled the radio, but she let it hiss. “When I was young I dreamed of being a poet.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t any good.” And then she added, “I haven’t written a word since I had you.”

That didn’t make any sense to me—that my existence in the world could have taken poetry away from her. “You could try again.”

She chuckled. “No. It’s all gone from me now.”

She paused, my hair still in her hand. I leaned back into her knees. “You know, there’s a lot about ourselves that we can’t change—it’s just the way we’re born. But some parts of us are shaped by what we see. And how we’re treated by other people. How we’re made to feel.” She finally pulled the brush free and whisked it against a fistful of my hair until it was smooth. I cringed while she finished. She handed me the brush over my shoulder and I uncrossed my bony legs to stand.

“Blythe?”

“Yes?” I turned around in the doorway.

“I don’t want you learning to be like me. But I don’t know how to teach you to be anyone different.”