The Push
“I’m your mother.”
The first night in the hospital I didn’t sleep. I stared at her quietly behind the perforated curtain that surrounded the bed. Her toes were a row of tiny snow peas. I would open her blanket and trace my finger along her skin and watch her twitch. She was alive. She came from me. She smelled like me. She didn’t latch for my colostrum, not even when they squished my breast like a hamburger and pried at her chin. They said to give it time. The nurse offered to take her while I slept but I needed to stare at her. I didn’t notice my tears until they dropped onto her face. I wiped each one from her skin with my pinkie and then tasted it. I wanted to taste her. Her fingers. The tops of her ears. I wanted to feel them in my mouth. I was physically numb from the painkillers but inside I felt lit on fire by oxytocin. Some mothers might have called it love, but it felt more to me like astonishment. Like wonder. I didn’t think about what to do next, about what we would do when we got home. I didn’t think about raising her and caring for her and who she would become. I wanted to be alone with her. In that surreal space of time, I wanted to feel every pulse.
A part of me knew we would never exist like that again.
1962
Etta turned on the bath faucet to wash Cecilia’s long, tangled hair. She was five years old and it wasn’t often anyone made her brush it. Her elbows dug into the avocado green ceramic.
“Lean back,” Etta said and tugged her hard. She pulled her head a few inches farther until Cecilia was square under the thunder of cold water. She gasped and choked and wrestled, until she pulled free of Etta’s fingers clutched in her skin. When she caught her breath, she looked up to see Etta staring right at her. Etta didn’t flinch. Cecilia knew she wasn’t done.
Etta grabbed her ears and forced her back under again. Her nostrils stung as they filled with water. Her head started to feel like it was floating away.
And then Etta let go. She pulled out the moldy plug from the drain and left the bathroom.
Cecilia didn’t move. She had shit herself during the fight and lay there, shaking and foul and cold, until she fell asleep.
When she woke up, Etta was in bed and Henry was home from work, sitting in the living room watching television, eating a plate of reheated roast beef, the tinfoil carefully folded on the table to be reused the next day.
Cecilia walked into the room with a towel draped over her shoulders and startled him. He asked through a mouthful of food why on earth she wasn’t asleep at nearly midnight. Cecilia told him she’d wet the bed.
His face fell. He folded her up in his long arms and carried her to her mother’s bed. She still stank like shit, but Henry didn’t say a thing about it. He shook Etta awake.
“Dear. Can you fix Cecilia’s sheets? She’s wet herself.”
Cecilia held her breath.
Etta opened her eyes and took Cecilia’s hand in the same grip that had nearly killed her five hours ago. She walked her to her room and put a nightgown over her head and sat her firmly on the bed. Cecilia’s heart pounded as they both listened to Henry’s footsteps go back down the stairs. Cecilia was always listening for Henry’s footsteps—he would change Etta’s mood like the flip of a light switch.
Etta didn’t say a word and she didn’t touch her. She just left the room.
Cecilia understood that her instinct to lie was the right one. What had happened between her and her mother was to stay a secret.
There were other times over the next few years when Etta’s problems with “nerves” were obvious to Cecilia. Some days she would lock her out of the house after school. The front door was bolted shut, the back door locked, the drapes all closed. But Cecilia could hear the radio playing or the kitchen tap running. She’d go to Main Street to kill time by wandering the aisles of stores, looking at things her mother never seemed interested in buying anymore, like fruit-scented soaps, or the mint chocolates she had once enjoyed.
After it had been dark for one hour, Cecilia would head home again. Henry would be there and dinner would be on the table. She would tell Henry she’d been at the library and he’d pat her on the head and say she’d become the smartest student in the class if she kept studying so hard. Etta would ignore her completely, as though she hadn’t spoken at all.
Other days, Cecilia would come down for breakfast in the morning and Etta would be sitting at the table, looking down at her lap, her full cheeks white. Like she hadn’t slept a wink. Cecilia didn’t know what she did during those nights, but on those mornings, Etta seemed especially distant. Especially sad. She wouldn’t look up until she heard Henry’s feet hit the stairs.
10
You’re anxious. She can sense it,” you said. She’d cried for five and a half hours. I cried for four of those. I made you look up the definition of colic in one of the baby books.
“More than three hours, for three days a week, for three weeks straight.”
“She’s been crying longer than that.”
“She’s only been here for five days, Blythe.”
“I mean hours. Longer than three hours.”
“She’s just gassy, I think.”
“I need you to cancel your parents’ trip here.” I couldn’t deal with your perfect mother being there for Christmas in a couple of weeks. She called constantly, and every conversation started with I know things are different these days, but trust me. . . . Gripe water. Tighter swaddles. Rice cereal in the bottle.