It was the sight of her face that told me she was never coming back—froth coming from her nose and her blue lips, her eyes glassy and wide open.
I stayed in the water, not sure when Phil left to call the ambulance. The sirens, the sounds of walkie-talkies all sounded so faraway. I was
hardly aware of the police in our backyard until someone put her arms around me under the water, saying, “I’ve got you.”
I wonder what her name is, this woman who wrapped me in a blanket, this woman who cupped the back of my head and rocked me against her breast so I wouldn’t see them pull Momma from the water. “There, there,” she said, smoothing my hair and ever so gently covering my ears to quiet the sound as they zipped the body bag.
I wonder if Momma had considered what it might do to us to find her like that. What it might do to leave a twelve-year-old boy in charge of calling for help and answering the police officers’ questions.
My brother. The soldier betrayed by his commander. The soldier who, in the middle of the war, stopped believing in its cause. He’s a geologist now, which makes sense to me. Rocks can’t stop loving you, and they can’t die. Once a year, he sends a carton of them with no return address to Dad’s house. Each rock is marked with its scientific name and where it was found, so we know where Phil’s been but not where to find him. I haven’t looked for him, and don’t expect I will. We survived that year by believing different stories, by deciding on our heroes and villains. He blamed Momma, and I can’t. She was never strong enough for my anger.
There was no question her death was a suicide. She’d left a note my father gave to the authorities—her fear that she was a burden, that she was destroying us.
I’ve often wondered where she went after she died. I imagine someplace in-between, where people with heavy pockets drag close to the earth, close enough to see the mess they’ve handed to others, but unable to help fix it.
I’ve felt my mother in the room with me. She comes close like warm breath, and makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I’ve only told this to Simon, who doesn’t doubt me, how I’ve heard the faint sound of her weeping, as if she’s there, surveying the damage.
• • •
“You’re starting to wake up, I see.” The nurse checks my blood pressure, and I’m shocked to find I could have fallen asleep, and that I’ve been moved into a new room—this one like a pastel bedroom with a dresser, rocking chair, telephone, and a vase full of daisies.
“The flowers are from your husband,” she says. “He’s going to try calling again in an hour or so.”
I reach for my stomach, used to the reassurance of my baby’s size and her kicks, but find it’s flat, still.
“I have good news for you,” the nurse says. “Your baby’s getting a little oxygen and nourishment. A real thorough check.” She hands me a clear plastic cup filled with juice. “You’ll be able to hold her soon.”
I turn to the wall and cry until I’m trembling all over. I feel so unprepared for all of this, for being here with strangers who irritate me, for failing to keep my baby safe, for already messing up as a mother.
“Is that your father in the waiting room?”
I nod.
“You look alike,” she says. “You know, he’s been out there for hours and seems pretty anxious to visit with you. Should I invite him in?”
I don’t answer or turn around. But in a little while, I know he’s here because he’s someone who always has to clear his throat, even if he’s only thinking of talking.
Still facing the wall, I hope he’ll think I’m asleep. When the room becomes so quiet I wonder if he’s left, I slowly turn my body—sore like I’ve been beaten—and there he is, standing just out of reach from my bed and holding a bouquet of flowers.
It’s true—despite growing my hair long like Momma’s and having none of Dad’s orderliness—we share the same boyish faces and full cheeks, though his now sag like a bloodhound’s, and I suppose mine will, too.
He approaches the bed cautiously, stands there in his button-up with two pens in his shirt pocket—one black, one red—his shoulders rounded from decades of bending over papers at a desk. He clears his throat again and hands me the bouquet, a ridiculous assortment of too many colors, still wrapped in plastic. “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know.” The bouquet lays stiff across my arms.
“I’m concerned about you,” he says, pulling a chair beside the bed.
“What kind of concerned?” The flowers drip a continuous stream of water into my lap.
“Well, to be honest” he says, pausing, then taking the flowers back, and cupping his hand under the point where the stems join, “I’m concerned about your emotional state.”
I don’t like his face without the mustache—the too-small upper lip, the expressions I’d rather not see. I sit up taller, the anger building fast. “Oh, that! How silly of me to be upset about going into labor a month and a half early and having no one here for me!” And seeing the disapproval he can never hide, and the way he keeps staring at my hair, I reach up to find it’s completely knotted around the rubber band.
“Tillie,” he says, lowering his voice as if I might copy his example. “You can’t let yourself get so overwhelmed that you aren’t able to take care of this baby.”
“That’s what you’re sitting there thinking? Seriously?” I try to unwind the rubber band from my hair until it becomes clear it will take hours of work, if not a haircut, to remove it. I growl out loud.
“Don’t get worked up, now.”
“Excuse me for getting worked up! I’m stuck here in this bed. They’ve told me almost nothing about what’s going on. My dad, who I should have never called, is lecturing me like I’m still a child. You tell me how I’m supposed to act right now. I mean, what exactly are you expecting me to do?”
He presses his bald lips together as if counting to ten. “Well,” he finally says, “you haven’t asked to see the baby. You haven’t asked to hold her.”
Squeezing my fists so tight that the nails cut into my palms, I begin to understand what it must have been like for my mother to have him constantly judging her. No wonder she preferred to stay locked in a room by herself.
“Dad,” I say, wanting to stand up, “I thought I had another month or two to prepare. I didn’t think I’d be doing this alone.”
Silence.
A strange squeak escapes from the back of my throat where the fear is hiding. “Why can’t you understand? I just don’t feel ready. Is that so crazy?”
I want from him things he can’t give. I want him to be a man who understands and says something to comfort me. I want him to be as powerful a father as he is a scientist. Instead, he crinkles the plastic wrap on the bouquet of flowers.
“What went wrong with her, Dad?”
He shakes his head.
“Please,” I say. “It’s my story, too.”
“I’m not sure what you want to know.”
“Tell me what she did that night before Anne took me away.”
He sets the bouquet on the floor beside his chair, then, slowly, he says, “She went to tuck you in to bed, though it was still quite early. The whole evening was upsetting to her and she wasn’t in a good state of mind.” He stops again as if that’s enough.
“What did she do?”
He takes a deep breath. “She was in your room for some time when she became hysterical.”
“What do you mean?”
“She started wailing and calling for me to save you. I ran to your
room, and when I got there, she was shaking you. I didn’t understand why she wanted to wake you up, but when I put my face near yours, you were colder than I expected.”
I remember this—the feel of his mustache against my forehead before he covered my shoulders with the blanket.
“Your mother began to rock back and forth, and wouldn’t answer me when I asked what had happened. But she mumbled over and over that she was sorry.”
I remember this, too. Her face was hot and wet against mine, whispering, “I’m sorry, Bear.”
“At first I thought this was your mother’s problem—what we’d been dealing with for some months—and I was just trying to quiet her down. But what she said worried me. And when I noticed a cup beside your bed, I decided to taste what was in it.”
The bitter drink.
“That’s when I knew our problems were bigger than I’d thought.”
I find the story strangely comforting because I’ve heard something I needed to know. That we are different. That my mother could do things I could never do.
“Did I go to the hospital?”
He shakes his head, and here is where he made the calculation I’d always suspected. The kinds of problems our family had were the kinds he couldn’t get help for, not without risking everything.
“I checked your pulse and your breathing,” he says, massaging his upper lip as if there’s still a mustache there. “You were a fighter, like we could have guessed. And we stayed beside you all night, touching your skin and feeling for breath under your nose.”
“But you didn’t get help.”
He looks right at me. “That was a decision we were unsure of all night. We were unsure of many of the decisions we made that year.”
• • •
Someone knocks gently on the door before coming inside. “I’ve got someone here who wants to meet you.” It’s the nurse who cut me free from the bathroom door. She walks into the room, carrying a small bundle in her arms. “Are you ready?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I think you’ll change your mind when you see this face.”
It’s a shock to see how small she is, her face thin with blue veins running across her forehead. She looks too fragile to hold, but without thinking I’ve extended my arms. And now that I
am
thinking, I’m not exactly sure if my arms should be turned this way, as if I’m accepting a bag of groceries.
“I’ve never held a baby before.”
“Really? Never held a friend’s baby? Never did any babysitting?”
I shake my head, but that doesn’t stop the nurse, who lays my tightly bundled daughter in my arms.
At first, I hold her like I did the flowers: She’s just stretched across my stiff arms. Then I cradle her closer, and the nurse, who has not yet let go of the baby, moves my hand under her head before she steps away.
“See?” she says. “You’ve got it.”
She’s unbelievably light, and, right now, I can’t imagine being responsible for anything so small. Dad leans forward on his knees as if he doesn’t believe I can do it, either.
“Baby Girl Harris-Williams. Four pounds, six ounces. Perfectly healthy. She just needed a little oxygen and an ounce of formula to get the hang of swallowing and breathing.”
I can’t relax with my dad watching my every move.
“It’s okay to unwrap this blanket and have a peek at her hands,” the nurse says, exposing delicate arms and tiny, perfect fingers. “Have you thought of a name for her?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I say. “Maybe Mara.”
It’s spite that makes me say this, a chance to remind Dad that my mother is more to me than just her mistakes. Sometimes I think of her twirling, singing, telling her story of the woman in the golden gown, and I wonder who she might have become if we’d gotten her help.
The nurse squeezes my arm and whispers, “I’m going now. I just wanted to say congratulations on your beautiful baby.”
She’s still leaning over me when the phone rings. I shake my head as she answers it, letting her know I don’t want to talk.
“She’s not taking phone calls just yet,” she says. “M-hmm. M-hmm. Yes, I see. Hold on a minute.”
Covering the bottom of the receiver, she asks, “Would it be all right if your husband speaks with your father?”
Surprised, I slowly nod.
I’ve often wondered if they’d get along. I worked hard not to marry a man like my father. I avoided men in the sciences and found Simon in the music section of a bookstore. Dad seems to be enjoying their conversation, asking about the museums in Paris, and stunning me by mentioning the painter Paul Cézanne. Maybe they would have always gotten along like this, but I’ve kept them separate. My life has been easier that way: past in the past.
The baby wriggles in my arms, roots around, suckling my shoulder. When I stroke the side of her face, she turns, trying to suckle my hand.
I put my lips to the top of her fuzzy head and whisper, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” My lips stay there against her skin, which smells of sweet rice.
“I think she’s thinking of the name Mara,” I hear my dad say before the long pause. He holds the phone out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
I’ve never tried holding a baby and a telephone at the same time. I don’t want the cord to touch her face, so I switch ears, and fumble the phone until Dad has to position it above my shoulder.
“Hello, Momma,” Simon says.
The tears come easily. “I wish you could see her right now.”
“Tell me what she looks like.”
“She looks like a little old man,” I say, cracking a smile. “Little droopy cheeks. Wrinkly forehead. A big tuft of sweaty black hair that sticks straight up like a troll doll. She’s amazing.”
“Tell me about her hands and her toes.”
I’m annoyed that Dad is still right here, listening to us, but I tell Simon, “She has her hand on the side of her face right now. The tiniest fingers you’ve ever seen. And her other hand is squeezed into a fist the size of a Super Ball. I haven’t seen her feet yet. She’s all wrapped up tight.”