What Lies Between Us (24 page)

Then everyone knows that the baby belongs to my mother. Everyone knows she loves her properly while I am only an impostor. The king takes the child from me, hands her to my mother. She walks away with the baby and I am left alone, milk soaking through the fabric of my shirt, turning it a deeper crimson.

*   *   *

A year passes. What do I remember of that first year? There was sleeplessness and joy. A sleeplessness that felt like jet lag, the same suspension of night and day, the same grit-eyed, vertigo-tinged jolting between wakefulness and dream as comes from crossing the planet.

I kissed her face while she slept. We marveled over her feet, her hands, the small face like a flower. Her cooing laugh became my favorite sound in the world. She smiled at me and my entire body lit up as if we were still connected, as if the umbilical cord was still trailing out of my body and attached to hers. I could feel that tug at all times. I would steal minutes to shower, the hot water like baptism, and there would be a clenching of my abdomen and I would know she was crying, grab the towel, run out. Because she needed me. This need was huge and everywhere. It was the definition of my life.

What happened in that year? Everything changed. We were different people from who we were before. It wasn't just her arrival, though of course that was the most important thing. In that year I was born as a mother, and Daniel too was born into a new life, not just as a daddy, but also as an artist. That's the year he became a star. Those first paintings went to the woman in Woodside. They say she discovered him, as if he hadn't existed before, as if he hadn't painted before she saw his work. But then after the “discovery,” paintings flew off the wall. Galleries called. Everyone wanted him. Money flooded in.

We bought a house, of course. My beloved Mission apartment in those first months was already too small for the three of us. So we joined the flight out of the city and bought a house in Oakland, near the lake. This is where we live now. There are two bedrooms, one for her and one for us. Her toys are strewn around, the breast pump and bottles on the kitchen table, my rocking chair in the living room, her stroller folded up by the door. This is where I spend all my days. In these six rooms where the sunlight filters through the air, painting everything a pale gold in the late afternoon, where she sleeps in her crib in a room he has painted like a jungle. All around her, chubby cartoon lions and tiger cubs stalk one another through the grass, reach up to swat at flitting butterflies. Two long-eyelashed giraffes, necks entwined, reach up to puffy blue skies. What a lucky girl she is. How much love her daddy has spent making this jungle kingdom for her.

*   *   *

The making of Daniel had started like this. He had called, breathless. “A gallery show. In New York.” Relief flooding his voice. He had named the gallery. It had meant nothing to me. I had stopped listening, all my attention focused on the baby, who was starting to wake up, who would scream in a minute if I didn't get my blouse undone in time.

A little later. His paintings sold. More than this, they wanted him for a solo show. He flies to New York when she is three months old. He comes back and says, “It's happening. It's finally happening. Everything I've always wanted.” I smile and say, “How wonderful.”

The art-handling job is long forgotten. Now they say he is the real deal. A painter the likes of which they haven't seen in years. He gets a studio space across town. When she is seven months old, I strap the baby in, go to visit. It is cavernous, a row of giant oils along the walls. He comes to us, grabs the baby and kisses her, snuggles her against his chest, where she coos, gloriously happy.

He lives in a different world now. Peopled by art dealers, museum curators, rich benefactors. I leave her with the sweet old couple next door and go with him to an opening in the city. We walk in hand in hand, but then he is swirled away from me. Everywhere people in angular clothes, women in sharp lines and black that drapes away from exposed shoulders, large-framed glasses and red-lipsticked mouths. I feel my body under me still ungainly, still bloated, an oddity among all these slim and svelte physicalities. On the wall, his new paintings. They are huge, bursting off the wall in riotous colors, none of that disciplined illustrative style he had had before. These are bold figures, almost abstracts. I go from one to the next. Each of them is a stranger to me. I do not recognize our life together anywhere.

A woman slips next to me, says, “You're his wife, right?” a glint in her sideways glance.

I nod, startled to be recognized.

She says, “What's it like?”

I raise my eyebrows at her and she says, “You know, to be married to so much genius?” She waves at the vivid canvas in front of us.

I turn my eyes away from her. “Amazing. So inspiring. To see that his talent is finally being rewarded.”

“Oh yes, you were with him through the lean years, weren't you?”

“Yes. We were together.”

“You supported him? Financially?”

“We supported each other. It's what couples do.”

I walk away. She's right. I had supported him. I had been the pillar and he the creeping vine. I had worked. And because of that, he can do this. I had been such a good nurse. It comes to me in a flood. I had been good. I had made a difference. It had been important. The difference between life and death, even. While what he does, this glorified playing with color, it cannot even compare in importance. But there he is, in a knot of people who will praise him, who will buy his work, who will pay him so much more than I could ever even have dreamed of.

But I am mommy now. Every single other thing is secondary. Even if I did go back to work, back to that other life, that umbilical cord stretched thin would nag and pull and then perhaps snap, and this I cannot risk.

*   *   *

We have agreed I will stay home for the first two years. These are the most important times of her life. These are the years that will dictate the whole of her life, that will set how she feels about love and need and desire. I will give her all that. The whole of my world revolving around her. She is the sun and I am every planet. I love my baby.

He's gone a lot, but I don't complain. I walk around with her. We sit in the rocking chair, her lips latch on my nipple, those eyes look up at me, her head rests in my palm. We follow the sun and the shadows across the rooms of the house. It is silent except for my voice, her small sounds, her crying. A sort of peace. Just her and me, like a big animal and a small animal curled together for safety. Like all the pictures of mother animals and baby animals in her picture books. Here is the mama duck with her soft yellow baby under her wing; here is the mother horse with her foal between her legs; here is the sow with a row of pink piglets suckling at her. We are just like them, I tell myself over and over. This is the most natural thing in the world. This is normal. This is only a mother and her child alone together.

But then why is there this noise like nails on a chalkboard somewhere behind my eyes? Why is there a thudding panic in my blood? Why do I feel as if some childhood door is inching open? Sometimes when he's gone, something secret happens to me. Sometimes I put her in the crib, go into our bedroom, close the door, and fall into bed.

Her screams come loud and piercing, but the heaviness is stronger. I can lift no inch of myself. It is as if I inhabit a different planet where the rules of gravity are stricter, each of my limbs pinned mercilessly to the bed. I lie there listening to her scream and rage and sob, and then, maybe hours later, silence. Finally, finally, she has released me, and sleep drops over my head like a shroud.

I wake up in a panic, shoot out of tangled, humid sheets. She is tearless, her eyes huge as I lift her out of her crib. She is learning the unnatural lesson that crying is in vain. Already I have trained her well. Her diaper sags heavy. I clutch her to me, kiss the sweet slope of her forehead. I coo and rock her. I change the filthy diaper; I pull out my tit and attach her to it. I think I'll never do that again, never. I won't leave her despairing, unsure if I will ever return.

By the time he comes home, the baby and I are starved for his love.

 

Nineteen

A year after her birth, and my body has shifted into shapes previously unimagined. In labor my hips had unhinged, and they have not swung back to where they were before. I remember in nursing school learning the signs by which a female cadaver could be identified as having borne children or not, that irrevocable spreading apart of the hipbones. My child has crossed my threshold and in so doing has marked me forever.

The outer signs also: my abdomen now slack, stretch marks puckering the lower skin. On the street, people's eyes slip by me. They might bend to coo and talk to the baby, but I am no longer
seen
, am only the adult attached to the adorable baby. When they
do
look, I flinch from their gaze. I know what they are thinking. I want to say, “No, I haven't lost the weight yet. Don't you know what my body has undergone? Months of reshaping from the inside, a complete structural transformation, bones sliding around, skin stretched to tautness. I'm not going to spring back to my pre-baby ‘bikini body' any time soon.” But this is exactly what every look on the street is projecting, what every celebrity magazine and TV show is shouting.

More than that, there has been another, more intimate kind of stretching. “It will go back to normal,” the doctor assures me. But the truth is that no one knows if this will actually happen. I think of taking a mirror and looking at myself down there. But it's too frightening. It feels like the site of a battle. I want to ask other women, “Is it the same for you? Has this happened to you too?” But I can't make myself approach the other young mothers with their designer baby bags and expensive strollers.

Between baby bottles and diapers and my baby's screaming, the last thing I can think about is sex, and when he tries, I push him away. My ungainly, unlovely body doesn't feel like it belongs to me. It belongs to her now. These breasts are hers; my belly and skin and lips are hers. When he touches my breasts, I can't stop myself from swatting his hand away. He rolls away, but not before I see something flash in his eyes.

He tries again months later, putting a tentative hand on my breast, kissing the corner of my face, and again I can't stand being touched. I don't want more hands on me, another piece of me taken away. Her need is already deep enough to engulf me whole. I can't withstand his.

I wriggle away. The space on the sheets opens like an abyss. I hear an edge of frustration in his voice when he says, “Baby, why not? It's been long enough, hasn't it?”

“Long enough? For what?”

“For you to be healed. For you to be ready. I love you.”

Some terrified tumble in my blood, my body stiffening from head to foot. I say, “I'm a mom now. That's all I can do. I can't take care of you too. Don't ask me to do that too.”

“I'm not asking you to
take care
of me. I love you. I just want us to be together.”

“No, not like that.”

He shifts closer; he says, “You're a mom, but you're still my lover.” Instant tears spring to my eyes. I can't imagine myself this way anymore. I'm not his lover. This body belongs to her more than to him or even to me.

He pulls me close. I let him kiss me on the mark on my face he has claimed as his own. He sighs. “It's fine. I love you. We'll be fine. We'll be like an old married couple. We'll just love each other and it'll be fine.”

I know he's trying to convince himself. Deep in my body I know that sex is too powerful a force to be ignored. I know there is nothing as flimsy as a shared life without sex.

*   *   *

She goes from crawling to walking on her wobbly legs. She watches everything we do with those startling eyes. She can speak only a few words, but she points with her tiny finger at every new thing that catches her eye—the flowers, the birds above, a tiny spot on the linoleum. She is like a spy in our world, watching and seeing everything. I feel as if she understands everything. But she gives no information about where she comes from, the secret place she has left. We teach her about our world, thinking it important, thinking ourselves important. But the mystery is, where did she come from? She can't tell us. The cosmic joke abides; the mystery protects itself.

When she cries, she wrings her little hands, twisting them in the most heartbreakingly helpless way, as if around invisible objects. There is something graceful in this motion of grief. It makes me adore this child who has come unexpectedly among us.

When Daniel is home, he's a good dad. He is sweet and generous and patient. He knows when she's tired. He packs snacks, water, blankies, wet wipes—the whole range of possibilities. He loves her completely. He reads her stories before she can understand them, and she is silent just listening to his voice. I see the bond growing between them.

When she bawls, he carries her around the house or puts her in the car and drives miles until she falls asleep. We go to the park and I sit on a blanket in the grass and watch them. He pushes her high on a swing into the sparkling sky. I hear the squeal of her laughter, see her dress fluttering like bird's wings, her legs kicking the wind. My heart too kicks in happiness. This is all I ever wanted. These two people, one large and one small. They are my tribe. I belong to them only. When I can't stand it anymore, I go to them. I grab her off the swing and squish her small face against mine. She looks into my eyes, deep and long as if she can read secrets there, as if she sees entirely how I am and loves me anyway.

A photograph from this time: I'm holding her over my shoulder and he is bending to kiss her high-sloped forehead. Her face is turned toward the camera while we are in profile. He has tucked a small white daisy behind her minuscule ear. It mirrors the perfect purity of her face, the softness of her skin. She is beatific, her mouth an open
oh
, her eyes wide and amazed to find herself held in so much love.