This is true, this happened: late at night, the baby glowed. Light pulsed off her and over the edges of the bassinet. I watched as the radioactive light slipped over me—only me; Joel was spared. I couldn’t get out of the light. It had a hard shell like an egg I couldn’t crack.
“Please stop,” I said. “Help. Someone help me.” Maybe I didn’t say that. Maybe I only thought it.
In the morning, I described the light to Joel as he squinted at me.
“Baby,” he said finally, “there was no light.”
“Don’t call me baby. I’m me, not her.”
“It seemed like you slept fine last night.” His words were clipped, careful. “I watched you, Mary. Your eyes were closed. You didn’t move for two hours. You were definitely asleep.”
“I wasn’t asleep at all,” I yelled. “I was trying to sleep. There’s a difference.”
He threw his hands up. “Well, you fooled me.”
I hated him just then. Who was he to tell me that I’d been asleep when I knew damn well I’d been awake the whole time? I started to cry.
He sighed. “I’m sorry this is so hard for you. What if you joined that new mom group? Then you could talk to other moms, get advice.”
I’d seen those New Moms, pushing strollers around the park in their yoga pants and sun hats, looking so serene and pleased with themselves. They probably dehydrated their own placentas or buried them under walnut trees.
I would prefer not to, I thought. “Maybe,” I said, just to shut him up.
The New Moms assured me they were tired, too. A few of them weren’t even getting five hours of sleep.
I looked at them. I could tell they’d all showered that morning. “Did you know that less than five hours a day of sleep and all your memories start falling out? Your brain becomes Swiss cheese.”
They laughed nervously. “I’m not sure it helps to exaggerate,” one of them said.
“You become pasty, prone to disease.”
“Let’s walk,” another interrupted. At a brisk pace, we circled the park three times. One of them checked her Fitbit. “Only 8,000 more steps to go.”
Around and around we went. I told the woman next to me about the boarded-up mansion.
“Like the mad woman in the attic!” she said, nodding enthusiastically.
“Exactly! And then one day you realize that other people are living in the parts of the mansion you thought were closed and it makes you want to burn the whole thing down.”
“Huh,” she said.
Just when I thought they would walk forever, they stopped and sat down in a circle on the grass. As if choreographed, they lifted their shirts and removed their left breasts—Was this real? Was I supposed to do this too?—and then they brought their babies to their nipples and those babies latched right on like a litter of ravenous puppies. No screaming, no crying, no pain. A haze settled over them. I couldn’t help but giggle.
“Shhh!” One mother said. “This is sacred time.” She had two babies, one in each arm, and was somehow able to feed both at the same time—that showoff!
I looked down at my chest and considered lifting my shirt as they swayed back and forth, eyes closed; I was reminded of a time in college when I came across the Hare Krishnas, sitting in a circle on the quad, humming their devotional songs—Kumbaya to this and that. What weirdos, I’d thought. The horror!
I jumped up. “I forgot I’m allergic to grass,” I said, and I wheeled the baby away before she got any ideas.