“Sex,” Joel said one night. “What you need is sex.” He nuzzled my neck in that way I used to like, bit my earlobe. Who is this man? I thought.
“One good orgasm and I’ll bet you fall right to sleep.” He hooked a finger under my bra strap and pulled me to the bed.
“It hasn’t been six weeks.”
“They said about six weeks.”
I would prefer not to, but I didn’t protest. He took off my shirt. My bra, crusty with milk stains, smelled like moldy cheese. I hadn’t showered in three days.
He didn’t mind. Once he got started, there was no stopping him. Each thrust made me think of a word: spermatozoa, zygote, placenta. This was how I got into this situation in the first place.
Placenta, placenta, placenta. Halfway through, he flipped me over so I was on top. He reached up to squeeze my breasts and milk squirted out, onto his face, his chest, the headboard.
“Holy fuck,” he said. He came immediately. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just that it’s been so long.”
Milk was dripping down my chest, semen and blood down my thighs. I jumped up. “Wait,” he called out, “what about you,” but I was horrified. In the bathroom, I took my time wiping myself off. When I came back to bed, Joel was asleep, as I’d known he would be. Where should I kick him? The head? No, the ass—one swift kick. But I didn’t have the energy.
I lay down. Milk had squirted out of my body, I kept thinking, and hit my husband in the eye! Was this how sex was going to be from now on? The thought made me sad. I used to like sex. I used to like being licked, bitten, squeezed, Joel’s fingers twined in my hair, his muscles flexing. Sometimes, right at the end, my mind would lose language. I would have no words. Now I had nothing but words, a runaway roller coaster of words.
In her bassinet, the baby began to glow, and I didn’t even try to fight her. I pulled my bra down and let her suck me dry—of milk, of brain cells, of sleep, my eyes wide open the whole time.
One day, I left her on the bed and went outside and sat in the grass outside the apartment. There was still grass. There was still sunlight. The world hadn’t changed: I was just a person sitting on the grass, watching cars go by, and I hoped that the people in those cars might see me and think, look at that woman enjoying the sunlight. That woman, not that mother.
Soon I started to feel guilty for leaving her in the house alone. It was the first time we’d been apart. Stop it, I told myself. She’s fine. I picked a daisy and plucked all the petals. She loves me, she loves me not. Whoever made up that rhyme got it wrong. It should be I love her, I love her not, so you could figure out how you felt.
Through the screen door, I heard her cry. I ignored it for a while, hoping she would tire herself out or self-soothe, as the baby books said, but she only got louder, more desperate. I hoisted myself up. When I entered the bedroom, she was asleep, her head tipped to the side, her lips parted. Had I imagined her crying? Or was she tricking me on purpose?
Later, the psychiatrist said that some women hear phantom cries. The brain on high alert, a type of anxiety.
Then I saw something—an ant on her forehead. It marched over the bridge of her nose, around her eye, then back down toward her open lips. The horror! Gasping, I slapped the ant away before it went in her mouth. Her scream pierced my ears. I covered them, shut my eyes.
Had I just hit my own child? Shaking, I picked her up. “Oh sweetie, oh baby,” I said, over and over. “Forgive me, forgive me.” Her screaming grew louder—venomous. She was not going to forgive me, not ever. And she would never let me forget it either.