There is a version of “Sleeping Beauty” in which she lies asleep as a king rapes and impregnates her. She continues to sleep for nine months, even as she gives birth to twins, and only awakes when one of the babies suckles at her finger and pulls out the splinter of flax that caused her slumber.
In those wakeful days after my daughter’s birth, I tried everything I could think to summon sleep, from meditation and yoga to military shift sleep techniques.
Then I wrote to my mother.
As I walked down the block, soaked in sweat, and dropped it in the mailbox, I wondered when the letter would detonate. I hoped the fallout would not be too wretched for my father, who still occupied the frontlines when it came to my mother’s advances, though they divorced more than a quarter-century ago. His has been a long, stoic stand. He has remained silent on the subject of my mother except when pushed to the brink, and although I spent years hating it, his dedication to this narrative void is one I have come to respect. I have realized that sometimes there is nowhere to start or end a story—no clear purpose in telling it, even if you’re one of its characters.
In the letter to my mother, I included an ultrasound photograph of my daughter: a black and white glimpse of her past self nestled in me.
“I do not mean for this to hurt you,” I wrote, knowing it would anyway.
After mailing it, I felt as though a fever had broken. I lay down, and sleep claimed me until my newborn baby’s cries pierced my dreams.