Later, everyone went home. My husband slept peacefully in one of those vinyl hospital chairs that become a small bed. He snored, happy in the knowledge my body would soon be his again. Even though my legs felt rubbery, even though I felt like someone had taken a knife and cut me all the way open both ways, I walked to the nursery pushing my IV pole.
When I was 5, there was a boy much bigger than me picking on a girl half his size. I walked right up to him and socked him in the jaw. I had to jump up to connect my fist with his face. I came home with a nosebleed and scraped knees and his skin beneath my fingernails, his blood between my teeth. As she cleaned me up, mother told me I had grit. She said, “You hold on to that grit no matter what, you promise me that.”
There is nothing I care to remember about my father. He was a selfish man who saw to it I would hate any man who came after him. After I found my mother and father with holes in their heads, I sat on our rotting front porch. I waited for someone to come get me. I went into foster care, lived with a family who had seven children. Not even my husband knows what those years were like. The past cannot be undone. At 17 I got a scholarship and went to college. My life started when Elsa was born.
The baby and I still had matching hospital bands that said she was mine so I was able to see her. She was swaddled in a pink blanket and wore a little pink hat. She was awake and again, she stared at me. She knew me. “She seems to be awake an awful lot,” I said to a nurse passing by. The books said newborns mostly sleep so I worried maybe she was hurting somehow and was staying awake to get our attention. The nurse smiled. “Your daughter’s just fine,” she said, and went about her business. I pressed my finger to Elsa’s cheek. She blinked slowly and yawned. There was a rocking chair next to her crib. I rocked her and stared at her tiny lips, how they quivered every so often. Eventually she fell asleep. I whispered, “I’m only going to cry about this once.” She shifted, and I rubbed my tears on her eyelids, her lips, her tongue. My breasts ached even though my milk had not come in yet. I wanted to steal what was mine.
The next morning, in my hospital room, my husband sat on the windowsill, looking out into the parking lot. He asked, “Will you ever forgive me?” I pretended to be asleep.
♦◊♦
My sister-in-law came to pick up Elsa from her weekly visit. We had a glass of wine on the patio before she left. She told me about her night in the city, the girl she met, a co-ed, art major. She said art major like that meant something important. She and her brother both like them young. I met him when I was a sophomore in college. We’ve been together for 14 years. She started making awkward statements about Facebook and setting up a profile to chat online, said she would friend me, said she and the art major had plans for the next weekend. She asked for help getting situated online. I once helped create a platform similar to Facebook before the company got sold and I no longer needed to work. Unfortunately, that happened after everything. You always get money when you no longer need it but my mother told me you can’t trust a man to provide for you so I hold on to my money for later, for something better.
My sister-in-law started complaining about her ex, how Patty was refusing to pay child support because as queers they didn’t have to support heterosexual legal paradigms. “What does that even mean?” my sister-in-law asked.
I took a long sip of wine, digging my fingernails into my thigh. “I have no earthly idea.”
“Patty wanted a child and the child showed up and motherhood wasn’t what she expected. Now, I’m alone raising a kid I have nothing in common with. God knows I love her but I kind of blame Elsa for the break up.”
I considered her staggering ingratitude. I measured my words. “A child is never to blame for divorce and especially not this child. She is the greatest blessing.”
“You’re so lucky, what you have going on here, just you and my brother, no burdens.”
The wine bottle tempted me, sitting in its marble wine chiller. I closed my eyes and pictured slamming the bottle into her skull, the shards of glass finding their way through her bone. I gripped the stem of my wineglass so tightly it started to curve. I nodded.
“Patty never wants to see Elsa and oddly enough, Elsa never asks to see her.”
I refilled my glass. “Elsa’s a smart girl. She knows who her real mother is.”
This is a fabulous story. I think there’s more to it—more possible. Perhaps it could be a novel. Very compelling, beautifully done.
Wanted to print out your Weekend Fiction, but there is NO easy way to do that – like a simple Pdf. Can you arrange that in the future?