6. Noa
six
Two Months Later
Levi has been crying for nearly an hour.
I’m in the rocker by the window with my shirt unbuttoned, one tit out.
His mouth is in the rough vicinity of my nipple, but he’s still not latching properly.
The lactation consultant assured me it’s not my fault.
Apparently, colic causes an overtired, crying infant to latch and unlatch over and over because they’re having trouble settling. Supposedly, it peaks at six weeks.
Levi is twenty-eight days old.
Fantastic.
My mother’s making chamomile tea in the kitchenette. She came over a few minutes ago to bring me breakfast made by the chef and has the same careful face she’s worn since I confessed everything.
Not hovering, exactly, but also not pretending any of this is easy. I understand her better now that I’ve given birth and know what it means to love someone more than yourself. She’s close enough to catch me without making me feel like I’m failing, even if I am.
Levi manages to eat for a few sucks before pulling off my breast and screaming louder. His face turns the color of cooked beets.
“It’s okay, sweet boy,” I whisper, trying to get my thumb out of his fist before he snaps it clean off. “I’ve got you.”
We both know I’m a liar. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Not for a lack of trying. I’ve read books, watched hours of YouTube videos, and paid a postpartum doula thousands of dollars to coach me. All of it goes out the window when my son goes stiff in my arms, furious at the outrage of being alive.
When he cries, I can’t seem to identify the particular reason for his distress. He stops and I have no idea what I’ve done right. Then he starts wailing again and I’m convinced the thing he’s most upset about is the fact he was born to a terrible mother.
My mom brings the tea over and sets it on the side table where I won’t knock it over. Her hair is pulled into a low knot. She wears jeans, a soft gray sweater, and socks with little embroidered lemons on them. I guess becoming a grandmother has turned her ankles whimsical.
“He still won’t latch.” I glance up at her.
“Try the other side.”
I shift him. He screams.
She leans over us. “Try skin to skin.”
I strip off my shirt and press him against my bare chest. His tiny body burns hot against mine. For a second, the room tilts around the raw absurdity of all of this. For years, my body was the thing I knew how to monetize. For attention. Men. Money. Pills. Powder.
None of this history belongs in this room with my newborn son screaming against my naked skin. I birthed him from the channel I allowed hundreds of cocks to penetrate. I’m trying to feed him with nipples even more guys have pinched and sucked on.
How can my body be safe for him when I treated myself like garbage?
A high white sound starts behind my eyes. “I think I’m losing my mind.”
Mom doesn’t rush in to take him or tell me all new mothers feel this way. Her hands rest on her knees as she watches me struggle. “I remember this so clearly. Stick with it.”
I look into the eyes I avoided for years because the woman behind them didn’t ever notice I was disappearing in pieces, a little bit each year. “You remember colic?”
“I remember thinking if I couldn’t get you to stop crying, it meant I was failing you.” She lifts a shoulder.
Her words don’t register. I grew up with nannies. I don’t recall my mom doing anything unless there was a photo opportunity attached.
Levi screams again, his mouth open, his fists tight against my collarbone. “You thought you were failing me?”
“All the time.” She nods.
I shift my nipple toward his mouth. “You had help, though right?”
“Not in the early days.” A small smile tugs at her mouth, then fades before it can become comfort. “I loved you so much and never felt like I was enough.”
I stare at her, holding my screaming baby against a body I don’t know how to forgive.
Mom carefully reaches for Levi and I let her take him. She lifts him to her shoulder and walks him toward the window, moving into the low bounce-sway I’ve seen her do with my older brother Mark’s kids. He doesn’t stop crying, but he shifts into a sort of whimper. Quieter.
I button my shirt wrong and pick up the tea and drink the whole cup in three swallows. “Thank you for giving me a break.”
She smiles. Bounces.
I sit in the rocker with the empty cup between my hands and watch my mother walk a colicky newborn across the pool house I’ve spent countless mornings nursing hangovers in. Why don’t I have anything to say?
“My sponsor asked me something this week,” I manage.
Mom keeps moving. “Oh?”
“She asked what I would say to my daughter if she’d made the choices I did.” I avert my eyes to look out the window at the garden.
Her steps slow.
“I hated the question,” I mutter.
“I bet.”
“She kept pushing. What would I say if she were sitting across from me. Same stories. Same choices. Same everything.” My fingers tighten around the mug. “I wanted to say I would tell her to stop being such a stupid whore.”
Mom’s face changes into a grimace. As if she’s thought the same thing.
“I know…” The cup trembles against the ceramic saucer. “I know how awful that sounds.”
She stands in front of me. “What did you actually say?”
“I told her I wouldn’t know what to say to me.” I catch her eye and then look at Levi, whose cries are wearing down into little jagged mewls against my mother’s shoulder.
Mom closes her eyes for a second. “I do.”
My throat constricts.
“I would tell her she deserved to be protected before she knew how to protect herself.” Mom’s voice is low, steady. Wrecked around the edges. “I would tell her whatever she did to survive is not the whole of who she is and how sorry I am that I didn’t open my eyes to what was happening sooner.”
I can’t look at her. The cup blurs in my hands.
“I should have known because I was there,” she continues. “Not in the rooms. Not with the men or when the drugs were in your body. I knew enough where I should have stopped it. Sometimes I was so afraid of pushing you away, I turned a blind eye. Convinced myself you were an adult.”
Levi fusses, then settles against her shoulder.
“Your father and I failed you,” she admits. “For a long time. Probably from the time you were born.”
My head lifts. Her words are too close to the ones on repeat in my own head. “You didn’t fail me.”
“Noa—”
“No.” My answer comes out sharper than I expect. “You couldn’t know how to save someone who didn’t want to be saved.”
Her mouth trembles. “Since you told me what you’d been through, I’ve found myself hating every person who touched you. Sometimes I hate myself more because I couldn’t make you stop letting them.”
Levi’s mouth opens on a shuddery breath. In one impossible second, he falls asleep. Mom doesn’t notice and keeps bouncing.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe.
She looks at me over his small body. “I’m sorry too.”
The apology sits between us without needing anything more. Levi’s lashes rest against his cheeks. His fist unfurls against my mother’s sweater.
“You can put him down.” I motion to his bassinet.
She keeps bouncing. “Not yet.”
The pool house is quiet in a way I haven’t been accustomed to since Levi was born. A few minutes later, Levi slumps against her and Mom lowers him down. Stands over him for a second with her back to me. I watch her shoulders rise and fall.
“I won’t ask about his father today.” She turns toward me.
The sentence steals the air from the room. I don’t know what to say because I’m not ready to discuss Lake yet.
“Your dad won’t push you either.” Mom crosses the room and kneels in front of me. “We talked about it.”
Of course they did. I wouldn’t expect anything else.
“Someday, if you want to tell us, we’ll listen.
If you want him in Levi’s life, we’ll figure out a way to make it happen.
If you don’t, we’ll take all legal precautions to protect him.
” She clasps her hands with mine. “For now, all we want is for you to keep going to counseling, do what your sponsor tells you and take care of yourself. I’m here to help. Whatever you need.”
“I don’t want to need you.” A tear rolls down my cheek.
“Noa.”
“I’m sorry.” I look down at our hands. The skin around my thumbnail is raw. I’ve picked at it all afternoon without noticing. There are milk stains on my shirt. I’m a fucking mess.
She cups my cheek. “I haven’t slept through a night since you came home from college. Please need me. I’ll always be here for you.”
A laugh slips out sideways, half sob, half hysteria. I pull away and cover my mouth so I don’t wake my baby. “I’m a disappointment.”
“Never. I love you, baby. Unconditionally.” Her words are simple. Effective.
For the first time in forever, they feel less like an obligatory sentiment and more like a door opening to a new kind of relationship.
Suddenly, my mind drifts elsewhere. To a place I don’t allow it go very often. A startling pair of green eyes stare into my soul as he fills me with his seed. Our connection is so intense, I grab his ass to make sure not a drop spills out.
It’s my most vivid reoccurring memory of my night with Lake.
I’m not sure why I did it. All I remember is, in that moment, my entire world seemed to shift on its axis. I’ve never allowed myself the luxury of contemplating why.
Now, I know.
It was the exact moment he and I made Levi.
Of this, I have no doubt.
I spent years believing love would be dramatic when it finally arrived. I expected confrontation. Boundaries. Tears. Hard conversations. Grand gestures.
Some sort of fractured destiny, I guess.
My mother catches me staring like I’ve seen a ghost. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head.
Nothing.
Everything.
Levi sighs in his sleep. Peaceful at last. Silent tears stream down my face so suddenly, it shakes me to my core.
Four weeks ago Levi didn’t exist in the world. In this moment, I know he was meant to be here and I’m going to do everything in my power to be a better person.
A good mother.
The best mother.
Mom reaches for my hand again. Rubs her thumb once across my knuckles.
For a little while, the world shrinks to this room.
I can do this.