I wrapped the baby in a towel, grabbed the leather sack stained with Ciba’s blood, and walked back to the village to show Aki his daughter.
Thirty-Four
When I brought the baby to Aki, he looked at her with a coldness that chilled me. We stood at the center of the village, the baby not an hour old, so new to the world that she struggled to open her eyes. I offered him the baby, but he would not touch her. He would not look at her. Ciba’s death had made the child invisible to him.
“What will you name her?” I asked.
“Ciba must name her,” he said, without meeting my eye. “It is our tradition that the mother chooses the name.”
“But Ciba can’t name her,” I said. “Ciba is gone. You have to do it.”
Aki looked so forlorn, so lost with grief, that I said nothing more. I understood that his silence was not indifference, but his way of expressing the pain he felt over losing Ciba. His rejection of his daughter was an act of mourning, one that took the opposite form of my own grief: I wanted to spend every minute with the baby. Ciba had given her life for this child, and I would care for her as if she were my own.
I named her Isabelle. If the tribe called her something different, I never knew it. Aki could not bear to have her near, and so Isabelle slept in Uma’s hut, in a wooden box lined with fur. In her first days of life, I spent every minute with her, anxious that she would fall sick. I wrapped her tight in a blanket, so that she felt warm and secure, and held her close to me when she cried. I watched for signs of illness. She was strong at birth, and remained healthy for the first days, but soon began to grow weak. She needed nutrition, and there was no milk. Uma soaked a towel with warm goat’s milk and put it to Isabelle’s lips, but she wouldn’t take it. She began to grow thin.
“There is no other way,” Uma said, gesturing to my breast. “You are her mother now. You must feed her or she will die.”
Uma lifted my tunic and positioned Isabelle at my breast, guiding the tiny mouth to my nipple. “You love this child,” she said. “You will keep her alive.” Of course, it wasn’t possible to feed Isabelle. When I said as much, Uma replied, “It is possible. I have seen it before. Hold her. Sing to her. Keep her at your breast. Milk will come.”
At Uma’s urging, I slept on a cot near Isabelle, waking every few hours to bring her to my breast. It was Isabelle’s instinct to nurse, and so she latched on and began to suck at my flesh, desperate for milk that did not arrive. She cried with frustration and hunger. It struck me as a futile endeavor. The very idea seemed absurd. Surely, there were hormones and chemicals swirling through a mother’s body that I simply did not have. Uma made teas from mountain herbs, and I drank them religiously, but they did nothing. Isabelle would cry, and—more out of desperation than belief—I would try again, praying that Uma was right, and that my body would comply with Isabelle’s needs. Some nights, I would hold her for hours at a time, rocking her, as she cried herself to sleep; I would whisper her name when she woke, calming her in my arms, bringing her to my breast. Days passed like this, and Isabelle grew weaker and weaker, her voice becoming no more than a whimper.
I saw her small body diminish, the tiny ribs becoming visible through her pale skin, her arms and legs like twigs, her tongue dry and white. The horror of watching Isabelle wither cast an ominous shadow over my thoughts. I slept very little, and when I did, I was haunted by dreams of Ciba. Always, in every dream, I lifted Isabelle from Ciba’s arms, carrying her away from her mother as if just for a moment, no more than a quick walk around the village. There was no blood. No scalpel. Just a simple exchange—I took Isabelle; Ciba kissed us both and then ran into the blackberry bushes alone. I interpreted this dream as Ciba’s blessing to love and protect Isabelle.
One night, I was asleep on the cot, when I heard Isabelle crying. I woke, pulled myself out of bed,