I said, staring at her face. But it wasn’t really true. I’d never looked like this.
“And what did you see?”
“You know, regular stuff.”
She nodded. “Let’s try again.”
“Where’s the cervix?” I asked.
“It’s not far.”
Suddenly I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to meet myself.
Hazel put her hand on my stomach and squared her eyes with mine. “The universe brought us together,” she said.
I knew the universe was just code for God among people who didn’t believe in God, but really truly did believe in God deep down and didn’t want the responsibility. And maybe she was right. Maybe God wanted me to have help. People who knew what to do. The idea seemed so delicious. When I felt Hazel’s hand on my belly, how I wished it were my mother’s. I wondered what my mother would have seen if she could have met herself in this way. I wanted to take her along for this experience somehow, reach my hand out to her cosmically, carry her like a child.
I looked into the mirror. My first thought was wow. I felt sad then, for who my mother was, for the girl I’d always been. The one who until this point had never seen.
AFTER WE CHANTED a final yoni blessing, Hazel swaddled us in thick blankets and put pouches of lavender over our eyes and performed what she called a sound bath. I wanted to relax during this part but the whole thing had me jittery. I just knew I didn’t want her to leave. Soon sounds filled the room, they seemed to come from everywhere, even from within myself. It was hard to think while hearing them. I opened my eyes to see Hazel stirring nothing in a metal bowl, creating an orchestra.
After she unswaddled us, Hazel told me I could have an appointment with her whenever I wanted. She’d see me for free. I wondered if she would still offer this if she knew the whole truth, that it was my cousin’s baby. I didn’t say anything.
Daisy stretched her arms up and touched her toes, then studied me as I got dressed. She came close and patted my back. “Florin says you’ve been talking to Rick. He’s not supposed to call here anymore.”
I looked at the doulas and Hazel, who were packing up, thankfully not paying attention to us. I hated that Daisy was reminding me of work right now. I didn’t want to think of any of it.
“He’s money like all the rest,” I said.
“Sometimes all the phone would have to do was ring when that man called, and a chill went up my spine, but your mother didn’t have any intuition.”
Yes, so why didn’t you cut her off from him? I wanted to say. Why didn’t you do anything?
“People are one way, you think. You watch them every day and you think you know all they’re capable of. That’s how I felt about your mother. I felt I knew just what she would do in any situation. But that’s always wrong. You never really know what any one person will do, or has done.” She pressed her fingertips into the mask of scars on her face.
“Do they hurt?” I asked.
She brushed me off. “This is where your life gets fun,” she said. “All these trials will bring forth a whole lot of gifts.”
“You sound pretty religious sometimes,” I said.
She smiled. Held my hand. “Your mother is lucky to have a girl like you.”
“She’s selfish,” I said. “That’s all. Disobedient to God and selfish.”
Daisy squeezed my hand hard, looked to Florin, who was deep in conversation with Hazel. “I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t want to be a mother. Sometimes still I think maybe it was all a big mistake.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“Is it? Why does it have to be? I loved her anyhow. Even her sharp little fingernails scratching me like a wildcat when she was a baby. The dumb things I loved.”
I sighed. I liked imagining them together so many years before, when everything was still unknown, wrapped up in the future.
“But slowly as she got older and older and needed me less it seemed she was becoming a stranger,” Daisy went on. “I found I didn’t need to smell her head or hold her to my body as much. Whole days could pass and I would have barely seen her. But then out of nowhere I would long for her. I’d reach out to find her and she was gone. A person had replaced