to me that she had even smoked while nursing me. I told her I could imagine that a few puffs here or there wouldn’t be so terrible. And she said, “No. I mean, I smoked while nursing. As in at the same time.”
It’s hard to imagine nursing a newborn baby while holding a cigarette. Did she think to blow the smoke away from my little face? Did the ash ever fall onto my soft, wrinkled forehead?
Was she even looking?
chapter three
Azalea was born on January 27, 2006, at 6:15 P.M. It was nothing at all like sitting on the toilet.
After a day of painful pushing, with the help of Thayer and one of my best friends at my side, the midwife realized that Azalea wasn’t coming out on her own, so I was wheeled into the operating room, and soon nearly seven pounds of human life—my daughter—was lifted from the ocean of my body.
As I lay on the surgical table, a green cotton screen pulled taut between my face and my exposed guts, Thayer, in scrubs, held our tiny baby bird in his arms, looking at me, and though I couldn’t see it, I knew his mouth was open, halfway between a smile and a sob. I looked at our baby. Her eyes were closed. I finished vomiting into a tray in time to smile for a picture.
Life in the hospital was grand. I loved being awakened every few hours to nurse my baby into this world. It was like a moon-filled Arctic day, totally unmarked by time. And Azalea was perfect: her ears, eensy-weensy fingernails, and crinkly thighs, that musky little mammalian neck.
Holding Azalea’s tiny sleeping body in my arms, I called another dear friend, who was stuck in Vermont instead of being there with me, as we’d planned.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Girl, I had no idea,” I cried. “I love this baby so much.”
“Whoa,” she said.
“I know,” I said, sucking in some air. “Whoa.”
* * *
—
IT WAS A few short/long months later when I changed Azalea’s diaper on the pad on top of our old dresser, and she looked around the room, then at me, hands waving, feet jerking in little socks the size of a snail. I smiled into her sweet little face, then sat down and nursed her, her eyes fluttering lightly until she fell asleep, her warm, whistly nose-breath long and heavy on my breast, her eyes closed tight. Then I laid her gently down in her crib, surrounded by the soft white bumper. I had already closed the curtains against the spring sun.
Pulling the door quietly behind me, I snuck out to the cedar deck in the backyard, journal in my hand, as hot tears rose up in my throat. I sat down and cried, looking out toward the greening May mountain rising above us, hoping it would protect Azalea against the terrible words that circled in my head, the words I was afraid to write. I loved this child with all my heart, and yet I was miserable. How could both be true?
So that Azalea would never have to know how difficult being her mother was for me, I made a deal with myself: I would allow myself the comfort of writing it all out, but only if I made it disappear. And indeed, I recently found that old journal, with a section of pages ripped out, leaving a row of little paper teeth along the spine, dotted with edges of handwritten o’s and t’s and s’s. Specks of words.
I remember that day well—the relief of truth spilling onto the page. And the pain of what the words said.
It had never before occurred to me to erase something I had written, because my words had always been my periscope, and to cross something out would have submerged me into darkness.
Until I became a mother.
Then I was writing as a prayer to save my life, and my daughter’s. That’s how much I loved her—I was willing to risk facing a dark truth because I knew even then, at the beginning of this journey, that in order to save her, I had