What Lies Between Us

by Nayomi Munaweera

  By the time he comes home, the baby and I are starved for his love.

  Nineteen

  A year after her birth, and my body has shifted into shapes previously unimagined. In labor my hips had unhinged, and they have not swung back to where they were before. I remember in nursing school learning the signs by which a female cadaver could be identified as having borne children or not, that irrevocable spreading apart of the hipbones. My child has crossed my threshold and in so doing has marked me forever.

  The outer signs also: my abdomen now slack, stretch marks puckering the lower skin. On the street, people’s eyes slip by me. They might bend to coo and talk to the baby, but I am no longer seen, am only the adult attached to the adorable baby. When they do look, I flinch from their gaze. I know what they are thinking. I want to say, “No, I haven’t lost the weight yet. Don’t you know what my body has undergone? Months of reshaping from the inside, a complete structural transformation, bones sliding around, skin stretched to tautness. I’m not going to spring back to my pre-baby ‘bikini body’ any time soon.” But this is exactly what every look on the street is projecting, what every celebrity magazine and TV show is shouting.

  More than that, there has been another, more intimate kind of stretching. “It will go back to normal,” the doctor assures me. But the truth is that no one knows if this will actually happen. I think of taking a mirror and looking at myself down there. But it’s too frightening. It feels like the site of a battle. I want to ask other women, “Is it the same for you? Has this happened to you too?” But I can’t make myself approach the other young mothers with their designer baby bags and expensive strollers.

  Between baby bottles and diapers and my baby’s screaming, the last thing I can think about is sex, and when he tries, I push him away. My ungainly, unlovely body doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. It belongs to her now. These breasts are hers; my belly and skin and lips are hers. When he touches my breasts, I can’t stop myself from swatting his hand away. He rolls away, but not before I see something flash in his eyes.

  He tries again months later, putting a tentative hand on my breast, kissing the corner of my face, and again I can’t stand being touched. I don’t want more hands on me, another piece of me taken away. Her need is already deep enough to engulf me whole. I can’t withstand his.

  I wriggle away. The space on the sheets opens like an abyss. I hear an edge of frustration in his voice when he says, “Baby, why not? It’s been long enough, hasn’t it?”

  “Long enough? For what?”

  “For you to be healed. For you to be ready. I love you.”

  Some terrified tumble in my blood, my body stiffening from head to foot. I say, “I’m a mom now. That’s all I can do. I can’t take care of you too. Don’t ask me to do that too.”

  “I’m not asking you to take care of me. I love you. I just want us to be together.”

  “No, not like that.”

  He shifts closer; he says, “You’re a mom, but you’re still my lover.” Instant tears spring to my eyes. I can’t imagine myself this way anymore. I’m not his lover. This body belongs to her more than to him or even to me.

  He pulls me close. I let him kiss me on the mark on my face he has claimed as his own. He sighs. “It’s fine. I love you. We’ll be fine. We’ll be like an old married couple. We’ll just love each other and it’ll be fine.”

  I know he’s trying to convince himself. Deep in my body I know that sex is too powerful a force to be ignored. I know there is nothing as flimsy as a shared life without sex.

  * * *

  She goes from crawling to walking on her wobbly legs. She watches everything we do with those startling eyes. She can speak only a few words, but she points with her tiny finger at every new thing that catches her eye—the flowers, the birds above, a tiny spot on the linoleum. She is like a spy in our world, watching and seeing everything. I feel as if she understands everything. But she gives no information about where she comes from, the secret place she has left. We teach her about our world, thinking it important, thinking ourselves important. But the mystery is, where did she come from? She can’t tell us. The cosmic joke abides; the mystery protects itself.

  When she cries, she wrings her little hands, twisting them in the most heartbreakingly helpless way, as if around invisible objects. There is something graceful in this motion of grief. It makes me adore this child who has come unexpectedly among us.

  When Daniel is home, he’s a good dad. He is sweet and generous and patient. He knows when she’s tired. He packs snacks, water, blankies, wet wipes—the whole range of possibilities. He loves her completely. He reads her stories before she can understand them, and she is silent just listening to his voice. I see the bond growing between them.

  When she bawls, he carries her around the house or puts her in the car and drives miles until she falls asleep. We go to the park and I sit on a blanket in the grass and watch them. He pushes her high on a swing into the sparkling sky. I hear the squeal of her laughter, see her dress fluttering like bird’s wings, her legs kicking the wind. My heart too kicks in happiness. This is all I ever wanted. These two people, one large and one small. They are my tribe. I belong to them only. When I can’t stand it anymore, I go to them. I grab her off the swing and squish her small face against mine. She looks into my eyes, deep and long as if she can read secrets there, as if she sees entirely how I am and loves me anyway.

  A photograph from this time: I’m holding her over my shoulder and he is bending to kiss her high-sloped forehead. Her face is turned toward the camera while we are in profile. He has tucked a small white daisy behind her minuscule ear. It mirrors the perfect purity of her face, the softness of her skin. She is beatific, her mouth an open oh, her eyes wide and amazed to find herself held in so much love.

  * * *

  She is one and a half and we go to the zoo. We watch her eyes grow wide at these far-fetched creatures, the strutting emu, the plodding giant tortoise. She makes us consider the impossibility of the giraffe, its head teetering on that ridiculous neck; the painted symmetry of the zebra. We laugh at her clear consternation, the way her eyebrows rise, and you can see her thinking What are those things? What are they? She flaps her arms toward the animals and says, “Bow-wow, bow-wow,” the sound that dogs make in picture books. This is her word for all animals—some logic here, some rendering all creatures into a kingdom of their own.

  We stop in front of the elephants and she won’t let us leave. We must stay here and look at these creatures, their gray bulk, those strange flat feet with the familiar toenails, the intelligence in their small lashed eyes as they sway back and forth and back and forth with that slow, lumbering grace.

  A lost afternoon blooms around me. Humidity and that scent of home, lush and green. I am small, watching the elephants walk up Kandy road, my hand tight in my father’s. There are a line of them ambling up the mountain road, coming from all parts of the island for the annual procession, enormous loads of grass balanced on their backs. “They are carrying their lunch,” my father says. I can feel him tall and straight next to me, the rub of his fingers over mine. His presence true and unshakable, but some menace also there. I shake my head to clear him away; my adult body comes back to me, and I am again with him and her in the kingdom of animals.

  * * *

  He says, “Shouldn’t she be talking more by now?”

  I say, “She’s fine. She’ll talk when she’s ready, won’t you, sweetness?” kissing her, that sweet scent of baby girl, the perfect curve of forehead under my lips.

  Thinking, Maybe for me it is better that she doesn’t talk. Not yet at least; that it is strange, of course, but maybe also convenient. There are so many secrets we share. So much I don’t want her telling her daddy.

  * * *

  When he’s gone she watches me with those great brown eyes. Every bit of her attuned to my mood, my state. I am her deity. She knows how I feel and adjusts her mood to mine as if I am her weather. She knows my
anxieties, my terrors, and my dangers, and she accommodates herself to them. This is something not noted or commented upon: the gentleness with which they approach us. We who are not gentle with their small, delicate selves. In this way they know us in a way that we do not ever know them.

  She comes to me where I lie on the old gold couch, staring into the occluded sunlight that falls through the window. She puts one small hand on either side of my face, pulls my clouded face close to her own bright one, dispels the images, says, “Mama sad?”

  And I, startled to be seen so clearly, say, “I’m not sad, baby. I’m fine … I’m good. I’m just very tired.” I flash the brightest smile in my repertoire, know that it comes off like a shark spotting something seal-shaped in the water above. Her face works as she assimilates this, the evidence of her own eyes at odds with my words. I see her coming to the inevitable conclusion that she must be wrong, that her reading is mistaken, that mommies can lie on the couch not talking, not moving, barely breathing, tears rolling silently over the planes of their faces, and still be happy. I see it as it happens, the first time she knows she can’t trust her own feelings, that they are unreliable. It is perhaps the cruelest moment, but I can’t do what was required, which is to say, “Yes, Mommy is very sad. But it’s okay. I’ll be okay soon.” She rests her forehead against mine, little and confused, wanting to understand.

  * * *

  I come to myself. I am in the shower, the water tepid, running to cold. He is banging a fist on the door, shouting. I turn off the water with trembling, wrinkled fingers. How long has it been? Where did I leave her? I grab a towel and open the door and he is there, huge and blocking the light, his hair in lifted tufts as if he has raked his fingers through it. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Where is she?”

  “In her room. How long did you leave her?”

  “Not long.” My voice like something coming from far underground.

  He leans close, grabs my upper arms, his eyes slitted, glacial blue. “I don’t believe you. I think you left her for a long, long time. Her diaper was filthy.” He pushes me from him so I smash into the basin with my hip, sink to the floor sobbing, the towel fallen around my feet.

  He says, “Just don’t infect her with your disease. Whatever that is.” He turns away and his footsteps are loud as drumbeats.

  I nod into my hands. Yes, it is a disease. Yes, I am infected. Yes, I need to keep it away from her. She is too fragile to hold the weight. Even on perfect days, there is something under my skin. Some beast that moves below the surface. I can keep it at bay, mostly. But every now and then, it awakes and unfurls in jerky movements. It is the minotaur in the maze of my body. It wakes up and howls and wants to be seen, wants to show its broken face that is also mine. It asks for sympathy or perhaps for love. It screams that it too was a child once and it was hurt. It asks why it cannot have these things: love, belonging, ease. When it emerges, it has no pity, no mercy. His presence is the antidote. It keeps the beast away.

  He’s gone into her room, holding her to his chest, the one place I want to be. The place she has taken. I reach for the sink and pull myself up slowly. My hip feels disjointed, already a bruise rising like paint swirled on my skin from the inside. I limp into the bedroom, pull aside the covers, and sink into the bed. I’m still wet, so the sheets stick to me, sucking away moisture, my hair on the pillow like a mermaid’s.

  I remember that time before she came. I remember rolling around in Golden Gate Park, his body over mine, breathless for each other. I remember that a group of bicyclists had yelled and hollered, cheering on our passion. And we, shy but also ecstatic, had risen to look and wave at them. I remember when he wanted me so badly he ground his teeth at me in desire and groaned when he touched me. I remember when I wanted him so badly it felt like hunger, like thirst.

  I burn alone until morning.

  Twenty

  My little girl never darkens. She is milk with the slightest splash of tea, golden headed as if birthed from him and a much paler woman. On the streets they stare at us, this dark woman and this fair little girl. They say, “Look at her. So pretty. So cute.” South Asian mothers come up to me and say, “My goodness, she’s so fair. Your husband must be American, no?” Their eyes are covetous, appraising. They like these gifts of whiteness. Where am I in her blood? I had read somewhere that young children most often look like their fathers. It’s a way to ensure that a man knows who his children are, that he will not kill them because he suspects they are not his. Here is biology in action, her pale skin and yellow curls. Only her staring, watchful eyes, darkening to chocolate, are like mine.

  * * *

  I take her to the city, a park in Noe Valley where her father used to live in those other fairy-tale days. I sit on a bench and watch her toddle around, drag her blanket behind her to the sandbox, stumble over the edge, sit down. She runs her fingers though the sand, holds her hands out to see the sand fall through her tiny fingers. I watch her like a hawk, always. You never know what could happen to a girl. A woman comes and sits next to me. There is a sort of peace. The day is bright and airy. Clouds speed high overhead so that we are in light, then shadow, and then bright sunlight again.

  The woman next to me makes a gesture, her hand rising to shade her eyes. I can tell she wants to chat. I straighten my back, curve away from her so that she will know my solitude must not be breached. But she cannot abide this turning away. We are one tribe, after all, the community of mommy. She leans toward me, says, “Hola. Cómo estas?” I realize that we are not in fact one tribe. Instead, she has confused me with one of the Latina nannies that run around after white charges in this wealthy neighborhood. She has read me as one of those women who have abandoned their own children in some faraway place to look after these American offspring. It is an old role she has found for me, the children of this country for so long brought up by women with dark skin, black skin.

  Now Bodhi comes up to me, clutches my knees, pushes between my legs, flings her head and arms out, and reaches up to me. I grab her and lift her into my arms, stand up and kiss her cheeks, my dark hand in her lit curls.

  The woman says, “Wow. She’s really attached to you, isn’t she?”

  I turn around and stare at her. My eyes are slitted; the blood is slow in my veins. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  The color jumps into her cheeks, two spots like a painted doll’s rouge. “Oh, I just meant that … you know…”

  “Yes, I know what you mean. I’m not the nanny. I’m not the babysitter. This is my child.”

  “Oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  I want to say, “Fuck you, you racist piece of shit.” The words slide down my throat, thick, unspeakable. Tears springing in my eyes, I turn on my heel and walk away with my girl draped over my shoulder, leaving behind us the woman’s unslapped face.

  * * *

  She is always quiet, always meek, and it reminds me of my mother saying, “You used to sit so quietly. We would leave you sitting in a room by yourself, and if we came back much later you were still sitting there. You didn’t move. You weren’t rowdy like the other children. Our friends’ children.”

  Bodhi has inherited my childhood stillness. But unlike my mother, I am not fooled. This is not obedience. When a baby bird falls out of the nest, it does not chirp to alert the slinking cat. The kittens in their turn are silent when left by their mother. They are aware of the shadow of the owl. No matter how long she is gone, they will not call out. Only at the edge of starvation, weeks later, will they cry out, desperate for salvation.

  My girl’s stillness is likewise a certain careful gauging, a waiting to see how things will unfold. She is watching to see from which direction danger comes. My mother had thought it was some inherent goodness in me. Instead it was an act of survival.

  * * *

  At the playground I sit on a bench while Bodhi plays and smoke cigarettes to the bitter stub, trying to suck down enough nicotine to get me through the long evenings
ahead, the sleepless nights. I sit on the edge of the bench, my knees jiggling high, and smoke and try not to slip into the bottomless pit.

  Before Daniel came, my soul had been cloistered. I had been reconciled to isolation, and in this, there had been a kind of contentment. But I had let him inside and I had swallowed happiness. I had feasted on his flesh; I had dwelt within it. I had fallen into the arms of this country that was first his. Then she had come and my world had swelled with love, but had also shrunk down to the size of a pinhead. There is the sensation of a shroud dropped over my head, no more air to breathe. I don’t like this, I realize. I don’t like being the mommy. I love my child, but I don’t like motherhood. Motherhood is the constancy of a pair of eyes seeking you out, wanting you, needing you. It is the feeling that there is no darkness, no private place, no escape from those small but piercing eyes. I had not thought that a child could intrude so completely into one’s solitude. I see now that she does not share my serenity but rather disrupts and shatters it. Now wherever I go, her eyes track me like a hunter’s.

  I remember the trip Daniel and I had taken once, that deep mountain lake. All those corpses he had claimed lay at the bottom of the freezing depths. The sun is shining, but I can’t feel it on my skin anymore. The water has reached out once again and dipped its pointed finger into my jugular. I feel what it would be like to fall through miles of dark water, the horror of coming to bed in the mud surrounded by smashed, water-torn bodies.

  A sharp cry, and I look up to see that Bodhi has fallen, her knee skinned. She looks at me with tears trembling unshed from her eyes. We have an important and silent conversation then. Her asking for succor and my replying, “I am not the one to come to. I will not help you. This is the nature of my maternity.”

  “Who should I go to, then?” her eyes ask, and mine reply, “No one. There is no one in the world to go to.” I look away, I take a drag, and when I look back she has brushed off the bruised place and already turned away. I don’t think she will ask again. I’m teaching her to be tough, to be strong. No one else can teach her like I can. There are people in the world who can hurt her like they hurt me. But if she is as strong as iron, if she can lock up that inside place where no hands can reach, then she will survive the world of men as I have survived.