That Kind of Mother

by Rumaan Alam

  “Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “Think about menstruation. There’s a lot you need to know that your mother or your big sister or your cousin or whoever shows you. This is the same thing. I’m here to show you, Mom.”

  Christine, fourteen, had explained maxi pads to her. “Please. Call me Rebecca.”

  “I’m Priscilla. OK, Rebecca. Jacob.” She included the baby in her direct address, but smiled as though she knew it was funny to do so. “Let’s start by getting you comfortable. Sit up, like you’re eating breakfast in bed. Which one of you is! Put a pillow in front, like it’s the tray, and put Jacob right on top of it.”

  Priscilla set the baby on the white pillow, sacrificial lamb. He had been inside of her and now he was not. If Priscilla had set her liver or pancreas on the pillow before her, would Rebecca have recognized it as part of her own body?

  “OK, I’m going to stop you here.” With a firm hand, Priscilla divided the baby from Rebecca. “You need to be comfortable. Mentally, but also physically. This is work, Rebecca. So make it easier. Relax your shoulders.”

  “Telling someone to relax is not very relaxing.”

  Priscilla laughed. “I have to remember that. But pretend until it feels true. Take your breast in your hand. Like it’s not attached to your body. I think that helps, to treat it like a tool. Rub your nipple right up against his mouth and his chin. He’ll fuss, and then he’ll latch.”

  Rebecca traced the baby’s chin with the distended tip of her breast.

  “Wake up, my love. Wake up, now.” Priscilla bent her head and blew gently onto the baby’s ear. Her Afro brushed against Rebecca’s skin.

  Priscilla put a hand on Rebecca’s. “I know I’m making you tense. Pretend we’ve known each other for years. I’m an old friend of the family. I’ve come for a visit. Move your finger away from the areola. So you don’t slow the flow.”

  The baby’s eyes were shut, his mouth on her breast.

  “Is he there? He’s not there.” Priscilla put her finger between the baby’s wet mouth and Rebecca’s rigid nipple. “It’s coming, is the good thing.”

  “The milk?” This woman had her finger on Rebecca’s breast and in that moment she was indeed an old friend of the family. It was as before, with her sisters and her mother, a private but powerful conference. There was magic between them, or it was the baby.

  “It’s colostrum. It’s like cream on top of the old-fashioned bottle, from the farm. The good stuff. That’s what he needs now.”

  “He’s not there?” Rebecca didn’t know who he was or where there was but she was trying.

  “You’ll know when he’s there.”

  “How will I know?” This was baffling.

  “You’ll know.” Priscilla’s confidence was reassuring. “Take Jacob’s head in your right hand and lift it up and turn him onto your breast. He won’t like it. Cup him gently, but firmly. He’s your baby. You’re not going to break him.”

  “Has he eaten?” Rebecca looked at the baby, gasping and fussing in her hands, eyes closed like he couldn’t bear to see her, to be seen. “Is he starving?”

  “Nature is smarter than us. Don’t worry. You just need to learn how to work together. So put him right onto your nipple. Then what should happen is he should take hold and your nipple will be right up at the top of his mouth, deep in there.”

  He had already been inside her. Deeper seemed impossible.

  “But we need to wake our friend up.” Priscilla had the child’s small ear between her fingertips. She kneaded it, like she was forming pasta. Once again, she leaned forward, breathing on the baby. Once again, her soft hair brushed against Rebecca’s chest. That big room and the three of them huddled together like the survivors on Géricault’s raft.

  The baby had his arms clenched close to his face, his knees curled up to his chest, like a folded piece of paper that’s accustomed to its envelope. This time, her nipple slipped past his gums and into him. The pressure, pull, pinch were a surprise. It hurt. By some magic, she knew her nipple was at the back of his throat; it was as though there was something pressing against the back of her own throat. “Is it working? How can I tell?”

  Priscilla laughed. “If you listen very closely, you can hear it. Two sucks. One gulp. It takes two sucks to coax the milk out, one swallow.” She was intent for a moment. She smiled. “I can hear it. Soon you’ll be able to tell. And there are other ways. The breast he’s not on might leak, which may be a sign that the one he’s on is also working.”

  “So that’s it then?” Rebecca felt a rush, hormonal, physical, like when you’ve had too much to drink and stand up suddenly.

  “That’s it. For now.”

  The baby suckled. Rebecca worried the spell would break if Priscilla Johnson left the room. “I didn’t tell you,” she said. “About Princess Diana.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My husband met her. At a party.”

  “Go on!”

  The books said bonding was important. But this woman, this Priscilla, didn’t seem to be interfering with that. Rebecca stroked his barely there dark brown hair and Jacob’s skull vibrated beneath her fingertips, delicate as a summer fruit. “It just happened! He works for the embassy, my husband. He’s English.” There was a note of apology that she didn’t intend. “She was at the White House. He was there, too.”

  “That’s something!”

  It was something. Rebecca pretended to find it less impressive when discussing it with Christopher. It was too embarrassing to explain, that she had a special feeling about a princess. Rebecca was high-minded; Rebecca was a poet, at least that was the intention, now that she’d left Woodley Park Montessori. That had been a stopgap. It was Lorraine who had found Rebecca the job, as a teacher’s assistant and not, important to note, an assistant teacher. Rebecca poured cups of juice and played the cassette of the Brandenburg Concertos to rouse the napping pupils. The children were sweet but had damp noses and coughs like a dog’s bark: you needed a passion for such work. She’d quit after marrying Christopher. “I was so jealous! But I was so pregnant. I couldn’t have gone, even if I had been invited. What on earth would I have worn?”

  “I do wonder what she looks like in person. I’ve seen the pictures, but you can just tell that she looks different in person.”

  Rebecca had never admitted that she’d bought a purple cashmere sweater vest like the one she’d seen Diana in, as she shepherded those pallid kindergartners. She couldn’t point out that she herself had been a school helper, had married a taller, older Englishman. The coincidence was delicious but secret, tinged with shame but also pride, like the orgasm you only ever achieve alone. “Even my husband said she looked lovely, and he never notices that kind of thing.”

  “He was at the White House!”

  Rebecca relished the transitive glamour of Christopher’s work. So much easier to comprehend than her own work. People always wanted to know what you did. She was a poet but what had she done, the past two years? She’d bought a sofa, Italian, leather, the gray of an elephant, an ingenious glass coffee table, floor lamps that cast halos onto the ceiling, an espresso maker, All-Clad pans, and bamboo baskets that hung from the ceiling, which she filled with bananas, apples, tangerines. She’d been to parties as host (unwrap cheeses from wax paper and sweep Carr’s crackers in tidy arcs, light votives in the powder room) and guest (spritz on Opium, make never-to-be-realized plans for ski vacations). She’d honeymooned in London, she’d bought a Volvo, she’d found the house on Wisconsin Drive. It all looked like subjugation, but it didn’t feel that way. Poetry was a thing that she could never finish, therefore poetry could wait.

  “Did you see the pictures, from that night?” There was the pain at the nipple, but there was also the slow creep of satisfaction. It spread from somewhere near her breast—her heart—and down her arms, to the tips of her fingers, even through her hair, passion but more placid.

 
“I must have.” Priscilla clutched the manila folder of papers to her breast.

  “She wore blue. Midnight blue, velvet.”

  “A sapphire choker. Set in pearls. I remember. I saw the pictures. Those gloves to the elbow.”

  “She danced—”

  “—in the arms of that movie star!” Priscilla chuckled. “Too perfect, if you ask me.”

  “That’s what I said!” That was what she’d said, the morning after, going back over the night with Christopher. He told her what details he remembered, though he couldn’t think of the movie star’s name. Rebecca had listened and said it was too perfect. Diana did everything right, somehow.

  “Well, I feel special now. Just one step removed from Lady Di. Think of that!” Priscilla smiled down at them. “He’ll fall asleep, you’ll see. It’s fine, just keep him close for now, learn to listen for when he’s hungry. I’ll come back later.”

  “There’s more?” Rebecca had it under control! She gripped the baby with one hand, that was how small he was. She wondered, idly, where Christopher was.

  Priscilla wore a black cardigan that looked very soft. She smoothed it out. “We can review how to pump, if you’re going to be working, or away from the baby, or just want to have a bottle on hand. We can talk about some of the effects—you may have some contractions as your milk begins flowing.”

  “Contractions?” These were present only in the vaguest way, the memory of a meal. Rebecca knew that contractions had meant fire, light in her peripheral vision, a dulling of her sense of hearing. She could now barely conjure how it had felt.

  “Not like labor. But they can be bad.” Priscilla nodded. “I’ll check on you tomorrow. It looks like you’ve got his needs covered, but we should go over yours. There might be pain, discomfort. It’s all the usual stuff. Nothing you can’t survive.”

  “Survival seems like a pretty low metric for success.”

  Priscilla laughed, a proper laugh. “There’s no truer measure, if you ask me. But you’re funny, Rebecca. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  2

  THE BABY—JACOB, HIS NAME WAS JACOB, BUT IT WAS EASIER AND more honest to think of him as the baby, a specter, a force, not an actual person—made everything seem different. The house was unrecognizable, but not for the ministrations of Joyce Cohen, the interior designer, a blur in a bouclé skirt forever talking about occasional tables and finishes. Dangers loomed. The hard tile underfoot: Jacob’s skull was so soft, Rebecca’s grip on him so unpracticed. The books on the shelf: What was stopping a poltergeist or seismic event from sending the whole thing down upon them as upon poor Leonard Bast? The baby made life seem both triumphant/powerful/enduring and horribly fragile. What on earth was she doing?

  Everything was, in fact, the same. Christopher woke, dressed, smoked a Silk Cut on the back steps (it’s bad for the baby, she said), kissed her, and drove off into the District. The Maryland streets bled into Washington, reality bled into motherhood, and Rebecca slipped across that unmarked border.

  Rebecca lay in bed, cold—the house was old—but unable to bear the pressure of the down comforter on her body. Her right breast was ossified, diamond hard, hot to the touch though Rebecca shivered. The baby was noisily dozing in the bassinet beneath the window. Mysteriously, it didn’t seem to bother Christopher, not the heavy nasal wheeze of the infant or the slow build of his imprecations, stir whimper lick lips cry wail. Absent actual sleep, the restorative sort, that deep oblivion, Rebecca began to feel mad. She thought of her sisters. Judith had Jennifer, Christine had Michelle, and both had said they were tired but no one had said anything about going crazy. It had only been a few days, the baby so new his life span could be measured in those units. Rebecca tried to imagine her own mother, and herself, curled up as small as Jacob. She couldn’t.

  Jacob began the first in his steps toward fussing. It had been almost two hours that he’d slept. Not so bad. Four thirty was near enough morning. She took him downstairs, switched on the electric kettle, but he was ready to nurse, so the thing clicked off and the water cooled once more while Rebecca sat with the baby, massaging her rock-hard right tit with her left hand. This required dexterity. She folded her knees up and rested the boy on them, but the nipple slipped from his mouth and his brow furrowed, and he began to cry, silently at first, then quite loudly, uncannily, like an animal in the abattoir.

  She’d always been competent. Rebecca never got lost driving, even to unfamiliar places. It took her one phone call to coordinate even a complex plan. If she was curious about something, she’d note that curiosity and look it up in a book when convenient. She was unfazed in the face of emergency. Once when she was in college, a man on the T had a cardiac event. Rebecca took the man by the arm, led him off the train at Boylston. She wasn’t even late to class. There was nothing for her in What to Expect, just some silly illustrations. But if your heart races all the time, you’re having a cardiac event yourself.

  Rebecca wished there was some other person in the room who could prepare her a cup of tea. Hard to imagine that she’d once spent so much time in these rooms with Joyce Cohen, the interior designer. People appeared and then they disappeared and that was life. She looked back at the baby. Someday, he’d go off to college. The crying wasn’t so loud, wasn’t so disruptive, but it had some other sort of effect on her, something chemical, or akin to those whistles that only dogs can hear. His crying affected her uniquely among all living people because he had issued from her body; it was her own cells calling back to her, saying, You feel hungry and you don’t even know it. She tugged at her right nipple and no milk came out, just a vague oily secretion that seemed like, but was not, blood. Her baby needed something and she didn’t understand why she was unable to provide it.

  The baby back at her breast, Rebecca turned on the radio, filling the silence with warm voices discussing Reagan’s meeting with Gorbachev. She turned the kettle back on. Her breast throbbed and then, as had been happening for a couple of days now, her uterus kicked, seemed to flip inside her much as Jacob once had, when he’d been just a preening, anxious fish. The pain made her woozy. Rebecca touched her breast again. She’d been reading Ovid, only weeks ago, and here she was, Galatea in reverse, the tissue hard as marble, the nipple a faceted jewel.

  Christopher came into the kitchen: pinstripe pajama pants, morning squint. “Morning then.”

  “We didn’t wake you?” She found herself speaking of herself and the baby as one, with the same interest, Siamese beings.

  Christopher filled a mug, steam rising to fog his glasses. He was still slender, Christopher, so little give on his body it was like his very torso was tucked into the elastic waistband of his pants. The flat plane of his chest, punctuated by those pointless pink nipples. Women’s bodies had these useful appendages but no one ever spoke of men envying them. “No, no. It’s time I was up.” Christopher inhaled deeply, like a connoisseur with a wine. “What’s today, then?”

  He liked an accounting of the day to come, and at night, in bed, an accounting of the day just passed. He liked to hear what Rebecca had read, what Rebecca had bought, what Rebecca was thinking about making for dinner the next day. Where once she’d have considered hours spent exploring the etymology of a given word or puzzling over another writer’s choice of line break or planning a party time well spent, where once the day reliably included some acquisition (shoes, a new dress, a library book, a pork loin), now Rebecca found herself drawn to a smaller, more concise existence. She hadn’t read anything more than a page or two of Anne Tyler in weeks. “Today is the same.” Rebecca tried not to commit. She had the strangest sense that Christopher meant to make a point. “We’re seeing Doctor Anderssen at ten.” You had to go to the doctor all the time, when they were little.

  “Good then.” A touch of the philosophical, maybe. Mornings made him melancholy. Christopher sipped the tea. He would not ask how she was. He might have wanted to know it—how she was faring, whether that was sadness in her eyes or simply sleeplessness. He did love h
er, of course. But babies were a matter for mothers. It was Christopher’s duty to make silly faces at the boy. He went outside to smoke while Rebecca made him an egg, runny yolk and a square of brioche, then he showered, dressed, disappeared into the day. There was nothing deeper in this, and Rebecca didn’t feel abandoned: the way of the world.

  Blood out of a stone, somehow Jacob was sated or simply gave up. The baby dozed and Rebecca showered, the spray electric on her chest, impossible on her vulva. Even the towel was painful. She gave the baby her left breast once more, then dressed, then dressed him. It felt that this had been the way she’d whiled away all her days, weeks, years. Sleep wake sleep wake, the house cold and smelly, the baby an utter mystery. He dozed as she drove the station wagon downtown.

  Rebecca couldn’t find change so she didn’t feed the meter. She lifted the heavy plastic car seat out of the backseat and hurried into the building. The receptionist frowned because they were late. The nurse frowned because the baby was dressed but needed to be nude to be weighed, though Rebecca couldn’t see how the tiny cotton undergarment could throw the scale off by even an ounce. Doctor Anderssen frowned because that was his way, at least with adults. He chuckled and clowned for the children, but seemed not to understand what Rebecca was saying.

  “Is he gaining enough?” Thriving. They called this thriving.

  “He seems good to me.” As though he didn’t have the data at his disposal; as though he were making a guess.

  “I just can’t tell.” Rebecca held the nude baby close, daring him to urinate on her Ralph Lauren sweater. Let him piss on her. Perhaps it would be a salve, as when a jellyfish stings. “He takes the breast. I hear the sucking. Then he falls asleep. I can’t tell. The diapers are supposed to be wet. They don’t seem wet. I don’t understand.”