Before the Storm (18 page)

“Are they brown like yours and Laurel’s?” She ran a fingertip over the nearly translucent skin of the baby’s forehead.

“They’re kind of gray right now,” Jamie said, “but the pediatrician said they’ll most likely be brown.”

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Miss Emma looked at me where I sat in the rocker. “You

must be in seventh heaven, darlin’,” she said.

I was too tired to speak, so I smiled the same smile I’d been

wearing for the past three days. I’d pasted it to my face shortly

after the baby was born, and it was still in place. There was

something wrong with me,and so far I’d managed to hide it from

everyone else. I watched Jamie and Miss Emma sitting with the

baby on the sofa and it was as if I was watching them in a dream.

I felt apart from them, a strange sense of distance between us. If

I tried to walk from the rocker to the sofa, it could take me days.

My pregnancy had been far easier than I’d anticipated.

Except for some nausea early on and some puffy ankles toward

the end, I’d felt very well. The baby was two weeks early, and

although labor was harder than I’d anticipated, I made it

through ten hours of agony without an epidural. I was nearly

as concerned about Jamie as I was with myself. With his “gift,”

he looked as if he felt every single contraction. The baby was

eight pounds, eight ounces and I was grateful she hadn’t waited

the two extra weeks to make her entrance.

I knew the moment when I changed from a woman in love

with the baby she’d carried to a woman who no longer knew

what love felt like. In the delivery room, I heard the baby cry

for the first time, and I reached down toward my spread-apart

legs, anxious to touch her. A nurse placed her on my chest.

Jamie kissed my forehead as I lifted my head to look at her, but

I felt like I was looking down a long, spiral rabbit hole. My

world started to spin, faster, faster, and then it went black.

When I woke up, I was in the recovery room, Jamie at my

side. I’d hemorrhaged, he’d said, but I was going to be fine.

Maggie was perfect, and I’d be able to have more children.

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I barely heard him. I was stuck on the word
Maggie.
Who

was Maggie? I had a cramping pain low in my belly and thought

I was still in labor. I was frightened by my confusion. It took

Jamie several minutes to set me straight.

I didn’t get to hold the baby until thirty-six hours after she

was born. When she was placed in my arms, I felt absolutely

nothing. No maternal tug of recognition that this was the

familiar little presence I’d been carrying inside me for nine

months. No longing to explore her body. Nothing.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Jamie stood next to the bed, beaming,

and that’s when I pasted the smile on my face. Now at home,

everyone seemed to think I’d returned from that rabbit hole.

I was the only person who knew I was still stuck somewhere

between the black abyss and the real world.

“Is she eating well?” Miss Emma asked.

Jamie looked to me to answer, which meant I was going to

have to somehow force words out of my mouth.

“I’m—” I cleared my throat “—I’m having some trouble,”

I admitted. “She doesn’t latch on well.”

How I’d longed to nurse an infant! Working in the pediatrician’s office, I’d watch with envy and anticipation as mothers

slipped their babies inside their shirts for that secret, sacred

bond. But my nipples were too flat for the baby to latch on

easily. In the hospital, nurse after nurse tried to help me. A

counselor from the La Leche League showed up in my room

in the hours before I was discharged. Sometimes I was able to

get the baby to suck, but more often she wailed in frustration.

The woman from the La Leche League swore the baby was

getting enough nourishment, but I was worried.

“Oh, switch to formula,” Miss Emma said now, as though it

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was no big deal. “I bottle-fed both my boys and they turned

out all right.”

Jamie’d turned out great, I thought, but Marcus was questionable. He was
still
being bottle-fed. I felt tears fill my eyes,

though, at receiving her permission. She was the first person

who made it sound like no big deal to stop nursing.

“Well, it’s important, Mama,” Jamie said.

From where I sat, I could see the baby’s face tighten into her

pre-howling expression. A knot the size of a boulder filled my

stomach.

“Oh-oh,” Miss Emma said. “What’s the matter, precious?”

She raised the baby to her shoulder and rubbed her back, but

the howling started anyway. “She wants her mama, bless her

heart.” Miss Emma handed the baby to Jamie—he already

handled her with more assurance than I did—who walked

with her toward my rocker.

“I’ll try to feed her.” It took all my strength to get to my feet.

Jamie settled the baby in my arms and I walked toward the

bedroom. I needed privacy, not out of a sense of modesty but

because I didn’t want witnesses to my failure.

In the bedroom, I sat on the bed with my back propped up

against the pillows and started the battle to get the baby to latch

on. She cried; I cried. Finally she started sucking, but not with

the fervor I’d witnessed in other infants. Not with the contentment of being in her mother’s arms. Her expression was one

of resignation, as though she
had
to suck on my breast because

it was her only option. She would rather be anywhere else but

with me.

From the bedroom, I heard Marcus come home.

“Hey, Mama.” I pictured him striding through the living

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room, leaning over to kiss Miss Emma’s cheek.“When did you

get here? Have you seen my little niece yet?”

“Lord have mercy, Marcus!” I heard Miss Emma say. “You

smell like a barroom.”

I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, just the muffled

sound of their voices—including that of a young woman—and

I knew Marcus had brought home another of his girlfriends.

He seemed to have one for every day of the week.

Closing my eyes, I listened to my own voice inside my head.

Your baby doesn’t like you.

I know. I know.

You can’t even give her enough milk.

I know.

The baby turned her head away from my breast, wrinkling

her nose in what I could only interpret as distaste. I felt dizzy

with tiredness.

“Jamie,” I tried to call.

I heard laughter from the living room.

Gathering my strength, I called louder. “Jamie!”

In a moment, he opened the door to the bedroom and

peered inside. “You doing okay in here?”

“Can you burp her, please?” I asked. “I need a nap.”

“Sure, Laurie.” He took the baby from me and, as I burrowed

under the covers and gave in to the exhaustion, I felt the guilty

freedom of not having to think about her for an hour or so.

Marcus had moved in with us during the sixth month of my

pregnancy and he’d been a mixed blessing. Between Jamie’s

work at the real estate office, the fire department and the

chapel, his hours were long and unpredictable and I liked

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having Marcus’s company, even if I often had to share it with

his girlfriend du jour and a few six-packs of beer. Jamie’d

gotten him a construction job where he used to work. On the

evenings Marcus wasn’t working, though, he’d sometimes have

dinner ready by the time I got home from my job at the pediatrician’s office. He helped me turn the third bedroom into a

nursery, painting it in greens and yellows and setting up the

crib and dresser I’d bought. He’d long ago given up the electric

piano, but he played the stereo in his room so loud that if I

walked on the beach, as I did most mornings and evenings, I

could hear it a quarter mile away. He’d turn it down if I asked

him to. He did anything I asked, actually. The problem was not

between Marcus and me but between Marcus and Jamie. They

rubbed up against each other like sandpaper, and I soon

realized it had been that way for most of their growing-up

years. Jamie was a different person around Marcus. To say

that Jamie tried to understand another person’s feelings was

putting it mildly. With Marcus though, he reacted before he

thought. The music was too loud? He’d yell,“Marcus, turn that

crap down!” If Marcus came home in the middle of the night,

crashing into furniture and slamming doors after hours of

partying, Jamie would get out of bed and I’d cover my head

with the pillow to block out the fight.

I discovered it was impossible to intervene in the dance of

anger between the brothers. It had been going on too long and

my voice must have been a tiny, annoying buzz in their ears

when I tried to make nice. Their parents had choreographed

the rivalry many years ago with their deferential treatment of

their older son. Marcus was no angel, to be sure, and he’d play

dense when I tried to talk to him about the way he behaved

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with his brother. He drank way too much. Although he was

only twenty, six-packs of beer appeared and disappeared and

reappeared in the refrigerator with such rapidity that I lost

track. We began to understand why his parents had planned

to kick him out.

“You knew what he’s like,” I said to Jamie on one of our

morning walks along the beach. It was a rare March day when

the weather had turned so warm we were walking barefoot in

the sand. My hands rested on my belly as we walked, cradling

the baby I couldn’t wait to meet. “You knew he drinks, he

parties, he’s rowdy.”

“Lazy and irresponsible.”

“He’s not lazy at all,” I countered, thinking of the help he’d

given me with the nursery. I couldn’t argue with “irresponsible,” though. Several times, Marcus didn’t show up for work,

and the foreman called Jamie to complain.Having gotten Marcus

the job, Jamie naturally felt responsible for his performance.

“Why did you want him to live with us?” I asked. “Did you

think you could change him?”

Jamie ran his hands through his hair and looked out to sea.

“I thought I could change
me,
” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I always had problems with him when we were younger,”

he said. “But I feel good about myself. Good about the person

I am now, so I thought I could learn to be more tolerant of him.

But I swear, Laurie, he’s a whiz-bang expert at pissing me off.”

“I know.” For all the help Marcus gave me, he did put Jamie

to the test, like a rebellious teenager trying to see how far he

could push his parents.

“Maybe it was a mistake letting him move in,” Jamie said.

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“We told him we’d try it for six months,” I reminded him.

“Can you tough it out that long?”

Jamie nodded. “If we don’t kill each other first.”

Jamie took three weeks off from real estate and the fire department after Maggie was born. It took me that long to begin

thinking of her by her name. At her two-week checkup, the

pediatrician I’d worked for confirmed what I already knew: she

had colic. He took a finger-prick’s worth of blood from me

while I was there and told me I was still anemic, which accounted for my exhaustion and pallor.

“And I think you have a touch of the baby blues, Miss

Laurel,” he said, still referring to me the way he did when I

worked there. He studied my face and I realized I’d forgotten

to paste on my smile that morning. “Don’t worry,” he said.

“Your hormones will sort themselves out in good time.”

I told him about my struggle to breast-feed. Every couple

of hours, Maggie and I were locked in a battle that left both

of us drained and at least one of us in tears. He was hesitant

about suggesting I stop, but something in my demeanor tipped

him over the edge.

“The first two weeks were the most important,” he said.

“And if it’s having a negative impact on how you feel about her

and about yourself, I suggest you begin weaning her now.”

I nodded, relieved. Things would be better, I thought. I

wouldn’t dread feeding time. I would start to love her.

But that didn’t happen. She took to the bottle more easily

than she had my breast, but she still seemed uncomfortable in

my arms, fussing no matter how I held her. I could quiet her

by slipping my finger in her mouth, but as soon as she realized

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there was no food coming from my fingertip, the crying

started again.

She was undeniably different with Jamie. She’d sleep on his

shoulder or in the crook of his arm. I was both envious of her

comfort with him and relieved that
something
could put an end

to her crying.

The night before Jamie returned to work, I begged him to

take another week off.

We were lying in bed together, keeping our voices low so

we didn’t wake her even though she was a room away from

us.

“I can’t, Laurie,” he said. “It’s nearly high season and I’ve