up where she’d left off? Would she muddle things up as she had been doing at home – adding bubble solution to the chicken dinner and only realizing when she went outside to blow a tin of chopped tomatoes into the air for her confused children? Would she be able to function? Was she still relevant? Had her portfolios been given away? Would her clients be happy to see her return? What if her replacement had been more efficient, quicker, faster, better? What if they were looking for flaws, examining her under the microscope, looking for a reason to get rid of the woman with three kids? There were people who wanted her job, people who could stay longer in the evening, arrive earlier in the morning, change their schedule at a moment’s notice. Young men, older men with children, young women, women with no children because they didn’t want them, couldn’t have them, or who were afraid to risk it all.
She had dropped the six-year-old at school, then the three-year-old at Montessori, then the nine-month-old at daycare. Every single drop-off had broken her heart, each one more than the last. Each child howled as she left him, looked at her with sad searching eyes as if to say, ‘Why are you leaving me like this?’ Stamping images in her mind of their crumpled-up faces, tormented and accusing. Why was she doing this to them? Nine months at home had been lovely – stressful at times but lovely, with at least one daily psychotic screaming episode that scared her more than the kids, but still, they’d been together and she’d loved them and they had felt loved. So why was she putting them through this? Most of her salary went on childcare. She could get by without working if she really had to, if they economized even further. It wasn’t about the money. Well, it was a little, but not completely. She was going back to work because she needed to. She loved her job. She wanted her job. Her husband wanted her to have this job, not just so she could help pay the mortgage but because he loved that other woman that she became when she worked, the one that felt a little more contented, a little more useful, satisfied, relevant, a little less cranky. Though she certainly wasn’t feeling that way on her first day back.
She watched her baby in the arms of the stranger whose nametag said ‘Emma’ and her heart twisted. She hated Emma. She loved Emma. She needed Emma. The baby screamed and she felt her nipples twist and leak. Her silk shirt was already soiled, not by the kids for once but by her own body. She blasted the heating, directed the fan towards her wet boobs, placed a cabbage leaf in each bra cup against her breasts, and searched the radio for anything to take her mind off abandoning her children.
That night as she was inspecting her body after the shower, she noticed the red mark. It was on her right breast, the fleshiest part of her body.
‘It’s a heat rash,’ her husband said.
‘It’s not.’
‘You always get these spots when you take a hot shower.’
‘The shower wasn’t very hot. I’ve been out for twenty minutes.’
‘It’s dry skin, then.’
‘It’s not. I’ve just moisturized.’
‘Well then, what is it?’
‘That’s what I’m asking you.’
He pushed his head closer to her breast and squinted.
‘Did Dougie bite you? It looks like a bite mark.’
She shook her head. Not that she remembered. But maybe he had. Though he’d barely looked at her when she’d collected him from daycare that evening and had fallen asleep in the car on the way home so she’d had to put him straight to bed. She recalled the struggle while handing him over to Emma at daycare. She didn’t remember him biting her, but maybe.
She’d slept well that night after the emotional day, despite a bed-wetting incident, an unscheduled night bottle and a sleepwalker. The two eldest ended up in bed with her husband while she ended up in the spare bedroom with the baby. Still, the best night’s sleep one could ask for under the circumstances.
The following day the mark on her chest had turned a purple colour and she found another. She’d noticed it after lunch, when she managed to sit alone in the local restaurant and order food for herself, by herself, actually finishing her cup of tea while it was still hot, then went to the toilet alone for the first time in a very long time. She thought she’d sat down on a pin or a thumbtack but found nothing on her desk chair. In the toilet cubicle, she pulled out her compact mirror and found an even larger red oval-shaped mark on the white flesh of her buttock. She didn’t show her husband that one but she was careful with the children, making sure none of them were nipping at her when she wasn’t looking.
It was during an overnight business trip to London that she began to grow really concerned. One too many stares at her on the plane – on which she had been able to sit alone, without having to share a seat belt or a seat, or distract her children from kicking the seat in front of them or running up and down the aisles, or screaming at the top of their lungs – caused her to rush to the bathroom as soon as they landed. She discovered that her neck was covered in red marks, which were much larger than the previous ones and definitely bite marks, with tiny tooth incisions clearly visible. She hid her neck beneath her scarf, despite the stifling heat in the car she shared with her male colleagues, and later in the hotel realized the marks had spread all the way down her left arm. While on Skype, talking to the kids, who were too hyper to pay her any attention, she showed her husband the bite marks.
His annoyance and distrust were evident. ‘Who is away with you?’
They argued and she couldn’t sleep, feeling rage and hurt, on the one night she had a bed to herself. To top it all off, at 1 a.m. the hotel fire alarm went off and she found herself outside on the street in her gown, in the cold, for thirty minutes until she could return to her room.
When she got home, her baby wouldn’t come to her, would only stay in his father’s arms and anytime she neared him he screamed as though his legs were being sawed off. Which was what hers felt like. Her husband found her sobbing in the bathroom; when he saw her body, covered in marks in various shades of bruising and swelling, he knew something was seriously wrong. The pain was agonizing.
She went to the doctor the following day. It was a Saturday and she didn’t want to – all she wanted was to be with the kids – but gave in when her husband insisted and his mother offered to have the kids for the afternoon. The pain was getting worse by the hour.
The doctor was equally confused but more suspicious. She confirmed that these were bite marks, prescribed painkillers and a lotion, then pushed some pamphlets about domestic abuse into her handbag as she left the surgery, telling her to be in touch if it continued.
Three weeks later, she was unrecognizable. The marks had spread to her face; there was bruising on her cheeks and chin, and the tips of her ears looked as though they’d been nibbled. She hadn’t missed any work – she couldn’t, not after nine months’ maternity leave; she had too much to prove, too much to catch up on. But she was exhausted. She looked ravaged and drained of all colour. The doctor arranged for blood tests. All appeared normal, nothing that could cause or be related to the marks on her skin. She and her husband fumigated the house, they got rid of the carpets and laid timber flooring in case dust mites were the cause of her agitated skin. And every weekday morning she’d say goodbye to her babies, who no longer cried when she left them, which made her feel even worse and caused her to cry all the way into the city, where she’d apply a layer of extra-thick foundation so she could pass for a competent professional in the office. When socializing at the weekend, she would lather on body make-up to cover her bitten legs, and play the super-attentive wife and friend.
Of an evening she would try to keep the baby awake in the car on the way home, sometimes lowering the windows
