Heath and I had been married for three years, and he had this whole other child, this ex-wife, a past life that had nothing to do with me. I had my friends’ questions (When y’all having kids of your own?) and my mother’s proclamations (That baby’s gonna have good hair!). I had two hands held out, waiting to receive my due. I’d wanted a honeymoon baby, a curly-haired kid with golden skin and Heath’s hazel eyes. While I waited, I would practice with his child. Out together at dinner, I’d wind a strand of Nila’s hair behind her ear, tell her not to eat so fast, introduce her as our daughter.
Nine months ago, when I missed my period, when I confirmed with the pee stick and the doctor, when I told Heath over a bottle of expensive champagne and a card that read Daddy, I was glowing from the inside out. This baby validated me in the same way as my master’s degree, my good credit; Heath’s getting down on one knee. I bought the baby books, browsed the best cribs, shunned the million things expectant mothers should shun. Rule-by-rule, I was everything I was supposed to be—twice as good for half as much.
The baby was the size of a Washington cherry, with miniature sex organs even a skilled technician couldn’t see, when I lost it. There’d been no symptoms, it was too small for fluttering, and when I went to the appointment, the milestone when embryo became fetus, the doctor told me she was sorry, her face solemn and practiced. There was no heartbeat. It was, and then it wasn’t.
“This is common in early pregnancy,” she’d told me. “It happens all the time. Once the fetus is out, and you begin ovulating, you can try again.” The fetus, she’d said, and the word I’d been so excited about minutes earlier soured.
I opted out of the D&C and the pill, waiting for things to proceed “naturally.” There was still hope inside of me. Doctors were wrong all the time. I prodded my slim belly, shook it, willing my baby to move. “Wake up, baby,” I commanded, but the next day, the bleeding started and didn’t stop. The doctor said, It’s beginning, and there was nothing to do. Heath kissed my forehead, tried to fold me into his arms, but I couldn’t let him hold me. I locked myself in the bathroom with the baby books, flipping through them carefully, and nowhere was it written how to reverse time or spark a heartbeat. How to make a womb worthy. I tore the pages out in handfuls and flushed them down the toilet, watched as they swirled back up in soggy clumps and came to rest at my feet. Later, in the shower, my baby would come out that way.
I saw the first baby part in a bouquet of marigolds Heath brought home that night, the small slit of sex resting among the petals—a girl. I was afraid to blink, in case it disappeared. She was with me, talking to me, which meant maybe I could talk back. I was glad to see her, even in this way; if a tiny ear appeared, I’d whisper into it how much she’d been wanted. But over time, these signs began to feel less like benedictions, more like blame. I didn’t tell Heath; this was for me, and I didn’t need a psychiatrist to understand what these visions were—a reminder of how the baby would have developed if she were still safe inside of me.
The moon has been replaced by the buttery glow of midafternoon sun when I’m woken by my phone ringing. I know without looking it’ll be my mother or Heath. By now, no one else bothers to call.
“Hello.”
“You’re still in bed,” Heath says. Not a question.
“Yes.”
The college has been kind, allowing me to stretch the interpretation of “sick leave” these last few months, as long as the job gets done. I’ve covered my bases diligently: all accounts manned, no client left untended. Mostly I work from home, running formulaic programs that allow financial aid to go through so students can buy their textbooks and birth control, stock their shelves with Top Ramen. But Heath knows my primary post is my bed, my real work the practice of forgetting through sleep.
“You have to pick Nila up from school today.”
I bring my free hand to my face and examine the fingers, the pinkish white of my nails, the frayed cuticles holding them in place. I bring them to my mouth and bite away the excess skin.
“Are you there?” Heath asks, and I hear an edge of worry in his voice, expertly mixed with a dash of irritation—our most common cocktail these days.
“Yes,” I say, still gnawing. My stomach rumbles.
“Rayna . . . you promised you would spend the day with her.” He pauses, and the space between us hisses with static, his wishes and mine distorted through the phone lines. “Please,” Heath says, and I sigh. Now that I’m pitiful, I’m a sucker for beggars.
“I’m getting up,” I tell him. I work up a spit in my mouth, swallow the torn-off skin.
I park on the street, outside the circle of mothers and fathers corralled along the drive marked for child pick-up. The children are hazy with movement, erratic bits of color sprinting from the school, waving papers, some carrying retro plastic lunch boxes, the kind I used to beg my mother for. Everything always comes back. The children screech like seabirds and collide with their parents with the same energy as waves meeting the shore. I shield my eyes and search for Nila in the crowd.
I see her among all the others at the edge of the curb, her tongue poked out in concentration, looking for me. At the sight of her, a pang starts up in my stomach, a kind of knocking, some feeling asking to be acknowledged. My hand is on the keys and the gas tank marked full. It would be easy to drive away before I’m spotted. I could vanish—follow the wet summery air down an unfamiliar highway and try to escape the little legs dancing on my kitchen counter, or the lungs the size of kidney beans wheezing from the nightstand. I imagine cracked earth; giant saguaro; the hot air drying the farther west I ride and the sun sinking red. Out there, I would track vipers through the bleached sand and lie beneath the moon’s cool regard, my belly full and swaying with meat. The coyotes would sing my lullaby.
I pull the key from the ignition and get out of the car, cross the street, and hold my hand high. I wave. It’s been almost five weeks since I’ve seen her, and I’d forgotten her six-year-old’s exuberance, the brightness of her hair, that she loves me. She throws her arms around my waist, and her stomach, soft and plump, pushes against me. I hold her away from my body at the shoulders, look into her face, and feel nothing but appetite.
“Let’s get some food,” I say, trying on a smile, a stretched thing.
At the car, I buckle Nila into the backseat and she tells me about Jupiter’s moons and clouds of space dust where stars are born. She tells me about gravity, how it keeps us pinned to Earth and makes apples fall from trees. “We did drawings today,” she says, and promises to show me later. I know what I’m supposed to say, but can’t. I am a dead satellite, picking up information but relaying nothing back. She’s a smart kid, she senses this. She tells me she missed me, and because I’m trying, because I love her, I lie.
“I missed you, too,” I say, and guide the car onto the road.
Heath and the ex-wife have agreed Nila must eat vegetables with every meal, a helping of fresh fruit and whole grains with little allowance for processed junk. I order bacon cheeseburgers and large fries at Wendy’s and we eat them in the parking lot, sharing a chocolate Frosty between us, dipping our fries into it, getting brain freeze as the cold saturates our teeth. I let her gulp down my orange soda between sloppy, open-mouthed bites, flick away the bit of hamburger and bread left on the straw like a flea.
“Our secret,” I tell her with a cartoon wink.
“Can we go to the toy store after?”
I recognize the hard
