Page 21 of Fractured Destiny

She leans over us. “Try skin to skin.”

I strip off my shirt and press him against my bare chest. His tiny body burns hot against mine. For a second, the room tilts around the raw absurdity of all of this. For years, my body was the thing I knew how to monetize. For attention. Men. Money. Pills. Powder.

None of this history belongs in this room with my newborn son screaming against my naked skin. I birthed him from the channel I allowed hundreds of cocks to penetrate. I’m trying to feed him with nipples even more guys have pinched and sucked on.

How can my body be safe for him when I treated myself like garbage?

A high white sound starts behind my eyes. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Mom doesn’t rush in to take him or tell me all new mothers feel this way. Her hands rest on her knees as she watches me struggle. “I remember this so clearly. Stick with it.”

I look into the eyes I avoided for years because the woman behind them didn’t ever notice I was disappearing in pieces, a little bit each year. “You remember colic?”

“I remember thinking if I couldn’t get you to stop crying, it meant I was failing you.” She lifts a shoulder.

Her words don’t register. I grew up with nannies. I don’t recall my mom doing anything unless there was a photo opportunity attached.

Levi screams again, his mouth open, his fists tight against my collarbone. “You thought you were failing me?”

“All the time.” She nods.

I shift my nipple toward his mouth. “You had help, though right?”

“Not in the early days.” A small smile tugs at her mouth, then fades before it can become comfort. “I loved you so much and never felt like I was enough.”

I stare at her, holding my screaming baby against a body I don’t know how to forgive.

Mom carefully reaches for Levi and I let her take him. She lifts him to her shoulder and walks him toward the window, moving into the low bounce-sway I’ve seen her do with my older brother Mark’s kids. He doesn’t stop crying, but he shifts into a sort of whimper. Quieter.

I button my shirt wrong and pick up the tea and drink the whole cup in three swallows. “Thank you for giving me a break.”

She smiles. Bounces.

I sit in the rocker with the empty cup between my hands and watch my mother walk a colicky newborn across the pool house I’ve spent countless mornings nursing hangovers in. Why don’t I have anything to say?

“My sponsor asked me something this week,” I manage.

Mom keeps moving. “Oh?”

“She asked what I would say to my daughter if she’d made the choices I did.” I avert my eyes to look out the window at the garden.

Her steps slow.

“I hated the question,” I mutter.

“I bet.”

“She kept pushing. What would I say if she were sitting across from me. Same stories. Same choices. Same everything.” My fingers tighten around the mug. “I wanted to say I would tell her to stop being such a stupid whore.”

Mom’s face changes into a grimace. As if she’s thought the same thing.

“I know…” The cup trembles against the ceramic saucer. “I know how awful that sounds.”

She stands in front of me. “What did you actually say?”

“I told her I wouldn’t know what to say to me.” I catch her eye and then look at Levi, whose cries are wearing down into little jagged mewls against my mother’s shoulder.

Mom closes her eyes for a second. “I do.”