The Perfect Child

by Lucinda Berry

Why did the universe allow people who hurt kids to have them? Why couldn’t it give them to people like me, who wanted them?

It gave us an opportunity to miss each other, and sometimes you needed that in a relationship even when you loved each other as much as we did.

It never crossed anyone’s mind that someone else might be in trouble. I wished it would’ve. Maybe then things would’ve ended differently.”

“They’d officially diagnosed Janie with child abuse syndrome. People always assume sexual abuse is the worst kind of abuse that a child can endure, but it’s not. It doesn’t have the kind of lasting effects that you see in kids who’ve been severely neglected. Don’t get me wrong. Sexual abuse is terrible, but the type of neglect that Janie experienced? That affects brain development.”

“How do I explain this to you?” I took a minute. “He was fully aware of her potential difficulties and problems. He just didn’t care.” It was what I loved the most about him. But it was also what had gotten him into the most trouble.

“Children of trauma are experts at triangulation.” “Triangulation?” I asked. “The child will act a certain way with one parent and a different way with the other parent. They try all kinds of things to drive a wedge in the parents’ relationship.”

“I’ve never seen you look happier, and I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I love more in this world than seeing you happy.”

I fell in love with my baby boy instantly, marveling at his perfection and that he’d lived inside me for so long. My feelings stemmed from the deepest parts of me. He wasn’t a stranger in my arms—it was like a missing piece of myself had been returned.

She crawled up on my lap and whispered in her sweet voice, “I like hurting people. Do you?”

“And he was so ashamed, right? Promised to never do it again? Probably even brought her some beautiful flowers too.” He snorted. “Seriously. You know better than that.” He was right. I couldn’t deny it. Men didn’t hit women no matter what. Period. It didn’t matter if a woman was beating up on a man—he took the hits. There was nothing that justified hitting a woman. It was what I taught perpetrators in all of my domestic violence education classes.

This. This is how it was supposed to be. Me, Christopher, and our baby.