Can You Feel This?

by Julie Orringer

You know the flower’s name: alyssum. Four-petaled, a star in miniature. Found in clusters. Scent of honey. That’s how your baby smells, but better. Ambrosiac. Fictional. You hold his head a centimeter from your nose. You want to lick him as if you were a cat.

You’d never worn your trauma like a badge. It was something you carried alone.

But if you’d told him, wouldn’t it confirm what you most wanted to hide? That there was something wrong with you? Not that you were crazy, maybe. You knew you weren’t your mother. But what might happen once the baby was born? New mothers lost it all the time. Ordinary ones, who didn’t carry what you carried.

But then you know: What you want is to be alone, figuring things out. Figuring your baby out. Figuring out how to give him what he needs. If you can’t manage it, if you can’t do this first thing, how will you do everything else? How will you do any of it without losing your mind?

the baby lives out in the world, his cord cut: a newborn with a mother whose mother came undone. Someone has to know about this. Someone has to know about you, to know you. The thought of it is pure terror. You sit down on the bed, reeling.

You don’t say you hate her for all she’s done and hasn’t done. But for a moment you think it. And that’s when she goes.