She just won’t stop crying. Tiny face full of fury, mouth gaping open like she could swallow the whole world and everyone in it. I’d changed her nappy, stripped her naked, offered her boob after boob after boob, rocked her, burped her. Now I rock her while trying to latch her on to my right breast, shoulders aching with the weight of her, knowing my breasts are useless. Just empty balloons at this point, looking as sad as she clearly felt. On she goes, sucks for a moment which enrages her even more and she pulls off, my nipple twanging, and she looks up at me, eyes blazing. A pause, as she inhales, and then screams in my face again.
I imagine the air waves pulsing through the air and reaching me like a slap. ‘You’re USELESS’ she is shouting at me. Little hands, sometimes so soft, so boneless, curled into fists and punching my chest. She tries to writhe away, still screaming ‘why are YOU my mother? You don’t know what you’re doing.’
She’s right, of course. I don’t know what I’m doing. Why did I think I could do this? What did I think it would be like? Not this, that’s for sure. Not this, me covered in dried milk and smelling like stale yoghurt, hair that hasn’t been washed for days. What am I even wearing? Not even pyjamas now because I’ve been wearing them night and day, just occasionally, desperately changing the pad that soaks up the blood which is still pouring from my now-empty uterus. So much blood. And that too, I can smell it all the time. Stale yoghurt from my breasts, the metallic smell of blood from my womb. Like an animal. Not a vibrant mother lion, but a dead carcass being devoured by vultures.
Still she screams. I look at her eyes and find that they are no longer scrunched shut but staring at me as she screams. ‘Useless’ she’s saying to me ‘why did you ever think you could do this?’
I’m going to ruin her. I’ll break her, and she’ll be broken forever. Why did I ever think I could do this?
I had fantasies, I suppose. I thought I’d have time. I thought we’d have endless time, I was so worried about being bored. I thought we’d just have days stretching ahead of us. She would be wrapped up in a buggy, I would be wearing clean clothes, and we’d walk the streets together. She would sleep, I would walk, I’d drink coffee. We’d go to art galleries and I’d explain to her everything I knew. We’d meet friends, we’d walk along the river. She would smile. I would smile. We’d smile at each other. That was as far as I’d got.
But this, this ball of rage, this was not what I imagined. Where did she get all that anger from? ‘Useless’ she is still shouting at me. And I see my mother’s eyes, in hers, dark pupils narrowing and I’m five years old, covering my head and trying to shield myself from angry words. Like arrows they pierce me all over, ‘useless’, ‘you’re ruining everything’, ‘idiot’.
As she inhales again, I gasp for air, tensing my body against the onslaught and put her down on to the bed.
Immediately, she stops crying.
Away from the tension in my body, the words in my mind, she unfurls – stretching her limbs and yawning. ‘You needed to be free, did you?’ I ask her. She looks up at me again. And there she is, three weeks old. My daughter.