An unidentifiable yearning gripped my insides, twisted them until I gasped.
How much time had passed? A minute, maybe less. I glanced at the house behind me. A wall of weather-coated windows reflected the desert landscape back at me; if the grandmother was in there, looking out, I wouldn’t be able to see her. But there was no sound of life coming from inside, no shrieks of alarm. The grass was sharp and itchy underneath my knees. The desert air was so dry that it hurt my lungs to breathe. I wanted to run a finger along the curve of the girl’s cheeks, press my palms around the soft pudge of her naked arm, but I was too scared. Instead, I tentatively placed my hand on the little girl’s chest, right above the pocket of her tee. Just to see if she was OK, because that rapid breath was so alarming. I told myself that I was just being a conscientious observer, because the child was alone out here, and what if she wasn’t OK? I could feel the frantic quiver of her heartbeat through the thin cotton, and it felt too fast, far too fast.
And then suddenly her eyes were open and looking right at me. Her gaze was deep and still, not surprised at all but calm, as if she’d recognized me and was relieved to find me there.
I felt it then, that instinctual connection. My DNA, in this child. My child.
She blinked a few times, and then—blinded by the midday sun pressing down directly overhead—winched her eyes back shut again. “Mama?” she asked, in a tiny sleepy voice. I realized that, with the sun in her eyes, she’d probably seen a halo of blond hair, nothing more; just enough to give her the impression of mother. And yet that single word—an echo of the question I kept hearing in my dreams—sent a sharp needle into my heart.
She lifted her arms to me, letting them hang limply in the air, asking to be held.
Naked instinct kicked in. Before I could second-guess myself, I’d picked her up, pressed her against my chest, and was rubbing my palm along her back. She was so warm, almost hot to the touch. Was she feverish? But she slackened in my grip, put a thumb in her mouth, and let her head loll against my shoulder. Almost immediately, I felt her jaw working against her thumb, soothing herself back to sleep. The heat of her body against mine, the faint strawberry scent of her hair: It was all so visceral—my hallucination come to life—that I felt dizzy.
I heard a voice calling softly behind me, “Let’s go.”
I turned and Iona was standing there, halfway across the yard, just out of eyeshot of the windows that faced the backyard. She gesticulated wildly, waving me toward her, and, in my dazed stupor, I moved without thinking.
The child in my arms didn’t even stir.
When I walked within reach, Iona grabbed my elbow and rapidly steered me toward the car. I let her direct me across the road, afraid to ask what she had in mind, afraid to open my mouth at all, because what if I spoke and the child woke up and started to cry? What if her grandmother heard it and came out and saw me crossing the road with her baby in my arms? What if she called the police? Somehow this was a more terrifying prospect than silently following Iona’s lead as she ushered me and the baby across the road. I noticed that the door to the back seat was wide open, a mouth waiting to swallow us. The engine idling, the car gently vibrating, ready to move.
I didn’t resist as Iona pressed me into the back seat, her hand firm on my back. I didn’t say a word when she climbed in the front seat and put the car in drive. I didn’t question the logic of what was happening, I didn’t ask myself whether I should be doing what Iona clearly wanted me to do.
* * *
—
Looking back now, it would be easy for me to pin the blame on Iona. It was her encouragement—her idea really—that had me climbing into a car with another woman’s child in my arms. Would I have done it if she hadn’t suggested it? Hadn’t grabbed my arm and steered me across the road? Hadn’t pressed me into the back seat of the car? I doubt it.
And yet, I can’t absolve myself. Of course I can’t. Because if I am going to be honest—truly honest with myself—wasn’t it exactly what I wanted, too? To climb into the safety of those deep leather seats and clutch the sleeping child against my chest, to hold her there forever and ever, to make her mine?
Iona just saw what my darkest longing was and pushed me to make it a reality.
As we drove away from the house that day, I didn’t realize that I’d just made a decision that would change my life. Dazed and overwhelmed, I wouldn’t come to this awareness until five minutes later, ten minutes, twenty; not until we’d pulled onto the highway and were already driving back west; not until my heart stopped beating so fast and the adrenaline cloud began to dissipate and logic reinserted itself into the haze of madness. Not until the child in my arms finally stirred and looked up at me and didn’t murmur “Mama,” but instead started to cry.
Only then would I understand that I had somehow made a choice, and that the choice I’d made was so utterly, irrevocably wrong.
30
AND JUST LIKE THAT, I had a daughter, one that was technically half mine. I called her Charlotte, a name that had topped my list for years, and when I called her by this it was like a memory made manifest. I purchased the contents of an entire Pottery Barn Kids catalog and converted the guest bedroom to a nursery. I bought books with names like The Happiest Toddler on the Block and studied them for parenting tips. I wooed my new daughter with ice cream and cookies, I took her to the beach and the playground and strapped her on my back for hikes up to Inspiration Point.
In response, Charlotte cried. She sobbed because the sand was too hot. She threw herself out of my arms when I picked her up. She refused the food that I set in front of her. She wailed when I belted her into her brand-new car seat and she screamed when I took her out of it. She pushed her hands against my face and said NO, one of the few words she could clearly articulate. I knew, of course, that her tears had nothing to do with anything that I was doing wrong; her malaise was something much bigger, and it was all my fault.
Of course it was—I’d selfishly taken her away from everything she’d ever known.
But eventually, a few weeks in, she stopped crying so much. It was as if she’d accepted some inevitability, realized that her new reality was perhaps not so bad after all. She’d decided I was safe. Perhaps the memory of her life before was already fading away, paved over by the eternal new of existence as a fledgling human.
I studied her for signs of long-term trauma, for some evidence that wrenching her away from her parents had caused permanent damage. In retrospect, I’m sure it did; how could it not? But at the time I was reassured when, so quickly, she started eating like a normal child, she played with the toy kitchen that I set up in her bedroom, she made eye contact with me and laughed when I read her Sandra Boynton board books. She started snuggling into my side when I picked her up, and burrowed her head in my neck when a neighbor’s dog barked at her, just like I was her real mother.
I discovered that she had more words: Kitty. Hungry. More.
And yet sometimes, I would look over and see her watching me with measuring eyes, a worm of worry furrowing her brow. As if she was trying to fully comprehend this new reality she’d found herself in.