"Kids can sense bad people," I tell Brad one night.
Spread out on the bed with his head between my legs, he's talking to the baby, despite his oddly sexual positioning. I wish to strip him naked and fuck away my fears. Except I don't think of it as fucking anymore. We make love. Just another change when I'm already overloaded with them.
"I don't think that's true," Brad says, talking more to my bump than me. "Dogs are good at sensing bad people, and our dogs love you. They loved you even when you thought they were gross licking machines."
I smile slightly, but his words don't help. "They liked Marx too," I remind him.
"Oh, yeah. Well, they're attention sluts, I guess. Anyone who loves them is their best friend. I didn't do a very good job training them to be guard dogs."
When he doesn't take me seriously, I cup his face. "Tell me I won't hurt our baby. Promise me that I can love something that only takes."
"Saskia, you already love our baby. You wouldn't be so worried if you didn't care about her."
"These hands have done ugly things," I say, still cupping his face.
After gently kissing the palms of both of my hands, he stares into my eyes. "They're also as tender as a whisper."
Brad's goodness and knowing his mother and Nell will help keeps me from truly panicking. I don't enjoy my pregnancy, though. The baby's kicking makes me tense. The stronger the kicks, the sooner she'll be born. I don't fear giving birth. I fear every moment afterward.
"I'm sorry," Brad says when we learn I'll need a C-section since our baby is too gigantic to exit vaginally my body.
"I want her to be like you in every way," I whisper. "I don't want to see anything of me in her."
Brad frowns at my words, but he doesn't say anything else. We prepare for the surgery, and I'm so tense that I panic until the anesthesiologist dopes me up with something wonderful. I even smile when they show me the baby. Unfortunately, the drugs wear off.
I'm told Denise is a good baby. I don't know what a bad baby is like, so I can't really compare. She cries a lot but mostly sleeps. I go through the motions with the redheaded giant baby girl who stares at me. I don't know if she senses I'm not a good person or that I'm nervous around her. Whenever I feed her, she stares transfixed by me as if afraid to turn her back on the bad lady. To be fair, she also stares at Brad, but I sense she's simply impressed by his beauty.
When Denise is three months old, a virus runs through the house. Ruth gets sick first and soon Nell is bedridden. The minute Brad feels off, he quarantines himself in a guest bedroom. Suddenly, I'm alone with Denise.
Trapped with my child who I don't understand, I constantly cry which makes her cry. We're two sobbing females in a house where everyone else is puking. This isn't the fairytale I imagined when I fell in love with Brad. I stupidly believed he could magically fix all the flawed things about me. Love is a powerful thing, but even it has limitations.
Hour after hour, I bounce around the living room, trying to soothe Denise when I can't even soothe myself. We're still crying when Brad peeks out of his room to see if he can help us by sending happy thoughts.
"Put on Ghost Hunters," he says from down the hall.
I'm too tired to argue with Brad, despite knowing he should be in bed. After turning on the show, I return to pacing with my crying baby. Denise looks too much like me when I was a baby. Was I a miserable baby too? Was that why my mother hated me? I know my thoughts are stupid, but I feel like I've created another me rather than the mini-Brad I wanted.
My husband mutters something about a ghost recording from the show. Frowning, I glance at the ghost hunters gasping and flinching at imaginary terrors. Even after all this time and seeing too many episodes, I can't help laughing at their antics.
"I think this house might actually be haunted," Brad says.
His worried expression makes me laugh harder. "It's not our house, so why do you care?" I ask between giggles.
Over my rolling laughter, I miss the sound. Brad's smile draws my attention back to now laughing Denise. I've seen her laugh for Brad and Ruth but never for me. Now she's laughing wildly.
Kissing her wet cheeks like Brad does for me, I feel like a parent for the first time. Instead of a caregiver doing a job, I'm a mother capable of soothing her baby. Denise isn't scared of me. She's just never sees me do anything except stare at her, so she only stares back at me.
Brad watches us, knowing his little plan worked. I wish I could climb the huge man and thank him properly, but that'll have to wait. Through Brad's eyes, I see me holding Denise, and we're one hell of a beautiful sight.
Epilogue
Brad