Eighteen
Motherhood. With her birth a new person is released in me. A person who has nothing to do with the person I was before. I had not known until I crossed into this new land what would be asked from me. What is asked is everything.
*
In that first devastatingly exhausting week, I fall asleep with the baby in my arms and my mother walks into the room. I think this cannot be. She lives far away. She cannot be here; it is impossible. I try to tell her this. She waves away my words, says, “That is my baby. Give her to me.” I’m crying, but I know she is right. This is not my baby, this is her baby. She reaches down to grasp Bodhi. I don’t want to give her up. Both of us are tugging on her, so she wakes squalling.
We go to the throne of King Solomon. And he, magnificent, purple-robed, seated on his golden throne, pulls out of its sheath a curved sword. It catches the light. It is sharp enough to cleave the child in two. He will give us each a part to carry away, he says. I am happy. I hold the child out for the sword’s swing, and the king stands, comes forth. But my mother cries, “No, let her have the child!”
Then everyone knows that the baby belongs to my mother. Everyone knows she loves her properly while I am only an impostor. The king takes the child from me, hands her to my mother. She walks away with the baby and I am left alone, milk soaking through the fabric of my shirt, turning it a deeper crimson.
*
A year passes. What do I remember of that first year? There was sleeplessness and joy. A sleeplessness that felt like jet lag, the same suspension of night and day, the same grit-eyed, vertigo-tinged jolting between wakefulness and dream as comes from crossing the planet.
I kissed her face while she slept. We marveled over her feet, her hands, the small face like a flower. Her cooing laugh became my favorite sound in the world. She smiled at me and my entire body lit up as if we were still connected, as if the umbilical cord was still trailing out of my body and attached to hers. I could feel that tug at all times. I would steal minutes to shower, the hot water like baptism, and there would be a clenching of my abdomen and I would know she was crying, grab the towel, run out. Because she needed me. This need was huge and everywhere. It was the definition of my life.
What happened in that year? Everything changed. We were different people from who we were before. It wasn’t just her arrival, though of course that was the most important thing. In that year I was born as a mother, and Daniel too was born into a new life, not just as a daddy, but also as an artist. That’s the year he became a star. Those first paintings went to the woman in Woodside. They say she discovered him, as if he hadn’t existed before, as if he hadn’t painted before she saw his work. But then after the “discovery,” paintings flew off the wall. Galleries called. Everyone wanted him. Money flooded in.
We bought a house, of course. My beloved Mission apartment in those first months was already too small for the three of us. So we joined the flight out of the city and bought a house in Oakland, near the lake. This is where we live now. There are two bedrooms, one for her and one for us. Her toys are strewn around, the breast pump and bottles on the kitchen table, my rocking chair in the living room, her stroller folded up by the door. This is where I spend all my days. In these six rooms where the sunlight filters through the air, painting everything a pale gold in the late afternoon, where she sleeps in her crib in a room he has painted like a jungle. All around her, chubby cartoon lions and tiger cubs stalk one another through the grass, reach up to swat at flitting butterflies. Two long-eyelashed giraffes, necks entwined, reach up to puffy blue skies. What a lucky girl she is. How much love her daddy has spent making this jungle kingdom for her.
*
The making of Daniel had started like this. He had called, breathless. “A gallery show. In New York.” Relief flooding his voice. He had named the gallery. It had meant nothing to me. I had stopped listening, all my attention focused on the baby, who was starting to wake up, who would scream in a minute if I didn’t get my blouse undone in time.
A little later. His paintings sold. More than this, they wanted him for a solo show. He flies to New York when she is three months old. He comes back and says, “It’s happening. It’s finally happening. Everything I’ve always wanted.” I smile and say, “How wonderful.”