“What? Are you leaving me?”
“No, no. It’s just for a while. Just to give you some time. I’ve found a nice place for us. My parents are coming. They’ve always wanted to spend some time with Bodhi, and now they have it. They’ll look after her in the daytime and I’ll be home more now that this show is over.” He passes a hand over his face. “And then you can relax for a while. Just a few weeks. Okay? It’ll be good for us. You’ll have a break and then we can be together. Yes?”
They are leaving me. Of course they are leaving me. A lesson I learned young: Everyone leaves.
“Why are you doing this?”
He turns and looks at me as if taking me in, as if seeing past me to everything I hide. “I can’t be around you right now. The way you are.”
“What way? What way am I?”
“Like your mother. Everything you told me about her. The locking herself up when you were little and leaving you outside, falling asleep for hours. It’s exactly the same. I can’t have that around Bodhi right now. Get yourself together and we’ll be together, I promise. But not now, not for a while.”
The words hit me between the eyes. I sink back into the bed, lie there curled up as he walks away. Evening sun pours down through the window and over me like water. It feels like when Samson used to bathe me at the well. I remember the liquid spilling over my head, the chill and shock of it.
*
He leaves two weeks later, taking her with him. I’ve begged and begged, but nothing will change his mind. I lie in bed and listen as he packs, taking his clothes from the closet, from the drawers, dumping them into a big duffel bag. In other rooms, he makes decisions about essentials—her stroller, her toys, her jars of food. He is packing them up, taking them to the car. He is pulling these things out of our marriage like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. How does a jigsaw make sense with half its pieces gone? It is only jumbled chaos, bits of colored nonsense.
He has gutted me like a fish. He has slid a large knife along my skin’s seam and slit me from throat to groin. He is removing the organs from my body. My kidneys, my gallbladder, my heart—things hugely important to the workings of my whole. He is wrenching each one out of its place in my chest and abdomen, snipping the blood cords that bind it in place, fitting them all into one of his cardboard packing boxes, the bottom slowly splotching red.
His feet walk back to me; he holds a box of my organs in one arm, my baby in the other. He says from miles above me, “We’re going now. Mama doesn’t feel well, so we’re going to let her rest. Bodhi, do you wanna say bye-bye?” He puts her down and her arms wrap hard around my neck, her small face against mine. She kisses my nose, my cheek. A flurry of small, fierce kisses before he reaches down and grabs her again. She is crying when he walks out.
I whisper, “Please. Don’t. You don’t love her like I do. I’m her mother.”
The front door opens and slams shut. They are gone. They have taken every part of me. Only an empty husk is left, the sort of thing an insect climbs out of and leaves behind on a windowsill.
Twenty-two
Now I am that desolate thing, an abandoned woman left by her man, without her child. I remember my mother and her friends talking about a woman left like this. They spoke of her in whispers; they dropped pity like acid. She had lost her looks overnight, she had stopped eating, she had had to move back into her parents’ house. They had gone to visit and she had seen them and tried to pretend everything was all right. But how could everything be all right? Even back then in girlhood, I knew this was the worst fate, to be left by a man.
*
Daniel calls often. To make sure that I am okay, he says. I realize that his leaving is more constructed than I had thought. This is no last-minute decision, this is a plan with well-thought-out architecture. He has rented a house a few miles from this one. His parents are there. He says, “It’s just for a little while. Just till you get yourself up and about. How are you?”
I say, “I’m good, Daniel. I’m good.” I exhale and ask the only question on my mind. “When are you coming home?” We both ignore the jagged edge in my voice.
“Soon, baby, soon. Just give it a little time, okay?” His voice is so tender, I tear up. I can see him, worrying his eyebrow as he does when the wheels are turning deeply. He says, “Just take a little time to feel better. Maybe see someone…”
“See who?”
“A professional. Those nightmares of yours, they’re so fierce. I think you need to talk them out. Maybe something happened when you were little. When you were Bodhi’s age. Sometimes having a kid can bring up buried memories, you know.”
A dark door inches open.
“Daniel! I don’t need someone professional. Nothing happened to me. What I need is you and my little girl back.”