Little Voices Read online

  Despite the milk I pump every three to five hours and the new Deepfreeze in the garage that’s filling with the small plastic bags, Ester still cries.

  And she ain’t stopping anytime soon with a mother like you.

  I hate the voice in my head that began again when Ester was born, whispering, Maybe you’ll be seeing Belina real soon.

  I almost did. Death circled us both that day.

  Them chickens can still come home to roost, girlie.

  I flinch at the sound and shut my eyes as I bounce. To hear a voice that’s not there is shocking and unsettling but not unfamiliar. It’s older, wiser than I remember. There are new, vicious judgments about my motherhood failings. The worst part is, sometimes, the voice is right.

  I haven’t told anyone, but I can silently defend myself when I’ve got the mental fight. The less I sleep, the less it’s possible to do anything but cry with my baby.

  You fixated on having this baby, but it didn’t do no good.

  No arguing with that one either. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

  I read about newborn sleep in a dozen books, on Pinterest pages, and in three times as many articles. The sleep cycles, the need for feeding, how quickly breast milk calories are burned over formula calories. I’m still at a loss as to what’s going on with Ester.

  This is the curse you deserve from the God you abandoned.

  The tears burn my eyes, but I blink them back even as I fear the truth. That it is me. This child hates the look of me, my smell, the taste of my breast refused by her tiny, perfect mouth. I want to be a good mother more than anything. I do not accept this failure.

  My whirling mind realizes it’s the only sound other than my bouncing. Ester is quiet; the voice is quiet. When my pulse is almost normal again, I breathe in the stillness of my bedroom.

  The flashes of morning sun through the blinds remind me that our bedroom has too much white, like celebrity teeth. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

  I glare at the white marble bedside tables, the mirrored white cabinets, and white upholstered headboard. I’m a coward. I was afraid of revealing that I don’t belong. Those colors, those patterns, those pieces of furniture aren’t worth a home like this.

  Jack didn’t care. He only needed to say, You know, babe, let’s go kelly green or chartreuse. It didn’t cross his mind that I didn’t know what I was doing. That every bedroom I’d ever had was sparse and bare and ignorable. So the first time I really tried resulted in our bedroom having the charm and authenticity of veneers.

  You don’t belong here.

  He’ll realize you’re trash and dump you.

  My gaze roams over the room again, seeking to anchor me to this idyllic New England life. But all I find is agreement that this room is Exhibit One that I am a fraud. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

  After easing off the exercise ball, I place a sleeping Ester in the (white) bassinet on my side of the bed. I retreat down the hallway toward the room where I spend most of my time, the nursery.

  I analyze everything, seeking to quell my uneasiness. First, the gray walls with pink accent stripes are adorable and not totally cliché. The white wood glider with a gray chevron pattern is derivative of every Pottery Barn Kids catalog, but Jack liked it (miracle!), and I couldn’t justify the cost of custom. A matching white wood changing table gives the room a finished look. My toes curl into the plush faux-sheep-wool rug that will be cozy for tummy time and a soft landing for early unsure steps.

  Surely this is the kind of nursery a good mom would have.

  No photos on your walls.

  Changing pad isn’t secured to the table.

  She’ll be needing three-month clothes soon.

  Other moms, good moms, they’d have it done.

  You don’t love her enough.

  “You’re crying again, Dev,” Jack says from the door, in his soft way, the way that’s meant to make me feel connected. The tone works to pull me out of darkness and back into our lives. I can still hear his words that brought me back at the hospital: “Do you want to hold our daughter?”

  Now in our home, returned to our life, his voice is strange. Like a language I used to speak but forgot.

  I take the tissue he offers. “Just the blues.” I used to hate crying, but I’ve discovered its real cathartic pleasure.

  “Is it the baby?” he asks. “Belina?”

  At the mention of my dead friend’s name, I nod. It’s easier to blame my sadness on what I lost instead of what I gained.

  We are quiet, assessing each other, and the contrast is a fresh wound. He’s showered and relaxed and standing in the doorway. I’m smelly and uneasy and slumped on the twin bed in Ester’s room.

  “Will you rest today?” Jack asks. The subtext to the question is our home’s tidiness. Near spotlessness, actually.

  “It needed to be done.” I hear my formal tone, a crutch. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid sounding like a Kansas hayseed. I’m not intimidated by his local private school education, which had roughly the same yearly tuition as our Georgetown undergrad and law school. But I don’t like to remind him of our differences unless it’s relevant.

  “Ester needs a clean home,” I say with a weak smile. It’s not the first time I’ve used her as an excuse for my behavior. Not the last.

  He raises his eyebrows, his large forehead punctuating the annoyance. He doesn’t want to argue. Ever, actually, which I’ve always appreciated. But I wish he’d say what he wants me to do. Ignore the laundry and the soap scum and pretend this house isn’t covered in germs waiting to infect our NICU baby.

  Even before Ester, I cleaned. This is our home. You make time for what you care about. It’s easy for him to take it for granted because he’s always had love in his home.

  I keep myself from saying any of that because I recognize the thread of crazy, and it’s daily work lately to keep it from unspooling in front of him. “I’ll take it easy today.”

  But you still won’t be better.

  Rest never healed the wicked.

  He kisses my forehead as I reach over to feel the soft sleeve of his dark-navy suit. I lean back and note the red silk tie, his power combo.

  “Big meeting?” I smile in the way I used to, which says I understand.

  “We’ve got a new public relations consultant,” he says. “He’s going to tell us everything we’re doing wrong.”

  “It’ll be a short meeting,” I say.

  “Doubtful.”

  “A come to Jesus before you’re all crucified?”

  His laugh surprises me. It’s been a while since I made him laugh. “That’s about right,” he says. “It might be late. I’m sorry.”

  I try to hide my disappointment that his work is shifting back to normal. I want to keep this real conversation going. But it’s not a surprise. I could feel him pulling away the past week. Watching his phone more than me. That’s who we were once. Who he still is.

  I try to remember that person, how we’d fall into bed, exhausted but still buzzing from full days of difficult decisions, reaching for each other. I need him so much after a lifetime of not wanting to need anyone. “Lunch ordered in?” I ask with what feels like a smile.

  He scratches at the short black hairs on the back of his neck. “And dinner.”

  Here is the root of the root. I’ll be by myself all day and evening for the first time since we’ve been home with Ester. For the eight weeks I was in the hospital, much of it semiconscious, Jack was there as I drifted—hours, days passed. He was always curled in the uncomfortable pleather chair in the corner, watching, waiting, hardly moving himself. We’ve been home three weeks, and he’s continued to go into work late, leave early.

  “You’ve been out of the office too much,” I say. “That’s the problem.”

  Jack gives a big shrug. “What matters is us. If the ten other people working for the mayor can’t keep things running, that’s on them.”

  I don’t agree, and in his heart, he can’t either. The mayor hired Jack as chi
ef of staff to turn things around. It’s not easy to be a probusiness Democrat in a town that went Bernie over Hillary. He has a big job that needs a focused leader, first in and last out. The fact that they’re bringing in a consultant, certainly expensive, means it is more serious than he is letting on.

  His failure is your fault.

  You’ve never deserved him.

  “What is it?” he asks, hazel eyes wide with worry. “The baby?”

  I shake my head no and smile, though it’s work. He’s the last person who can know about the voice, and yet he’s the only person I’d ever trust enough to help.

  He twists one of my fuzzy curls and lightly pulls it before tucking it behind my ear. “I’ll text when I’m coming home. If you need me at all . . .”

  This conversation wakes my pride, steels something formerly mushy within me. I want to be closer to who I was before. For both of us. “There is something I need to do.”

  “What’s that?” he asks, surprised.

  I head to the changing table and almost reach for a folder I hid in a drawer. It contains four articles about Belina’s murder, those I managed to save from the paper without Jack noticing.

  You would think of that now.

  Terrible mother, not caring for your baby.

  This is where trouble always starts for you, girlie.

  I refold onesies until my nerve is back. “I have to check on Alec,” I say about my friend. Technically, our friend.

  “Not today,” Jack says, softly but firmly. “They’re still investigating Belina’s . . . case.”

  “He didn’t respond to my texts. All my calls have gone to voice mail,” I say. “Something isn’t right.”

  Jack’s jaw rolls side to side, his tick when he’s trying to solve a problem. “Okay,” he says and leaves. He returns with a present, wrapped in an old Sunday Times. “I was saving this for the weekend.”

  I run my finger along the paper’s creases before slowly peeling off the tape. Inside is a long strip of fabric in a gray chevron pattern. It’s soft and has a flex to it. “A baby wrap?”

  “There’s a YouTube video on how to do it,” Jack says with his typical confidence. “You should start walking again. You miss it.”

  My muscles ache for the activity, but my mind whirls in alarm. “I’m not sure.”

  “The baby will be safe, covered completely by the wrap.”

  He thinks you’re fat.

  You’ve never been his type.

  Now you’re repulsive.

  Tears burn, but I blink them back. I’m still wearing my maternity jeans because my C-section scar is only now healed over. The soft material of the band is all I can stand against the raw incision.

  “Dev, listen. There’s always a reason not to do something.”

  I hate it when he sounds like a crappy Tony Robbins, but he’s right. I miss my long walks through the East Side streets and along Blackstone Boulevard. But the cracked sidewalks are too bumpy for the stroller. Or at least that’s what I theorize because I haven’t left our home. Yet.

  “She’ll be safe against your chest,” he says too eagerly. “You need to walk again.”

  I want the truth to be that I will walk because I want to do it. But it’s actually that I’d bounce on a pogo stick to bring back a sliver of my old self.

  She’s long gone, girlie.

  This pathetic lump is all that’s left.

  As a tear falls, I hear Ester in the bedroom. “Oh no. She’s up,” I say, but Jack takes my arm.

  “I got her,” he says. “Let’s try the wrap, please. The video says wearing calms them down.”

  I want to argue but let him leave the room instead. Her cries soften as I hear him pick her up. She’s quiet when he walks into the nursery. The sight of her in his arms, their twin black hair, releases some kind of maternal hormone in my brain, and I can breathe again.

  “Let me put her down,” he says. “We’ll get the wrap on you first.”

  She almost killed you.

  He wishes she would have.

  Not the first person to love you and then wish you were dead.

  “She’ll wake up,” I say too loudly.

  He dips his forehead, as if stepping into a windstorm, and continues with his plan. As he eases her into the crib, she does not cry. My fingers flex to check to be sure she’s breathing. She always cries when I put her in the crib.

  Jack is grinning victoriously as he faces me. “Okay?” he asks.

  I can only nod.

  “First step is like a tube top,” he begins as he finds the center and wraps the fabric across my chest. “Then cross it in the back. Pull it over your shoulders like a parachute. Then tuck each side through the tube top.” The fabric not wrapped around me only just touches the floor. “It needs to be tight,” he says as he’s pulling. “For her head and neck support.”

  I purse my lips as if he’s told me something new. As if there’s a corner of Pinterest and mom blogs and local “kangaroo care” Facebook groups I haven’t analyzed for the leading ways to baby wear. I made notes, observing moms and nannies wearing babies (ring sling versus soft wrap versus carrier versus carrier with insert).

  Jack may have guessed as much, but he knew the most relevant fact: I hadn’t pulled the trigger on a carrier.

  In the long mirror across the room, I watch him finish tying the wrap as efficiently as his double Windsor. My heart aches with gratitude.

  “Okay, now for baby girl.” He hurries over to Ester, still quiet in the crib. He doesn’t bounce her but is gentle.

  He’s going to drop her.

  Her tiny skull will crack open on this cheap rug.

  “Bend over a touch, babe.” He directs me slightly forward so the tube top becomes a pouch. He slides Ester against me, and my arms come around her small body.

  He tightens the fabric and wraps it around my waist a few times before finishing with a knot.

  I take a deep breath, so relieved to have her close. “This is nice,” I whisper. I snuggle her against my breasts, regretting I didn’t pump as soon as I got her to nap.

  “You’re ready,” he says as if assuring us both. He gently slides an organic cotton knit hat over her black hair. “Wear your maternity coat, and zip her up.”

  He’s impressed me with his present, a solution for how I can finally check on Alec. My chest warms at the idea of Jack caring about me. It never stops being a surprise.

  I keep my arms protectively wrapped around Ester, so she’s able to nuzzle into my chest. I bend my neck to make sure I can kiss the top of her head, one of a dozen safety tips I remember.

  I stare at both of us in the mirror. Jack watches me, likely wondering if I’ll do something odd. The kind of behavior that will lead him to make excuses for missing the big meeting and stay with me. A week or two ago, I’d have been oblivious to his attention. I’m getting better. A bit more sleep, and who knows? Maybe the voice will leave too.

  I step toward the hallway. “Help me into my coat?”

  He is close behind and keeps a steady hand on my back as we ease down the stairs as if they’re covered in ice. My C-section scar burns, but I don’t let on. The real pain is when we reach the landing where there’s a blank spot on the wall. Ester’s birth photo should be there, both Jack and I proud but exhausted, beaming at the camera. But with the emergency surgery, her NICU stay, and my long recovery, it’s blank. I couldn’t even muster the energy for two-month photos.

  You don’t love her like a real mother would.

  I wipe the tears as Jack’s back is turned. He faces me, holding out my long jewel-green mohair coat. It’s a little big because I bought it with pregnancy in mind even though I wasn’t pregnant at the time. I spent more than I should have, but it’d been so easy to picture the shape of my pregnant stomach beneath the soft, fuzzy fabric.

  Jack leads me toward the back steps until we’re through the sunporch and into the winter air, cold and cleansing. He drops the spare key in one of the many empty flowerpots. />
  I can’t move.

  I took Ester out for fresh air once but decided against it and hurried back inside our “oven house” as Jack calls it, since I now keep it at a cozy seventy-four degrees.

  No one wants to see you make your baby cry.

  “You should get a latte,” Jack says. “Go see Cynthia at Chip.”

  I’ve been avoiding my good friend and her bakery, and that will have to continue for now. “That’s not where I’m going.”

  “Yeah.” His head dips to the left as if I’ve punched him.

  “Alec is our friend,” I say. “He’s mourning Belina too.”

  Jack’s mouth is slightly open. His tongue taps against the back of his teeth. It’s a tell that there’s a lot he’s not saying, likely can’t because updates on Belina’s investigation would have been given in confidence during a briefing with his boss, the mayor. “The investigation is almost over,” he says finally.

  “Then it won’t hurt to check on Alec.” I hope Jack sees the old me. Realizes she’s still here.

  “We’ll talk tonight.” He kisses my forehead before hurrying to the garage.

  Leaving his wife and baby.

  This is the best part of his day.

  I scrunch my chapped lips into my teeth until I draw blood.

  Enough.

  “We’ve got work to do,” I say to Ester. With a cautious first step, testing our weight together, I hurry toward Blackstone Boulevard.

  Chapter 3

  The bank sign on Hope Street says it’s just above freezing, and I open my coat to double-check that every inch of Ester is covered for our walk. Her arms and legs are beneath the fabric, and her cozy hat is pulled down, covering most of her soft black curls. I slowly zip my coat back up.

  You took this tiny baby from her home.

  Worried more about your fat ass than your baby freezing to death.

  I push myself to walk faster, hoping to exhaust the voice and the rising panic at the thought of Belina’s death.