I wanted to fling the DVD from my hand like a throwing star. “Her what?”
The room seemed strangely quiet. “Her episiotomy!” Sedona pronounced the word carefully. “You know, when they have to cut you down to your asshole—oops, excuse me!” she said, and kind of curtsied an apology to the rest of the guests. “When they have to cut you down to your butthole—”
“That’s a conversation for another time,” César’s mom said. “No more about episiotomies.” She smiled at me encouragingly. “You’ll learn all about that at your birthing class, anyway.”
“My birthing class,” I repeated dimly.
“You did sign up for one, right?” Ana asked, frowning a little.
“Yes, we did,” César told her. “And a parenting class, too.”
“And a parenting class, too,” I parroted.
César’s hand on my shoulder squeezed and I reached again to grab it. “I’ll take that present,” he said. He plucked the DVD from my fingers, passed it off to my sister, and it disappeared. “Thank you very much,” he told Sedona, smiling at her. “I’ll open the next one.”
“Oh. Well, that’s something. Oh!”
Everyone turned to Lindy. Her mouth was open in a perfect circle of surprise. She had been sitting in a big armchair where she had to rest her tired ass, as she had phrased it, but now she stood up. And she was all…wet.
“Oh, shit!” her husband yelped.
“Katie, I’m super sorry, I think I just got amniotic fluid all over your new chair,” Lindy said, and after that, the party was basically over.
∞
César was back on his couch, reading, when I walked in. He put the hardcover on his chest and looked up at me. “Big day,” he remarked. “Or is that an understatement?”
“The understatement of the year. Of the millennium!” He bent up his knees and I sat on the couch and leaned on his legs. “Holy mother of all shits.”
“That sums it up pretty well,” he agreed.
“Have you heard from Davis about Lindy?” He and Katie had gone to the hospital, too, with her saying that she was never, ever going to host another baby shower.
“Nothing yet.” César moved the book and put it on the floor. “Come lay down.”
That was what I had been hoping he would say, and I snuggled into his body. “What are you reading?” I asked. I wanted to kiss his chest, his neck, his cheek; I contented myself with burrowing closer, and he held me tighter when I did.
“I’m reading a little about the life of Julia Mamaea. Roman stuff,” he explained. “I keep thinking about Lindy.”
I nodded against him. Me too.
“Did Ellie get to her flight ok?”
I had driven my sister to the airport, which I had insisted on because I wanted to maximize our time together. “She did, and not even late at all.” She had bullied me into leaving before I was ready. “But I think she’s going to be back soon, and she’ll probably bring Teddy. She’s worried.”
“About you?” I felt him twist to look down at me.
“About everything.” I sighed. “Did your family have a good time, besides the amniotic fluid?”
“They did.” He expelled a big breath, flopping me a little, but then he pulled me even closer. “I think a lot of them will be back sooner rather than later, too. Not because they’re worried, but because they like you so much.”
I picked up my head. “Do they?”
“They do,” he agreed.
“They’re not worried anymore about you having a baby with me?” I asked.
“They weren’t worried about you. Not after they met you,” he clarified.
I put my head back down and he played with my hair. “César, it’s really good that you signed up for those classes for us,” I told him. I was already such a bad mom, I hadn’t even thought to do it myself. “But I don’t think that’s going to be enough.”
“I knew that episiotomy DVD threw you off,” he sighed. “I told your sister to burn it.”
“No, it wasn’t the DVD of someone getting cut…never mind. It wasn’t just the DVD, it was everything at the party. Lindy going into labor! All the little clothes and everyone asking me about breastfeeding and swaddling and tummy time, and I don’t even know what that is. I’ve never even held an infant. I didn’t have anybody younger in my family—I never did any babysitting. Did you?”
“Well, yeah, but I’m not an expert or anything. And it’s not like you can’t learn stuff,” César said.
I shook my head. “Ellie was talking a lot to me about my mom and I’ve been thinking more and more about her. I’m just like her, César. I’m going to be a terrible parent.”
“Cammie—”
“No, listen.” I propped myself up on his chest so I could see his face. “Soleil hated motherhood, every part of it. Like, you know how I always call her by her first name? That’s because I wasn’t allowed to call her anything that sounded maternal. I remember my teacher in kindergarten asking who my mom was, and I said I thought it was Soleil, but it could have been the maid, too.”
He looked horrified.
“I know she cared about me,” I told him. “She got upset when I broke my wrist when I was twelve, and she was always proud that I was thin and pretty. If she didn’t have a guy over, we would wake up late on the weekends and I would make coffee and we’d look at fashion magazines. She’d rip out pages and we’d talk for hours about her boyfriends. She was my friend.”
“Your friend.” He sounded unimpressed. “Well, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be that way. It doesn’t mean that you’ll hate being a mom or that you won’t love the baby.” His fingers moved from my back to stroke the side of my stomach. “Right?”
“I already love the baby,” I told him. “Soleil loved me too, but that wasn’t enough.”
“Enough for what?”
I moved my head down to rest on his chest. “Enough…for her to want to protect me from stuff. Her boyfriends, for example.”
I
