‘Don’t be such a scaredy-cat, Cecilia. If you want her, go get her.’
Cecilia got down on all fours and Etta pushed her forward. She fell onto her forearms and started to whimper, but she wanted Beth-Anne badly, so she slowly inched toward the back of the small, dark cave. The pickle jars that lined the walls looked like swamp water and she started having trouble breathing.
Something creaked behind her, but the walls of the cellar were too narrow for her to turn around. She realized then that the last sliver of light she’d seen on the glass jars around her was gone. She couldn’t get enough air and called louder for Etta. The rubble under her knees dug into her skin every time she twitched. She inched back and tried kicking open the door with her heel, but it was jammed.
She heard the phone ring from the living room. Etta’s heavy footsteps pounded the stairs. ‘Hello?’ she heard her say, and then it was quiet for a moment, until the television set came on, and then the familiar voice of the evening news. Cecilia heard Etta’s muffled voice again speaking into the phone. It was September 1964 and the findings of the Warren Commission were being released. Etta, like everyone else, was obsessed with JFK’s assassination.
Etta never came back. Henry levered the door open when he got home from his night shift. He hauled Cecilia out by the ankles. Her fists were scraped. There was an argument about taking her to the hospital to be checked out. He thought her breathing was shallow and her eyes didn’t look right. But Etta won; they stayed home.
Henry sat near Cecilia’s bed while she slept. He put cold cloths on her head and didn’t go to work in the morning. None of them spoke to one another for days. Henry took the door off the cellar and moved the few remaining pickle jars to the pantry in the kitchen.
‘That door never worked properly,’ he said and shook his head.
A week later Etta whispered something to Cecilia when she cleared her dinner plate. Henry was at work. They were listening to the news on the kitchen radio. Cecilia couldn’t quite hear her, but what she thought Etta said was, ‘I meant to go back for you, Cecilia.’ She put her lips on Cecilia’s cheek and lingered there for a moment. Cecilia didn’t ask Etta to repeat herself.
15
Time goes by so quickly. Enjoy every moment.
Mothers speak of time like it’s the only currency we know.
Can you believe it? Can you believe she’s already six months old? Other women would say this to me, nearly chipper, idling their strollers back and forth on the sidewalk as their babies slept under expensive, gauzy white blankets, their pacifiers bobbing. I would look down at Violet, staring up at me from where she lay, her fists waving, her legs stiff, wanting, wanting, wanting. And I would wonder how we’d made it so far. Six whole months. It felt like six years.
It’s the best job in the world, isn’t it? Motherhood? This was what the doctor said at one of Violet’s appointments for her shots. She was a mother of three. I told her about my recurring hemorrhoids the size of grapes, about how long it had been since we’d had sex, since I’d even thought of your penis in passing. Her eyebrows lifted with her smile – Yup. I get it. I really do. As though I were a part of the club now, privy to its unspoken truths. What I couldn’t tell her was that I felt I’d aged a century since I’d given birth to Violet. That she seemed to stretch every hour we spent together. That the months had crawled by so slowly I’d often splash cold water on my face during the day to see if I was just dreaming – if that’s why time never made any sense to me.
It’s like you blink, and they’re suddenly such big girls. They become these sweet little people right before your eyes. Violet seemed to grow so slowly. I never noticed a change in her until you shook it in front of my face. You would tell me her clothes were too small, that her belly was hanging below her shirts, that her leggings came up almost to her knees. You would pack away her baby toys and buy her things on your way home from work that blinked and beeped, things for tiny humans who are developing, learning, thinking. I was just trying to keep her alive. I was focused on her eating and her sleeping and the probiotic drops that I could never seem to remember. I was focused on getting through the days as they rolled like boulders into one another.
16
Us. No couple can imagine what their relationship will be like after having children. But there’s an expectation that you’ll be in it together. That you’ll be a team where the teamwork is possible. Our operation functioned. Our child was fed and bathed and walked and rocked and clothed and changed and you did everything you could. I had her all day, but when you came through the door, she was yours. Patience. Love. Affection. I was grateful for everything you gave her that she didn’t want from me. I watched you two and I was envious. I wanted what you had.
But this imbalance came at a cost. We had shifted away from our easy, treasured decade of comfort. Instead, my presence made you withdraw. Your judgment made me anxious. The more Violet got from you, the less you gave to me.
We still kissed hello and conversed over dinners at restaurants on the odd night we got
