cluster of strands and melting into my scalp. Elizabeth slapped at my smoldering hairline, and the sting of the slap felt good, deserved.
“I’m putting it out!” I screamed. “Leave me alone!”
“With what?” Elizabeth demanded. “Your bare hands? The fire trucks are coming. You’ll get killed standing here like an idiot, waving your hands in the air.”
Still, I didn’t back away. The flames leapt closer to where I stood.
“Victoria,” Elizabeth said. She had stopped screaming, and her wide eyes filled. I strained to hear the words she uttered over the roar of the fire. “I’m not losing my vineyard and my daughter on the same night. I won’t.” When I didn’t move, she lunged at me, grabbing me by the shoulders, shaking me. “Do you hear me?” she shouted. “I won’t!” I wriggled free from her hands, and she caught me by one arm, pulling me toward the house. As I fought, she pulled harder, and I felt my shoulder pop out of the socket. She yelped and let go. Collapsing onto the ground, I pulled my knees in to my bare chest. The fire circled me like a blanket, and through the heat I heard the faraway sound of the trailer door slamming. Elizabeth screamed for me to get up, pulled at my feet, and kicked me in the ribs. When she tried to carry me, I screamed and bit at her like a wild animal.
Finally, she let me be.
The baby was awake in the Moses basket when I returned. Her wide eyes blinked up at the ceiling, and she did not cry out when she saw me. I retrieved her bottle from the kitchen, emptied the day-old formula into the sink, and refilled it with a fresh can. Standing over the baby, I rested it on her lips. She opened her mouth but did not suck. I squeezed the nipple and watched the liquid run in a thin stream down her waiting tongue. She swallowed twice before falling asleep in the basket.
I showered and ate a bowl of cereal on the rooftop. Every time I walked by the baby’s basket, I would pause and study her face, and if she opened her eyes, I would put the bottle to her lips. She learned to suck, slowly, placidly, without the urgent ferocity with which she had once devoured my breast. It took her all day to finish a single can of formula. She did not cry. She did not even whimper.
Before going to bed, I changed her sodden diaper but did not take her out of the basket. She seemed comfortable there, and I was afraid to break the fragile peace we had reached, afraid my panic would return at the sound of her first scream. Instead, I moved her basket to the couch, where we settled into a square of moonlight. I offered her a fresh bottle, and her lips formed a perfect circle around the amber-colored plastic. Tiny bubbles ran the length of the bottle as she persuaded water, iron, calcium, and protein through microscopic holes. Her eyes were wider than I had ever seen them, concentric circles and small triangles of white scanning my face. When she was done eating, the rubber nipple slipped from her mouth, and she reached her tiny fingers toward my face. I lowered my head until my nose was only inches from her hands, my eyes looking into hers. She opened and closed her fingers in the empty space between us, squeezing tight.
Before I realized I was crying, a tear dropped from the tip of my chin onto the baby’s cheek. It ran in a thin line to the edge of her mouth, and her red lips puckered in surprise. I laughed, and the tears ran faster. The open forgiveness in her eyes, the uncensored love, terrified me. Like Grant, my daughter deserved so much more than I could give her. I wanted her to carry hawthorn, laugh easily, and love without fear. But I could not give her this, could not teach her what I didn’t know. It would be only a matter of time before my toxicity would taint her perfection. It would leak out of my body, and she would swallow it with the willingness of a ravenous infant. I had hurt every person I had ever known; I wanted, desperately, to save her from the dangers of being my daughter.
I would bring her to Grant in the morning.
He would preserve her goodness and teach her everything she needed to know. Renata was right; Grant deserved to know his daughter. He deserved her sweetness, her beauty, and her unwavering loyalty.
When I pulled my face away, the baby’s eyes were closed. I left the basket on the couch and shut myself in the blue room.
That night I smelled moss, dried leaves, and damp soil in my apartment of plaster and concrete, blocks and blocks from anything green or growing.
In the morning I hurried out of the apartment. Feeding the baby what was left of the formula in the bottle from the night before, I carried her in her basket to my car. She was awake as we drove across the city. She had slept through the night, or, if she hadn’t, she had not cried out. I had slept deeply and without dreams but awoke with the agitated alertness of the overtired. My body ached, my full breasts on fire, and I was hot in the cool morning. I rolled down the windows, and the baby grimaced in the strong wind.
Driving north on the freeway, I crossed the bridge and took the first wooded exit. I didn’t have time to drive to one of the lush state parks, but it wouldn’t matter. It had been a wet spring. I would find what I needed in any dense, shaded forest. I pulled in to a parking lot at a vista point overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, which was rust-colored and glowing in the early-morning sun. Already the parking lot was half full with hikers pulling on boots and filling brightly colored plastic bottles with water.
Grabbing the basket by its woven handles, I started down a trailhead. The trail split and split again. I chose the path with the least sun and shuddered as I walked into the cool undergrowth. Hikers passed and cooed over the baby until I turned off the main trail and onto one marked
The baby didn’t make a sound as I lay her down on the forest floor, the bald patch on the back of her head pressing against the soft duff. She looked up through the redwoods, her blurred, blue-eyed vision scanning the tall trees, patches of light, gray sky, and perhaps even what lay beyond it. I didn’t doubt her.
I pulled out the large, flat putty knife I had stuck in the back pocket of my jeans and began to strip the spongy green moss from the trunks of the redwood trees. The moss fell to the ground in long, hairy patches, and I arranged them carefully around the bottom and sides of the basket, making sure the softest and most fragrant pieces would surround her tiny head.
When the basket was completely covered, I put the knife back in my pocket, picked up the baby, who had fallen asleep, and lay her down gently on the blanket of moss.
It was all I could give her. Someday, I hoped, she would understand.* * *
The spare key to Grant’s door was where it had always been, inside the rusted tin watering can on the front stoop. I unlocked the door and carried the moss-lined basket into the kitchen, setting it down beside the spiral staircase in the corner of the room. From where the baby lay, she could look up three stories, and it seemed to amuse her well enough. She continued her quiet squinting while I moved about the kitchen, lighting the stove with a match and filling a kettle with water for tea. It had been nearly a year since I’d made tea in this kitchen, but everything was exactly as it had been before.
I sat down at the table while I waited for the water to boil. The baby was so quiet it was easy to forget her, easy to imagine I had returned only to surprise Grant with a cup of tea at the splintering table. I missed him. Sitting in his water tower, looking out over his flower farm, the feeling was impossible to ignore. And soon I would miss the baby. I pushed the thought from my mind and kept my focus on the flowers stretching across the fields below.
The baby made a sound between a sigh and a squawk just as the water started to boil. Steam clouded the kitchen window. I wondered if she could drink peppermint tea. It seemed like it might be good for her stomach, soothing, and I had brought the near-empty bottle but forgotten a can of formula. Dumping the congealing liquid down the drain, I rinsed the bottle and filled half with boiling water, half with tap water. I dropped in a tea bag and screwed on the top. The baby’s nose wrinkled in surprise as she tasted the tea, but her lips worked the nipple hungrily and without complaint. Steam from the still-boiling water settled down on us. The moss glowed greener from the moisture in the air.
I balanced the bottle against the side of the basket so the baby could suck while I filled a soup pot with
