water and lit another burner. I wanted the moss to live for as long as possible. As the baby sucked, the water tower filled with hot, billowing steam. I carried the basket up the two flights of stairs to Grant’s bed. The baby was asleep by the time I got to the top—a deep, motionless sleep that made me nervous about my choice of nourishment. Setting the basket down in the middle of the foam mattress, I lay down next to her, lowering my face until I could feel her quick exhales on my upper lip.
I stayed there—our noses nearly touching, our exhales joined—until the sun was dangerously high in the sky and Grant’s arrival was imminent. Closing my eyes, I withdrew my face. The baby made the air-sucking whimper I remembered from the release of my nipple from her mouth, and my breasts ached with the memory. I pulled a small square of moss off the edge of the basket and rubbed it against her cheek, her chin, and tucked it into the crease where her neck would be, someday, when she was strong enough to lift her head. The moss pulsed with the beating of her heart.
Pulling myself away, I walked down the stairs. The pot on the stove was almost empty. I filled it to the brim, returned it to the stove, and slipped silently out the door.
My hatchback skidded down the long dirt driveway, and I continued toward the highway without looking back. What had started as a dull, dislocated ache had become centralized in my left breast. When I touched the nipple, a pain shot through my flesh and down my spine. I started to sweat. The windows were down, and I turned on the air-conditioning as well, but still I was hot. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw the empty seat where the baby had been. There was nothing but a thin spray of dirt and a single hair-fine coil of bright green moss.
I turned on the radio and spun the dial until I found something loud and vibrating, too many cymbals and a voice without words. It reminded me of Natalya’s band. I drove faster, flying over the bridge and through intersections, neither red nor yellow lights slowing me down. I needed the blue room. I needed to lie down and close my eyes and sleep. I wouldn’t emerge for a week, if I emerged at all.
Screeching to a stop in front of the apartment, I came bumper to bumper with Natalya’s car. The trunk was open. Boxes and suitcases were stacked on the sidewalk. It was hard to tell if she was coming or going. I got out of the car quietly, hoping I could slip inside the blue room and lock all the locks without her noticing.
I tiptoed across the empty office space and nearly collided with Natalya at the bottom of the stairs. She did not step aside. I looked up and could tell by her expression that my face looked as hot as it felt.
“You all right?” Natalya asked. I nodded and tried to get by, but still she did not move. “Your face is pinker than my hair.”
She reached out, touching my forehead, and recoiled as if she’d been burned. I pushed past her but tripped and fell on the bottom step. I didn’t even try to stand but crawled on my hands and knees up the stairs. Natalya followed. Collapsing into the blue room, I pulled the door closed behind me.
Natalya tapped on the half-door. “I have to leave,” she said, her voice a whisper, full of fear. “Our tour has been extended—I’ll be gone for six months at least. I just came to get some things and tell you to use my bedroom if you want.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I really have to go,” she said again.
“So go already,” I managed to say.
Something loud hit the door, likely Natalya’s foot. “I don’t want to return in six months to the smell of your rotting corpse,” she said, kicking the door again. The next thing I heard was the sound of her shoes stomping down the stairs and a car door slamming. The engine of her car sputtered and started. Then she was gone.
Would she call her mother? I wondered. Would she realize the baby was gone, and report me to the authorities? If she was going to call someone, I hoped she decided on the police; I’d rather do time than face Mother Ruby and her disappointment.
I lay on my left side on the featherbed, the hard rubber ball of my breast supported by the mattress. My body, which did not feel like my own, shook uncontrollably. I was freezing. I put on every sweatshirt I owned and pulled up the brown blanket. When that didn’t warm me, I crawled underneath the featherbed. I stayed there, barely able to breathe, my body and mind an ice storm under a heavy cloud. My chill became something black and swirling, and I had the fleeting, comforting thought that the sleep I was entering was eternal, a state from which I might never return.
From far away, sirens whirled, growing louder, nearer, until they sounded as if they were coming from Natalya’s bedroom. Flashing lights soaked under my door. And then, just as suddenly, they stopped.
For just a moment the room was black and silent as death; then the door was pushed in and I heard the trampling of feet on the stairs.
I lay in an ambulance, strapped to a white cloth board. I couldn’t remember how I got there. I was still in only my underwear, and someone had draped a hospital gown across my chest.
Beside me, Elizabeth sobbed.
“Are you her mother?” a voice asked. I opened one eye. A young man in a navy uniform sat near my head. Whirling lights shone through the window and flashed across his sweaty face.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, still crying. “I mean no. Not yet.”
“She’s a ward of the court?” he asked.
Elizabeth nodded.
“You’ll need to report it, then, immediately. Or I will.” The man looked apologetic, and Elizabeth wept harder. He handed her a heavy black phone, connected to the side of the ambulance by a cord that spiraled like the one in Elizabeth’s kitchen. I closed my eyes again. We drove through the night for what felt like hours, and Elizabeth didn’t stop crying.
When the ambulance stopped, hands tucked the hospital gown under my arms. The doors opened. Cool air rushed in, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Meredith, waiting. She was still in her pajamas, a trench coat thrown on over them.
As we passed, she leaned forward, her hand reaching out to pull Elizabeth away from me. “I can take over from here,” she said.
“Don’t touch me,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Wait in the lobby.”
“I’m not leaving her,” Elizabeth said.
“You’ll wait in the lobby or I’ll have you escorted out by security,” Meredith said.
I watched over my receding toes as Meredith left Elizabeth standing in the hall, shocked. She followed me into a room.
A nurse examined my body, recording my injuries. I had burns on my scalp and in a ring where the elastic of my cotton underwear had melted into my stomach. A dislocated arm fell limp at my side, and my chest and back were bruised where Elizabeth had kicked. Meredith recorded the nurse’s findings in a notebook.
Elizabeth had hurt me. Not in the way that Meredith believed, but still, she had hurt me. The marks were indisputable evidence. They would be photographed and recorded in my file. No one would ever believe Elizabeth’s story: that she had been trying to save me from running headlong into a raging blaze. Even though it was the truth.
And suddenly I saw, in the markings on my body, an undeniable escape route, a path away from Elizabeth’s pain-filled eyes; a path away from the guilt, the regret, and the scorched vineyard. I could not face the pain I had caused Elizabeth. I would never be able to face it. It wasn’t just the fire; it was a year’s worth of transgressions, many small, some unforgivable. Mothering me had changed her. A year after I’d moved in to her home, she was a different woman, softened in a way that allowed suffering. With me in her life, she would only continue to suffer. She didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve any of it.
The nurse walked into the hall. Meredith pulled the door of the small room closed behind her, and we were alone.
“Did she beat you?” she asked.
