Always a Mother

Beth gripped the wheel, hands dutifully stationed at ten and two o’clock. This final stretch of Old Pecos Trail, where the s-curves stopped and the asphalt rolled out straight as a ribbon, had a way of bringing out the complacency in people. This is where they’d let their guard down, glancing at messages or changing their music—where, purposefully or not, they’d want to speed up.

In forty years, the view hadn’t changed much—with the exception of Beth’s hands, of course. Time had aged them: stealing her rings and swelling her knuckles; pushing veins up through rice paper skin that stretched, limpid, across her bones. Even so, she saw herself in them. These same two hands had cupped her babies’ skulls before they were strong enough to hold up their heads. These same slender fingers had changed their diapers, smoothing the paper across chubby bellies to minimize how much it would crease their skin.

Once a mother, always a mother. You become, in a way, every mother. It was comforting to Beth to see her hands there, steering the wheel: two sentinels faithfully manning their posts. She was certain she watched more carefully than others, for deer, runners, cyclists, lost dogs. And children, of course—there’s no predicting what children will do, and they don’t always make the most sensible choices.

It’s so much simpler when they’re just babies. They cry, and then you offer the breast. Not one single time do they ever refuse it—even if it’s you that they’re upset with, ‘cause you said it was bedtime, or didn’t let them have ice cream, or whatever silly thing got them riled up.

When they see your breast, their mouths gape open like nestling chicks’. They draw your nipple deep down their throat and, even if they’re feeling a little resentful (staring you down the best that they can), their warm, small bodies melt into yours. Pouring into your nooks and crannies like gooey batter in a cake mold.

God only knows where you are. A park. A mall. A train. A bus. Your spine might feel like it’s going to snap; your arms and rear might have pins and needles. But still, you nurse them, stroking whatever hair they’ve got. Whispering into their petal-like ears your dearest hopes and heartfelt intentions, because in those moments, that’s what feels real.

If Beth could choose one time of life to go back to and relive interminably, she would go back to nursing her babies—especially Zadie. Beth wasn’t one for playing favorites, but there is something special—untouchable, really—that only occurs with a firstborn child. Because in the act of birthing that baby, the mother also gives birth to herself. She, too, is fragile, weak, naked. Every thought, emotion, and physical sensation is searingly painful or utterly wondrous—each one new and a little bit shocking. She and her baby thrum and quake in response to the world, innately understanding what others don’t get. That they are not, in fact, symbiotic creatures, but a single, whole (if schizophrenic) being with four pairs of limbs and two distinct heads. One is not soothing the other; as one, they are soothing themself.

Beth had doted on all her babies, but the thing that makes firsts so very special is the way they can only ever happen once. By the time you’ve had a second or third, you know too much—plus you can never again be alone. But with Zadie, there had been nothing else. Just them, sleeping and waking. Crying and cuddling. Standing or sitting or lying down. There was only Zadie at the breast, gazing at Beth with those tourmaline eyes.

A familiar figure came into view: tiny in the distance, but instantly recognizable for her telltale march. Everyone in town knew her on sight, as she walked and grumbled and sometimes shouted, walking her beat round the city each day. Up Old Pecos Trail, across Cordova, then back down St. Michael’s Drive to wherever it was she’d started from.

You could feel the labor in her walking. She peeled her boots up and plopped them down, slapping the ground with every step. Instead of letting her arms swing freely, her hands crossed limply in front of her belly.

Beth felt a gnawing urge to stop. To pull over, step out, and greet her warmly. To lay a kind hand on those frozen shoulders and offer whatever reassurance she could.

She’d tried before, as had her kids—sometimes with disastrous results. Not a year ago, she’d guided her Suburu onto the shoulder and slipped lithely out. Long, buoyant steps had carried her forward until she clocked the glass soda bottle, smashed at one end and pointed her way. How foolish she’d felt, running back to her car, with throaty expletives echoing behind her.

“Best to leave them to their own devices,” said a passerby who had witnessed the altercation while walking her dog. She’d approached Beth’s car when the dust had settled, to check on her and offer comfort. “These poor, lost souls. There are plenty of resources for them to access, but it’s up to them to want the help.”

Beth’s heart pounded as she played out this memory. Then, fueled by the adrenaline it had summoned, she slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop. She jumped out of her car, breathing hard, and loudly slammed the door behind her.

They faced one another from afar, separated by a cloud of dust that had been kicked up by Beth’s violent stop. There was no broken bottle that she could make out; just two hands dangling loosely at the wrists, slightly crossed in front of that belly. A chin cocked down, and two eyes rolled upwards, glaring at Beth.

Beth advanced into the cloud, aware that she was being watched, but unsure what was being seen. Was she still, in fact, a harmless, old lady? Or, in the eyes of this beholder, had Beth taken on a nefarious form? A cop or a rabid coyote? A dust devil whirling and snaking closer?

“It’s okay,” Beth called out as she trudged forward, slipping and crunching on the shoulder’s loose gravel.

The dust cloud between them began to disperse, dissipating into ever more evanescent puffs that floated upwards and blew to one side. Beth pressed on, but slowed her pace, feeling more cautious the nearer she got—and also because she was stunned, quite frankly, by the details she hadn’t made out from her car. The mottled brown skin. The creases and hollows carved into the face of a woman who ought to be in her prime. How could it be that she looked so ancient: a cavewoman who had come down from the mountain, speaking a language that no one understood?

“I just want to help,” Beth said, inching closer.

“To help?” She shrieked back, “By calling the Alternative Response Unit? By having me locked up?”

“Would that be so bad? You’d have a bed. You’d sleep inside.”

“Oh, well, you know all about that, don’t you?”

“They can help you. They can get you on the right medication.”

“Medication! I’ve been to the ER. I go once a week and try to explain …”

“Explain what?” Beth interjected, flinging her arms wildly to either side,” That you’ve got snakes in your stomach? Bees in your ears? Worms in your brain? Which one is it this week, Zadie?”

The face before her twitched with emotion, which gratified Beth for the briefest of moments before flooding her with sickly remorse. Zadie’s pupils, which had been abnormally dilated from a very young age (a result of the SSRIs she was on), began to swell even rounder, threatening to eclipse the tourmaline around them. Her eyebrows sank and her cupid’s bow quivered. Then, as mysteriously as her face had cracked open, it stiffened again, ossifying into an outraged glare.

Her hands found each other in front of her belly, and she pivoted robotically, like a machine recalibrating after being unplugged and then plugged back in.

“Damn it, Zadie!” Beth shouted at her baby’s back, which was receding now at a rapid pace. Marching diagonally across Old Pecos Trail, opening the chasm of space between them.

“For Christ’s sake, Zadie,” Beth rasped. “Look before you cross.”