And I. You came with the gift of respite and, for a short time, I believed that I, we, had a chance at happiness. I was inebriated, high. Which made it all the worse when, two weeks after you arrived, I fell.

I couldn’t, for some reason, settle you on to the breast, even though we’d had no trouble at first. Coaxing you to feed put both of us in such an anxious state that I had visions of slamming either my head, or worse, your good body, into the wall. It was the pitch of your scream. Your braying sent me into a frenzy. You screamed yourself purple and you hadn’t any tears and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

All I wanted to do was sleep, but when I slept, I dreamt of pushing your head underwater, or of losing you in a pit of suckling mud. When I was awake, my thoughts were darker still.

And the whole affair with Axelle. Compared to this? Vaudeville. I was ashamed to have ever felt anything for her at all.

I stopped being a part of the world. You and Madame Debord were somewhere over there, safe on the other side of a plate of glass that separated us. I could see you both but couldn’t touch you. Through my half-closed bedroom door I could hear Madame singing and clapping and making a fuss. I would stutter-sleep until your lamb-cry, and then you would be placed in my arms and my nightdress pulled down to expose a nipple, dark and sore and split, and we would look at each other and then fight and fight until you latched on, for at least a moment. The prickle would come and the let-down of milk and a brief, brief moment of relief as I heard the sounds of your quiet swallowing, but then your body would tense, your legs curl up, and you, still tightly latched, would abruptly turn your head away, tearing my skin with your strong gums.

We called for the doctor. He informed me that my troubles were a result of my traumatized womb, a sort of shock, and that all would be well in time. He presented us with a feeding bottle. The rubber teat smelled like something burning, and I didn’t think you would take to it, nor to the pap, the clouded mixture of flour and water we put in the bottle. And you didn’t. You refused it with vehemence and the misery continued.

The first time I left the apartment with you, you were five weeks old. It was the end of August, the same season as, a year before, I had met Axelle. The smell of the streets, the sultry hang of the leaves on the trees, and the way the light fell through those leaves on to the pavement, reminded me of her. I was overdressed with petticoats and thick stockings and felt as heavy and uncoordinated as a barge. Just to breathe evenly was a task. You started crying and I envisioned letting go of the pram, like casting a boat off the end of a pier, and watching it sail into the middle of the road to be smashed by an omnibus. The feeling was akin to looking down from the edge of a great height, wanting and not wanting to jump. I went home, trembling, and left the apartment only once more in my life.