I thought we could make cookies for Daddy! I said to E, who didn’t look up, so I said it again to B and squished my nose up against his, wrinkling it in exactly the way I had done in a picture that I loved of myself from when I was eighteen. B gurgled at me and I turned back to the kitchen to get the dough ready. It was so hot in the apartment that the butter was melting already, slumping, oozing out across the counter in a bright slick.

I scooped the whole mess into a bowl and added flour and eggs and sugar and stirred it with a wooden spoon in exactly the way I had imagined I would. The dough smelled good and was soft in my hands. I pinched off a piece and ate it. I crushed the sugar crystals between my teeth and ate another piece, then another.

B began to cry, he had been crying and crying all afternoon and now he was crying again. I felt suddenly choked and instead of turning to pick him up, I took a big handful of dough, almost all of it really, and mashed it into my mouth. For a second I couldn’t breathe. I wondered if I would choke to death but it passed, the giant gob of dough, down my throat and I ran fast to get the baby. I sat with him whoosh down on the sofa and slipped my nipple into his hungry little mouth. Good mother. Bad mother. Good. Bad. A coin flipped high in the air, spinning up and up and up.

I brought my fingers across my forehead to smooth away the wrinkles, to bring my face back in order. I used one hand to relax my jaw while I held B in the crook of my arm. I could hear myself breathing, a heehawing sound that I realized was strange even as I couldn’t stop myself from doing it. I realized I was crying and also that I was still wearing my hair in the braids, that I had gone around all day looking like some terrible doll with an old woman’s face, all lined and wrinkled. I realized this and then felt silly and pulled my nipple out of B’s mouth, set him down on the carpet and went to see what was left of the cookie dough. Just enough. I put it in the fridge to firm up and went into the bathroom to undo my hair and put it up in some way that was less terrible, some way that made it clear that I knew what I was.

B was crying again but I found this time I could smile and walk to him without shaking and pick him up and hold him and sing a song to him without the words coming out of my mouth too loudly or too quickly. He smiled at me and I hugged him and I felt again saved from something ghastly and there we were rocking and singing and ready to be watched again, ready to be seen.