by Katie Bockino
Three things happened next. I learned by chance or fate, I still can’t decide which, that I had my daughter’s time of death wrong. My husband left me–not in the dark of night but after lunch. I watched him pack his socks and old college basketball trophies into his Honda Pilot as I picked greasy dandelions out of my toes. And, I learned all at once and yet not soon enough that there is life after death. Just not in the way my Judeo-Christian faith had wanted me to believe.
I was, in fact, going to see Willa again.
Everyone thinks that their baby is beautiful. The cutest, the best, the sweetest. Willa wasn’t. She was a mess. Fat cheeks in a way that made me wonder if I could put an infant on a diet. Long, horror movie length nails that scratched me constantly. Whenever I tried to pick her up, I’d walk away covered in red lines. And of course, the temper. Her mood swings. My doctors all smiled and nodded and said Poor Mom, you’re under such stress aren’t you? It’ll get easier.
But it didn’t.
Our only “thing” that we had at that age was me whispering Hi baby! Hi baby! Hi bay-bee! over and over and over again until she mellowed. I could have been saying anything, it was all about the tone, but somehow that dumb phrase became my prayer. Our prayer. So whenever her little whimper would begin I jumped to it, clung to it, believing that it would soothe even the worst tantrum.
“Hmm?” Greg, my soon to be ex-husband, called from the bedroom. He was packing his things as I read over the police report. Greg had asked for it after he was too upset to go and identify her body with me. He sobbed, said he couldn’t possibly see her. He couldn’t look at what that monster had done to her. So, I walked in alone. I let him have his meltdown, sob on the floor like a child, like the dead child I was about to see. Gender roles be damned, that part of my brain thought. I’m tough. I’m good. I’m strong.
Willa. Her red curls torn away in chunks near her ears. Her lips, always pale, weren’t blue like how I thought they’d be. They were plump and red and I wanted to kiss them.
But now Greg felt bad. Guilty. So he asked to read everything that had happened. And yet. Yet. He had left it on the kitchen table like any other magazine or newspaper story about pandas going extinct or a corrupt white senator asking forgiveness for impregnating his mistress’ cousin. So I read every word, took out a highlighter and marked phrases or stray commas that struck me. Someone had to.
And that’s when I saw it.
“I always just assumed that Willa died at 1:00 AM.”
“I don’t want to –”
“But it was actually 12:57AM.”
“Oh.”
“The police came to our hotel at 1:30, you remember? We weren’t sleeping and I kept tossing and you said, ‘It’s almost 1:30, we need rest.’ But then we heard a knock and Number 2 and 3 told us. But the EMT from the ambulance recorded it as 12:57 AM.”
“Alright.”
“So interesting.”
“I mean….”
“I had always just assumed, you know?”
October 7th. What else happened that day? The first three pages of Google mentioned Willa. She was national news. So many girls had died while out for jogs this year. Sort of insulting though that she faded by the fourth page. But America is fickle, especially about dead girls.
On page four, the third article down, I read that in one state over a miracle had happened. On the same day mine was taken away.
MINNESOTAN NEWBORN AND MOTHER SURVIVE HORRIFIC CAR ACCIDENT UNSCATHED.
Lilian Prescost (20) was driving down Main Street near Park Avenue in the early morning when her left tire blew, causing the car to roll three times before flipping. Prescost, 8 months pregnant, was tossed out of the car. Luckily, a car saw the wreck and called 911.
James Dowl (42), first-year paramedic, helped deliver Miss Samantha Prescost on the side of the road at 12:57AM. Both mother and daughter are expected to make a full recovery.
“Means nothing,” I mumbled before closing out the browser.
There are so many, perhaps too many, stories out there on reincarnation, re-birth, reawakening. But here are some of my favorites.
A six-year-old boy woke up screaming right before dawn. This scream, somehow, was different. It was determined. It was calculated. Each breath was perfectly timed, a rhythm and a beat one could tap or hum along too. The husband and wife woke up in between one of his breaths. Turning only their chins towards one another, confused and sweaty as to why their eyes were creaking open.
Then, they heard the scream again. Soft and yet jolting enough to cause them both to flinch. To dig their nails into their palms.
The son was rattling, seizing, on his twine carpet. The glow from the stars stuck onto his ceiling caused his shadow to stretch and tighten. The husband called 911. The wife pinned down his arms, remembering something on Grey’s Anatomy or TLC. But then, he stopped. The son opened his eyes and fixated each dilated pupil on the glowing orbs above him.
“The water. It’s everywhere. It’s…we’re turning over. The boys, they’re all screaming. I want them to stop. I want the lights to come back on. We’ve been hit.”
“What?” she asked. Her son had never been so articulate. So deliberate.
“We were trying to go back home. But they wouldn’t let us.”
After more nights of this rambling, of more clues being dropped between breaths, the mother pulled out a faded album and showed it to the son, asking if he recognized anyone.
He smiled, his tooth front teeth already lost, reminding her of both youth and decay. “That’s me,” he said, pointing at her father.
The family made it all the way to the Huffington Post. Fifty-five different YouTube videos were uploaded on the story, describing this astounding story of reincarnation.
But what happened next? No one reported on that. How did they ever go back to normal? Was there even a normal to go back to? The family wouldn’t answer my calls, but that was alright. I could imagine.
***
“I was going to ask why you came in today, but I recognized your name from the news.”
“Right.”
“So I already have a good idea why you’re here, and what you’re experiencing.”
“Sure.”
“But, of course, I still want to hear everything from your perspective. When your daughter went missing, how you felt during the search, catching the –”
“I actually can’t stop thinking about…young mothers.”
My therapist, Dr. Wendy she insisted, shifted behind her desk. I thought I’d be on a love seat, with my right arm draped over my forehead as lavender was pumped into the room through the air vents. Instead I felt more like I was meeting with a principal. Dr. Wendy was sitting behind a dark oak desk that had a globe off to the left. It said in bubble letters, “You can take your mind on any adventure!”
Craigslist therapists, I suppose, come with their quirks. But they’re cheap, and since I had decided I would rather join Willa than ever step foot back into the world of legal marketing again I couldn’t exactly afford top dollar.
“I see,” she continued, biting the top of her pen as if she was in a porno.
“Like, it’s hard to be a mother overall, right?”
“Right.”
“You’re a mother?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“But please,” she continued as she sat farther back against her chair. It squeaked like a deflating dog toy. “Keep going.”
“I know it’s hard to be a mom. I am one, after all. But if you’re really far along you should be taking every precaution. Eating especially well. Taking all those vitamins. Not driving late at night down dark streets.”
“Sure.”
“So why take any risks? Why not stay home at night?”
“I’m not sure where this is –”
“I just don’t understand moms who don’t put their kids first. Born, unborn, still a little inconsequential cell. Them before you. Isn’t that in the Bible? Or from an episode of Full House?”
“You think you didn’t put Willa first?”
It was jarring hearing her name. Like that tiny pressure you feel before you orgasm.
“No,” I said, sitting back in my own armchair. It didn’t squeak, but I was aware with each shift that I had forgotten to put on deodorant – again – today. That sweet, rotting smell seemed to be hovering around me, and I wanted Dr. Wendy to know that I was alright. I just recently had been rather lazy. No one in my house cared if I smelled a little stale.“I always put her first. Even when I didn’t want to. It’s what you do. Your child is the only person who has ever heard your own heart beat from the inside of your chest. How incredible is that? It’s what I would do again. Easily.”
“Do you and your husband want to have another child?”
“I just have been wondering how come my child was taken, and yet somehow mothers who do the dumbest shit and clearly just don’t care somehow keep their babies? It’s not right.”
“So you’re thinking of adopting? It might be soon to–”
“Oh. No. No. I’m just saying…I don’t know what I’m saying I’m sorry. I can’t sleep, I just read these crazy articles online about anything and everything and can’t stop.”
She leaned forward, her pencil dangling between her fingers. “I think we should schedule you for a few times a week. Maybe even every day. I’m a bit concerned.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary, I’m really fine.”
“It’s alright not to be, though. You just went through a tragedy.”
“I just need sleep, or answers, or –”
“Answers to…?”
“Everything.”
Was it that wrong that I wanted to know it all? Who doesn’t? Isn’t that why there’s science? Religion? It didn’t seem fair that we had to wait until we croak to find out. The dead were too good at keeping their secrets.
Secrets. I kept many from Willa. But my favorite was the Peter Pan mystery. Instead of writing to the tooth fairy one night when she was seven, she wrote to Peter Pan. Left it on her windowsill, next to an armless Barbie. She asked him if he could take her away, just for one night, so she could help him and the Lost Boys.
All the other cons were easy. Christmas, Easter, there were traditions already set in place. Greg thought maybe she’d wake up and forget about it. But I knew her. So, I did the only thing that made sense. I wrote her back, as Peter, telling her that she should believe in him but now wasn’t the right time. Captain Hook was guarding the entrance and it wouldn’t be safe for her. But, maybe, hopefully, one day she’d join them.
She didn’t tell me, like I thought she would, about her discovery. She was so sly I thought maybe Greg was right and she never checked. But a few days later I found in her closet (not very well hidden) a knapsack with a water bottle, granola bars, batteries (I still don’t know what for), and one pair of underwear. I smiled, clutching it closer. She was preparing for her adventure.
She asked me over the years about it. Mom, come on! You wrote the note, right? But I never gave in. I wanted to keep some sort of magic alive for her. I wanted her to know it was alright to stay a kid for a bit longer, that she didn’t have to grow up so fast.
I never would have guessed how much she’d end up having in common with Peter and his Boys. Kids shouldn’t stay kids forever.
“Do you think our religion is bullshit?” I asked Greg over the phone a week later. We still called each other. Mostly to ask what to do if the toaster started smoking.
“What?”
“Like Christianity can be so bleak. And Hell isn’t even mentioned in the Bible.”
“Really.”
“How do we not know that the ancient Egyptians weren’t right? Maybe we should have made Willa some of those dolls and placed them in her coffin, so she didn’t have to work in the afterlife.”
Greg sighed.
“Or put coins on her eyes so she could have paid the boatman to cross Styx. Maybe we screwed up her soul. It sucks.”
Greg exhaled slowly. We weren’t the type of people to say “sucks.” Like, “this sucks, that sucks, he/she/it sucks.” No. We cursed, sure, but maybe it was the sexual connotation behind it, or the way the s and u had to hit your teeth right in the center. We’d scold Willa whenever she’d say it. Sometimes I’d just widen my eyes and tilt my head, so she’d know that I didn’t approve. But I found myself saying it a lot. This sucks, this sucks, this fucking sucks.
“Anyway,” I continued, clearing my throat as I switched my iPhone to my other ear. “I don’t know, what if reincarnation is real?”
“Hmmm.”
“I keep reading these stories. I don’t know, they make sense. Like there are so many of them. Isn’t that odd?”
“Not really.”
“I grew up thinking, knowing, that it’s all bullshit. But I feel, I guess, comforted reading them?”
“That’s good then.”
“Yeah?”
“If it’s giving you some peace thinking that her ‘energy’ is still around you, then I think that’s healthy.”
“Healthy.”
“Yes.”
“But not real?”
“Who am I to say?”
“You have a degree, don’t you?” I huffed. I knew I was about to lose him.
“In accounting. Not philosophy or religious studies or –”
“But if you were to say….”
“Then, I’d say that matter can’t be created or destroyed. It has to go somewhere.”
“Right?”
“But reincarnation doesn’t make logical sense.”
“YET,” I said so harshly my throat felt a bit sore. I moved the iPhone to the other ear as I clunked my legs down on our coffee table. My coffee table. “Remember that time we were trying to find a new apartment and we were waiting to hear back from the broker if we got it? That place near the coffeeshop with that bay window? And as we were waiting we got Chinese and that fortune cookie said, ‘Your expectations won’t be met in the way you think, but it will all work out?’ And I just knew, like knew, that we lost out on that place? And then the broker called us later that night and told us our application wasn’t approved.”
“I liked the apartment we ended up getting.”
“Yeah. I did too. That’s the point. We ended up getting a better one. And when my mom got sick it had the extra room.”
“True. So have you gone back to the office yet?”
“And I’ve been thinking about all the ‘coincidences’ in my life, and yours, and Willa’s, and they just feel more than that.”
I heard a rustle on his end, the sound of multiple glasses clinking. “Are you sleeping well?”
“Not really.”
“I think you need more sleep. Or someone to help you sleep.”
“Like a man?”
“Sure.”
“You’re still my husband you know. We’ve been separated less than a month.”
I could almost see Greg shrugging from across the phone. “I filed the paperwork today.”
“Oh. Well. That’s great. Thanks.”
“Please get some sleep. Take those pills Dr. Zheng prescribed.” I pushed both empty pill bottles off the coffee table with my gray toenails. It was the longest in perhaps five years I had gone without a pedicure.
Greg continued, “It’s really been helping me, love.”
He said it before he could stop himself. It was so easy to fall into old habits, old phrases, when you let your mind wander even for a moment. He called me Love, I called Willa Love.
After I hung up, I looked around the empty house. I let my feet slide across the chilly kitchen tiles, banged pots and pans as if it was New Year’s Eve. I opened every blind and stood naked, waving out into the empty street.
But no one was there to stop me.
And there still was no one around to stop me the next day from driving to my least favorite part of town. The few blocks past Main Street, past the shopping holes, and past the highway looked and felt as if someone had accidently dropped some random shops there, shrugged, and then walked away. There was a rundown music shop that always seemed to be closed, a bar (there’s always a bar, isn’t there?), and a parking lot. Just a parking lot, no shops around it, just existing like a patch of grass between a city sidewalk.
There was one more shop, tinier than the rest, that somehow must have enough customers to stay open. Madame Juliet’s Seeing Shop. Are psychics usually named Juliet? Google didn’t have any other suggestions.
But as I opened the stiff glass door and heard that always too loud chime, I wasn’t greeted by Juliet, but by someone whose plastic, chipped nametag read Rose. She didn’t shake my hand or ask me what I wanted. She led me past the two isles filled with crystals and burning jasmine incense to the back room where a sign that said “READINGS” hung crookedly.
In the room there was a table, with a flower tablecloth, and two plastic folding chairs. Rose sat down and so did I. The jasmine now smelled more like burning syrup.
“I was wondering –”
“It’s ten for a reading, twenty if you want me to take out the ball, and five if you just want to look at the cards.”
“That doesn’t seem … alright I just want a reading. Please.” The good, midwestern girl in me didn’t forget her manners.
“Then let me look at you.” Rose leaned forward, her frizzy blonde hair pointing straight out on either end, as she breathed and leaned in closer. I counted one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi until she sat back, crossed her arms and nodded for me to begin.
“My child recently –”
“Passed.”
“Yes. And I want to know –”
“If she’s still around you.”
“Yes, but I –”
Rose leaned in, like we were two underage sorority sisters about to take a sip of cherry flavored vodka and didn’t want our house mom to know, “You don’t want bullshit. You want to really know.”
I breathed in a way that sounded and felt more dramatic that it was. “Yes.”
“There are a few answers to this
question. Some are harder to hear than others.
I liked Rose. But I didn’t
like riddles. “Please.”
My second “please” of the day. Here I was, practically begging this stranger for answers. I let my lip trace across my teeth. There was no way she could know the answers, perhaps even the questions. No way she –
“Your daughter is still here.”
I tasted blood. “I knew it.”
“And not in the way others would
believe. You will see her again.”
My heart was slowing down. The
silence between each beat made my chest seem empty, hollow, as if something
could fly in between my lungs and heart and organs and nestle in there. “When?”
Rose crossed her legs, her knee bumping the table. “That’s the tricky part. I’m having trouble seeing that. And seeing how. I do see a new journey for you. Maybe a new career path?”
“No.”
“A new hobby?”
“I doubt it.”
“To find your lasting peace, to find your daughter, you have to see this journey through. Whatever it is.”
Now I crossed my legs, causing the table to rebound. “Maybe you mean like a physical journey? Like a road trip?”
Rose smiled in a way that was not very becoming. “Sure. This trip will answer your questions, and give you peace. Perhaps to her grave, or where she was last, or –”
“Or where she is now?”
Her smile faltered at the corners, but when I blinked it was back in full. “This journey will give you answers. But they won’t appear in a familiar or expected way.”
Of course. If that child really was my Willa, she weighed less than ten pounds now. And I’d have to prepare myself for that.
Here’s another good story.
A sad husband. One of those loves that we throw popcorn at the screen during the kiss scenes. No one is really that in love, we all say.
But they were.
When she died at 82 it was more than that he didn’t know how to cook a good chicken, or who to call about the broken dishwasher. He wondered if it just would be easier to go as well.
After two weeks of not leaving his apartment, he walked by the library and saw they were offering discount bus tickets to the zoo. Why not? It used to be something they loved to do. Besides, who knew when he’d ever go again.
As he paced by the flamingos, his wife’s favorite, he paused and remembered how beautiful she was. How she had not two but somehow six dimples. How she had the cutest feet because they were always soft. That her smile was timid but radiant. Like a flower about to bloom. The potential to be perfect.
That’s when he saw that there was one flamingo staring at him. But its gaze was too penetrating, too intense, too human. There were thoughts behind those eyes, an understanding. He moved closer to the enclosure, the warm barrier, as it did as well. The eye contact never once breaking. And he knew. That was his wife, wishing him well.
He cried on the bus home. Called one of his last friends, who texted his cousin who drank sambuca and shopped only in Brooklyn, who wrote a blog post about the experience.
I cried too as I read it, because I knew it was real. Too fucking real.
***
“I’m not actually going,” I said out loud to myself, embracing a bit of the crazy, as I shopped for a thicker, heavier jacket in Kohls. As I added extra water to my houseplants, unplugged the unnecessary appliances, and closed blinds so the sun wouldn’t bleach my furniture.
But it would be good to see a different part of the country, to leave my house, to leave the sad neighbors and streets and even dogs that also somehow knew, since each time I passed one its tail weakened and fell to the ground. It wasn’t crazy, like actually crazy, to want to see the famous baby of the news. Well, maybe, yes, but I was just going to keep obsessing, right? So I had to at least see. Put the nonsense out of my head.
It was scary how easily it was to find out information on Lilian Prescost. I knew her age from that initial article. I knew her town, the streets she frequented. I figured she was single – no mention of a father/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend “other” rushing to her side. I saw from pictures she had dark hair and two moles on either side of her nose.
As I pulled into the motel, I finally glanced down at what I was wearing. Willa would have been appalled. When she was fourteen, she declared to Greg and I that we had to stop wearing black and brown together. And no more capris. Ever. Oh, no more open toed sandals. Why? Because an episode of some now cancelled reality TV told her this.
She wouldn’t let me near her or her friends if I dared break a rule. I had become the embarrassing mom, the one who only ever saw the whites of her daughter’s eyes since they seemed to be constantly rolling.
Of course, I eventually reached a breaking point. We screamed at one another in a Target parking lot, our bodies angled between two parked minivans, as she held a bag of Clorox wipes and I held a plastic bag filled with sponges. I was the first to cry. I should have been prepared for the horrible teen years. After all, I had survived her terrible twos. But the past few weeks she wouldn’t even look at me. How odd was it, when eye contact was denied? You never knew how comforting it was, until it wasn’t given. I almost took out a sponge to dab my face, I was that much of a mess.
She never apologized. And neither did I. But as we were winding nearer to our home, she suggested we stop at our favorite ice cream place. The one that touts it’s all homemade, made daily in the back, but if you parked near the dumpsters you were able to see boxes it came in. But we loved it anyway.
After that things got better. She still loved her rules, dressed better than I did at her age or ever would. But it was as if we had to have at least one fight, one earth shattering (or at least Target parking lot shattering) screaming match once in our lives. We eventually were able to joke about it, and how she’d never argue with her kids over clothes since they’d always win Best Dressed.
Is it odd to also mourn grandkids that were never even here?
The childlike woman behind the counter though didn’t seem to care how tattered my clothes were. She didn’t look up from the Stone Age computer as she said, “Rooms are $69.99 a night, Ma’am.”
“Ma’am?”
“Miss?
“Ha!
No. Ma’am is fine.
A mom can’t really be considered a miss, can she?”
“Checkout is at–”
“Does it matter that she hasn’t met me yet?”
“Excuse me?”
“The girl. To still be considered a mom.” I cocked my head to the left just the way I saw a cat do once after it finally caught its mouse toy.
“I don’t–”
I placed my card on the counter. “I’ll be staying at least a few days. You know what? Charge it for a week.”
Some of Ms. Prescost’s social media pages were down – I was guessing from the sudden media attention. But it had been almost a month. I sipped on surprisingly good coffee from the motel’s vending machine as I scrolled through LinkedIn. It took longer than I thought, but there she was. Her hair was dyed a lighter shade of brown, and too heavy makeup covered her moles. A tire saleswoman at a little 24 hour pit stop. Worked the night shift – that was something she even put in her skills section. Adaptable to any time shift, any schedule. And it was all public.
I tsked. Lilian wasn’t the brightest. And she now was a mom.
She wasn’t there when I went in at 11PM. I bit my fingers until they bled in order to stop myself from asking the sleepy kid working when she’d be in. If she was going to bring the baby with her. If she was on maternity leave. Where to find her.
“I sound crazy,” I told myself, sounding even crazier, as I looked at my reflection in the motel mirror. It was permanently dirty, smudged, even after I bought glass cleaner and rubbed it until the center of my palm ached. But I could still see the eight bags under my eyes. Blackheads lining my nose. Taste the mayo I used to dip my French fries in yesterday morning.
I easily settled into a routine. Morning coffee from the parking lot machine, a donut I’d sneak from the nicer hotel down the block that served a complimentary breakfast, and then wait. Outside the lot, or across the street, or even around the sandwich shop all the other employees lingered at in between cigarettes and lunch. After four days I knew something was wrong. I was worried if I came back again one of the pimpled kids would recognize me at this point. And even if I tried to convince them that nothing was up, that I just wanted to meet the legendary baby, wanted to look at her, say hi, they’d think I was crazy. Which, come on, I wasn’t.
“The M17 isn’t coming for another twenty,” a woman to my right said. I didn’t realize I was waiting, lingering, under the bus stop sign.
“Thanks,” I shrugged, digging my hands into my sweatshirt’s pockets. God when was the last time I had worn a sweatshirt? Willa would laugh.
“I’m probably gonna just wait too.” The woman also dug her hands into her jacket’s pockets. My first thought was homeless as I took in her tattered overalls and frizzy hair. But I supposed hipster – was that the word Willa uses? – could also suffice.
“Want gum?” she asked, already reaching out, offering it up on her palm like Holy Communion.
“No, thank you.”
“Fair. I don’t know if I would take gum from a stranger either.” She smiled, and I did too.
It was the first normal encounter, conversation, I had in a while.
“Actually, I will take a piece.”
She brightened in a way that made her seem younger. Maybe she was thirty, maybe forty, maybe twenty-five. I never was good with people’s ages, but the timid smile and shaky hands made me guess she was younger than myself.
“Have you lived in these parts your whole life?” she asked.
“I’m actually from Iowa.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Your whole family?”
“Yup.”
“Mine’s from all around here.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah.”
The conversation was getting awkward. Greg would laugh, but Willa wouldn’t. She’d say that people were just trying to be friendly, and that I should just give them a chance. She’d say…she’d say….
“What’s that?” the woman asked, chewing her gum in a way that made her jaw move left like a seesaw. I didn’t know I was talking aloud. Was I? No, that would be crazy. And I’m not. This was just, Willa just –
The gum was stuck in my throat. I turned and bent down, trying to throw it up, desperate to get it out. My knees sunk down, staining my tan pants with green and red and yellow.
Willa. Calling me after her first college meal, laughing how the dining hall labeled French fries as a vegetable. Saying that if this place of higher learning deemed them healthy, then who was she to challenge them? I made her promise to call at least once a week, that I’d miss her too much. She called every day.
Willa. Taking away other’s toys at playdates. Not understanding yet the difference between “yours” and “mine.” But later picking fallen petals and giving them away to make amends, to her little friend and me as well. I kept them in my denim pocket that whole summer as a reminder that she was growing and learning.
My baby. Loving our moments, our phrase, our prayer. Her arms above her head before I’d even enter her nursey, knowing that I was coming to pick her up. That I’d always be there, morning and night, for her and her alone.
“I…can’t ask Willa what she’d think. Because even if it is her, it’s not her you know. Not her personality. Not her memories. Not her. That Willa, my Willa, is really gone.”
The woman had retreated into the enclosure of the bus stop, unsure and unwilling to help the crazy woman on the ground. I wouldn’t want to help me either.
I walked back to my motel and packed my bag. The one bra, the laptop, the unwashed clothes and unused shampoo and conditioner. And because I was angry and upset and somehow also numb, I took their prickly blanket that itched my calves and tossed it in my bag as well.
There was no big revelation. No peace. This trip was crazy, as was I for embarking on it. I had to go back, find a better therapist, go back to work. Live. Live without her. And that would have to be alright.
One last story.
A mother loses her daughter in the worst way imaginable. No, it is imaginable. It happens to young women all the time. So often, in fact, that it’s just another headline for us to skim by as we sip our creamy coffee.
She had looked for signs. Reading everything she could on the possibility that her daughter might not really be gone. But she soon realized that she had to accept that her child was, in fact, somewhere else other than this world.
After packing up her motel bags (after a trip that somehow made her feel even more alone), she let the screen motel door slam as she walked to check out. She rummaged through her pockets, her fingers sliding between loose coins and gum wrappers, when she had one of those moments people try to describe but never can. Where her head felt heavy and slow and yet everything was moving too fast in a blur of color and high-pitched sounds all at once. A cough. A shuffle of bags. She turned and there was a baby and its mother. Checking in or out she didn’t know, but there they were. Tired and hungry and looking sad. But there.
The mother groaned as the bag dropped to the ground, a bottle and rattle spilling out. Both women reached down, hands brushing, as they gathered the belongings.
“It’s been a tough day,” the mother mumbled, stuffing them back in. In her arms, the baby coughed. “Maybe I should have said it’s been a tough month.”
They both smiled, two women, two mothers, understanding one another instantly.
“Do you wanna say hi to the nice lady?” the mother asked, twisting the baby in her arms in a way that made the other woman stiffen.
She leaned forward, taking in that new baby smell that you only miss when you’ve lost one of your own. The baby’s eyes were bright and focused as they met the woman’s. They were too intelligent, too present, too familiar.
She reached forward without asking and brushed away some of the baby’s fluff and lint that was stuck to her forehead.
“Hi baby,” she cooed as the baby laughed. It’s toothless smile wide and full. They shouldn’t be able to laugh at that age yet, but it was like it knew. She knew.
“Hi baby,” the woman said again. “You’re beautiful, aren’t you?”
“You’re so good with her,” the new mother said.
“May I hold her?” she asked, her hands already reaching and gently tugging. Before the mother could protest, she was out of her arms and into another.
“Her name is –”
“Oh, I know,” she replied, holding the baby closer. Tighter. “I know who this is.”
Katie Bockino received her MFA from New York University. She is an editor and freelance writer who is obsessed with the Byzantine Empire, Catherine of Aragon, and most TV show love triangles. Currently, she teaches English at CUNY.