Veronica Wasson

I hold my friend’s baby

I hold my friend’s baby. Sleepily she leans her head on my shoulder. Laying my cheek on the soft down I feel the heat pulse into my skin. Each day I have changed imperceptibly, like an old tree. I learn like an animal to trust. Can a starfish form a trust relationship as it walks across the ocean bed. Can I learn to trust my own voice. Each day I have changed imperceptibly but it’s not enough. I can feel the heat of this baby, her thoughts that pulse, as she looks, startled, at a window or a bird. Sleepily I rest my head against my breast, sleepily I curl around myself, sleepily I muse on what it all means. And sometimes one wishes for it. When I hold my friend’s baby and her fingers curl around a lock of my hair, as if she holds onto a stalk of truth, wheat growing from the soil, and the facts suggest themselves. She widens her eyes because there is too much to see, too much of it all, so much light, so much sound, there is the space between things etching their boundaries, and when it is too much, then sleepily she rests her head on my chest. It is often too much, I find. I mean the space that etches the boundaries between things, necessary so that things are things, distinct, in space. Like a drawing painted with an infinitely thin brush, a single hair, soft down. The hairs that line the feathers of the crow, as it tilts its head this way and that, eyes bisecting the world, a world of flashing movement. Sleepily I curl toward myself. Crows form trust relationships with other crows, exchanging caws, the news of the day, gossip. When the hawk arrives the crows rise darkly from trees to circle and harry the intruder. Sleepily I doze and imagine that I am a crow, rising darkly from branches to beat against the air, swimming upward to crest the canopy. Often in dreams I beat my wings, my feathers blot the sky, a dark thundercloud whose clap opens a fissure in the earth and echoes through caverns wet with stalactites, cold rock fingers. The baby’s hot breath mingles in the air with mine. She can only begin to fathom the depths of herself, this child, and how it will be, the days to come. Like a plumb weight, suspended from a string, a vector pointing in the direction of gravity. Meanwhile I am cracked and fissured. It is often too much. Like a crow I remember glittering things, how they trap and then throw back the sunlight, flashes of light, cold and somber. It is not like the heat of my breath, but here, in this moment, with this baby, for this moment I am still, becalmed. Time glows when the day is ending, and it is there that I can rest against myself, for a moment, stilled. I am a vector pointing in the direction of my life. Normal to the plane of my being. On other days I cold-shoulder myself. In the mirror I see my face without makeup and take a cruel pity. The water falls into the sink with a charming lilt, the babble of a river nymph domesticated and tamed, laughing with the cruel merriment of nature, sparkle of light, and my snake-like gaze, alone amongst rocks and the marble busts of men. When I hold my friend’s baby, motherhood reasserts itself, a motherhood I never earned but lay claim to. I know no other word for it, having cast off my other cloak, that of father. Did I know that I would slough off so much with my old skin, and the new skin tender and painful in the morning air. These boundaries are etched in me like ancient carvings, like marks in my skin. When I hold my friend’s baby she stares rapt at my fingers, at my manicured nails, her eyes widen, taking it all in, this bright world with tables, plastic chairs, birds, lights, the smell of bread, voices, and the din of it all, everything all alive and electric. If I could form a trust relationship with my body, then I could hold myself in this room, in this bathroom where the mirror births an image of my self, where I sit on the edge of the tub, where I shave from my legs the fine black hairs that wash into the soapy water, where the alcohol prep pad ritually cleanses the skin of my thigh, sharp medicinal smell of hospitals, where I choose a shade of eyeshadow, as a flower paints itself for the butterfly and the bee, to be seen in the ultraviolet spectrum, the night’s moon flowing like cold water. This baby holds within herself all of her joy and anger, all of her intelligence, as a puzzle box holds within itself the secret to its unlocking. This world of tables and chairs, of lights, of people talking. The warmth of her head flows into my cheek. It flows with understanding and with questions. I receive her weight softly on my chest. She flows into me but there is a separation. She squirms. Sleepily she rests. I am still, as a pond calmly opens itself to the buzz of mosquitos. I am twinned. Air kissing water, breaking its stillness. How the ripples subside and what’s left is this alive buzz and thrum of silence, and the way that it feels right, sometimes. I picture myself as a line that circles back to herself. For every moment that I catch, that I trap in a jar like a firefly, three more escape and are gone. I am a line that circles back. Sleepily I write this down, and the silence resumes from where it was interrupted, a single moment’s lingering, a sigh.