All the Ways We Lied by Aida Zilelian

Author:Aida Zilelian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Part 2

Chapter 14

KOHAR BLINKED ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES AND OPENED HER eyes to an early dawn. From the open window in her bedroom came the chitter of birds, their cries sharp and distant. She lay awake, listening in amusement as if she could understand their banter perfectly. She knew she would smell the lilac trees now, with their perfumed flowers, if she were to sit in the back yard. The forsythia bushes were bursting with buds the evening before, and she wondered if by today they would peep open. It all meant that spring had come.

She gently slid out of bed and crept to the bathroom. Her hope was to use the bathroom without the baby hearing and make coffee before Jonathan woke. She longed for several quiet minutes in a house that for now seemed to be breathing with sleep. As she crept down the corridor, she remembered to walk narrowly in the center to avoid creaking the floorboards.

What she needed, she knew, was to drink coffee in the growing light of the morning and do nothing but look out the window. She stood over the sink, forcing herself not to look at the sink full of baby bottles and oddly shaped attachments for the breast pump that should have been scrubbed and steamed the night before. Under the bright lights of the kitchen countertop, Kohar would not have to look at the hamper of dirty baby clothes that sat in a corner of the living room, the bags of maternity clothes that she had meant to donate—all mercifully obscured in the darkness of an early morning. These days, her sanity seemed to rest on the neatness of the house and a general orderliness that had lost its rhythm entirely since she had had the baby.

Her friends from work teased her about the timing of the pregnancy, as if she and Jonathan had planned for a late spring due date, the time of year when one ideally used hoarded sick days to bridge the gap until summer so there were no paycheck interruptions. Jonathan had encouraged Kohar to take an extended maternity leave. At first, she was hesitant to notify her principal and tell her that she wouldn’t be returning in the fall; most teachers in her building were eager to find a caretaker or drop off their newborn at a daycare and return to work. One of her colleagues who had finally gotten pregnant after several IVF trials was also of the mindset that it served her best to go back to work as soon as the six-week maternity leave expired. But none of this deterred Kohar from finally sending her administration an email, less concerned about how she would be perceived by her colleagues and more worried that she would be given a difficult schedule whenever it was that she decided to go back to work.

But it was of no matter to her now. She leaned on the marble counter, feeling the cold hard surface numb her elbows unpleasantly.

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