If a Tree Falls by Jennifer Rosner

Author:Jennifer Rosner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2010-08-19T21:00:00+00:00

At home, I laid Juliet down on a satin-edged baby blanket in the center of the living room floor. The smell of her diaper cream mingled with our wool rug, rough beneath my knees. My breasts ached under the medical order not to breastfeed Juliet in the wake of the surgeries. Cabbage leaves and frozen peas, fabled to quell lactation, rustled inside my bra.

I tried to meet Juliet’s gaze, but her eyes didn’t register mine. She looked in my direction, but past me, through me, toward the sunlit window. It struck me that she had not yet met my gaze. I leaned over her, positioning my face directly in front of hers, but she still didn’t look at me. She began to arch her back. Little scales of cradle cap flecked from her scalp and floated in the air.

Juliet’s spine formed a perfect bridge, her weight balanced on the soft spot of her head. I rearranged her, bending her knees up toward her belly to force a concave posture, but as soon as I took my hands off of her, she reassumed the arch position. I backed away from her—was she arching to get distance from me?—but she stayed in her backbend, the light from the window bouncing off of her upside-down chin.

My baby couldn’t hear me. And she wasn’t looking at me, either. Whatever competence I felt as a mother the second time around—I was skilled now at newborn feeding and diapering and bathing and swaddling—was undermined by Juliet’s inexplicable arching, by her distant gaze, by the unknown degree of her hearing loss.

I went into the kitchen to make a bottle. As with Sophia during those first weeks, every sound was exaggerated for me now that I knew Juliet was probably unable to hear it: the faucet rush of water, the scooping of the formula powder, the shaking of the mixture—I could make this louder or softer depending on how vigorously I shook—then the second faucet rush of water to heat the bottle. Finally, the sound of the canister rotating on the countertop; I turned it so I didn’t have to see the mocking words “Breast milk is best ...” as I walked back to the living room.

In the living room, Juliet was still arched back. I scooped her up, but like a fish, she flipped and flailed. I nestled her into the crook of my arm and placed the bottle to her lips, but she squirmed herself to an upright sitting position with her back to me. She wanted to face out as she drank her bottle, her eyes away from me.

How were we going to relate to each other? All my worries about motherhood were back, strong as ever. With Juliet here, I’d be less available for Sophia. Juggling two, I’d be less focused than with one. And my girls’ deafness, on top of everything, was like an enduring signpost of my own impediments to hearing, to connection and closeness.

I draped Juliet over my shoulder to burp her, and sang to her from a mixed-up, past repertoire of show tunes and operatic arias.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.