Let It Destroy You by Harriet Alida Lye

Author:Harriet Alida Lye [Lye, Harriet Alida]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

I didn’t send the letter.

* * *

—

And then, she woke up. She woke up! After three or four months it was like her brain turned on and all she wanted to do was learn what it was to be alive in this world. She became real. I mean, she had always been real, but she became real to me. Not just the shape of a baby, but my baby. She smiled. Her first smile. It came from nowhere. I didn’t have to do anything to elicit the smile, there was just some happiness within her that she wanted to express. I started to wonder if maybe there were smiles I missed, whether she grinned while I was sleeping or washing dishes, and I felt, I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, jealous. Of what? Of whatever—the air, I suppose?—that got to witness her happiness. Or maybe jealous of her, of my daughter’s mind, capable of generating her own joy. But her smiles made me smile, it was impossible not to, and I became addicted to making more of them. My baby. I could keep her alive with my body, and she could keep us happy with whatever it was that sparked through her.

Her toes! Her toes. This will sound vain, or selfish, or something, but my daughter felt more familiar to me, and this familiarity in turn allowed me to love her more, when I saw that her toes were miniature versions of my own. The same narrowness, the same-shaped nailbeds, the way the second toe is positioned at an angle to the first; the way the knuckle on the fourth is slightly closer to the top than the proportions on the rest. I could picture my mother holding my toes, feeling this same mystery, and awe, and love. Before noticing that our toes were the same I felt as if she were a foreigner in my land, in my heart. The toes created this…connection. Recognition. Oh, child of mine! This love!

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