Tiana Stowers

The days drag on but I’ve lost count of them, unbeknownst to me the time of day it is or what month we are in or even what we are having for dinner tonight.

My baby sits on the floor in front of the TV which plays something colourful and cheery and with slow drawn-out sentences currently incomprehensible to me. The light reflects her beautiful face and bounces off the smoothness of her cheeks. I think, not for the first time, wow. So innocent she looks. My body leans right and I find myself laying sideways on the living room couch, arms tight around my torso and fingers indented deeply into the shallow crevices of stretch-marked skin. So innocent but so cruel.

My eyes narrow at her little fat form. She mindlessly bangs her palms into the carpet underneath her and each thud, though so quiet and indiscernible, echo and reverberate in my head. It’s a piercing sound, an irritating sound, and with the way she refuses to stop, I think she must know it hurts but simply does not care. She does not care. I know she doesn’t, because she also does not care about the stains leftover from where she hurls her food, or about the rancid smell of her nappy anytime she pisses or shits, or about the quality of her mother’s sleep when she wails endlessly in the middle of the night; she does not care about the uncomfortable and painful weight of my breasts, heavy with her food and her nutrients, or about the fragility and weakness of my bladder in the wake of her birth; does she even care about the ways in which my body stretched and deformed itself to make room for her? How it has never been the same since? How I have never been the same since?

The day I birthed her I lost something so vital. I don’t know what she took with her but the emptiness is inescapable; there is a deep wrongness about myself, within my existence, beyond my understanding. I fear I am no longer human, that I am missing the components that make me so.

My psychologist Lisa says it is normal. That many new mothers experience difficulty attributed to, what she refers to as, ‘the adjustment period’.

‘You’re not alone. It’s very common in new mothers. After all, it’s an adjustment that’s life-altering in nature. You have every right to feel this way,’ said Lisa with empathy in her voice and kindness in her eyes. Our session four days ago comes back to me, an afterimage, like my mind is conjuring up a guardian angel to save me from this situation; from this child I birthed that refuses to love me. ‘Do you have these thoughts often, Anna?’

I looked up from where the skin of my thumb had become dead and loose from the cold winter days. Meeting the eyes of Lisa was jarring after avoiding her gaze for so long. I retreat into my own world during our sessions, because in spite of all my past therapy—past drug addictions, severe and so malnourishing it transpired and overlapped with the development of anorexia, so intertwined they were; when becoming clean, it resulted itself tenfold and spiralled into binging and an uncontrollable appetite—I simply could not look into the face of the woman who knew all of these things about me, who carries each secret of mine within everything she does (does she think of me when preparing her own dinner, thankful she is even-keeled and thin and stable in ways unfamiliar to me?).

I seek constantly and reflexively for something to fill me, to fill the gaping hole inside that I cannot remember living without. A shy and unpromising child that became a depressed and angry teenager who followed whatever high presented itself, now a sad adult with a meagre income from a telemarketing job. I am too old to be experiencing woes I supposedly should have outgrown years prior.

That is why I became a mother.

This will be good for us, promised my partner Tom. Our relationship reached 8 years this month, mirroring the age of our baby daughter: 8 months old, healthy, happy. I turned 34 and suddenly it was as if I had run out of time, my life previously rendered meaningless, because I was 34 without a child and without the title of Mother. There was a clock that ticked on and on, invisible to me but in which the effects of could be seen in between the lines of my forehead, the thickness of my hips, the dulling complexion of my skin. My mother constantly berated me about it; I want a grandchild, Anna. Your body’s been through worse anyways. You’ve wasted enough time.

I was losing the privileges of youth, so it was time I passed them on.

Lisa uncrossed her legs and recrossed them, shuffling her notepad in the process. She set her eyes upon me and searched. I am hollow; I had nothing for her to find. ‘The thoughts that your baby hates you or is out to get you. Do you have them often?’

The image of my baby girl appeared; big brown eyes, so full and lively; soft round cheeks plump with youth; a wide toothless smile as she babbles nonsensically, cries of Dada! Dada! Dada! but never once Mama; never once acknowledging me.

‘Lately, I guess,’ I said. ‘I mean, I feel like they’ve definitely increased lately, but, like, I know it’s irrational.’

Lisa blinked, and her head tilted slightly. I continued.

‘Tom says it all the time. Y’know, that she’s only eight months old and that she’s still learning and developing and to give her time.’ I wiggled in place, the cushions of the couch suddenly uncomfortable and itchy. ‘But it’s hard, when it’s Dada this and Dada that, and she only wants Dada to hold her and she only wants Dada to console her or to feed her, as if her food isn’t coming from my own fucking body.’

I exhaled harshly and in the wake of my rambling I grew self-conscious and quiet. I wondered then, as I do now, lying here, formless, aimless, my thoughts interrupting each other, clamouring for attention, if Lisa would truly understand how I felt; if she, in hearing the extent of my thoughts, the ones I have yet to voice or bring into existence, would nod sincerely, draw me into a warm embrace, stroke my hair. I know, Anna. I understand.

She folded her notepad in half and rested her arms on top. ‘We’re out of time for today Anna but I would say that was good progress.’ She stood from her armchair and walked over to her desk, opening her schedule. ‘Did you want to rebook now?’

As if sensing my inattention, the baby suddenly turns her head, the rolls of her neck swathing her little face like a thick scarf. Her eyes land on my useless depleted form. The babbling stops and she is quiet as her gaze penetrates me; I feel raw and exposed, as if I should turn my back to her and protect this failing empty husk she must call Mother. Except, she never has. Not once.

I look at her, her relentless gaze meeting mine, and tears well up in my eyes. They begin a slow descent down the curve of my nose and onto the pores of my cheek, before dripping into a dark stain on the fabric of the couch. A small hiccup escapes my throat. ‘Why won’t you accept me?’ I cry desperately. ‘Why?’

She stares at me, lost. Or maybe she’s not lost at all. Her gaze is half-hearted and uncaring, smug and intelligent; she knows of all the ways she destroys me and all the ways she deprives me. Of the hole she has left behind within me.

Her mouth moves but I hear no words; too quiet are they amidst the noise of the TV.

I dart upright and lean forward manically, trying to hear more. Again, there she goes, speaking; her mouth forms the shapes of words that I cannot hear or understand. She sits there, her eyes assessing me and her mouth airing the critiques, I’m sure of it. What is she saying?

I crawl hurriedly on all fours to the TV and switch it off at the power point. The resulting silence is abrupt. I sit in front of her on the floor; like a disciple looking to their teacher, I kneel and search her face for a sign. A message. A meaning. An answer.

Tell me, I think. Tell me what’s wrong with me. Tell me what’s missing.

‘What are you whispering?’ I ask unsteadily. My hands are trembling and wet where they grip the fabric of my pants because I have had to repeatedly wipe away the tears and snot dripping from my face.

She is making no sense, and yet somehow her intelligence and cunningness leaves me depleted and crumpled like a 5-dollar bill, whose existence peaks when used to snort a line of coke from a dirty table. My purpose has always been destructive, unstable, counterintuitive to my role as mother, and my daughter who is eight months old knows this. Somehow, she has figured it out before myself and my partner and before my mother, who begged and pleaded for me to have this baby in the first place.

‘How do you know me so well?’ I ask her, but her head only tilts to the left sympathetically. Her little hand, soft in ways my skin will never again be, darts out clumsily and lands on my left breast. Over my heart.

‘My heart?’ I ask urgently, and her knowing gaze answers me. A hiccup escapes my throat, and I wail in realisation. ‘Yes, that’s right! You’re my heart,’ I sob. I keel over and my forehead hits the carpeted floor. I am in the form of prayer, but what I am praying for I do not know. All I know is that this baby is my savour; she is the solution to all my problems.

My beautiful baby. My heart. This is true, I know it to be. The day of her birth, when I was screaming and spasming in a deep indescribable pain, so deep I felt as if my body was producing an earthquake and the world had to cope in the wake of its ruin—fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, I was going to kill them all—I gave birth to my heart. That day, I was emptied in so many ways. So many ways.

I cry now because I realise, I cannot ever be the same. I am a soulless, heartless woman, and all that is good in me is embodied and stored in the soft warmth of this baby’s body. She has taken from me endlessly, even when detached. She seeks my breast because she knows that’s where she once was. Nestled between my lungs, which now heave relentlessly, because they have finally realised that I am missing the vital organ that pumps my blood, that sustains my livelihood, that gives me autonomy and agency and my freewill. Oh, how I want it all back so desperately I can’t breathe.

I hear a curious babble and lift my head up to see her looking at me, searching. I’m not sure for what; for the empty hole behind my sternum? ‘What do you want?’ I ask.

She continues to stare, her brown eyes so big and wide I fear every thought I’ve ever had is behind them. Her little fist once again stumbles blindly ahead of her, this time landing on my cheek. She smiles a little. ‘Mama!’ and chortles, the way a baby does when their little throats and mouths attempt to expel the relentless energy inside of them.

I whimper and break out into a wide trembling smile. I laugh in surprise, because she has chosen now to acknowledge me; to acknowledge this undeniable part of herself. ‘Mama. Yes. Yes! That’s me, I’m your Mama!’ I laugh hysterically. ‘Me and you, we’re Mama! We’re Mama!’

I rise onto my knees and take her with me, holding her up and cradling her between my arms which are loose and flabby. Her body melds into mine, into the overspill of skin on my stomach from where my body mourns her, into the leaden weight of my breasts, into all the gaps and malformations in which exist only because of her. I hold her close to the place where she once was and rock side to side. Trancelike, I rock. It’s as if the hysteria from all my revelations has made way for an eternity of peace, a deep and once unfathomable solitude encompassing me. I hug her and am hugged back similarly because I am embraced by the fulness of becoming human again.

A deep slow sigh escapes my mouth, like meditation. ‘Ahh, my baby. My beautiful heart. You’ve come back to me.’

She wiggles in my tight embrace. A noise and twitch of discomfort. I bounce her weight up and down once to appease her. ‘Shh, shh, shh. I know, I know. You miss your home.’ Taking the weight off my chest, I hold her out and in front of me, gazing upon her and all of my past and all of my future. ‘Wow…’ I am shaken by what I see. ‘You are so beautiful.’

I open my mouth and sink down into her cheek. It feels like breaking the skin of a nectarine or plum. Once the initial layers of skin have been breached, a briny hot rush of liquid fills my mouth. It is so sudden I nearly reel back in surprise, but the taste feels familiar; biting my tongue when eating in urgency, or like licking the dry cracked skin of my lips in winter so that a sliver of warmth escapes amongst the cold. It is pure and familiar because it is my own blood.

I pull away, leaving a shallow mark overflowing with blood. I chew slowly as if savouring a rare cut of meat but in reality, I am rushing with emotion. I can feel all of the missing parts of me in between my teeth, coating my mouth thickly.

A screeching wail splits my ears harshly and so suddenly that I flinch and jerk my head left. The baby is crying, screaming hysterically, as if she’s experiencing the pain and misfortunes of childbirth. I smile and laugh again, with blood staining my teeth and smothering my mouth. ‘I know baby, I know! This is how it feels to be born!’ I wipe the wisps of her hair back from her contorted face and bounce her encouragingly. ‘You’re giving birth to me! Yes, you are!’ I kiss her wailing mouth and leave a delightful whisper of blood behind. ‘Shh, it’ll be over soon. Don’t worry my baby. You’ll be with Mama again.’

I open wide and turn her once again, biting back into the gaping oozing wound. There is something stretchy and chewy in this bite, and I become emboldened by the fatty richness of meat I pull off that I lick up the blood dripping from her jaw and around the wound itself, desperate and hungry. It is tangy and raw tasting, the flavour nothing like I’ve ever experienced; it is addictive, better than the oxycodone, than the coke and the ketamine. It is as good as a binge on food or on drugs, but absent is the guilt, the shame, the dread and the numbness; an aftermath of a sinking and all-devouring self-pity that knows no restraints or limits, endless and heavy in feeling.

I know this ingestion won’t hurt me. I know as the hole inside of me is slowly mended that this is what it means to be a mother, to be a woman.

I bite and chew, and as I do so, the wails become quieter and quieter, the breaths from her little chest less and less frequent. The gape of her mouth is indiscernible; one of many. Her body is still and unmoving, which makes my consumption of her easier. I take big chunks from her arms and descend onto her stomach like her body is a ripe and juicy saccharine apple; I bite off her fingers and swallow each one as if they are Zoloft; so easy do they go down and so effective too. I have never felt happier.

Since that day eight months ago when I expelled her from my body, I have had to live a life of cruelty and depravity from my own organs, my own blood, my own life. I birthed an extension of me, but at what cost? Her life could only exist through the negligence of my own.

Everyone loves and accepts her in the ways they have never loved or accepted me. Burdened she was with an unstable mother such as I, and yet everyone praised her as my cure. A baby will be good for you, they said. All of your focus and energy will be taken up by her; the energy you once used to overconsume drugs and food, as if there were no other aspects of myself that existed or mattered, as if I was only this or that: an addict or fat.

You will never feel love like this, joy like this. All that you sacrifice will be worth it.

I exhale harshly through my nose because my mouth is full, and that is when I feel it. An undulating rhythm ricochets from my chest. I rise in shock and drop the body in my hands, the mass of blood and raw meat hitting the floor with a splat. Shaking, I feel around slowly, traversing the subtle planes of my sternum and the taut, stretched skin of my breasts, weighed down by gravity, age, and now useless milk. A bloody residue follows each desperate caress.

A beat. There it is again. I press my palm hard into the place where it echoes and wait.

‘Oh my god!’ I cry out, wailing and keeling over. ‘I can feel it!’

Tears and snot stream down my dirty face and off my chin, and with it comes blood; it drips off me, staining the white carpet and the fabric of my pants.

‘Ahh!’ I scream, though it is more of an exhale; an expulsion. I scream and scream into the stillness of the air and the beats of my heart, once missing but now consistent and steady, follow. They follow without stopping.

My heart. Mine, and wholly mine. It is with the consistent rhythm of my heartbeat that I sink down, through the carpet, and rest.

The desperate hungry energy that sustained me just moments ago drains suddenly. It is like I have been wrapped up into a warm heated blanket and tucked snuggly into the safety of a mother’s arms. I wrap my arms around my shoulders and rock gently, exhaling little sighs and tuffs, rubbing my chin against the rolls of my neck; like a cat licking its wounds, or a baby soothing itself in the absence of its parents.

I fall slowly as sleep beckons me. A sleep that only comes after a depravity of restful nights, awakened every half hour to cries and wails and vicious smells.

There is only the acetic smell of all things bloody and human. In the midst of it all, I am whole again. With a heart, and a body, and a mind free from the pain that once haunted me. I am flesh and blood, alive and impassioned, the dormant parts of me active in ways they have not been in a long time. I thought it would never be possible.

A woman I am again, simply that and nothing more. How free it feels.

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Tiana Stowers is a 23-year-old student, writer, and lover of the psychological horror genre and feminist literature. Based in Melbourne, Tiana is in her third year of a Bachelor of Communications at Deakin University and continues to pursue her love and passion for writing outside of and within her degree. She enjoys reading and expanding her book collection and finds great interest in sociology and exploring the human experience.

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