Two weeks after I gave birth, my mother sent me a text message that read, “I need $2,600 to buy new iPhones for your sister’s kids. Christmas is important for them.” I read it once, then again, then a third time, because sometimes when people hurt you often enough, your mind still gives them one last chance to be misunderstood. Maybe she meant something else.
Maybe the number was a typo. Maybe she had texted the wrong daughter. But no.
The words stayed exactly where they were, cold and ordinary and perfectly clear, glowing against the cracked screen of my phone while my newborn daughter slept against my chest, her breath warm and damp through the thin cotton of my T-shirt. I could still smell baby lotion on her hair. My body still ached from labor.
There were stitches pulling every time I shifted, milk stains on the front of my bra, hospital bracelets still lying on the kitchen counter because I had not yet found the strength to throw them away. On the table beside me sat a stack of unopened bills, a half-empty box of diapers, and a canister of formula that cost more than I thought any powder should. I had given birth alone less than fourteen days earlier, and my mother wanted me to buy iPhones for my sister’s children.
I sat in the silence of my apartment and stared at that message while Lily slept, and what I felt first was not anger. It was exhaustion so deep it felt ancient, like I had inherited it from every woman in my family who had ever been told to endure. Outside, someone’s car alarm chirped twice and stopped.
The heater kicked on with a clank and rattled the window above the sink. Lily made a tiny sound in her sleep, a soft questioning sigh, and her hand flexed open against my skin, fingers like damp petals. I looked down at her and felt the same thing I had felt from the first second I saw her: wonder so fierce it was almost terrifying.
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