the habit of being

When I arrived at the country escape of my lover, I was about six months along, and no one knew it. His wife and her friends sat outside at black metal tables on brick patios, drinking cocktails in the afternoon sun. I stayed mostly in my room, which had a window overlooking the back patio and the yards beyond it. The women knew I was up there, but they did not seem to know or care who I was, or why I was there. I knew all of their names, Sandrine and Belinda and so on, were because he told me, when he visited me upstairs. We would also talk about the baby’s name. It took a long time, but we decided on one.

When she was born, I could not think of the name we had chosen. I was too ashamed to admit that I did not know my daughter’s name, so I waited for my lover to use it. He did not. So I called her the baby, and waited.

Her name was not the only thing I didn’t know. In fact, I knew nothing at all. She had come very early, almost as soon as I arrived in the country, before I was ready. I thought I would break her. I was most afraid of her neck breaking from the weight of her head. My lover was much older than I was, and had had other children long ago. He showed me how to support her head when I held her. When I tried to copy him, I pressed too hard on the back of her neck and one of the bones of her skull, which had not yet fused, moved out of place. She had a protrusion on her forehead like a reptile, and I was horrified, thinking that I had ruined her. Her father was able to move the bone back into its correct position, to my great relief, and I did not make the mistake again.

After I could hold her confidently, all I wanted to do was to hold her, and to look at her. She was incredibly beautiful, even though she looked very much like me, and I never believed anyone who told me I was beautiful. I could also see how she resembled the photographs he had shown me of his other children. She was more obviously ours than I had expected, and I was happy with her. When she cried and woke me, I was excited to see her, no matter how little sleep I’d had. I was very happy. The only problem was that I could not remember her name, though I remembered very clearly that we had discussed it long and hard and had come to a decision. I knew that having forgotten meant something was the matter with me.

One first morning I took the baby downstairs, he came along and took her from me. There was an infant seat set out on the breakfast table, and he took her over to lay her down in it. I went to pour myself some tea, and presently all the women were up and about. Sandrine asked me whose cousin I was, and I said I didn’t know.

While I drank my tea, I forgot all about the baby. When I remembered her again, I couldn’t believe I could have ever stopped thinking about her for an instant, and I felt guilty for it. I walked back over to pick her up, but there was not an infant seat on the table at all. Why would there have been an infant seat there?

The only thing on the table was a brown cardboard box. The top of the box was open, and the baby was in the bottom. She was limp when I lifted her, and I stood there screaming and screaming. I ran around the house looking for him but he wasn’t there. I ran out on the porch and found his wife and demanded that she call him, that it was an emergency, that the baby was dead. I waited while she left him a voicemail.

All the women went inside and I waited out on the porch in one of the black chairs until he came back. Now everyone knew everything and no one came near me. At first I’d been sure it was me forgetting about her that had made it happen, but then I wasn’t so certain. He was the one who put her in the box. He was the one who didn’t want people to know. It was hours until I heard the car.

He walked up to me from behind and knelt down next my chair and said he was sorry. I asked if he was sure nothing bad had happened when he put her down, and he said he was sure, she was fine, and he gathered me up in his arms. I needed to hug someone, so I hugged him, but I did not believe it.