14

14

F lora regains her voice. "You… you came."

"You wrote to me," Jodi says, one hand on the suitcase. "You don't remember?"

"No, I do remember, of course—"

"You said you wished I was here."

Flora's mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. "I did, yes. I do. "

"You said you needed me. And so here I am."

Zephie snorts. She mutters under her breath, "First time for everything."

But Flora ignores the girl's remark. Instead, she stares at her mother. Her mother, here, on her doorstep. Her mother, here, after four years of no contact. Her mother, here, responding to Flora's desperate plea without hesitation. Flora doesn't know if her body can contain the feelings beginning to bubble and spring within her.

"Can I come in?" Jodi asks. "It's cold."

Flora shows Jodi to the kitchen and is suddenly hyperaware of the surrounding mess. The table and countertops are littered with dishes, half-eaten snacks, and spare pump parts. A giant bag of clean laundry sits atop a chair waiting to be folded. Flora steps on something sticky near the refrigerator.

"Do you want some coffee?" she asks her mother.

Jodi casually takes in the space and instead points out, "You're leaving a trail. Should we be concerned that your arm is leaking?"

what a funny way to think about bleeding

"Oh," Flora says, looking at the gash in her forearm, open and exposed. She has indeed left a line of blood droplets in her wake.

"Where's Iris?" Jodi asks, and just hearing her daughter's name on her mother's lips activates an electric jolt in Flora's bones.

Zephie, too, perks up at the question.

"She's sleeping," Flora says.

Jodi nods. "Sit down," she instructs, and Flora doesn't hesitate. When she takes the weight off her feet and settles into the hardback chair, every part of her body aches. "You should put Iris on that breast," Jodi says, pointing to Flora's inflamed cantaloupe chest. "Or you could get mastitis."

"She's not—we're not…" Flora's cheeks flush first with shame and then with frustration at that shame. "I'm pumping."

"You're not breastfeeding?" Jodi asks, dubious.

"Well, I pump milk from my breasts and feed it to my baby, so, yes, I am breastfeeding."

Jodi frowns. Flora's breath gets shallow as she falls into this familiar dynamic with her mother. Maybe Zephie was right. Maybe this reunion is doomed to fail.

But Flora steps out of her body to assess herself: no shirt, no pants, bleeding arm, purple thumb, greasy hair, red eyes. Perhaps Jodi should be doubting Flora's capabilities as a mother.

Jodi searches the kitchen, opening cabinets and gathering first aid tools. She sits beside Flora and cleans her arm wound, which is deep but narrow. Flora watches her mother work, mesmerized by the new wrinkles around her nose and the additional age spots that have sprouted on her forehead near the hairline. Her cheeks are redder and more raw. Her eyebrows are thinner and lighter, disappearing halfway unless looked at from just the right angle. Her right eye twitches again and unsettles Flora.

As if reading her mind, Jodi points to it and says, "I don't know what that's about. Started a couple years ago. Just another old-age thing, I guess."

Flora has many questions, but she is too spellbound by her mother's touch to disturb the moment. Her mom is taking care of her. Even Zephie doesn't have a quippy retort. Flora closes her eyes so that she doesn't cry.

When her arm is bandaged and a clean set of clothes has been retrieved from the laundry bag, Flora leads Jodi to the bassinet in the living room. Iris is awake now, and one of her arms has broken free of the swaddle. Flora gently unwraps her and ceremoniously hands her to Jodi.

As she does, Flora's breath catches in her chest, so that she has to take short, quick inhales. She thought she'd never see this. And now that she is, a peach pit forms in her throat. She stares at her mother and Iris, both of whom, she is realizing now, share many traits: the round eyes, the large forehead, the small folds at the tops of the ears. Jodi smiles at the baby and then at Flora. For this moment, none of the baggage between them exists. The only thing that's real is this miracle Jodi is holding, this tiny human who is all that matters in life.

And this time, Flora lets herself cry.

Sometime later, after putting Iris to bed, Flora stands at the sink of the bathroom with her hand pump. The electric pump doesn't have suction strong enough to budge a clog this stubborn, and this way she can pop in the hot shower if she needs the heat for reinforcement. She works the clog with the fingers of her left hand, minus the thumb, which turns a darker purple with every passing hour. Her right hand cramps with each aggressive squeeze of the device. Every so often she pauses to shake out her sore wrist.

Her breast is bright red and hard. The pain is unreal as she pushes directly into the pressure point, but it also feels satisfying to strongly knead it with her knuckles. She even uses the butt end of her electric toothbrush to apply vibration and agitate the mass. At least forty-five minutes pass before she finally feels something start to loosen. And after many more squeezes, her nipple stretching unforgivingly far into the flange, the clog bursts open.

Relief crashes over her as the dam breaks. A stream of milk shoots like a hose, and when she has pumped nearly double what she normally does, she sees the bloody clog floating in the bottle of pink liquid.

strawberry milk