5

5

F lora places the last pump piece on the spiky drying mat just as Iris wails from the nursery upstairs. She wipes her hands on her sweats and heads through the kitchen toward the staircase. Outside, there must be a break in the clouds; the sun shines brightly just beyond the front door but by some trick of the mind seems to be swallowed away before entering the house, rendering the tiny foyer dim. She grips the wooden railing with her right hand and traces her left fingertips on the wall as her feet carry her upward.

Iris's cries become more urgent, so Flora picks up the pace through the hallway, passing the small bathroom and old curio cabinet full of fragile trinkets she inherited from her mother. Two steps beyond that, and she pivots to the right, toward the nursery, whose windows face the front yard. But when she arrives, she finds that Iris is sleeping quietly in her crib.

of course

Flora approaches lightly and finds her sweet baby dozing calmly, her chest rising and falling beneath the teal fabric of the swaddle. Flora's teeth grind as she thinks about how cute Iris is

I could eat her I could literally eat her

and then she catches a whiff of something truly rank. She lifts her left arm and begrudgingly points her nose toward her armpit. Yep, it's her. This isn't the first time she has noticed her new body odor. She spent her last middle-of-the-night pump reading about it. Apparently, it's some evolutionary thing so the baby can smell its mother and find the breast to feed. Flora can't even describe the stench. Some combination of sweat, sulfur, and old cheese.

Since Iris is, in fact, sleeping and not crying, Flora makes her way farther down the hall to the master bathroom. She turns on the shower and picks at a fresh pimple on her chin while she waits for the water to get warm. Once inside, she carefully maneuvers her body so that her breasts stay clear of the pressurized water. In one instance, while reaching for the soap, her right breast grazes the stream, and she yelps in pain.

Just as she lathers some shampoo and begins to massage it into her scalp, she hears Iris wailing again. She curses herself for not bringing the monitor into the bathroom. Flora considers finishing her hair anyway, but the cries only get louder, and guilt pulls her out of the shower, only half-bathed, and hastily into a bathrobe. She pads down the hall, careful to walk on her tiptoes and not slip in her own wet wake.

And yet again, when she arrives, Iris is sleeping soundly in the crib.

Flora can feel the shampoo residue in her hair, which now seems dirtier than it did before. Her shoulders slump in defeat. The clock on Iris's sound machine tells her she has less than thirty minutes before her next pump.

That night, lying in bed, Flora wakes with an audible gasp. She feels the sensation of the suck suck sucking and is mortified to realize she has fallen asleep attached to the pump.

But no, that is just muscle memory, her body remembering, like how it sways after a day on a boat. The pump is stowed away downstairs by the couch, where it belongs.

And then a much more horrifying realization takes hold. Flora feels her baby's head pressed face down into her chest, mere inches from her own chin. Iris's impossibly tiny nose is blocked by Flora's disgusting melon breasts. It must be. She has done what they always warn new mothers about: she has fallen asleep with Iris in bed, and she has suffocated her baby.

Adrenaline lights up every lamp in the house. Terror ignites a flash sweat that soaks her shirt in an instant. She lifts her head, stray hairs stuck to her wet neck and pillow, heart echoing loudly through every limb of her body, and sees that Iris is not on her chest.

She is not in the bed at all.

She is three feet away, safely sleeping in her bassinet.

Suddenly, Flora gasps as familiar pinpricks stab her nipples from the inside: her milk is coming in. This always makes her think of those pin impression toys that save a handprint in the pins. Like her milk is marking its shape emphatically toward the exit. She has learned that this is called the "letdown."

Who knew that motherhood came with a whole new vocabulary? Her growing lexicon makes her feel increasingly lonely, as if the acquisition of each new word pulls her further from her old life.

letdown

noun [s]

1. the painful release of milk every two hours

2. life since Iris was born