Don't Cry

I bounce the baby carefully on my hip, cooing at her pretty smile. She giggles. She likes being held, a lively little thing.

If I squint, I can almost see my mother in her little scrunched-up face. We have the same eyes, in spite of her expression.

I press a kiss to her forehead and she grins. She’s mine, fully mine, in a way that scares me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it made me angry. But I do know better.

Maybe I’m just tired.

Her happy mood doesn’t last forever, though, and eventually, something ruptures our tranquil little tableau. I don’t know what it is, but her smile drops and she starts to wail, primitive and painful.

I want to shove my fingers in my ears, want to make it stop, want to scream back with the same intensity until my chest is empty. I do not do what I want.

“Shh,” I clutch her tight against me and gently rock us, back and forth, “shh, love, shh.”

She’s heavy, and my arms are tired, but I sway until she falls asleep.

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The next day she is fourteen, and I greet her with a tilt of my head when she comes down for breakfast.

She doesn’t answer, abnormally preoccupied with normal teenager things, just gulps down her coffee and runs out the door with her backpack still unzipped. I frown. I think she might be too young to be drinking coffee.

It’s a good day for her, though, better than most, so I let it slide. The new high school hasn’t chewed her apart yet like I was so afraid of. She is still fully mine.

When she gets home from school she still doesn’t answer my questions, but she smiles. I smile back, a victory, and stop asking.

We make it through the rest of the day like that, grinning in near silence. It nearly drops when I pass by her locked door at night and think I hear her sniffling, but then I listen harder.

“Shh,” her whisper slips gently through the wall, “shh.”

I keep walking.

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And then she’s nine and quiet, very quiet.

I forget why she’s upset this time. Last week it was because her best friend wouldn’t play with her at recess, and before that when she was sick and missed the class field trip. Maybe her teacher yelled at her today, or something just as trivial, I can’t remember. It all mixes together.

She doesn’t cry though, and I’m grateful, even though I know I probably shouldn’t be. She just sits in silence, breathing shallowly.

I give her a quick hug and she turns away from me, squirming out of my arms to pick up her book again.

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The silence comes and goes. At sixteen she is angry again. At sixteen she starts screaming.

“You are making a scene,” I tell her, “lower your voice.”

She pays me no mind.

“I don’t care,” she bellows, her words rough with tears, “I don’t care anymore. You put me up on this pedestal, you expect me to be so perfect all the time, but I just don’t care anymore.”

For a while, I think that this is where I lost her, that when she started to cry out she wasn’t mine anymore. But that’s not right.

She’s telling the truth, but she’s wrong. She does care.

I let her scream herself hoarse, let her yell and yell and yell until she loses her voice. And then she’s quiet again.

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She’s twenty-two today, and she’s crying.

The reasons have gotten less trivial, I think. She can’t really tell. It all mixes together.

“Shh,” she digs her nails into her forearm, “shut up, dumbass, stop crying.”

I don’t touch her, just stare at the bruise blooming around her eye, the angry red lines crisscrossing her arms, and realize that I’d never lost her. She’d just been chipping away from the start.

She wails, painful and primitive. I don’t shush her this time, even if I want to. I cannot make it stop.

She cries herself to sleep, and though she is heavy and I am so tired, I lift the baby to my hip and hold her tight.

We will try again tomorrow.