Upending

It was one of those days when everything as she’d known it suddenly upended and went down the drain. It began at 5:07am, Sonja waking up to a knocking and something that sounded like chanting. It was too early. Elsa was reliable to make it until at least six. But the knocking was steady and insistent, and though the steadiness might have lured Sonja back to sleep, the insistence was worrisome: it was knocking with a purpose.

She shuffled half-naked into Elsa’s room, and there was her daughter holding Amanda, her Everything Doll, by the legs and slamming Amanda’s head against the low drawing table. Bad, bad, bad, she sang with each slam. It was bizarre. To Elsa, this doll was as good as real. Most nights at dinner, Elsa would insist Amanda sit at the table with a plate of food in front of her, and at bedtime, she’d tuck Amanda into a little blanket bed beside her own pillow. A few months ago after telling Elsa she was pregnant—though she hadn’t clarified that the baby had a different father—her daughter had started nursing Amanda, shoving the doll against her naked belly while making slurping sounds. 

“Hey,” Sonja called, and Elsa banged Amanda’s head with more vehemence.

Amanda must have done something major to deserve this, Sonja was thinking when, with a literal pop, the world ended and Amanda’s head flew off and rolled across the table.

A moment of silence, then Emma wailed and tipped over backwards. Sage scooped her up and held Emma. It was awkward with her distended basketball of a belly, but Emma found space and pressed to Sage’s bare chest. For a minute or two, Emma cried and moaned, then moaned and whimpered, and then just whimpered.

Maybe it was her half-fog of sleeplessness, but what happened next was so sudden and strange yet so definite, it made no sense. Elsa had been pressed against her chest, but then somehow the girl had Sonja’s nipple in her mouth. It must have been an accident, but then that unmistakable, breathy pleasure: a little one sucking at her breast.

“No, no, Elsa,” she said, but the girl sucked harder, a zing of nerves down Sonja’s leg. “Baby, baby,” she whispered, hearing those words, regretting them. For a long moment, she let it go, let the shock of joy flood her, a preview of all that would soon be. Then she remember with a sudden fear that nursing could induce labor. She steadied herself, then leaned back, pressing Elsa away. A soft, puckering release. A look on the girl’s face: mortified, desperate, ravenous.

“Sweetie,” Sonja began, but Elsa’s mouth dropped open and she shrieked as if broken.

At breakfast, Sonja tried to be cheerful, but Elsa said she no longer liked Pop Tarts. Which made no sense because she loved Pop Tarts, heated up a little but not too much. Instead, she demanded a cereal Sonja had never heard of, probably something Brian was giving her and which the kid was getting the name all wrong, if that even mattered—which it didn’t because they didn’t have that mispronounced, misremembered, mis-whatevered cereal. The day was crumbling from them, and Sonja decided to cave. She peeled a banana, covered it with spray-on whip cream, chocolate sauce, and a blob of strawberry jam. Though she was sure Brian wouldn’t agree, she felt it was a moment of pure parenting brilliance. It was Desperation Parenting at its best, and it automatically defied judgment. Take that, Brian, she thought, but wasn’t comforted.

They were late getting out of  the house, and as they walked to the car, Sonja had another parenting premonition: the kid would refuse the car seat. Since getting pregnant, she’d been disturbingly accurate in predicting exactly what her kid would do as if they shared one mind, and now Elsa climbed into the car, climbed over her car seat, and with a glance back at Sonja, started to maneuver herself into the front of the car.

“Please, Elsa, not today,” Sonja said.

The girl was tugging at her shirt, trying to lift it over her head when Sonja pulled her from the driver’s seat, the girl giggling. It was all fun and games until Sonja plopped Elsa back in her car seat and grabbed an arm to hook it under the strap. Elsa’s body went stiff, her chest thrust out, and she somehow wiggled and slid out of the seat and on to the floor.

Sonja reached for a leg and the girl screamed and crawled to the safety of the opposite seat well. Sonja ran to the other side of the car, flung open the door, but Elsa had seen this coming and was already scampering away to the other side. Sonja leaned in to the back seat, careful of her belly, worming her way towards the girl, blindly reaching for anything, finding a leg, a foot. Elsa screamed and tried to get away, but Sonja held on. It was ridiculous: splayed across the back seat, Sonja could do nothing more than just hold onto her kid as the pressure mounted in her belly.

“Damn it, Elsa!” she yelled then let her daughter go.

She lay there, listening to the girl whimpering, then pushed herself up onto the seat. Another Parenting Premonition: Elsa in therapy for years to get over the time her mother tried forcing her into a car seat.

“Daddy,” Elsa called out.” I want Daddy.”

“He’s not here.”

“Nooo,” Elsa screamed. “Daddy. I want Daddy.”

“He’s not coming. It’s just you and me.”

“I want him. Daddy,” she moaned. “I want him, too.”

“You don’t get both of us!”

She heard herself and something in her sank. If she had to admit it, she also wanted Brian. She’d never wanted the breakup despite knowing that they weren’t good for each other. But being alone felt worse.

And now here she was, pregnant by a guy who hadn’t mattered and was long gone, waiting out the two months before her life would somehow knit itself back together again because what other options did she have.

Elsa climbed into her car seat and was quiet, waiting, but Sonja didn’t feel any rush. Time was ticking her forward, but slowly, and for now, she had all the time in the world to breathe and fill herself with the space between breaths, an almost infinite chasm like the endlessness of wanting.