Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins (read any book .TXT) 📕

her tiny body around like a rag doll until keepers were able to tranquilize it. Helena suffered lacerations all over her body that required stitches. Her time as a viable—and sellable—caulbearer was all but over. According to the doctors, any lesser child would have died from the sustained injuries. The Bronx Zoo’s board of directors and the Melancon women did not want this accident to get out to the press because both parties wanted to maintain privacy. To settle the score, Maman negotiated a seven-figure deal (compensation for what Helena could’ve acquired from caul selling) in exchange for not pressing charges. As Helena healed from home in the bandages and gauze pads that Josephine changed on the hour every hour, Maman barely acknowledged her, often walking past and harrumphing, seldom showing any affection. Helena was now in a unique position, both familiar and unusual—a member of the family and a pariah just like her mother, who conversely became more affectionate than ever before.

On the night that Hallow arrived, this new young girl whose name began with the same letter as hers, Helena felt another layer of abandonment that inflated into anger. It was a kind of anger she had not the faintest idea how to restrain. For the days and weeks that followed, her tantrums were long and distressing. She cried until her voice gave out and her face remained red and inflamed for hours. If someone shook her, she spasmodically blinked and swiveled her head around the room as if a force had relinquished its hold over her. Then she cried some more when she saw how angry Josephine got with her petulance. On late nights, Iris and Josephine would talk about Helena; they believed that all of this was due to envy of Hallow and, eventually, Helena would grow out of it. But the anger grew to be too much fun. This was not a phase but the essence of her personality itself, swallowing every other good trait about her and strengthening the rage. And once Hallow became old enough and Helena got out of her bandages, Helena had plans for her new cousin.

4

After Hallow’s birth, Amara’s room was deafeningly quiet. Valerie cleaned her up and ushered her back into bed without saying a word. The Thomas children were shushed if they so much as walked too loudly in the second-floor hallway. She lay there on her back in the dark, where only a sliver of moonlight permeated through window blinds, and she wished that someone—anyone—would disrupt the stillness to ask her if she was okay. She was sore everywhere from the waist down. She was exhausted but could not sleep. Every time Amara twisted and turned in her bed, she had to remind herself of what just happened, because the sequence of events passed so quickly: her water breaking, Melinda coming in, the pain, the screaming, the shooting stars, the birth. She thought she would have labored for several hours at the very least, but everything was done in under two. Maybe, Amara thought, it was a mistake not to look her child in the face, because now all she was left with was a primal feeling in the gorging of her breasts, the bleeding in her thick compression underwear, and the bloated belly.

The feeling overpowered every groove in her body and strained every nerve in her head.

The mornings were the worst. If she had the strength to make it down the stairs, she would have breakfast with the family, where everyone would engage in conversation about school, housework, and the front page of the daily paper while she sat there, food in hand, without so much as being spoken to beyond a “Good morning” and a “Can you scoot over?” Then everyone would go their separate ways once they walked through the front door, and she would take her time finishing her breakfast because the trek back upstairs would be long and excruciating.

Other times, she would sit in the living room (where Landon would regularly create a makeshift bed, much to Amara’s confusion) and watch a little television, but loneliness met her there. If Amara so much as heard a sound effect of a crying baby on a sitcom or saw a baby in a commercial, she leaked milk. If she saw Valerie show any pronounced affection to her children or husband, like a lingering hug, doting eyes, or sweet compliments, she leaked milk. She leaked and leaked until she was always wet in the chest and sour in scent. The moments when she wasn’t leaking were painful, and her breasts swelled and swelled with no baby to relieve her of the burden. In the shower, she would gently press down on her breasts to squirt some milk, which would then spiral down the drain. She wondered if Hallow was overworking her small mouth trying to suckle with not a breast in sight, all the while her milk was going to waste. But the plan had gone off without a hitch. She could return to the life she had before her pregnancy and carry on as if nothing had happened.

When her belly had finally shrunk back to its original state, about a month and a half later, Amara went to her mother’s one Saturday afternoon unannounced, with all of her clothes stuffed in duffel bags. She left without telling either Landon or Valerie anything (and had no intention of talking to them for quite some time). She found the opportune moment to leave when the family decided to visit the Met. When Denise opened the door, her eyes grew wide and spit got caught in her throat, removing her ability to speak. They’d hardly spoken once Amara left; their conversations never extended further than a greeting, a “How are you?,” then a one-sentence answer before Amara had to go. Denise quickly pulled Amara into her chest and kissed all around her forehead. Amara prayed that she would not leak through the three layers