![]() She handed me her favorite wooden stick, the one she used to play her rainbow xylophone. All I could do was lie beside her toys, wrapped in a gray blanket, flushed and shivering. The things she put in her mouth just blew my mind. I didn’t have the strength to stand, but I didn’t want her out of my sight. When the baby woke, I crawled after her from room to room, then lay on my side on the wooden floor and watched her, sideways. I stumbled to the bathroom, past the dreaming baby, and knelt in front of the toilet until dawn. One night, I woke up at four in the morning with my mouth full of sweet saliva. Our rooms were sometimes flooded with the liquid pulsing of red emergency lights through the slatted blinds. My fingers smelled like oranges all winter. Our nights were full of instant ramen and clementines. But what did I know? Maybe there was a reason for everything. Sometimes the firemen next door ran their chainsaws for no good reason. The biggest piece of art was a large white canvas that looked like a wall, hanging on the wall. The coffee table was just a stylish slab of wood resting on cinder blocks. ![]() It seemed to be owned by artists it was not made for a child. “Just over thirteen months,” I added, wanting to make it seem like we’d stayed married longer than we actually had. If I cried for five minutes, it would cost me fifty dollars. As if to say, We aren’t surprised by your tears, but it’s not our job to manage them. “I know we’ve got them somewhere,” she told me warily, rising from her swivel chair to search. ![]() As it turns out, divorce lawyers keep tissues in their offices just like therapists, only not as ready to hand. It was only when I told my divorce lawyer, “She is thirteen months old,” that my voice finally broke. Next door, a fireman strutted toward his engine with a chainsaw in one hand and a box of Cheerios in the other. I’d brought raspberries and a travel crib, white Christmas lights to make the dim space glow. For the next month, we were renting this railroad one-bedroom beside a firehouse. Outside, it was nineteen degrees in the sun. Why put breakfast on diapers?, I might have asked, if there had been another adult in the room. We had diapers patterned with drawings of scrambled eggs and bacon. At a certain point, I’d run out of suitcases. The baby and I arrived at our sublet with garbage bags full of shampoo and teething crackers, sleeves of instant oatmeal, zippered pajamas with little dangling feet.
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