—after Connie Voisine’s “Dangerous for Girls”
It was the summer of crumbling in the pediatrician’s office
when she turned from my newborn daughter to ask me,
And how’s mom doing? My hand floating
a Dixie cup of water to my lips and the doctor squeezing
my other hand, admitting she didn’t love her son, really love her son,
until he was four months old. It was the summer of understanding
that I should be so hungry but never feeling hunger, forcing
down a milkshake and corndog from Cookout, breathing
through each bite with opaque eyes. Knowing I needed
to eat, my mother fed me pieces of waffle drowned
in maple syrup while the baby hummed and sucked. It was the summer
I was scared to read the word psychosis, scared the word could turn me
into the mother who strapped her baby to her chest and jumped tandem
off a high-rise balcony. That summer my OB lied when he said I was okay,
or rather, he said, You have no history of mental illness.
And I was not alone that summer—
Everywhere are always women who stare down at their babies
and wish them away, begging to wake up years earlier
lonely and free. Instead of waking up, that summer I slept
even when I was awake, peering through the haze at visitors
who trilled: we love the baby. I watched greeting cards pile up,
pale pink and sparkly: blessing, little angel, princess, precious.
And then the crumbling would appear again, like a mudslide
caving in a village, and I’d drop my head to the kitchen table
and cry next to a plate of Chinese takeout. My mother said, Maybe
you need more sleep after the OB said I would be fine though I couldn’t imagine
ever being the same while the world chanted love the baby,
love the baby. I searched for other mothers’ stories
and remember folding up in relief when I read about a woman
who pictured her baby floating dead in a swimming pool. Let me repeat
what you said to make sure I understand
what you are feeling, the social worker said after I choked
my dread into the phone. So, I listened and he assured a plan to get me better:
psychiatrist, Zoloft, support group, Ativan, counseling, sleep. I pressed
a damp Kleenex into a small, compact square, nervous through the tips
of my fingers. And this will save me? For some women, becoming a mother
is not natural so much as it is gradual. And so we condemn ourselves, drifting
along, flashing the bright, red smile of a façade, balancing over the void
like a tight-rope walker crossing for the first time without a net.

Bridget Bell is an instructor of English at Durham Technical Community College in North Carolina and a proofreader for Four Way Books, an independent literary press in Manhattan. She studied at Ohio University and Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has been published in The New Ohio Review, Folio, Eclectica, Zone 3, The Los Angeles Review Online, DIAGRAM and Eleven Eleven, among other literary journals.