“Yeah. I mean, I’m kind of taking it all in, you know?”
“I guess I just hope you don’t feel like you’re just my helper or something. I care about you. I value your presence,” Angeni said.
“Oh, well, I appreciate that,” Sitka said.
“You’re so good with Freya. Do you want to be a mother someday?”
Sitka’s eyes went wide at the question. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Really? You’re a natural.”
“Did you always know you wanted to be a mother?”
“Not always, no,” Angeni said. “I had to go through several stages of healing before I felt the pull.”
There was more of a story to tell here, but Angeni wasn’t ready to tell it to Sitka. It was a story of her own childhood. It was a story of an ache, a longing, to know what the mother-child bond was supposed to be.
“Your posts make it sound like you always knew, like it was your destiny,” Sitka said.
“It was my destiny,” Angeni said. “It just took me a while to realize it.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes while Freya’s tiny hands pressed on Angeni’s breasts.
“Can I ask you something?” Sitka said.
“Anything,” Angeni said.
“Do you ever worry about how your messages affect people?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have these followers who think you’re, like, a god. They live their lives according to what you say. Doesn’t that worry you?”
Angeni wasn’t sure what she was getting at. She loved that she was influencing people to enrich their relationships. She loved how mothers turned to her for ways to better connect with their babies.
“Why would it worry me?”
“I don’t know. Not everyone can ... or should ... do things the way you do, right?”
Angeni shrugged. “I don’t know. I believe pretty strongly in what I do. I think I have every right to share what I’ve come to see as true.”
“You do have every right,” Sitka said. “I guess I just wonder if you feel a certain responsibility to people?”
“Responsibility? I see it as my responsibility to share what I know, to share my truth. It is the responsibility of others to receive it as needed.”
Sitka nodded. She said, “I see,” but she seemed distressed somehow. A silence followed, and it was tense, awkward. Angeni felt the need to shift the energy, so she stood. Freya was still against her bare chest, not feeding, just playing with her breasts.
“I have an idea,” Angeni said. “The light is so beautiful right now. Maybe you can take some photos of Freya and me?”
Sitka had assumed the photographer duties on a couple of occasions before. She shrugged and said, “Sure.”
“Are you okay if I’m naked?” Angeni asked her.
“Sure,” Sitka said again. She had seen Angeni in various states of undress on a daily basis, after all.
Angeni handed Freya to Sitka and took off her socks and shoes. She stepped out of her leggings and pulled her shirt down over her hips, letting it fall to the ground. Though it was sunny, there was still a chill in the air, and goose bumps dotted her skin as she stood in her underwear before casting that aside too. She watched Sitka’s eyes scan her body, the pooch of her belly where Freya had resided all those months, the full bush of hair beneath that.
Angeni extended her arms to receive Freya, unsnapped the baby’s onesie and cloth diaper, and set them on the ground next to her own clothes. She held her naked baby over her head.
