She started crying over the fact that, once again, she was the only one aware that anything was wrong.
He pulled out of her, looked down at her vagina as if expecting a gush of blood.
“Oh my god, did I hurt you?”
He looked horrified, and that made her cry more.
“It doesn’t feel right,” she said. “It hurts.”
She didn’t mean to make him feel guilty, but she obviously had.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
He lay next to her, his erection still there, waiting for attention.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said.
She was really sobbing now.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. It’s okay.”
These were all lies.
June, as if sensing that her mother needed an excuse to leave this godawful situation, started shrieking. She had never woken up without her mother right next to her.
“I have to go get her,” Gwen said.
She stood, still naked, not bothering with re-dressing herself, and fled the room. He started to follow after her, wanting to talk and comfort and do all the right things that she wanted nothing to do with.
He was standing behind her as she picked up June from the bassinet, held her against her chest.
“Mommy’s here, Mommy’s here,” she said.
Jeff’s presence felt like a burden, something else to tend to. She just wanted to be alone with June again. It was the only relationship that made any sense.
“Let’s just talk tomorrow, okay?” she said to Jeff as she bounced June in her arms.
“Okay,” he said, “if that’s what you want.”
It was clear it wasn’t what he wanted, but what was she to do?
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He kissed her on the lips and then on the nose, then kissed the top of June’s head.
“I love you girls,” he said.
“Love you,” she said back.
When he turned to leave, she stared at his naked butt, the muscles of his back. He was such a handsome man. She was just no longer a woman who cared about such a thing.
Chapter 10
Angeni Luna
A society that tells a mother she has anxiety because she doesn’t want to be away from her child is a broken society.
In the caption, Angeni wrote about how natural it was for a mother to be with her baby around the clock. She explained how humans are born premature compared to other mammals—roughly twelve months too early, according to some research. In an ideal world, gestation would be twenty-one months—nearly two years. Horse foals, for instance, come out of the womb practically galloping. Same with giraffes. The problem is our brains. Human babies cannot gestate any longer because their heads would become too big to fit through the birth canal.
