Avalanche by Julia Leigh

black mark on my palm, like a nascent melanoma. Maybe a blood blister. I waited to see if it would sink away but after a week it hadn’t changed. Then it started to grow bigger, almost imperceptibly, the way the body usually changes. I tried scratching if off but that didn’t work. Something else: it was hard, not as soft as a mole. I hoped it would go away. Instead it kept growing, it reached the size of a small coin and then it started to thicken, protrude. It took the shape of a spike or a blade, there in the hollow of my palm. I had to walk around with my hand curled into a fist in order to hide it. Late one night, when I couldn’t sleep, I turned on my side and began pounding the bed, the empty space where my husband used to lie. I had grown my knife, now I was compelled to use it. I was sure that was the only way to get it out of my hand. My father used to complain that my mother hit him in his sleep. Back then I’d never understood it.
    A prince came to my rescue. I walked up to his castle, knocked on the door. We’d had a dalliance some twenty-odd years earlier and since then had kept in touch. I told him of my predicament. In turn, he grilled me about why I wanted a child. He wanted to know the state of my finances. He reminded me that having a child wasn’t all fun and games, wasn’t easy. “Take your niece home for two weeks or two months, see how you like it. Your whole life will change.” He said he’d think it over—and soon came back saying yes, I deserved a chance, he’d help me. Darling man! The good news was that he already had frozen sperm in storage, at another clinic, so hopefully I wouldn’t have to wait out the quarantine period. His one condition: he wanted our arrangement to be strictly confidential—for the first three years of the child’s life. I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone he was the donor. I agreed. We drafted a legal document that extensively outlined the expectations of the Mother and the Donor, pre- and post-conception. Basically it said he would have no financial responsibility, no custody: he would not be the legal parent. I think we did discuss trying to get pregnant the good old-fashioned way—sleeping together—but under the law that would mean he would haveunwanted responsibilities. We took a very straight, strict approach. Strait is the gate . I felt hopeful and grateful when I signed on as the Mother.
    The Mother. I allowed myself some small leeway to identify as a mother, to peek through the door. Both my sisters had set an example. I am enchanted by my nieces and nephews. For many of my nephews’ early years I was living overseas and didn’t spend that much time with them. My nieces were born when I was 41 and 44. Their mother was intimately aware of my difficult circumstances. I had a choice: I could distance myself from her pregnancies in order to spare myself pain, or I could embrace them. Today I am so glad that I did not hide away, cut myself off, that I chose a path that at times was excruciating, bittersweet. There were nights when I was babysitting and would cry when checking on the sleeping child, there were days when I couldn’t stand another minute in the swarming playground. Birthday parties remain a bridge too far. In spending time with the baby girls a new kind of love was revealed to me, one that emanated directly from the chest, something uncomplicated and all-forgiving. It was different in tenor to thegreat love I’d had for my husband—which also emanated directly from the chest but which, I am not proud to say, proved more complicated, less forgiving. This new way of loving was something gentle and constant. A plain good thing.
    P ROSECUTOR: Why did you persist in wanting to be a mother?
    D EFENSE: I refer you to Exhibit A. Conversation with Elsie, age 2.
    â€”Let’s play doctors and mices! Doctors and mices!
    â€”OK, what’s that?
    â€”You say, “A