Hush by Anne Frasier

his life.
    The pain she'd felt for the last nine hours
was forgotten, replaced by a new kind of pain, the pain of a love
so bright it hurt. She could feel it in her throat, in her head,
behind her eyes.
    With amazement, she touched his tiny, red,
wrinkled hands with their miniature fingernails. And later, when he
cried and cried, she cried too. And because the love she felt was
so monumental, so huge, so empowering, she knew she was going to be
the best damn mother in the world.
    To say she was unprepared for motherhood
would have been an understatement. She'd never been around any
babies in her life, and didn't have an older, experienced woman to
help her. Those things combined to create a recipe for disaster,
because everybody knew that good intentions alone couldn't raise a
child.
    A woman needed a plan.
    A woman needed support.
    A woman needed sleep. God, how she needed
sleep.
    The nurses at the hospital taught her how to
bathe her son, being careful to keep the umbilical cord dry. They
taught her how to get him to latch onto her nipple, and how to
change his diaper. They taught her how to keep him warm, and how to
keep him cool.
    Still, unsure of herself and her new role,
she begged to stay at the hospital one more day, just one more
day.
    No.
    Thirty-five hours after her baby was born,
Claudia took a cab home. With her cherished bundle, she climbed the
stairs to her apartment.
    She never wondered what she had done. She
never regretted her decision to keep him. He was a plus, only a
plus. Because now her life had purpose, now she had a reason that
extended beyond her own aura of wants and needs to incorporate
another human being, an innocent, helpless child. Her child. Once
again a male was the center of her world—and she allowed herself to
be consumed by him.
    She would name him Adrian.
    Claudia wasn't superstitious, and yet for a
brief moment she wondered if she should name him something
biblical, just to keep God happy. But she'd had enough of men with
biblical names.
    The problems started on the second day home.
He cried all the time, but when she checked his diaper, it wasn't
wet. Her breasts, which by this time were like rocks, only
frustrated him when she tried to get him to nurse.
    In the middle of the night she slipped into a
pair of jogging pants because she still couldn't fit into her
jeans. With eyes burning from lack of sleep, she wrapped up her
baby, little Adrian, and carried him down the steps to the street
below, toward a corner grocery store that was open all night.
    At the store, she bought a baby bottle that
was shaped like an oblong letter O, two cans of baby formula, and
returned home.
    When she reached her apartment she found the
door ajar. Her negligence frightened her. In her exhaustion and
worry, she'd forgotten to close the door.
    She closed it now, locking it behind them.
She put Adrian in his bassinet, washed and sterilized the baby
bottle as quickly as possible, then poured in the rich- smelling
formula.
    When she dragged the nipple across the
infant's mouth, he didn't respond. He just kept crying his
openmouthed, toothless, red-faced wail that hurt her like a knife
blade. Then, as soon as some of the formula dribbled into his
mouth, his breath caught. And caught again.
    And then he quit crying and began tugging
madly at the nipple, making little animal noises as he sucked.
    Claudia let out her breath. The tension in
her shoulders relaxed, and she sent up a silent prayer. Thank
You.
    A few moments later, milk from her heavy
breasts came down, saturating her shirt and the infant she held in
her arms; she'd simply been too tense to nurse.
    Baby Adrian drank all four ounces of the
formula Claudia had put in the bottle. He still acted hungry but
she was afraid to give him any more, afraid he would spit it up or
get a stomachache.
    She changed his wet, milk-soaked clothes, put
a blanket over her own saturated top, and cuddled and hummed to him
until he fell asleep. Then, very carefully so she