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Show Moon -19 It's possible that I remember more of my birth than she, if only in my bones. They speak now of remembering back through the mother. I remember through her and for her. I remember through the time without language when the trees held onto their fruit like golden secrets. The Army officer, James, for whom her gratitude was wordless and mixed with a puzzling anger, was in Arkansas on maneuvers. "I am a man of my word," he'd said when her pregnancy could no longer be hidden. "I'll marry you and make the child mine." She'd asked him why would he do such a thing, and he'd said, "I want you to belong to me. If it means a child, too, because you were foolish once, that can't be helped." So he had married her, on a three-day pass. Ruth would not visit her in the hospital because she did not believe in hospitals. Esther, the only one left, was too young to be admitted to the ward. Anne must have lain there cupping her aching breasts, for the hospitals then had strict feeding schedules that bore no relationship to the heaviness of a woman's milk, and she must have tried to be glad. Anne wondered if her baby would die, perhaps turn white, then blue and then simply stop breathing. She wondered this dispassionately, unable to stir up much feeling for this odd, angry daughter who crawled at her breasts grunting and rooting like a litter runt, perversely unable to stay on the nipple, but wandering away, wailing and puking. She gave up breastfeeding after a week or so, ashamed at the relief of it. Ruth said in so many words that this was another baby who could, in all lightness, die quickly. But Anne soon realized that her daughter was strong. She would live. Once Anne saw this, she gave |