Chapter 49
Nobody tells you about the first three months. Or rather, everyone tells you and you hear the words and agree and have no idea, until you are inside it, what the words mean.
The first three months were: love so large it was almost frightening, and a tiredness so comprehensive that Marcus briefly understood, as he never quite had before, what his mother had done. The exhaustion of a newborn is not a metaphor. It is an experience that crosses every category physical, emotional, cognitive simultaneously.
He and Nia moved through it together, with the particular efficiency of two people who respect each other's capacity and do not assign roles in advance but negotiate constantly according to who has the energy and who does not. He did mornings. She did the feeding exclusively, in those early months. He did the walking at three a.m. when Elise was unconsolable in ways that had no diagnosable cause other than the general protest of having recently arrived from a very quiet place.
He walked her around the apartment in the dark, talking to her. Not in a performing way not in the way people put on voices for babies but genuinely, in his normal voice, about whatever was in his head.
'The school has a new vice principal,' he told her, at three forty-seven one morning, pacing the length of the living room. 'Her name is Miss Osei. She's very organized. I think she and Mrs. Baptiste are going to be good together. You would have opinions about this if you were older. You'll have opinions about everything. I can already tell.'
Elise made a sound that was not agreement or disagreement but was, he felt, attention.
'Your grandmother thinks you're strong enough,' he continued. 'I agree. But here's what I know that she doesn't say out loud being strong enough doesn't mean having to be strong all the time. It means knowing when to ask for help. I'm still learning that one. Maybe we'll learn it together.'
He put her down when she slept and stood over the small bed for a few minutes, watching her breathe.
He had never understood before properly understood the entry his mother had written in her journal. The world reorganizing itself around seven pounds of new life. He understood it now. He understood it completely.
He went back to work when Elise was eight weeks old. Nia took three months and then worked part-time. His mother came three days a week this was her choice, not their request, and she made it absolutely clear that it was her choice and she would revoke it if he suggested it was anything other than something she was doing because she wanted to.
'I'm coming because I want to,' she said. 'Not because you need me.'
'Both things can be true,' he said.
She gave him the look. He dropped it.
Having his mother in the apartment three days a week was, among other things, a lesson in how she had raised him. He watched her with Elise patient, observant, completely present, talking to the baby in the direct, honest way she had always talked to him. No baby voice. Just: 'I see you. You're fine. I'm here.'
He thought: that is everything. That is the whole thing.