Afterbirth

Daniela suggests it first, a small getaway. Your mind has been on too many things at once lately. The funeral. No, first it was the baby, then the funeral. Did he leave before that, or was it after? She knows you are remembering the way he left so hurriedly, the door did not properly latch, and you woke up to snow blowing into the hallway and a bird, maybe a mouse, peering at you, taking your first tentative steps out of the bed. Where was the baby? She knows someone, a friend of a relative, with a place. There’s water and sunshine. The doctor recommends both.

Daniela tells you that more people are coming. Talking to someone about anything other than the baby will be good for you. They will come later. She knows it might be overwhelming at first, so it's better to stagger the guests. Just a couple of friends. She didn’t tell them everything, just some small details. So you aren’t triggered, accidentally. It will be good for you. Daniela is your longest friend in adulthood. You met at your first job, post-college. You were starting out your lives together. Daniela has moved on, climbed the ladder. You are still at the bottom, and you love her because she pretends really well that it is your choice and that you are happy doing less. She doesn’t brag about her career success. She lets you pretend the beach house isn’t her own property.

When you first arrive, you stub your toe. The door to the small house is off-center, and you misstep, cursing loudly. Daniela is coming behind, carrying bags of groceries. She coos, “Oh, honey, I’m sorry I didn’t mention that. Do you want some ice? We keep a chest in the basement.”

“No, I’m fine.”

You know you cannot start to make a fuss this early. You just got here. The pain in your toe throbs and reminds you that your body is angry, suffering, and upset at you for not being able to keep the baby alive. Everything hurts, everything is dying. What is a toe?

“I think you should take this room,” Daniela says.

It faces out toward the beach, and even with the windows fully latched, you can hear the sound of waves lapping. It sounds like one of those white noise machines you had set up in the nursery to soothe a crying baby. Now, you are the crying baby.

“This room is perfect,” you say, staring blankly at the window. You start to wonder if you took off, dove through the window, could you be swallowed by the ocean before Daniela removed her shoes?

“Do you want to unpack, settle in? Tony is coming later, maybe in an hour or two. I thought we could have cocktails on the beach?”

Cocktails on the beach. Sex on the beach.

Tony.

Anthony.

Anthony is gone. All of his stuff is still in the house. Those t-shirts from high school are as left behind as your relationship. You were forced to start over, but prefer living in the past. Daniela leaves you, and you set your suitcase on the bed and sit, staring out the window. You are dissociating, thinking about the pain in your body, your heart, when a face appears in the window, a stifled scream on the face’s mouth. Blood is present on the temple. Eyes bugged out, frantic. You think the face must belong to arms and then to hands, which might at any time pound on the window. You shut your eyes. Count to 100 the way your therapist taught you. Open them. You are alone.

Tony is funny. As you sit on the beach wrapped in a towel to stave off the evening cool, Daniela tells an anecdote from her and Tony’s past, and he fills in details you are not aware of, and even you can’t help but smile faintly, the obtrusive tug at the corners of your mouth coming as a surprise. Daniela latches on.

“Tony, that’s the first smile I’ve seen since we got here. You have to tell her about that time you talked to HR, remember. At the company picnic.”

Before Tony can start, you ask if you can run back and use the bathroom quickly. Really, you are scared of that smile coming back. It feels too soon.

You are back at the beach house quickly but want to take your time, and so you walk around the perimeter, stopping at your window first. Your suitcase is still on the bed, unpacked. You move your toes in the sand, feel something sharp. You bend down to pick it up, and your eyes notice the trickles of blood dotting the sand. It has hardened the sand, crystallized. A broken shard of porcelain is wedged by the sun-dried pool-a memory of life leaking out, left out to dry.

When you wake up the next morning, it is later than usual. You slept poorly. Memories of returning to the party, cocktails. Never mention what you found. What if Daniela thinks you are spiraling again? It is better to just pretend it wasn’t real. Surely, it wasn’t real. You head down for breakfast, and Tony is washing dishes. Round and round his rag goes around the dish's perimeter. The window above the sink is open, a cool ocean breeze floating in. He notices you and motions to a plate on the table. It is filled with fruit, syrupy masses of carbohydrates dusted with powdered sugar, and thick strips of bacon, more meat than fat.

“I made breakfast,” he intones. “Daniela ate and went out for a swim.”

You sit down, but your stomach churns before you can think to start eating.

Tony glances out the window. “Don’t you just love letting the outside in?” he sighs.

Daniela has not returned from her swim. No one thinks it is odd. Danny comes. He is polite. Quiet. You don’t know how he fits in her social circle. Daniela had mentioned friends, but didn’t tell you it was two men. You wonder if she is trying to set you up. Neither Tony nor Danny wears a wedding ring. Without Daniela’s hovering presence, you do not have the energy to socialize, so you retire to your room and ask to be woken up when she returns. You dream in fits and starts: Anthony has come back, holding the baby. When you sit up to take hold of it, he unravels the bunting and stabs you repeatedly with a knife the baby-shape was concealing. Your stomach hurts. You sit up, holding the puncture wound. Pulse racing. It was a dream. When you move your hand away, it is bloody.

Tony and Danny come running at the sound of your screams. Danny takes you to the bathroom, and Tony returns holding a shard of porcelain, the outer rim of the plate your breakfast was blanketed on this morning. In your dreaming fit, you must have stabbed yourself, Tony explains. The cut is not too deep, Danny assures. Daniela has some first aid in the basement. "Where is she?" you cry, frustrated at every turn.

It is night, and you are sitting in the living room with two strangers, trying not to sound hysterical as you tell them about the woman in the window. Something is going on. You know something is going on. Tony and Danny look at each other, and their look says that they think you are the problem.

“No one is around us,” Tony assures. "I stopped for gas two hours before I hit the beach, and I didn’t see any businesses or houses for miles. Daniela bought this place for the privacy.”

It stings when he speaks the truth; you know she is hiding her wealth from you.

“There was blood outside my window,” you counter.

Tony speaks up, “I have circled the entire property, trying to figure out where Daniela ran off to. I didn’t see anything amiss.”

“Aren’t you worried?” you ask, startled at how loud your voice has become when it isn’t defending. “She hasn’t been back all day. Shouldn’t we call for help?”

This time, Tony stands up. “That’s silly,” he says calmly, walking to a phone sitting atop the small desk in the living space. He holds it up, dangling a cut phone cord in a dance mirroring the back-and-forth tic of a chiming clock. “No one is coming to help you.”

You wake up to the sounds of birds squawking. It smells like night. Daniela is lying next to you, and your heart settles. You feel stiff, and when you move, she shifts, dead weight falling into the space your body occupied.

Oh no, no no.

You cry out as you notice the dried blood covering her face, stab wounds where her cheeks used to be. Your hands are covered in blood. You run to the kitchen to wash your hands, furiously in the sink. A sharp pain in the sole of your foot as a shard of porcelain embeds itself in the soft flesh. The door is swung open, the wind blowing in from the outside. The faucet is running hot. Your hair blows, billowing around your face, directing your eyes toward the steam, making the same circuitous dance. Upward. Blood on your foot trickles downward.

You were washing dishes.

The baby was crying.

You wiped the plate, round and round.

The baby would not stop crying.

You threw the plate, and it crashed to the floor, breaking into shards at your feet.

You ran to the baby, stab, stab, stabbing.

Anthony found you.

He tried to call for help.

You stopped him.

Everyone is gone because of you.

Your eyes meet your face in the window over the sink as the glass explodes inward, shards flying toward you.

The outside is in.