Hold Still by Lynn Steger Strong Page A

doesn’t want some lesson or consolation. But when she turns to see her mom’s face, looking straight ahead and tight from jaw to temple, she stays quiet and lets her talk. “When you were just born,” her mom says. “You slept every night on my chest for months.” Her mom smiles, looking down into her shirt. “Just your skin and my skin and that tiny diaper. I thought everything good in the whole world had something to do with what it felt like to hold you like that.” Ellie’s not sure she wants to hear this. She’s not sure where to fit it in with all her other thoughts about her mom. “But then, you know, you got bigger and your dad was going a little crazy with you in the bed every night. I wasn’t really sleeping. And someone told us.” She feels hermom smile again. “It’s amazing how easily we took advice from almost anyone. It felt like the whole world must know more about how to parent than we did. But someone told us wherever you were at five to six months, wherever you were sleeping, was where you’d be your whole childhood, so I agreed to move you to the crib.” Her mom has a rounder nose and her eyes are smaller than Ellie’s. But they’re the exact same color, dark with tiny flecks of green around the edge. She shakes her head again, looks down. “The idea of being away from you, of not feeling you breathing every night, it scared me,” her mom says. Ellie doesn’t mean to, but she laughs and looks at her. Both of them smile shyly. Ellie looks back down at her boots. “I got up at night six or seven times. Sometimes I never slept. I must have, but I don’t remember any sleep. I’d just sit in your room on this little stool I brought from the kitchen and watch your chest move. You were so tiny still. Sometimes I’d place my hand on your chest just to be sure.” Her mom shakes her head. “Anyway.” She grabs a book off of her desk, then sets it down. “Your dad was worried that I wasn’t sleeping. You know, I wasn’t being productive at work , I’m sure.” She stops. Ellie watches as she turns from this thought of her dad back to her. “So, the next appointment with the doctor, he comes and tells him what I’m doing.” Her mom’s shoulders tense and she takes hold of both sides of her chair, leaning forward. She looks at her daughter. “I was so angry, you know? Like he’d betrayed me somehow. Like no one on earth could understand this need I felt to be sure every second that you stayed alive. And I’d been unsure of the doctor to begin with. I wanted a woman. I wanted only to be surrounded by women after you were born. But he was a good guy. He’d been dealing with new mothers for many, many years. I remember he touched me. It was somehow exactly as he should. He held my arm in this extremely paternal way. I was soyoung then.” Her mom’s shoulders curve so that her chin comes toward her chest, but she raises her eyes, still looking at her. “I was twenty-eight. Which must have felt old then. But with him holding my arm and me close to tears with fear, he said, very firmly, but very simply, ‘They want to live.’”
    Ellie’s mom stands up and walks toward her. Ellie holds tight to each of her elbows, her arms still crossed over her chest. Her mom stands close to her and grabs hold of her arm.
    â€œI want to trust you, Ellie,” she says. She smells like this room, dark and shut in. “I want to not feel like an idiot for trusting you.”
    Ellie leans closer to her mother. “I . . .” She feels like she might vomit. “I want that too,” she says.

Winter 2013
    M aya gets to class early. She sits on the desk in the small old whitewashed room with the radiator clanking beside her, the barely used blackboard hanging anachronistically behind. She’s grateful for its sameness, how certainly it