Swarm by Lauren Carter Page A

the doorway with the baby in my arms, running up the road, and I wondered if Shannon would bother to follow or if she’d be relieved.
    â€œHe went to find the doctor,” I told her. She sipped the drink without acknowledging me, like I wasn’t even there. I tried again. “We’ll find him,” I said, the sort of false reassurance I’d learned to offer to women. A lie. Shannon pursed her lips. “We have to,” I added.
    â€œWe? What problems do you have?”
    â€œThomson,” I said, too loud. The baby woke, her lips sputtering as she started to cry. Shannon pressed her fingers against her forehead. When she took her hand away I saw tiny crescent moons pushed into her pale skin.
    â€œI forgot. I forget things all the time.” She glanced at me as I jiggled the baby, trying to calm her. “But those boys. They devour everything.” The baby’s cries rose to a high-pitched panicked scream. I rocked her back and forth, unable to soothe her with a name because she didn’t have one. Shannon sighed but didn’t move from her chair even as the wrinkled face grew furious and hot.
    I don’t know what it’s like to have an infant. I was an only child, born years after my parents deliberated over whether to have kids or not. My cousin Emily, ten years older than me, happily became a mother, making jokes about how exhausted she was, sleeping when she could, tending easily to her newborn son. Shannon was different; she scared me. The baby wailed, arched her back like a cat intent on getting away. She wrinkled and squirmed. My hand felt wet. A bad smell rose from the small body.
    â€œShe does this,” Shannon said, looking over at us with narrowed eyes. “She does this to me.”
    â€œWhere are the diapers?” I asked, my stomach in a knot, but Shannon didn’t answer. Calmly, she set down her mug and stared at the window above the sink.
    â€œShannon,” I snapped, but she wouldn’t speak. Entranced by something I couldn’t see.
    They weren’t by the makeshift crib in the living room. I couldn’t find them. Outside, the boys were in the yard, Graham kicking his legs out and circling in a strange dance and Eric, the youngest, squatting on the ground, untangling a trapline. He led me upstairs to his parents’ room and took the baby from me. He laid her on the bed, undid the safety pins, and changed her by himself. Methodical, effortless, as if he had been doing it for years.
    â€œIs your stepmother okay?” I asked him in a whisper, but he didn’t answer me either.
    Downstairs, I carried the baby back into the kitchen. I expected Eric to follow, but the front door opened and closed and I heard the sound of his footsteps crossing the porch, racing away. “Eric changed her all by—” I started to say, but stopped when I saw Shannon, leaning against the counter with her shirt open. Her left breast exposed. The wide nipple chapped and bleeding. A drop of milk like a strange tear, turned pink.
    â€œI wanted you to see.” The baby screamed again, writhing in my arms, as if she sensed the proximity of her mother’s milk. What I wanted was to put her down, anywhere, in the sink even, and leave. But I felt her agony. The small cage of her ribs, wrapped around her hollow stomach. I took a breath and walked over to Shannon.
    Together we fed her. Slowly, painfully, Shannon’s fingers gripping the edge of the table as the small mouth suckled. A hot cloth to bathe the nipple.
    â€œAre you okay?” I asked over and over. Not once did she answer. Her eyes were stuck on my necklace, the heart-shaped locket that dangled over the baby’s head. Coveting, I could tell, and I slipped it under my shirt. She had a tattoo, a small black and orange snake wiggling at the top of her breast. Warped from the swelling, its belly looked distended, like it had swallowed a rat. I touched it with my finger.