When she got home, her baby wouldn’t come to her, would only stay in his father’s arms and anytime she neared him he screamed as though his legs were being sawed off. Which was what hers felt like. Her husband found her sobbing in the bathroom; when he saw her body, covered in marks in various shades of bruising and swelling, he knew something was seriously wrong. The pain was agonizing.
She went to the doctor the following day. It was a Saturday and she didn’t want to – all she wanted was to be with the kids – but gave in when her husband insisted and his mother offered to have the kids for the afternoon. The pain was getting worse by the hour.
The doctor was equally confused but more suspicious. She confirmed that these were bite marks, prescribed painkillers and a lotion, then pushed some pamphlets about domestic abuse into her handbag as she left the surgery, telling her to be in touch if it continued.
Three weeks later, she was unrecognizable. The marks had spread to her face; there was bruising on her cheeks and chin, and the tips of her ears looked as though they’d been nibbled. She hadn’t missed any work – she couldn’t, not after nine months’ maternity leave; she had too much to prove, too much to catch up on. But she was exhausted. She looked ravaged and drained of all colour. The doctor arranged for blood tests. All appeared normal, nothing that could cause or be related to the marks on her skin. She and her husband fumigated the house, they got rid of the carpets and laid timber flooring in case dust mites were the cause of her agitated skin. And every weekday morning she’d say goodbye to her babies, who no longer cried when she left them, which made her feel even worse and caused her to cry all the way into the city, where she’d apply a layer of extra-thick foundation so she could pass for a competent professional in the office. When socializing at the weekend, she would lather on body make-up to cover her bitten legs, and play the super-attentive wife and friend.
Of an evening she would try to keep the baby awake in the car on the way home, sometimes lowering the windows to let the fresh air in, singing loudly, blaring the radio, anything so she could have time with him awake. But no matter what she did his eyelids would flutter, unable to stay open beyond 6:30 p.m. She drove home faster, avoided conversations or phone calls leading up to 5 p.m. She charged from the building to get to her baby as fast as she could, but each time the motion of the car would cause his long lashes to flutter closed.
It wasn’t long before she found herself in the hospital, rigged up to wires and machines. Not able to be at home with the kids, or at work, the guilt was overwhelming. They would visit her but it was heartbreaking. Not being able to play with them and hold them as she wanted to hurt her soul. Work tried to accommodate her new ‘out of office’ temporary arrangement, but she couldn’t give herself to them completely. She felt like she was letting everybody down.
Her flesh had been devoured by hundreds of angry bite marks that began as nips but ended in blood-inducing tears of flesh. The physical pain was crippling, but the inability to be everything to everyone at all times was even worse. Since entering hospital her condition had deteriorated; the number of marks on her skin had been growing by the day, and that evening an angry sore had developed on her wrist, right over her pulse, as she looked on in horror.
Blood tests and scans might not have yielded any results thus far, but being alone in the hospital had given her time to think, precious hours alone that she hadn’t had time for since becoming a mother. Tied to her bed with wires and tubes, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t get out without alerting the nurses and making an event of it. She wasn’t working and as she had no other human beings to aid and comfort, it was just her, alone in a room, with her thoughts. All the pacing was done in her head and after a time even her mind got tired, stopped, sat down. Drummed its fingers. Waited.
The suffocation passed and her breathing began. With the in-out flow of her breaths, thoughts began to shift. Everything was separated, organized, put into the relevant boxes: the time this happened, the time that happened, the things she said and should have said, and experiences she’d resolved to put behind her or relive in another way. A spring cleaning of her mind, until everything was filed away neatly in her mind and the surface was clear. A clear mind in a clear room.
She looked around. What had put her here?
She felt her wrist to check her pulse and discovered it had calmed. The machine beside her, attached by wire to her forefinger, confirmed this. The caged tiger in her had stopped pacing. As she felt her pulse, with the finger that wasn’t hooked up to the pulse oximeter, her fingers brushed her most recent bite mark. She ran the tip of her finger along the jagged teeth marks on her skin, back and forth, gently, slowly, methodically, and she recalled the moment it had appeared.
She’d received a visit that afternoon from her husband and children. They had been excited to visit her, were hyper, jumping around the room, sending toy characters on adventures in, on, around the hospital equipment; Barbie wrapped in her new IV wire dress, Lego Batman in deep distress under a wheel of the bed, a teddy bear leaping on the remote control, trying to come up with a new algorithm for poo land. Her children had snuggled up beside her on the bed, stolen the jelly and custard from the tray, talked and babbled a mile a minute about their exciting and busy lives. She had listened, her heart full, loving the sound of their little voices, their developing words, their confused but practical grammar that she never wanted to fix. Her husband sat in the armchair by her bed, leaving the spotlight on her, her moment with her babies, watching her, trying to hide his concern.
And then their time was up, visiting hour had come to an end and the nurses, who had kindly turned a blind eye to the number of visitors in her room, gave a light knock on the door to warn them. She watched as they bundled up in their coats, woollen hats that squeezed their soft cheeks together, and chubby hands disappeared into mitts. Wet kisses on her cheeks and lips, little arms barely able to wrap around her body; she breathed them in and never wanted them to let go. But she had to.
She ran her fingers over her bite mark.
The familiar feeling had been building up, the feeling that let her know when a new mysterious mark had arrived on her skin. This was the first time she’d identified it, she’d thought before that it was spontaneous, sporadic, without any pattern at all, but now she realized there was a pattern.
She had kissed her husband, his turn to have her attention, and apologized again.
‘Stop apologizing,’ he’d said gently. ‘Just get better.’
She’d apologized to the children too.
‘It’s not your fault you’re sick, Mummy,’ a little voice said.
She’d watched them leave, heard their noisy chatter and the beginnings of bickering down the hall and she felt so sorry. Sorry because she was sorry. Sorry because she felt guilty.
Her fingers stopped moving over her wrist. Guilt. When she dropped her baby off at crèche, she felt guilty. When she couldn’t collect them from school, she felt guilty. When she couldn’t take a day off when they were ill, she felt guilty. She felt guilty about her cluttered house. She felt guilty when she discovered a friend had gone through the most traumatic moment of their lives without telling her and she’d been oblivious to it, she’d missed the tired eyes, the revealing lack of sparkle or words that held back the truth. She felt guilty for forgetting to call her parents, for making a mental note to do it and then allowing herself to be distracted. She felt guilty at work for not being at home, she felt guilty at home for not being at work. She felt guilty for spending too much money on a pair of shoes. She felt guilty for stealing the children’s pizza. She felt guilty for falling back on her workouts.
She had stored up so much guilt she felt as though she was guilt incarnate.
She hated that every time she was somewhere she was thinking of where she should be. She hated that she felt she had to explain herself, justify everything, she hated being judged, she hated feeling judged when she knew she wasn’t being judged. She hated living in her head.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. She knew these thoughts were irrational, because she liked her career and she was a competent mother with so much