Yellow

            Skin-to-skin. I hear those words before my daughter’s cries. Skin-to-skin, like a panic. A nurse in blue scrubs opens my gown, lying Palmer on my chest. She is still an egg, cold and dying without her incubator. I hold her, warming her limbs in mine. My body wills the pink into her cheeks.

            “They need their mothers first,” the nurse says. I feel Ellis watching. It isn’t like the movies: Father snips the umbilical cord, and the baby passes to them. “It’s instinct. See how she’s calming?”

            “Yes,” Ellis says. He doesn’t move until I look up at him. Like a welcome. “She’s got mean-marks,” he says, rubbing the curls in her hair. A superstition passed down in his family. If an infant is born with curls, they are predestined to be mean. 

            “She’s fine,” I say, pushing my fingers through her hair. I am glad Ellis’s mother is not in the room to hear me. Miranda lives her life avoiding the cracks in sidewalks and has passed her anxieties on to her son. I will not teach my daughter to fear the mundane. Palmer will not live in signs.

            “And,” I continue, watching Palmer’s hair settle into winding ram horns, “if she’s mean, whomever she’s mean to deserves it.”     

*

            In the recovery room, I try to breastfeed. I hold my nipple to Palmer, but she does not take it. Or, when she does, she can’t keep it.

            “Help,” I say to Ellis, and he comes over to me from the recliner in the corner of the room and takes my breast in his hand, adjusting it until Palmer latches.

            “You try,” he says, placing my hand where his had been, but when he lets go, so does she.

            “I can’t do it,” I tell him. I want to tear off my breast and hold it upright like a bottle. Let the milk flow easily.

            “She’s just learning,” Ellis says, cradling me again in his hands. “Here. Use both hands to hold her.”

*

            The breastfeeding specialist comes to show me what I’m doing wrong. She teaches me how to hold Palmer in different positions. The position that works best is like a football. I don’t like it. It feels wrong to hold my daughter like I am playing a sport.

            “You’re doing good, Mama,” the specialist says. She tells me that the first few days for breastfeeding are the most important. That my milk is full of colostrum that will help protect her from sickness. I tell her that I got the COVID shot while I was still pregnant.

            “Good,” she says, watching me from the foot of the hospital bed. “That’s good.” 

*

            On the day of discharge, my doctor comes to my room.

            “You might feel a little crazy,” she says. The way she says this is serious, different than the conversations we have had before, high with energy and planning.

            “It’s just your body changing,” she continues. “Your hormones leveling out.”

            I wish that this was a conversation we had had earlier.

*

            Palmer stays by the window. Ellis takes our bedroom curtains down and pushes the blinds up.  I imagine yellow growing in from behind Palmer’s eyes. Jaundice. Our blood, Ellis’s and mine, leaves her sick.

            “The pediatrician said we need to make sure she gets enough sun,” Ellis says, folding the curtains and lying them on the bed.

            “Like a plant.”

            “Like a plant,” he repeats. I picture my pregnant belly, watching Palmer roll beneath it. Her blood cells had been at war, and I hadn’t known. The sunlight is now doing what I could not, breaking down the bilirubin in my daughter’s blood.

            “I don’t think we should have another,” I say. 

            Ellis moves to the window, watching Palmer. He rubs his hands against her head, stirring her curls like when she was born, and tells her, “I think you get these from your mother.”

*

            Ellis holds Palmer on our bed as I file her nails. The clippers are too big for her tiny fingers. And so, we fight her tantrum, catching her hands with each swing. Her whole body turns red as we go, counting down one nail at a time.

            “She’s like a heater,” Ellis says, rubbing his hands against Palmer’s forehead. “Check her temperature.”

            I take the thermometer and place it against her. “Ninety-seven,” I say, showing him the numbers as proof. The nurse at the hospital said they can’t regulate their body heat. I remember a nurse walking into our hospital room, checking Palmer’s vitals. She had dark hair. The detail stuck to me because she took off Palmer’s pink hat, telling me Palmer was too hot.

            “We’ve got to be careful,” Ellis says, checking her fingers for any signs of injury.

            “She’s warm because she’s crying.” 

            “Then let’s put her mittens on,” he says. I want to tell him that that will make it worse, that she hates her hands restricted, but I put the clippers in my pocket and take the mittens from our dresser. “I’ll do it,” Ellis says, putting them on Palmer’s hands. They’re gray and make her look like a seal. She begins to cry again.

            “So you don’t scratch yourself,” I tell her, rubbing her warm head.

*

            Miranda comes to visit. Constant phone calls and guilt-trips lead Ellis and I to cave in. We set one boundary: No one can hold Palmer until she’s further vaccinated. It’s a precaution for the pandemic. Together, we sit in the living room.

            “Are you using formula?” Miranda asks me. A can of formula sits beside the kitchen sink in plain view. 

            “We have,” Ellis answers. I can tell by the way he says this, he knows her intent. It is a subtle attack because Palmer lies asleep in my lap. She is jealous.

            “There’s a shortage,” Miranda says to me again. “You should try breastfeeding more.”

            “I am,” I say not looking at her. It’s true. There is a shortage. Scalpers have been buying and selling baby formula, making it nearly impossible to find. Ellis had to drive out of town to find the can we had, a different brand than Palmer’s pediatrician recommended. But my body isn’t producing milk like it should, and I know that as we feed her more and more formula, I will make even less.

            “We’re alternating,” Ellis says in defense of me again. 

            “Is she comfortable?” she asks, watching my sleeping daughter. “I can buy her bumpers for the bassinet.”

            “No,” I say. “SIDS.” The acronym makes it hard for me to breathe. I don’t mention the hours of research I have done on ways to ensure safe sleeping for infants. That bumpers cause suffocation. The warnings scroll through my eyes. There is never a guarantee.

*

            Stretch marks work their way across my body. They’re the color of bruises. I rub lotion against them and hope they’ll lighten. It makes my skin smell like coconut. Inside of me, my organs migrate back to place. My internal voice repeats what I’ve been told since my pee made double lines: Your body will never be the same. Sitting on the toilet, I think of the stitches holding together my vagina. When they dissolve, I worry that I will tear again. I pat myself dry with toilet paper, and then I spray Dermoplast. 

*

            Miranda calls Ellis to tell him that she has COVID. I listen to their conversation. She tells him that she hadn’t gotten the vaccination. When he hangs up, we get in the car and drive to the immediate care. The doctor sticks a long swab into our nasal cavity. He asks us to hold Palmer still for her test. I sit in the back seat with Ellis as he holds her. She screams as they insert the swab into her nose, and I want to rip her from Ellis’s arms and yell at the doctor to stop.   

            We wait in the parking lot for an hour for the test to come back. The results are negative.

            “She can’t come back to the house,” I say to Ellis as we drive home. He nods, knowing that I’m talking about his mother. I turn my body around, looking at Palmer’s reflection bouncing off her infant mirror attached to the backseat. She looks so small, so fragile, and I wish that I had stayed sitting beside her.

*

            The television is a strobe light, blinking in and out of different scenes. Sleep deprivation is a level of hell. I hold Palmer to me as she eats, watching the characters on the screen lose their faces. They look as though God had rubbed a dirty thumb against them.

            “Ellis,” I say, squinting my eyes to catch each identity on-screen. “Ellis,” louder this time. He doesn’t answer. The bedroom door is closed, and his shift with Palmer just ended. I make us hold her through the night. Through her naps. 

            “Palmer,” I say, feeling her face with my free hand. Eyes. Nose. Cheeks. I watch the screen, not wanting to look down and see God take her from me. 

*

            I hear Ellis talking to Palmer from somewhere in the house. My breast pump suctions and loosens against my nipple. I sketch with charcoal. I had started the drawing pre-pregnancy. It was of a woman catching stars in her dress. Or fireflies for the realists. The balls of light fall from the sky in a wave. I add curls to the woman’s hair and pretend she is Palmer.

            The breast pump beeps and releases. The container feels light. Less than two ounces of milk sways back and forth inside. Its coloring is of cream and speckled blood. More antibodies to fill the kitchen drain. Palmer cries, and the formula maker’s grind follows her cadence.

*

            Ellis and I sleep alone at night. Separated from each other. One of us with Palmer on the couch while the other rests. Online, she’s called a Velcro-baby. Put her down, and she wakes, crying. When I wake up, every night, I think she’s in bed with me. Pillows, blankets, sheets—all killers.

            “Palmer,” I say, patting the mattress, unable to catch my breath.

            The television plays from the other room, and I calm myself, knowing she’s with Ellis. Hallucinations are too close to reality. I push everything off the bed, leaving just me and a fitted sheet. 

*

            I research ways to play with Palmer. I buy her toys in blacks and whites and reds. These are the colors that catch a newborn’s attention. We lie on the floor together, looking at her crinkle-books. Palmer doesn’t make a sound. Her eyes just dart, following zig-zag patterns and stripes. The videos I watch online recommend narrating day-to-day activities. To talk about walking down hallways and recounting body parts in songs during bathtime. Often, I catch us sitting in silence. I have to remind myself to talk to her.  

*

            Ellis tells me to take Palmer to the store. To let her see something new. “She needs mental stimulation,” he says, but there is a subtle tail end of his sentence, wanting to continue with an: you do, too.

            Even in my mind, the experience is tactile. I see germs like fuzzy caterpillars moving across grocery store aisles. On cereal boxes and shopping carts. The bristles on their backs are infectious. Touching them will make Palmer sick. In my mind, I hear her cough, see her attached to a ventilator, pulled too tight around her little nose and mouth.

            “Not yet,” I say.

*

            Ellis likes to play with Palmer. He sits on her bedroom floor beside her as she watches the ceiling fan spin. Ellis tells her it’s a star, and when she cries, he tells her it’s because of her mean-marks.

            “Just wait until they grow out,” he says to me. “She’ll be happier.”

            I want to say, “I know,” and sooth his superstitions, but the spinning star above Palmer worries me. I think of my sketch, and the stars falling onto her. I take her from the floor, from the spinning star, and out the room.

*

            I listen to the running water from the showerhead, waiting for it to stop. Ellis’s two weeks home are up. I hold the doorknob and picture him under the water. Nursery rhymes play from the living room. 

            “There’s something wrong with me,” I say. “I can’t be alone with her.”

            I feel Ellis on the other side of the door. I hear his energy in my ears. Like the beating of a hummingbird’s wings. Like he knows what I am going to say next. That I am afraid to be alone in the house with our daughter. So, I say nothing and let his wings play in my ears.

            “You need to call your doctor,” the hummingbird says. 

*

            On the days Ellis works, we move the bassinet into the living room, right between the window and couch. I hold Palmer in my lap with the window open. We listen to cars drive by as she breastfeeds. I burp her when she’s done and feel her stomach deflate.

            “Oh, no,” I say to her as I feel her ribs. They feel prominent underneath my touch. I lie her in the bassinet and run to the can of formula, making her a bottle as I watch her little arms sway above the bassinet’s horizon. “Almost done,” I say, mixing warm water and powder.

            I hold her as she eats, watching her eyes, the yellow fading into the outer edges of sclera. I wish that I could pull the rest of her jaundice from her body, taking it into my own to make her better. As she falls asleep, I lie her in the bassinet, rocking it to the same rhythm as I do while holding her. It squeaks with each push. I keep my eyes on her through the bassinets mesh lining, feeling my eyes burn and close as I fight sleep. If Palmer turns, the mesh could obscure her breathing, or the mattress could, or her arms, or swaddle—I stop rocking her and the house goes quiet. She begins to stir, and I know that in a moment she will wake up.

            “Sh-h,” I say, moving the bassinet again. “Please, sleep, baby girl.”

*

            I try to stay up at night with Palmer more often now. Ellis’s shifts start early, and I worry that if he doesn’t get enough sleep, the drive could be deadly. Palmer and I lie in our place on the couch. I rub her back as she sleeps, her body so warm that she creates a pond of sweat between us. I roll her on her back to let her cool, and when I do, she starts to scream. And with her, so do I.

            “What?” Ellis says, the ceiling light brightens the room as he takes her from me.

            “I hurt her,” I say over and over. “I hurt her.”

*

            Miranda comes to sit with me when Ellis goes to work now. Her demeanor has changed. The energy she omits is caution. She walks on eggshells around me. KN95 masks poke out from her purse.

            “Did Ellis say something to you?” I ask her, gesturing towards her bag with one arm, Palmer in the other.

            “No, no,” Miranda answers. She places a pacifier in Palmer’s mouth. There is a picture of a cartoon lion in its end. I nearly expect her to tell me that lions are for boys. “I just know you worry a lot.”

            “I do.” As I say this, a warm, wet spot forms between Palmer and me. It feels like a rash, makes me want to scratch my skin. Palmer cries. “Miranda,” I say, looking to my mother-in-law like I came from her womb. She picks my daughter up and takes her to the nursery and changes Palmer’s clothing with expert hands. I observe her and squeeze the wet on my shirt.

            “Lots of new moms get the baby blues,” says Miranda. “When I had Ellis, I would lie on the floor beside the crib to make sure he was breathing. I’d put the tip of my finger under his nose and wait for air. I was too afraid to put my hand on his chest because of the pressure.”

            “I feel,” I begin, but stop myself before I say too much. I want to tell her that I feel hollow. Like a paper lantern, one without the orange glow, but I hear the sound of eggshells cracking underneath my feet. “Dirty.”

            “Why don’t you take a shower and close your eyes. I’ll rock Palmer.”

            I go to the bathroom and turn on the bathtub’s faucet and undress. As water rolls down my body, I check my breasts. They are light, empty.

*

            My doctor prescribes me medication for milk production. It’s a pill, three of them. She tells me to look down when I swallow. It opens the esophagus. I break them in half to make it easier. My breasts start to leak and grow. And hurt. They are sore to the touch. As Palmer drinks from them, it is a relief to us both.

*

            Colored pencils lay on the kitchen counter. They are expensive. I can tell by their packaging—a black metal box. I pick them up, inspecting the container for a price, but it had been removed. There are remnants of a white sticker.

            “Ellis took Palmer for a car ride. She’s fussy,” Miranda says, coming from the nursery. She looks at the box in my hand. “He told me you like art.”

            “Thank you,” I say. “I do, but you didn’t have to get these for me.”

            “He said that drawing helps you relax as you pump.”

            “I do,” I say, and then picture Ellis and Palmer in the car. At a stop light. When the light turns green, another car hits them, mid-intersection. I take my phone and call Ellis.

            “Come home,” I say into the receiver.

            “What’s wrong?” Ellis asks. I can’t hear Plamer in the background and it worries me. She is alone, and Ellis doesn’t watch her carefully enough.

            “You just need to come home,” I say. Miranda watches me as I talk. She does not say anything to calm me. She just watches.  

*

            Miranda brings me Mother’s Milk tea. The milk production pills I had taken are gone, and I am making less. My nipples are now cracked, bleeding easy from Palmer’s suckles. She is desperate to eat, and I cannot feed her. Miranda boils water on the stove as I burp the air from Palmer’s stomach once more. She cries from hunger, and Miranda starts a bottle for her, too. When both tea and formula are done, she brings them to me, and I hand Palmer off to her, letting her feed my daughter as I hold a steaming mug in my hands, waiting for the tea to cool.

            “There you go, Sweetheart,” Miranda says, brushing Palmer’s curls with the palm of her hand. “She’s looking better.”

            “She is,” I say with a certainty in my voice that I do not feel. I can’t tell anymore if the yellow in Palmer’s eyes has receded. When we are alone, I stare into them, looking for the color and thinking that I see it. The yellow crawls back in from behind her eyelids the longer I look.

            “And you?” Miranda asks.

            “Better,” I say as I take a sip of the lactation tea. It tastes of raspberry and ginger.