Some Possible Solutions Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t see who was crying and who was sleeping.
    *   *   *
    Over the weekend they did things. Nice things, together, as a family. Sam insisted. It felt strange to Mimosa to be out and about, strolling down the sidewalk, sitting on a bench, eating ice cream. She was so accustomed to being inside the house. She was so accustomed to sitting on the bed with The Queen on her knees. Her armpits were damp and her sundress smelled. Her breasts were leaking.
    On the other bench, another couple ate ice cream and gazed into a stroller. The woman wore the same sandals as Mimosa.
    â€œLet’s go,” Mimosa said, standing abruptly.
    Sam looked up, surprised.
    â€œCome on,” she said.
    The labor had been so long. She hadn’t slept more than three hours at a stretch since then. He rose and gripped the handlebar of the stroller. She stormed down the sidewalk toward a quieter street. Small, sensible houses, not unlike their own. She allowed Sam and The Queen to catch up with her. At the end of the block, a woman was watering a row of sagging stargazer lilies with a long hose. Mimosa, who liked stargazers, very nearly smiled as they approached the yard.
    But this woman, the woman with the hose; she was wearing the same sundress as Mimosa. And, arcing outward from the small house: the wail of a newborn.
    *   *   *
    In the middle of the middle of the night, The Queen was screaming for milk, and Mimosa’s breasts were dripping, but the screaming interfered with the latch. The Queen was sticky with milk. Mimosa was sticky with milk. Mimosa wrestled The Queen’s confused, damp body closer to her nipple. Milk plastered them together at their stomachs.
    *   *   *
    On Monday, the heat was worse than ever. Something was happening to The Queen: hundreds if not thousands of small bumps had arisen on her skin. Mimosa noticed the rash when The Queen woke her at 4:57 in the morning (Sam slept through the crying, could always sleep through, and this was troubling to Mimosa, and at times filled her with queasy hatred, as though she had married a Frisbee or a spoon rather than a man).
    Mimosa stepped around the moving boxes and turned on the overhead light in The Queen’s room. She removed The Queen’s onesie and diaper. She stood at the changing table for far too long, staring at The Queen’s skin. The Queen kicked and twisted and reached, oblivious to her mother’s hard gaze. Only when The Queen’s flailing arm had a little heart-wrenching spasm (overexcitement? agitation?) did Mimosa finally pick her up.
    She went back into the other room and watched Sam sleep. Then she shoved The Queen at his face.
    â€œLook!” she commanded.
    â€œOh,” Sam cooed sleepily, taking the baby, pressing her into his chest hair. “I am looking! I am looking at this beautiful, perfect baby! Oh my!”
    The Queen smiled at her father, or so it seemed.
    Mimosa pulled The Queen away from him and held her close, as close as close could be, the baby’s head in its nook beneath Mimosa’s chin, but she wished there was some way to hold her even closer.
    *   *   *
    The house felt small, small and hot. Mimosa could smell herself more strongly by the minute. Her body odor had intensified since The Queen’s birth. Sam had read somewhere that newborns can recognize only one person in the entire world, and the way they recognize that person is by scent alone. She wondered when her stink would begin to offend The Queen, or if The Queen liked it more as it grew stronger.
    In the car on the way to the park she felt victorious (having packed the diaper bag, located the car keys) and rolled down all the windows. She wanted to sit on a bench by the pond and hold The Queen in her lap and gaze at the swans. This was something she had imagined doing when she was pregnant.
    But today even the birds terrified her. The swans and the pigeons were