Russell Banks - The Darling

I remember the fact of it, but not much more, because after that first time it was always the same with Woodrow, who never seemed to lose his erection and rarely came. He merely grew weary or sleepy or bored or had to leave for an appointment elsewhere, and that’s what finally, after long hours of it, stopped him. He could not follow a natural arc of rising passion — the drive toward orgasm, and the post-climactic, floating lassitude afterwards. No beginning, middle, or end for him, and consequently, none for me, either. Not once in all those years. I don’t think he knew that such an arc was possible or even desirable. He thought this was good sex, good for him, good for me, and was proud of his ability to keep us grinding away for hours like a pair of millstones groaning on wobbly axes, the thump of the bedstead bumping against the wall like a drum beaten by a dumb, arrhythmic drummer, on and on, making me first sore and then numb, until before long I was outside my body, floating somewhere overhead, thinking penny thoughts and making lists and averting my gaze from the two of us humping below like a pair of mechanical dolls that never finished what they’d begun but only ran slowly down until they finally stopped, batteries drained, and were still and silent.

And so ended one endless moment, the fucking, and another took its place. In a matter of weeks, Woodrow had come back at least once, and I was definitely pregnant, and in June of 1978 I bore Woodrow his first son, whom he named Dillon, after his mother’s father, to affirm the lad’s Americo heritage, and Tambu, after his father’s father, to maintain his lineage connection to the Kpelle, and Sundiata, to declare to all the world his own proud paternity.

Dillon Tambu Sundiata. Later the boy-soldier known as Worse-than-Death.

A beautiful baby. Everyone said so. Even I could see it, although I couldn’t at the same time keep from seeing my baby as an alien, a member of a different, non-human species. Not sub -human, but different and possibly superior.

The truth is, I wasn’t as bad a mother as I probably sound now, looking back all these years later and judging my past self from this distance. I’m less confused and turbulent now than I was then. But with regard to myself, less forgiving. When my sons were babies and little boys, certainly when they were newborn infants, I was diligent and careful and nurturing in all the ways of a good mother. No one faulted me then and no one can now, not even I. But nonetheless I was detached from my babies, detached in an unusual way, and I know this, and knew it at the time, too, because, with regard to my chimps, I was not detached and could tell the difference. I could look into the round, brown eyes of the chimps, even the eyes of the large and often fierce adult males, and could see all the way to their souls, it seemed, deep into the mystery of their essential being. But never, not once, could I see that deeply into the blue eyes of my sons.

I tried. I would wake in the middle of the night ashamed and in distress and would slip from bed and make my way to the crib and gently wake and lift Dillon in my arms. Sitting by the window, while the moonlight washed over my baby’s face, I gazed unblinking into his eyes and tried to see him, truly see him , for what and who he was, a person separate from me and yet a part of me, seen, known, honored, and protected; and every time, my gaze came bouncing back, as if reflected off a hard, shiny, opaque surface. I was like Narcissus staring into the pool.

It wasn’t his physical appearance that made Dillon seem alien to me — he was perfectly formed, straight boned and firmly muscled, even as an infant, and his skin was reddish, almost copper colored, and burnished, and his tiny face glowed in sunlight and shone in moonlight. His eyes were dark blue, almost black, though they later turned bright blue, like my father’s sapphire eyes. His head was large and round, like Woodrow’s, and symmetrical as a piece of fruit. His thin hair, the color of fresh-brewed coffee, was like a lace cap, and his tiny ears were perfect whorls, natural wonders, as if carved out of soft stone by trickling water, and I loved to touch them. He was a beautiful baby. I thrilled to his pomegranate smell and used to nuzzle him with my nose. And the quality of his attention — from the moment I first took him from the hospital nurse’s arms into mine and lifted his face to my breast and he began to suck — was refined and as selective and focused as a camera’s on the world that surrounded him: first the nipple of my breast, then my face, my eyes and mouth, and behind me Woodrow’s proudly smiling face, eyes, and mouth, the room, the light streaming through the open window, the noise of children playing outside, cars, buses, and trucks passing on the street.

But he didn’t seem to belong to the same species as we did, Woodrow and I. How could this infant, this stranger have emerged from my body? I kept wondering. The nine months of pregnancy had seemed like nine years to me, interminable, and though for the better part of it I had felt him moving inside me, shifting positions down there in the watery darkness, despite that long familiarity with him, when he was finally born he seemed to have arrived from another planet. His physical appearance kept surprising me, as if some other woman had borne him. Because he was male, I suppose, and had a penis attached to his body, and because his skin color and the texture of his hair were so unlike mine. He must be another mother’s child , I kept thinking.

You were the cutest little pink thing when you were a baby, with silky straight blond hair that I couldn’t bear to have cut until you were nearly six and your father insisted on it, and then I cried and cried, although for some reason you seemed extremely pleased to have it cut short . When my boys were infants, my mother’s voice in my ears plagued me. It was as if she were always standing just behind me, watching and commenting constantly while I washed, fed, and clothed my babies, brought them into the living room to show the guests, took them out in the carriage, held them up for the praise of strangers and friends alike, for Liberians love to make a fuss over newborns, and their attentions made me feel less like an alien myself.

It was only when Dillon was a few months old, and I could place him in the daily and nightly care of Jeannine, Woodrow’s eighteen-year-old niece who had come in from Fuama to keep house for us during my pregnancy and got promoted to governess, that my mother’s voice began to fade and eventually go silent. I no longer saw myself through her eyes and instead began once again to see myself through my father’s, which, while not ideal psychologically or otherwise, was preferable. It was, at least, familiar.

Then in short order I was pregnant again, another nine endless months of it. Pregnant with twins this time — although I didn’t know that I was carrying two babies until they had already arrived on the planet — and, as there were two of them, a matched, identical pair, they turned out to be even more alien to me than Dillon had been. And here came my mother’s voice again: Twins! They’re so adorable, like peas in a pod. I always wanted twins, you know. Especially when you were a baby. You were so cute and loveable that I wanted two of you. But you have to be careful and not name them similarly, calling them Florence and Francis, for example, or Ronald and Donald; and don’t dress them alike, or else they’ll have trouble separating from each other when they get older. Your father, you know, wrote about that in his second book, which, by the way, you have never read, have you? I don’t know why, Hannah, you refuse to read your father’s books, especially now that you have children of your own …