When I wanted to be a stepmother instead.

I’ve put a lot of things in my throat that I thought would make my arms small and incapable of what I needed them for today, and today I hold your son and remember what gratitude feels like when a throat won’t open up enough to say I told you so.

I have a boy and a reusable bag and a backpack and a water bottle and a phone to tell you that we made it back from the library—keys to make sure we get inside safely—and I orient all of these things to my left side. A gym instructor once told me You know your body so well. When I tell you to fix a movement, you can do it *snaps fingers* immediately. You know your body so well; you know what to do with it so easily, and I look at your son who is looking at his stomach under his shirt, and I ask him What’s that? As I put the key into the lock, and your son tells me that it’s his tummy. I kiss his forehead and say, You know your body so well.

I put him down and he runs toward the bathroom immediately because he knows Shon likes clean hands. I tell him Show me your hands! And he puts two small palms that hold your whole world in my face, and with a smile that does nothing for the health of my romance with solitude, he says, My hands! And I make a face that I could never mean. I scrunch up my nose. I tell him Ew! Let’s go clean them. And he races me to the bathroom because he knows Shon likes to run fast. He knows my body so well.

You have nothing in your hands when you walk through my door two hours later, but your son looks at you like you’ve brought him a garden. He says Daddy! With a timbre that influenced my decision, and you smile at me as his armpits crash into your hands because you know his small body so well. You pick him up and I pretend to look at the ground because where I haven’t learned my body, I’ve remembered the things I’ve held inside it, and I wipe one of my eyes, I lie to you for the first time in 3 months when I tell you with a smile, I was hoping he would get up soon, I’ve had to pee for the past hour, and I listen to you love your son in my kitchen as I go to my bathroom, I run the water, I remember our fetus so well.

You ask him about the afternoon he shared with me, and I hear him struggle to pronounce library, and his small feet hit the floor as he runs over to the corner where my books on the carceral state, reproductive freedom, and Mormons have mixed with his literature of dolphins, garbage trucks, and which parts of the body are okay for mommy and daddy to touch and no one else. Your voice travels across my living room and you listen to my water and his small, thick tongue tell you about a red square; you listen to my water under his voice saying Watch this! As his tiny body falls into the foam blocks I’ve set up for his play corner because he knows, through me, the importance of using all of him to communicate some of him. He knows, through me, to use his body so well. You listen to my water and his voice describe a turtle shell. I listen to my water, and you say, Daddy will be right back.

I’ve put a lot of things in my throat that I thought would make my mind impervious to the effect that seeing you with your second child would have on me, and today I see your son and remember what want feels like when a throat won’t open up enough to say We made a mistake.

You can’t leave a child unattended is what I tell you when you ask me if I’m okay. I’m fine too, go back out with him is how I reply when you tell me that he’s fine by himself. I turn into the words I’ve read about when I tell you that it’s unfair to you for me to refer to it as a child when I’m sad and as a decision when I’m relieved. I turn into the mother that I carry when I say, He was so happy to see you come through the door. You sift through the things that you know I should hear: This is why I didn’t want you to watch him / I don’t want to put you through this every time / and I tell you, I can’t keep referring to it as a child when I see you and as a decision when I remember that he’s the reason why I love you so much today. 

When I ask you What’s your capacity for my memory? I am about to elaborate to say, How much of my recollections can you handle before you start to feel like me too, when we hear a sound that can only come from a toddler. …And this is when I remember that it was a child — not a decision. You go out first because he is yours, but two sets of eyes find a smiling little boy in awe of a body that he’s learned so well. He has launched himself off of my couch into a now-deflated pile of foam skyscrapers that were previously erected for his honor alone, and he is running to you before he finds me like an afterthought — not knowing as he crashes into the stomach that held, at some point, his primary friend, a co-creator in the strategies of how his father learned how to love me first. And this is when I remember that it was a decision before it could have ever been our child. 

I know my body too well.