The Mother-in-Law's Mercy

"There is a kind of help that arrives like a verdict—a clean dress in one hand, a list of everything you are not in the other."

Mary Smith arrived on day six like a force of nature wrapped in modest clothing and righteous determination. She wore a floral dress that reached well past her knees, sensible flat shoes, and an expression that managed to convey Christian charity and deep disappointment simultaneously. Her grey hair was set in the same style she'd probably worn since 1960, and she carried a carpetbag that looked like it could contain supplies for a month or judgements for a lifetime.

"Heather," she said, my name somehow sounding like both greeting and accusation.

"Mary," I responded, trying to sit up straighter in bed, to look less like the madwoman who'd tried to cut her baby out with glass.

She settled into the visitor's chair with the gravity of someone preparing for a long siege. The carpetbag was placed precisely at her feet, and she folded her hands in her lap—no wedding ring anymore since Thomas had died three years ago, just the indent where it used to be, a ghost of marriage on her finger.

"I've brought you some things," she said, reaching into the bag. "Proper clothes for going home."

Proper clothes. She pulled out a dress—navy blue, shapeless, the kind of thing that would hide my still-swollen belly, my bound breasts, my shame. Then a cardigan, beige and bland. Undergarments that looked like they could withstand nuclear war. Everything chosen to make me invisible, respectable, contained.

"Thank you," I said, because what else could I say? Thank you for coming to manage my failure? Thank you for moving into my house to watch me not mother my children? Thank you for being right about me all along?

"I've been praying," she said, which meant she'd been discussing my sins with God, probably asking Him why He'd let her son tie himself to a girl who'd come to the Church looking for shelter rather than truth, whose faith had never quite taken, why He'd punished Noah with a broken wife when he was such a good man.

"I appreciate that," I lied. Her prayers felt like surveillance, like God's eye turned specifically on my inadequacies.

"The house is ready," she continued, businesslike now. "I've removed certain items."

Certain items. Glass. Knives. Razors. Anything sharp enough to tell the truth with.

"Noah's moved Luke's cot into our—your—bedroom. Easier for night feeds." She paused. "You are planning to feed him?"

"Formula," I said, and watched her mouth tighten slightly. Another failure. Good Mormon mothers breastfed, nourished their babies with their own bodies. But then, good Mormon mothers didn't try to perform caesareans on themselves either.

"Well," she said, the word carrying volumes of disapproval wrapped in resignation. "I suppose that's for the best, given... everything."

Everything. Such a tidy word for catastrophe.

She reached into her bag again, pulled out a small book. "Bishop Carlson asked me to give you this."

A Book of Mormon, pocket-sized, with my name embossed on the cover in gold letters. Inside, I knew, would be highlighted passages about enduring to the end, about trials and faith, about the sacred role of mothers in Zion. I took it because refusing would make things worse, though the weight of it in my hands felt like another stone added to my drowning.

"He's been very understanding," Mary said. "About your... situation. He knows you weren't raised in the Church. That you don't have the same foundation."

Foundation. Like I was a house built on sand, doomed to collapse. Which perhaps I was, had already, was still collapsing even now.

"Noah needs you to get better," she said, leaning forward slightly. "He can't manage alone."

"He has you," I pointed out.

"I'm not his wife." The word 'wife' came out sharp, pointed. "I can't be there forever. I have my own life in Murray, my calling, my visiting teaching. I'm here temporarily. To help you get back on your feet."

Back on my feet. Like I'd simply stumbled, not shattered into pieces that could never be properly glued back together.

"How long?" I asked. "How long will you stay?"

"As long as necessary," she said, which meant until I proved myself capable or proved myself irredeemably broken. "The social worker says a month minimum. We'll see."

We'll see. She'd be watching, evaluating, reporting back to Noah, to the Bishop, to God Himself probably. Every interaction with the children would be measured against her standards of proper motherhood.

"Paul's been asking for you," she said, her tone softening slightly. "He stands at your bedroom door saying 'Mama' over and over."

The image hit me like a physical blow. Paul, my firstborn, the one I'd managed to love before the weight became too heavy, standing at the door of the room where I'd bled, calling for a mother who'd abandoned him for white rooms and white lies.

"Is he eating?" I asked.

"Some. He's gone off his food a bit. Normal, the doctor says, when there's upheaval."

Upheaval. Another euphemism for what I'd done to our family.

"And Luke?"

"Growing. The nurses weigh him daily, check his progress. Three pounds, eight ounces now. Still small, but gaining."

Gaining weight while I was losing my mind. Growing stronger while I was being medicated into compliance. Surviving despite my best efforts to prevent his existence.

Mary studied me for a long moment, and I could see her making calculations—how much to say, how much truth I could handle, how much honesty our relationship could bear.

"I know you didn't want me here," she said finally. "I know you think I disapprove of you."

"Don't you?" The question came out before I could stop it, medication making me honest when I should have been careful.

She sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of every prayer she'd said for our family. "I disapprove of what happened. But I don't... I don't hate you, Heather. I'm trying to understand."

"Understand what?"

"Why a woman would..." she gestured vaguely at my midsection, at the hidden scar beneath hospital gowns and bandages. "Why you would do such a thing. Noah says it was hormones, temporary madness. But I think it was more than that."

I waited, curious despite myself about what Mary Smith, keeper of righteousness, defender of proper families, thought about my breakdown.

"I think," she said slowly, "you were never prepared for this life. For marriage, for children, for the weight of it all. You're like those forced bulbs they sell at Christmas—made to bloom too early, out of season. Pretty to look at, but not sustainable."

It was perhaps the most insightful thing she'd ever said to me. Also the most damning. I was decorative but not functional, forced into flowering before my roots were strong enough to support it.

"My mother," she continued, surprising me, "had what they called 'nervous exhaustion' after her fourth baby. Took to her bed for six months. My father had to hire help. Nobody talked about it, of course. But I remember."

"What happened to her?"

"She got up eventually. Went back to cooking and cleaning and having babies. Had three more after that. But she was never the same. Smiled less. Stared out windows more. Sometimes I'd find her crying while doing dishes, tears falling into the dishwater."

"Did anyone help her?"

Mary looked at me like I'd asked if anyone had given her mother wings to fly. "Help? She had a husband, children, a house to run. That was her life. You endured. You didn't ask for help."

"And you think I should have just endured?"

"I think," she said carefully, "times are different now. There are doctors, medications, treatments. Things my mother didn't have. So maybe you don't have to endure the same way. Maybe breaking can be... addressed now, instead of just hidden."

It was the closest to compassion she'd ever come, this admission that suffering was generational, that women had been breaking quietly in kitchens and bedrooms long before I'd broken loudly in a maternity ward.

"But," she added, because there was always a but with Mary, "you still have responsibilities. To Noah, to those boys. Whatever happened to you before, whatever's wrong inside you, those children didn't ask to be born into it."

No, they hadn't asked. Luke especially hadn't asked to be cut from his mother like a tumour, to begin life in blood and violence. But here we all were, a family built on accidents and obligations and the terrible momentum of consequences.

"I'll try," I said, because that's all I could offer. Not success, not healing, not mother-love, just the effort of trying.

"That's all anyone can do," she said, standing, smoothing her floral dress. "I'll be back tomorrow with Noah to collect you. Wear the clothes I brought. We'll stop at the hairdresser on the way home—your hair needs attention."

My hair. I'd forgotten about my hair, how I'd been cutting it shorter and shorter, trying to disappear. Mary would want it styled properly, femininely, wifely. Another costume for the performance of recovery.

"Mary," I said as she reached the door. "Why are you really doing this? Not for me. We both know you don't like me."

She turned, her hand on the doorframe, and for a moment looked older than her fifty-eight years. "For Noah. For those boys. And..." she paused, "for my mother, I suppose. For all the mothers who didn't get help, who just had to endure. Maybe if one mother gets help, it means something. Makes their suffering less invisible."

Then she was gone, leaving behind the navy dress and sensible undergarments and pocket-sized Book of Mormon. Leaving behind the ghost of her mother crying into dishwater, the admission that breaking was hereditary, the possibility that mercy could come from unexpected sources.

I picked up the dress, felt its polyester practicality. Tomorrow I would put it on like armour, like costume, like the uniform of a recovering mother. I would let Mary cut my hair into something respectable. I would go home to a house she'd sanitised of sharp objects, where she'd sleep on the fold-out and monitor my mothering, where she'd cook casseroles and quote scripture and pretend we were a normal family having a temporary crisis.

I thought about her mother, and all the mothers who'd broken quietly before me—who'd cried into dishwater and stared out windows and endured because enduring was the only door left open to them. Mary's mother had suffered in silence for six months, then got up and had three more babies. I had suffered loudly for six days, and would go home to two boys and a watchful mother-in-law. Maybe that was luck, in its twisted way: my breaking had been loud enough to demand attention, violent enough that it couldn't be filed away and forgotten.

But Mary had named the thing exactly. I was a forced bulb, made to bloom out of season—pretty enough to look at, never built for the life I'd been planted in. Whether I could grow proper roots now, after the flowering, after the breaking, I didn't know. I only knew the alternative was to wither completely, and there were two small boys who needed even a broken mother more than no mother at all.

And so I would take up the trade Mary and her mother had handed down without ever naming it: enduring what couldn't be fixed, crying where the dishwater could hide it, breaking quietly enough that it passed for bending. The mercy wasn't in the healing. The mercy was in being allowed to break more privately next time.