The Mother Performance

"They don’t want a mother—they want a mask that smiles, a body that holds, a woman who never drops the script."

They orchestrated it like a play—Noah arriving first with Paul, then the nurse wheeling in a clear plastic bassinet as if on cue, all of them converging in my white room for the performance of motherhood I was expected to give. The Valium had been adjusted again, enough to keep me compliant but not so much that I couldn't participate in this charade. They needed me conscious for this. They needed me to play mother.

Paul saw me first, his green eyes—my eyes, God help him—lighting up with recognition and relief. "Mama!" He wriggled in Noah's arms, reaching for me with sticky fingers that probably held biscuit crumbs from a bribe. Fifteen months old and already learning that love came with conditions, with performances, with the need to be good to get what you wanted.

"Careful, mate," Noah said, his voice forcibly cheerful, the tone you'd use at a zoo to keep children from startling the animals. "Mummy's still poorly. We need to be gentle."

Gentle. As if gentleness was something any of us knew how to be anymore. As if we weren't all walking wounded, pretending our injuries were invisible.

The nurse—not Margaret, someone younger with hopeful eyes—positioned the bassinet where I could see it but not too close. Close enough to perform bonding but far enough that I couldn't—what? Break him like I'd broken myself? They'd removed everything sharp from my room, but they couldn't remove me, and I was the sharpest thing here.

"This is Luke," the nurse announced unnecessarily, as if I might have forgotten what I'd carved out of myself three days ago. "He's doing remarkably well. Would you like to hold him?"

Would I like to hold him? The question hung in the air like a test I was destined to fail. Noah was watching, Paul was watching, the nurse was watching. Everyone waiting for the maternal instinct to kick in, for biology to override trauma, for love to conquer whatever had made me reach for the glass.

"Let me sit up first," I said, buying time, adjusting the bed with the electronic controls that made me feel briefly powerful—I could raise and lower myself, at least. The movement pulled at my sutures, a sharp reminder of the violence that had brought us all here.

Paul made another lunge for me, and this time Noah let him partially succeed, placing him carefully on the bed beside me but keeping one hand on his back, ready to snatch him away if I proved dangerous. My firstborn's weight against my hip was familiar and foreign simultaneously—I knew this child, had grown him, birthed him, fed him, but he felt like someone else's baby, someone else's responsibility, someone else's love.

"Mama sick?" Paul asked, patting my arm with a gentleness that broke my heart. When had he learned to be careful with me? When had my fifteen-month-old learned that Mama was fragile?

"A little sick," I said, the understatement so vast it might have been funny if anything could be funny anymore. "But getting better."

The lie came easily. I'd been lying to Paul since conception, pretending to want him when his existence had been just the first colonisation, the practice round for the violation that Luke represented.

The nurse was lifting Luke from the bassinet now, and I got my first real look at him—not the bloody thing they'd pulled from my wound, but this cleaned and swaddled creature with his knitted cap and his hospital bracelet that proclaimed him "Baby Smith" as if that identity meant something.

He was small. That was my first thought. Three pounds, four ounces of human who'd been evicted six weeks early because his mother couldn't stand the occupation any longer. His face was wizened, old-looking, like he'd already lived through something terrible. Which he had. His first experience of the world had been violence, rejection, his mother's blood and madness. What kind of beginning was that?

"He has your eyes," Noah said again, as if I'd forgotten his earlier propaganda. "Look, they're opening."

And they were—green like mine, green like Paul's, green like my mother's, who'd passed down more than just eye colour. Passed down the ability to not see what was happening in our own house. Passed down the talent for sleeping through violations. Passed down the gift of silence that felt like safety but was just another kind of dying.

The nurse moved closer with Luke, and I understood what was expected. I arranged my arms in the shape of holding, and she placed him there, this stranger who'd lived inside me, who'd fed off me, who'd grown from my unwillingness.

He weighed nothing and everything. Three pounds of accusation. Four ounces of evidence. He was warm through the blanket, alive despite my best efforts, breathing with lungs I'd tried to keep from inflating. The weight of him in my arms triggered something—not maternal love, but muscle memory. My body knew how to hold babies even if my mind wanted to reject them.

"See?" Noah said, relief colouring his voice. "That's nice, isn't it? Family together?"

Family. The word was a knife between my ribs, sharper than glass. We weren't a family. We were a collection of damaged people held together by blood and law and the terrible momentum of continuing to exist when existence was pain.

Paul leaned over to look at Luke, his face curious and concerned in equal measure. "Baby," he announced, then looked at me for confirmation, for approval, for something I didn't have to give.

"Yes," I said anyway. "Baby Luke. Your brother."

Brother. Another role Paul hadn't asked for, another relationship he'd have to navigate, another person who'd need things from him. I wanted to apologise, to explain that I'd tried to save them both from this—from each other, from me, from the endless performance of family that would trap them like it had trapped me.

"He's so small," Paul observed, reaching out one finger to touch Luke's fist.

"He came early," Noah said, still in that forcefully cheerful voice. "But he's strong. Aren't you, little man?"

Little man. Already gendering him, already assigning him roles and expectations. Little man who'd grow into a big man who might one day do to some girl what had been done to me. Or maybe not. Maybe the violence of his birth would inoculate him against violence. Maybe starting with blood would make him gentler. Maybe—

Luke made a sound—not quite a cry, more like a complaint, a general objection to existence that I understood completely. The nurse swooped in immediately.

"He might be hungry," she said. "Are you planning to breastfeed?"

The question landed like a bomb in the careful choreography of our family performance. Breastfeed. Let this child who'd already taken so much from me continue feeding. Let him latch onto the body I'd finally reclaimed through violence and make it his again.

"I..." I looked at Noah, saw the hope in his eyes, the need for something normal, something natural, something that would prove I was still a mother, still a woman, still salvageable.

"The doctors said formula would be fine," Noah said quickly, seeing something in my face that scared him. "With Luke being premature, and with... everything."

Everything. Such a small word for such a large catastrophe.

"Formula then," I agreed, and saw the nurse's disappointment, quickly masked. She'd wanted the happy ending, the mother overcoming trauma through the power of infant need. But some needs were too heavy to carry. Some wounds too fresh to allow more feeding.

Paul had grown bored with Luke and was now playing with the bed controls, making us rise and fall like a ship on slow waves. Normal toddler behaviour, but it made me nauseated, made the room spin, made everything feel unstable. Which it was.

"Paul, stop," Noah said, but gently, always gently, like we were all made of glass now.

"It's fine," I lied, because what was a little motion sickness compared to everything else? "He's just curious."

Curious. Like I'd been curious at seven, wondering why footsteps stopped outside my door. Like I'd been curious at nineteen, wondering if marriage would feel like safety. Like I'd been curious three days ago, wondering if glass could set us free.

Luke was falling asleep in my arms, his breathing evening out into something that sounded like trust. How could he trust me? Didn't he know what I'd done? Couldn't he feel the violence in the hands that held him? Or was this just biology, the terrible imperative to attach to whatever held you, even if it had tried to kill you?

"You look good together," Noah said, and I wanted to laugh or scream or both. We looked good together? A woman held together by sutures and sedatives, holding a baby she'd tried to cut out, while a toddler played with bed controls and a husband pretended everything was fixable?

"We should get a photo," the nurse suggested brightly, pulling out a Polaroid camera from somewhere. "First family photo with both boys."

First family photo. As if this was a beginning instead of an ending. As if photographs could capture anything real instead of just the surface performance. But Noah was already arranging us—Paul on one side, Luke in my arms, himself leaning in from the other side, his hand on my shoulder like a claim, like a comfort, like a chain.

"Smile," the nurse said, and we did, all of us except Luke, who had the excuse of being asleep and three days old.

The camera flashed, and I wondered what it captured. A mother who'd tried to commit suicide by caesarean. A father whose faith had been shattered like glass. A toddler who'd learned too young that Mama could disappear. A premature baby born from violence and rejection. But the photo would show none of that. It would show a family, tired but together, facing whatever came next.

The performance.

"I should probably rest," I said after the photo, the code for ending this visit before something cracked, before the pretence became too heavy, before someone saw through the performance to the truth underneath.

"Of course," Noah said quickly, relieved to have an excuse to leave, to take Paul away from whatever danger I represented. "We'll come back tomorrow."

Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. The endless tomorrows stretching out, each requiring its own performance, its own pretence, its own exhausting effort at being what everyone needed me to be.

The nurse took Luke from my arms, and I felt the absence immediately—not loss, exactly, but the removal of weight I'd grown accustomed to. He'd been inside me for thirty-four weeks, in my arms for twenty minutes, and both felt like eternities.

"Say bye-bye to Mama," Noah prompted Paul, who waved enthusiastically, then reached for me one more time.

"Mama come home?" he asked, and the question hung there like an accusation.

"Soon," Noah answered for me. "Mama will come home soon."

Home. Where I'd have to continue this performance without the excuse of medication, without the safety of locked windows, without the buffer of medical staff. Home, where I'd have to be mother and wife and functional human while carrying the weight of what I'd done, what had been done to me, what continued to be done just by existing.

They left in a flurry of goodbyes and promises to return, Paul's chatter fading down the hallway, Noah's footsteps careful and measured like a man walking away from an unexploded bomb. The nurse wheeled Luke away to the NICU, where he'd continue learning to breathe without me, continue growing despite me, continue existing in defiance of my best efforts to prevent it.

And I was alone again in my white room with its locked windows and its careful absence of sharp objects. The Polaroid was developing on my bedside table, our family materialising slowly from chemicals and light. I watched us appear—first as ghosts, then as shadows, then as seemingly solid people, though I knew we were all still ghosts, still shadows, still pretending to be more substantial than we were.

In the photo, I was smiling. It was a good smile, convincing even. I'd learned to smile like that at seven, learned that the right expression could deflect questions, could maintain illusions, could keep secrets buried where they belonged. Paul looked happy, unaware of the undercurrents. Noah looked relieved, like maybe things would be okay after all. Luke was a bundle of blankets with a small face, already part of this family he hadn't chosen, already trapped in this web of love and damage and desperate pretending.

This was the evidence of my mother performance: a Polaroid of lies, a document of denial, a proof of my ability to seem like what I wasn't. They would probably frame it, put it on the mantle next to Paul's baby photos, evidence that we'd survived, that we'd overcome, that we were still a family despite everything.

But I knew what it really was—a record of the moment I understood that I would never be free. That even suicide by caesarean couldn't release me from the roles I'd been assigned. That I would spend the rest of my life performing motherhood while feeling like a child myself, trapped at seven years old in a pink bedroom, waiting for footsteps that would always come, no matter how many years passed, no matter how many babies I had, no matter how much glass I broke.

The afternoon light was fading outside my window, painting everything golden like a blessing I didn't deserve and didn't want. Somewhere, Luke was being fed formula by strangers who'd protect him from his mother's hunger. Somewhere, Paul was playing with blocks, building towers to knock down, learning that things could be rebuilt even after they broke. Somewhere, Noah was praying to his God for guidance, for healing, for the strength to pretend this family could work.

And here, in this white room with its white lies and white coats and white pills that made everything softer but never soft enough, I lay back against the pillows and felt the weight of the performance I'd just given, would have to give again tomorrow, would have to give for the rest of my life.

Mother. Wife. Woman. Survivor. All performances. All exhausting. All mine to perform until I couldn't anymore. And maybe not even then. Maybe even death wouldn't release me from the performance. Maybe I'd already tried that and failed. Maybe the performance was all there was, all there had ever been, all there would ever be.

The Polaroid was fully developed now. We looked like a real family. That was the most terrifying thing of all.