He’s already made up his mind about me. The crisis counsellor scribbles his diagnosis at the top of his notebook, which he leaves open on the table for my eyes. Postpartum depression, the only explanation for a first-time mom to leave her four-month-old unattended in the backyard. 

“I’m not convinced,” I say. I fight the urge to correct his typo; he’s split the word Postpartum in two. “It doesn’t make any sense. We didn’t go outside all day—they issued a heat warning.”

He says nothing.

“It’s like someone is … gaslighting me, or something,” I mutter under my breath.

I imagine the neighborhood moms laughing over glasses of Cabernet. Their sick way of welcoming me to the neighborhood. 

The tapping of his pen brings me back to reality. There is still no response from the thirty-something glorified counsellor who has the task of analyzing my psychological state. He can’t even prescribe me medication for his diagnosis.

Looking down at his notebook, he finally says, “I saw that play, Gas Light, when it came to Toronto. The husband tries to make his wife think she’s crazy. Wants to send her away to an asylum instead of divorcing her.” 

This is the most he’s said since I entered his “office” that doubles as a staff lunchroom during work hours. The lighting is garish, due to the fluorescence. I sit directly across from him at the round table trying to avoid touching the remnants of someone’s salad. I adjust myself in the hard plastic chair, the kind that outnumbers students at every high school in North America. The late summer heat makes my legs stick to the bright orange seat every time I move, which I’m discovering is a lot. 

He scratches his pen on the page until blue ink appears in an angry scribble. “Gas Light.” He makes a note. It is unclear whether he plans to include this in his report or if he wants to see the revival. 

I know his type. I’ve dealt with more than a few of these crisis counsellors before. Most of the time they just listen to you. Get you to resolve your issues on your own. 

When I first arrived, he asked me if I wanted tea or coffee. I told him as a nursing mom, I needed to avoid caffeine, and his beady eyes shot me a look of skepticism. Was I the nurturing mother who cut out caffeine, alcohol, and junk food to purify her milk or rather, the woman who slept through her baby’s cries all morning? The anonymous tip claimed Addison wailed for hours, but I can’t imagine I slept that long. 

He sips his coffee and I imagine the liquid mingling with his overgrown moustache hairs. “Why don’t we start with your pregnancy, Mrs. Girard. Was it difficult?” 

I consider correcting him—my name is still Joanna Baker. I haven’t gotten around to changing my surname yet. I’m a feminist, yes, but I also have debilitating laziness when it comes to personal administrative tasks.

“Has any woman had an easy pregnancy?” I chuckle. It’s a momentary lapse of judgement. I straighten in my chair. This is no laughing matter. “As far as pregnancies go, mine was relatively easy.”

Sure, I’d felt nauseous throughout the first trimester, and my feet swelled during the third, but these are ailments one expects to endure while pregnant. I handled my emotions too for the most part. A pleasant wife and mom-to-be. JP would agree on that too. 

“Has someone talked to my husband? I’m just not sure what usually happens when someone calls Child Services on one parent.” 

I couldn’t get a hold of JP before coming here. He had been in meetings all afternoon.

“He’s up to speed on the situation. We’ll talk about next steps once we wrap up our chat,” he says. Chat, as though he’s been equally contributing to the conversation. I am starting to feel like this man has lost his passion for this job.

“I had a fairly smooth pregnancy. No concerns; JP can attest,” I say.

“Your husband mentioned an upcoming work trip. Does he travel a lot?”

“He’s the vice president at an advertising agency. He visits the Montreal office frequently. His family is from there, so it’s really his second home.” 

I’m not sure if I’m trying to justify his travel to this counsellor or myself. 

“Have you been having regular appointments with your doctor?” he asks. 

He checks number four off his list of questions. I narrow my eyes and silently count ten more until he interrupts me by clearing his throat. 

“I had my six-week postpartum check-up a couple of months ago and everything was fine. Physically and mentally. You can call my OB-GYN to confirm.” His silence pressures me to continue. “I’m in the process of finding a new doctor, though, because of the move.”

The move, a key event for his notes. A young couple packs up their glamorous lives in the city for the suburban high life filled with playdates and Costco shopping trips. The wife, abandoned with her newborn and her thoughts. 

“And what about with your other doctor?” He checks his notes. “Doctor Lui, your therapist?”

“I haven’t gone to Dr.  Lui since college,” I say. 

JP must have mentioned her when they called him. He’s been trying to get me to see her since I got the baby blues after Addison’s birth.

“Okay, so nothing that stood out in your pregnancy, then?” 

“Nothing.” 

The light flickers above us, and I squint, adjusting my eyes. My only negative feeling during the pregnancy happened early on, but I refuse to mention it to this counsellor. I had been reading a novel about a high school shooting and had to put it away by the second trimester. Not because I was afraid my baby might be a victim in a school shooting, but I was worried my baby would grow up to be the shooter, that I could have a negative impact so profound on my child.

“Why don’t you tell me about your birth experience,” he says, his eyes still focused on his notebook. 

I’d rather not go into detail about my birth experience with a man. Would he like me to begin with my second-degree perineal laceration? I pick at the side of my thumb and scan the room for something familiar, something comforting, but all I see is a sad plant that hasn’t been watered in days and a faded fire evacuation plan. Looks like my nearest exit is the window behind me. 

I tell him about the code pink—baby in distress—and that Addison spent her first days on Earth in the neonatal intensive care unit due to a slow heart rate. I don’t tell him about my fears during our separation. While Addison tackled those early days on her own, anxiety was my constant companion. I worried she would find it hard to trust me after her abandonment. As a woman who never got along with her own mother, my concern for my future relationship with my daughter had been almost as worrisome to me as her health. 

“You all right, there?” he asks, referring to my thumb, which I’ve picked raw and is now bleeding.

“I’m fine.” I wipe my thumb on my maternity jean shorts that I thought would be packed up in a box by four months postpartum. 

“We’re almost done here.” He licks the tip of his ballpoint pen and doodles some more in his notebook. “It sounds like the last few months have been quite eventful. Moving cities, a new baby. How do you normally respond to change?” 

If I’m honest, we could be here for a while. I chew on the inside of my lip. It sounds like a job interview. I answer correctly and I get to be Addison’s mother. I’m not sure I want to know what answering wrong will mean. 

“How have you responded to change in the past?” he presses. 

“Listen, Mr. …” I have completely forgotten his name. 

“Just call me Herb,” he says.

“Herb, right. Mommy brain.” It makes me physically cringe. I told myself I would never be one of those women who become flighty after they have a baby, and who use that horrible phrase. “I’m confused as much as anyone about this. Would you mind bringing me up to speed on the complaint? Who called it in? What exactly do you mean by next steps?” My left breast throbs as it swells. “I have to get home to feed Addison.” I adjust my bra strap to drill in my point. 

Herb presents a flow chart. A masochistic choose-your-own-adventure. It begins with a complaint. Likely one of my neighbors who heard Addy crying outside. Then the organization decides whether the complaint warrants an investigation. In my case, it does.

I bury my face in my hands. I’m running on four hours of sleep and my breast has started to leak, my milk pooling in my bra. Herb wraps up his list of questions, avoiding eye contact, and advises that someone will be stopping by the house unannounced in the upcoming week. 

I will have to start changing out of my pajamas. 

#

Rain cascades down the windshield, offering hope that the sticky heat we’ve experienced throughout September will make way for autumn. I let the heavy drops fill the entire windshield before turning the wipers on.

After about ten minutes of stop-and-go driving, I turn right onto the rural road that takes me along the Oak Ridges Moraine—nearly one hundred miles of protected green that spans from the Niagara escarpment east to Trent River. Its rolling hills and forests suffocated on the north and south by expanding urban development.

This untouched green drew me to our town, but the urban amenities convinced JP to move here. Best of both worlds, really. Our house is a five-minute walk from a plaza with a grocery store, hair salon, and doctor’s office. It’s also down the street from a dairy farm. We’ve only had buyer’s remorse on sweltering days when the manure from the farm fills the air.

The road is empty, so I increase my speed to twenty over the maximum. I’ve yet to see a traffic cop doing radar on this stretch of the highway and can’t wait any longer to see Addison. When I arrive, I’ll need to feed her and put her to bed. I’m trying to stick with a consistent sleep schedule. 

I’ll also have to face JP and explain that I have no idea how Addy ended up outside. That I have no recollection of the time after I put her in her bassinet for her nap and decided to take one myself. If it wasn’t for my sister Amy’s phone call, I might not have woken up when I did.

I turn up the radio in hopes that Michael Buble’s crooning will drown out my thoughts, but the song ends, and “Hungry like the Wolf” takes over. My wiper blades match the tempo of the bass, and my mind goes to a dark place. I think of Diane Downs, the mother who shot and killed her daughter and left her other two kids in critical condition, all while the Duran Duran song played on her car radio. I guess I can thank my college intro-to-psychology course for that mental image.

This is ridiculous. I love Addison. I would never do anything to hurt her. Logistically, it makes no sense—how could I even move her bassinet while I was asleep? And, more importantly, why would I do something like that? The whole thing is absurd. When Addison cries, I’m the first to run to her side. That’s how it’s always been.

I admit the first couple of months were hard. I barely felt like a human. Every mother must feel overwhelmed in the beginning. That experience was not unique to me, and I’m doing so much better now. There are times when I might do something without remembering—forget a load of laundry in the washer, leave the milk out on the counter—but I’ve never put Addison at risk. 

I grip the wheel harder and press down on the pedal, the speedometer rising along with my heart rate.

Of course, I found those early days on our own an adjustment. Getting into the rhythm of the new sleep schedule, stressing about my milk coming in, worrying about Addison’s weight gain. Bath time was my Everest. How would I get everything ready for the bath while also looking after her? I’d have to balance the changing pad on the bathroom counter so that it wouldn’t fall into the sink. Then I would sponge bathe her with my free hand, all the while avoiding her umbilical cord stump, which couldn't get wet, which is precisely why I had to sponge bathe her instead of running a real bath—which, oh my god, was going to be even harder to do on my own.

Then there were the hallucinations that happened for the first few weeks after Addy’s birth. But they were just dreams, weren’t they? They only happened during the night between bursts of sleep. Every night I would dream I was nursing Addy in bed. I was sitting up, leaning back on my pillow, which was propped up against the headboard. She was in my arms, suckling, half-asleep. It all felt very real. But then I would wake up, and she wasn’t in my arms. I had dropped her. She was suffocating under the duvet. I would wake JP in a panic, frantically feeling around us in bed, crying out, “I can’t find her—she’s somewhere under the covers!” He had to grab me by the shoulders, shake me back to reality, convince me that she was perfectly fine beside me in the bassinet. I moved into the guest room with Addy, so  we wouldn’t disturb JP, and we’ve been sleeping there ever since. These nightmares stopped shortly after—as soon as I got my sleep under control. Nothing too concerning.  Sleep deprivation is real.

A train’s whistle screams, overpowering the song that still mocks me on the radio and I realize how close I am to the tracks. I slam on the brakes and squeeze my eyes shut. The ground rumbles beneath me as the train races past. I open my eyes. 

Oh, dear God, how could I have ignored the crossing sign screaming at me? How did I not notice its flashing red lights?