I peek through the door of my daughter’s bedroom and find her sitting on the edge of her bed, rocking back and forth, back and forth, humming a soft and comforting melody. In her arms, she cradles her own daughter, a tiny baby all chubby folds and sucking lips. Her little black eyes have just learned to open, and now stare wide up into her mother’s face. But her mother, my daughter, isn’t really rocking her. I can tell. She’s rocking herself, comforting herself.

She whimpers, and the tears start again. Not my granddaughter, who still stares serenely like a painting of the Christ-child in Mary’s arms, but my daughter. Her tears drop onto baby girl’s cheek, and the little one blinks and shivers and returns her fierce gaze to her mother’s face. 

Gingerly, I open the door wide enough to slip in and my daughter shifts the baby in her arms, mashes her face in the crook of her sleeve to dry her eyes, and fakes a smile that turns down at the corners. I kiss her forehead and it feels feverish on my lips. When she was the baby, suffering from some bug or another, I bounced her in my arms around the house or sat with her on the floor of the bathroom, the hot shower running, clouds of steam whirling around us as if we had ascended through the clouds. Her wisp of a smile fades and her tears flow again, more forcefully now, shaking her frame underneath my touch.

I clear a place on the bed beside her, stacking away the unopened Trigonometry and British Literature textbooks, the school laptop and piles of papers near the corner of the bed, careful not to let them topple off. Sitting beside her, I slip my arm around her shoulders like I did just a few years ago, when some stupid middle school boy she had inexplicably fallen in love with had rejected and embarrassed her.

“I still don’t love her,” she whispers. “You told me I would grow to love her, everyone told me.” She brushes her wet cheek with her shoulder and repositions her silent, watchful infant in the crook of her arm. “I feel like I’m holding someone else’s baby. Like I’m holding a dolly. And he doesn’t even call anymore, not even to check up on her. Or me.” 

I open my mouth to say something, some words of comfort or wisdom, but no sound comes out. She looks up at me with her reddened and sleep-deprived eyes, and I look away. The black eyes of stuffed bears rebuke me from their places propped against pillows. Look at her, they say.

Instead, I look into my granddaughter’s eyes, which are my daughter’s eyes, which are my eyes. I wrap my arms around both of them, creating a circle, a halo, a holy trinity. The father, the daughter, and the new life. Pulling them both close to me and to each other, I hold them together, as if they might fly apart at any moment if I let go.

The baby reaches for her mother’s face with one chubby hand, two fingers extended to the heavens. Her hand flutters in the air a bit, then lights on her mother’s mouth, pulling her lips open and letting them slap shut with a wet popping noise. 

Baby girl laughs.

It’s a giggly, sly sound that brightens her face, her first laugh ever. The music of it fills the bedroom, bounces off the walls and transforms into color and light, brightening the space around us, filling the air with the sweet perfume of her happiness. The tones and colors and scents of her laugh pierce me and I laugh with her, a wordless joke that passes between us.

My daughter doesn’t laugh, doesn’t move. Her eyes seem fixed on the open doorway.

Baby girl’s laughter stops, and the room goes quiet and still again, the colors already draining from the walls, the bedding, the bears, and ourselves. We make a dark painting, the three of us. Or maybe we are two different paintings—my Pieta, my daughter’s Nativity.

But baby girl still glows. Around her head, the light of heaven shines. Her hopeful black eyes stare at her mother, my daughter, and will her to love. It is an ancient spell, I know. Under my arm, my daughter’s shoulders relax, and she exhales a long sigh. Lifting her child, she kisses the tiny forehead, kisses each watchful eye, until her face bathes in baby girl’s light.

Jeffray Harrison is a writer and high school English teacher living in South Florida, trying to squeeze writing in between his day job and spending time with his family. In what little time remains, he enjoys biking, swimming, and playing open world video games. His debut novel, Thy Father's Glass, released in May 2023.

Twitter - @mixedandblended

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Author Website: www.Jeffrayharrison.com