LJ Idol season 7: Week 20; Whisper
“Don’t worry about her, Molly...she’ll fine. That’s what the baby monitor is for.”
I thought my fears were rational ones. As a new mother, I didn’t want to leave my little girl alone in her crib that first night. But how many mothers do? I was fearful of every little sound she made, worried she would stop breathing or something. I wanted to protect her, watch over her....
I tried to talk my husband into putting her crib next to our bed, but he simply refused. He thought my fears were irrational and that letting her sleep near us would only be encouraging me to be more fearful and needy of our little girl.
So he just kept telling me that’s what the baby monitor was for, and I suppose he was right...but could you blame me for worrying? With one last kiss goodnight and a quick check to see if her pacifier was still in her mouth, I was off to bed myself.
I tossed and I turned, sleep was not coming on easily. I listened to make sure she was breathing and she always was, of course. My baby was fine. My anxiety was all for nothing. She was sleeping soundly, and I knew I should be as well. After all, she would need me to wake up and feed her in a matter of hours...I slowly drifted off to a restless sleep.
I dozed off for a minute? For an hour? I really don’t know. I heard a soft cry from the baby monitor, and my motherly instincts kicked in and I woke up, fully alert. It was a soft cry, nothing more...I waited to see if she fell back asleep before jumping to her attention right away. That’s when I heard a voice.
“Hush, my child...”
My heart jumped from my chest, I quickly nudged my husband.
“JOHN! There’s someone in the baby’s room!”
I quickly jumped out of bed and ran into the room, my husband had barely registered what I said and took his time waking himself up. He wasn’t an easy person to wake up, and I knew that if someone were in Lily’s room, I’d have to take care of it myself.
I ran down the hallway and there was no crying, no other sounds that I could hear, but I just knew I had heard a voice....
I opened the door and there was Lily, sleeping soundly in her crib with her pacifier still in place. She looked happy and content, no sign of distress in the slightest.
John was behind me, looking over the room himself.
“Jesus Christ, Molly! What’s going on here?”
“I heard something on the baby monitor...a voice.” I glanced around the room, there was no sign of anything going on. No one was there. The window was firmly closed and besides, we were on the third floor of our apartment complex. Could someone really climb all this way to break into the nursery?
“It was nothing but a stupid dream! Dammit , Molly.... Some of us have to get up early for work!” He was always grumpy when he first woke up...but I still didn’t think it gave him the right to yell at me even if he was right. I must have been dreaming. There was no one here. Max, our dog, would have barked had someone came in the front door. He was still asleep on the couch in the living room, calm as could be.
John looked at me with fear in his eyes...but not fearful that someone had broken in while we slept down the hall. Oh no, he was fearful of me. His own wife. He didn’t have to say anything, I already knew the thoughts that crossed his mind.
There was no winning this one, so I just walked out of the room and crawled back into the safety of my bed. I pulled the blankets up around me tightly as John turned off the light and crawled back in bed beside me. I couldn’t see through the dark, but I knew he was annoyed with me. This would be a discussion for another time, but not right now. We all needed sleep right now.
That night, I continued to dream. I dreamt of an older woman singing in a beautiful, clear voice as she rocked in the rocking chair that was in Lily’s room.
Golden slumber kiss your eyes,
Smiles await you when you rise.
Sleep, pretty baby, Do not cry,
And I'll sing you a lullaby.
I already knew the rest of the song since it was one sung to me in my sleep many times over the years. She was always elderly, never growing any older even as I did so myself. Her hair was grey, her eyes were so light blue that they were almost white. I felt like I could see heaven in those eyes if I looked hard enough, but I never got to stare at her face long enough to get that far since she always turned her head away after a second or two. Her face was gently wrinkled, but her smile was always kind and full of love.
She always sang the same song to help me sleep at night. I would close my eyes, lay my head in her lap and listen to the sweet words that would fill my ears as I slowly descended into the darkness of sleep, finally feeling at peace with myself.
And yet, the doctors and everyone else wanted to take that away from me because it wasn’t “normal”. They claimed my visions and my dreams were fake and that it was all caused my a chemical imbalance in my brain that needed to be fixed so I could be a normal member of society.
Why did they want to take her away from me so badly? Why must I conform to everyone else’s standards for what is normal? Asking these questions just further proved that I was crazy in their minds, so no questions were ever asked. I did what they told me, took their pills when I was forced to and tried my best to conform to society’s view of what I should be to avoid bringing any more attention to myself.
But every now and then, like now, I would skip my pills in favor of really feeling alive instead of a sedated version of myself. With Lily’s birth, I wanted to truly feel the joy of being a new mother...and the pills would surely hinder such joy. No one would ever noticed, would they?
At least for the time being, her singing continued and soon blanketed me in the peaceful darkness of sleep.
Care you know not,
Therefore sleep,
While I o'er you watch do keep.
Sleep, pretty darling, Do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby.
The next day, my husband sat at the kitchen table with the bottles of pills laid out before him. He had counted them out and seen that I hadn’t taken a single one since getting my prescription filled a month ago. I knew I should have thrown some away to make it less obvious. A couple? I could claim I forgot...but it was obvious I hadn’t taken a single pill within the last month.
He was not happy with me.
“Please...I’m not crazy...I promise...” I sobbed softly.
“No, Molly...you’re not crazy, but you have a chemical imbalance or something....you need to be medicated. Think of Lily? What would happen if you went mad and did something that hurt her?”
“Oh God, John...I would never hurt her! You know me better than that! I’m not crazy!” My quiet sobs were replaced by angry words... he had crossed the line by bringing our daughter into this.
“Sweetie, do you really want to go back to the hospital?” John tried to play it off with compassion...but I knew he had very little compassion for my illness. He wanted his wife to stop hearing things, stop seeing things that weren’t there. He wanted me to be “normal” and he was convinced the right combination of pills would magically transform me into a woman that I simply wasn’t.
“No, I can’t go...I can’t leave my baby..”
“Then take the pills, sweetheart...and everything will be just fine...” he slowly passed a handful of drugs toward me with a glass of water.
I had no choice. He had the perfect leverage this time: my baby. He knew I couldn’t leave her and that I would do anything to not abandon her like my own mother did to me. I swallowed them down and said goodbye to the lady in my dreams. They had me. John and the doctors knew that I would never leave my daughter’s side, thus I would never risk going off the medicine again. I would lose my dreams forever before exchanging my daughter for the mental hospital.
My husband was wrong though, nothing would ever be fine again.
I would never be the woman he wanted to be, there would never be enough drugs to make me be the normal wife he craved so much....but he would never give up in trying.
Ten years later, Lily is by my side, as she often is during the evenings when she comes home from school. I know she is there...but at the same time, I can’t really respond more than a simple mumble “hello” or a nod of the head. I couldn’t be the best company to my sweet child, but she always sits by my side, reading me books or telling me stories about her friends. I’m not very good company thanks to the newest round of drugs taking hold of my system and seducing me into a comatose like state.
“Mommy...are you there?”
I can barely mumble a response in my hazy state of being.
“Let me sing you a song...maybe that would make you feel better...”
She started singing softly as she stroked my hair. The words...they were so familiar? I wanted to ask her where she had heard the song before, but I could barely move my lips.
Golden slumber kiss your eyes,
Smiles await you when you rise.
In that moment, I knew exactly where she had heard it as I drifted off to sleep.