Amber was being melodramatic.
That was the only explanation she had for the utter misery that ravaged her stunned, dazed body. She was ridiculously fortunate to have seven men in her entourage, and Rumi's body never left the arms of her fathers.
The child did not need to lie in her mother's paralyzed arm for more than a few minutes at a time. And there was plenty of excuse not to, between sips of seaweed soup her soulmates insisted she consume, and with the stitches lining her belly like traps that could spring open with blood.
Their enthusiasm was a blessing in disguise, one that made guilt stir in Amber's guts.
While she did not want to hold the child longer than she needed to, her soulmates were determined to carry her as long as they could. Her lovers had expected a premature baby—riddled with blue veins and skin so thin it was almost see-through.
More than once they spoke tales of themselves, circling outside the operation theatre picturing an infant strapped into a machine that whirred. A child covered with tubes that fed and nourished, a child on the brink of death.
None dared to dream of the baby that was healthy enough to take each breath on her own and move with an energy unlike one of her size. And that seemed to fuel her soulmates with a grateful zeal for the riches they were blessed with. A benefit to the ordeal that could only get worse.
There were moments when Amber watched as her soulmates whispered sweet nothings to their daughter, gentle smiles that had her heart melting for their radiating love. Her heart was not immune to what she could only describe as the picture-perfect image of their future.
JieMi would kiss Rumi as MinJae bent over to watch, giggling as their heads bumped and the child stared. Sunlight bathed the trio in a wash of gold, as the others jiggled toys and took photographs of the smiling baby. Rumi seemed to like them more than Amber, evident in the gummy smiles she gave them. It was a thought that greatly disturbed Amber and made the task of loving her seem harder.
The baby and her soulmates were generic symbols of love, models of parenthood illuminated by soft sun and sweet little gurgles. A bleeding contrast to the failure that was Amber's heart, so lacking in love, and so lacking in empathy. And God, she hated these thoughts, knew with deadly accuracy that her head was harping on dangerous self-loathing words that one shouldn't repeat.
No one could be perfect.
She shouldn't even try to be.
And there was no reason for her to strive or think of the difficulties of achieving such perfection. It was idiotic; it was childish. It was ideas that shouldn't grace the mind of an adult that should know by now that adults were never perfect.
As much as she'd boasted about perfection in the eyes of Casper's family, there was no law tying her to achieve such ideals. She didn't have to make homemade food if she couldn't do it. She didn't have to worry about fucking up when she had yet to learn or try.
Amber just wasn't mentally prepared for the weight of Rumi that she had to bear on her shoulders. Amber would get better with time. She was sure of it. Her soulmates were sure of it.
And of course, the relationship she had with her child shouldn't bear the brunt of such vicious thoughts. Notions that she should stamp out like a wet towel or baking soda to grease fire in the pot, instead of the bucket of water she seemed to continuously douse upon the flames. Even if the thoughts felt right, just as how water to fire felt right. It was knowledge that would burn her to the ground.
Her child.
It was starting to register in her head, the idea that this stranger had been borne from her body, laid silently in her guts like a corpse in a cemetery. While the child was ugly—none would deny that she was wrinkled like an elderly, wailed like a banshee and frowned so deep her eyes always seemed angry—Amber would admit that Rumi was cute with her tiny fingers and toes.
Miniature things were adorable.
Always.
How blessed you are, her in-laws said through video calls, that you didn't experience a single one of the Godawful parts of pregnancy.
The crazed attempts to impregnate during ovulation; the nausea that plagued through oversensitive nostrils; the inability to sleep through the night; and then the constant need to piss because she just couldn't fully empty her bladder with a child sleeping on her organs.
And then of course, they questioned the reasons why she didn't know of Rumi's existence.
Wouldn't you have felt her kick?
Your belly should have felt round and hard...
There's no way you didn't know right?
Good fucking God, Amber would be fucking thankful if she knew those fluttery growls of gas in her belly had actually been her tiny little daughter pounding a weak fist against her fleshy walls. She would have been a million times happier if she'd learnt of Rumi's existence months before she was born.
At least then she had a damned choice. Phantom as it was with her soulmates desperately eager for child, and her youngest lover traumatized by abortions, the choice was everything to her. The ability itself was a form of liberation that Amber so dearly lacked. At least then she would be certain that she wanted Rumi, that she anticipated Rumi, that she loved Rumi.
But all that sarcastic anger in her head would later come with a sickening realization that maybe she did know something was wrong. That everything could have been prevented if she chose to acknowledge her pea brained self that thought— Even though I'm menstruating, I could be pregnant, right?
On hindsight, she would later admit that the blood that spewed from her vagina was a tad lesser than normal. And that there had always been a niggling little possibility in her head that somehow all the contraception had failed on her. That she'd panicked about pregnancy more than once as she snatched the birth control from its box, fearful when she had been a late to consume it.
She'd assumed the world had been going her way, until the path vanished under her feet and she was left stranded in the sky.
The lack of preparation first slammed its ugly fist against her head when the task of feeding her daughter came up. Amber had to eventually, now that she was awake and well enough to become her daughter's personal 24/7 restaurant. At first, she'd been genuinely excited about the prospect of bonding with her daughter.
Assumptions loomed in her head of a child latching upon the nipple, an easy smile dripping from a love-melted mother. The sweet eye contact, the warm cuddling, the cultivation of a beautiful relationship. The maternal bond she should have developed during pregnancy and child birth would be rightfully given during lactation.
Maternal Oxytocin circulation was what she needed; science seemed to say.
Breastfeeding hormones would rouse her from the soup of stress, bring forth empowerment and heal the trauma of all that she'd experienced. It would brainwash her straight to become the mothers she knew and the mother she expected to be. It was all just more crap that her brain repeated in poorly educated circles of nerves.
Or at least that was what the articles said in a harped, squeaky sing song voice. Just as peaceful was the videos that the hospital shared and the pamphlets of smiling mothers and smiling babies. Amber decided later that those were written by people who felt nothing in their nipples, people who'd already punctured their tits into oblivion and were numbed to the bone.
Normality.
She wanted to achieve normality: to be the same as every mother in the entire society.