My Baby

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When my daughter was two, we got a friendly letter from our local drug company representative. Did we know our daughter was bipolar? 

No. I had hoped she took after her father instead.

A data company had paid the city to tear open our trash bags to get at flakes of skin in her nappies. They noted her genetic predisposition and tucked it away. Mere predisposition isn't destiny.

But from the video I sent my mother of her first steps, they knew definitively. The sound of her fat feet smacking on my kitchen tile correlated with other facts in a computer the size of a mountain. That mountain houses an AI whose mind has evolved beyond the comprehension of its creators. It defined my limits and now hers.

Her pediatrician gave me a pamphlet at her next checkup, although he must have known I'm bipolar in the same way I know he has arthritis. Her daycare worker, whose grandfather dealt heroin, knew to look for night terrors at naptime. Our grocery store clerk, a nice young man with a roman nose and an unpaid parking ticket, handed us coupons for brain-boosting vitamins.

Her tantrums were thirty-seven percent longer than her older brother's were at her age. She started kicking her heels out from under herself and making herself fall. Once she did it on the tile. The same kitchen where she pulled herself up on my step stool, stood, and ventured across the great expanse between the countertops, from infancy into childhood.

I took her to the E. R. for stitches. It wasn't my fault, they said. I knew it too. The camera on my laptop saw my stomach smack the ground as I landed a moment too late to catch her.

A behavioral health specialist visited my house, and we came up with strategies. My baby got a sticker for every day she didn't try to fall. We talked about what we do when we're overwhelmed, learned a little song.

She teaches it to her dolls while they're all bathing in the tub. Even Barbie gets overwhelmed sometimes, she tells me.

Getting the information implanted is an elective surgery, in the same way, getting braces is elective. People opt out. It's not what you do if you love your children.

Six months before her first day in primary school, we took her to the hospital. She came back with both eyes swollen shut. Eventually, she learned to sleep through the constant noise of what the neighbors are doing, what the stock market is doing, what mommy in the next room is doing.

On the first day of school, I dropped her off. She had a little red backpack and shoes to match. I couldn't help but peek in at recess through the school's security camera. Three girls and a boy, all mentally ill like her, were waiting for her by the slide. They played and talked about their nightmares.

I am so goddamn proud of her.