brooke laurel / fiction

The Forgetting Room

The house is quiet in a way that feels intentional. No music, no T.V., no movement, no conversation. Just the hum of the fridge and the schhhh of the baby monitor. I’m not sure when it became like this, whether I turned everything off, one by one by one, or if, slowly, the sound just began to retreat.

Gabriel’s chest rises and falls in the tiny blue bassinet opposite the window. He is sleeping in our room for now. Adam originally wanted the bassinet to be beneath the window, it looked nicer in the room that way, until I had to explain that that wasn’t recommended for safe sleep. I didn’t have to say more than that for him to shrug and get to pushing it across the floor to the far wall, and I was grateful. It would have been embarrassing if I had to explain that I had visualized the possibility of the large tree outside violently shaking one night during a summer storm, sending a thick branch clean through the window to skewer our son’s chest. 

But he isn’t sleeping near the window, and so he is okay. 

And there is no storm outside, only a sharp light encroaching through the blinds that I am trying to fight off to keep him asleep for just a little bit longer. He is six days and four hours old, and I watch him carefully from the bed to be sure he is breathing. I’ve been on edge since his birth, certainly—some jitters for a new mom were to be expected, as I had been warned via many a patient survey. So we stay home, just the two of us, where it is comfortable. Where the milk-stained bra inserts and bloodied mesh underwear is disposable, and the sun-blocking curtains can stay closed around the clock. 

My body is soft, but not in the sensual, grown-up way that I had imagined motherhood might be. It is new, and unfamiliar. I don’t look like me, I don’t feel like me. I brush my teeth sometimes, and my hair less often. Never both. Or, rather, not yet? 

So, because of all this, I have been trying to keep my eyes down when passing the mirror in the hallway. Perhaps once shinier, the ornate bronze scrolling around the edges was worn in deliberate loops and swirls. It was bought secondhand by someone’s someone, and had been in my mom’s house for as long as I could remember. When I finally moved out, she sent it with me to take. It might have been her mother’s before her, but I wasn’t sure. It was old. 

Today I hadn’t kept from looking in it though, and in a slight accidental glance, I noticed something wrong. 

I thought it was a smudge. the reflection was off—not warped, but like the light was bending around me. I tilted my head, and in a sleep-deprived trick of the mind, the second me followed suit just a second after. I held Gabe up to look at himself (he can’t yet, of course), and emphasized the handsome baby on the wall. 

He truly is gorgeous. Everyone says their own baby is the prettiest one, I know, but I think ours really is. His eyes are clear and sustained like the darkest point of a blue sky, and turn down just slightly at the corners, full lashes dark and delicate. In a way that could bring me to my knees, he is beautiful. 

Often, when it is just us in the long quiet of the early morning, I use my fingers to trace the arch of his brow, the slope of his nose, the teeny sharp point of his cupid’s bow. I try to study his face as it changes. His features are soft and cherubic, like a High Renaissance painting of an angel.

He looks like Adam, or so everyone has said. He wouldn’t know, he wouldn’t have seen how quickly Gabriel is already growing in just one week, because he’s not here. Shortly after the birth, once the dust had settled and we were resting in recovery, he was headed out the door. Just a few more weeks, as he had explained leading up to birth, and he would have something new lined up, something different/stable/better, something that could finally give us what we need. Gabe had come sooner than expected, and we were still in the process of getting “baby ready,” financially, mentally, and more—because of that, with a lot of hope and a little trepidation, we were going to be flying blind for a bit. I would take a break from research, and Adam would look for some extra work to cover the difference. He had convinced me, this was just the way it had to be for a little while longer. Adam’s drive was initially what drew me to him; he had a way of making you believe that when he was promising the moon, he was really going to be able to grab it and yank it down. 

But now, these promises just made me feel lonely, as though they had barely snipped the thread after the last stitch before he was gone. 

He calls in the evenings sometimes, and sometimes he texts instead. 

Hang in there babe

Your doing amazing :)

You GOT THIS!!

It’s sweet, but also strange. Like he’s cheering from the sidelines of a game I don’t remember agreeing to play. 

And I don’t know if I really have got this. The days bleed together, and it’s hard to keep everything straight sometimes. To prevent that, the midwife had suggested a notebook. “Write things down,” she explained, “Even the small stuff. It helps you process. Helps you remember what matters.”

So I write, as often as I can. Short little notes. Observations. Reminders. Stuff that matters. 

12/5 a.m. Woke up wet-- leak if I don’t feed him overnight. Painful. 

12/5 p.m. Forgot if I brushed my teeth. Did it again just in case!

12/6 lunchtime. Gabe cooed when I made the owl sound.

12/7 p.m. Crying so much still! Not sure why?

12/8 a.m. Try more of the “arms up” swaddles. Don’t know what they’re called.

Quickly, the notebook became an anchor. Even when I don’t know what’s going on, when I don’t know what day it is, I can flip back through the pages to find myself again. And I see proof that time has passed, proof I’ve done things, that I’ve been here.

This morning, I opened to a new page, and saw that it had already been used. 

12/9 a.m. It’s getting easier now! Don’t you love your new life?

The handwriting was mine. Probably. It looked the same, but I don’t remember writing it. Not just the content, either—I don’t know when I sat down and opened the journal at all today. The ink was dark and bold, the indentation deep and confident. More confident than I had felt in weeks. 

I flipped back to the previous entry. 

12/8 p.m. AH spilled coffee near the bassinet. At least the mug was clean! I think. 

That one I remember. For a second, as Gabe snoozed below me, I bit down hard on my arm and was so mad I nearly screamed. And I tried to clean it up in the dark, but the floor was still the littlest bit tacky under my feet. Rosie has been licking that spot all day. 

So, the entry from this morning didn’t line up. Was that really today? Yesterday? 

Gabe stirred in his sleep, grunting as his arms startled up over his head. 

Did I love my new life? 

I used to think the question was whether I would be a good mother. I hadn’t thought to worry about whether or not I would still be me at the end of it.

I closed the journal and placed it next to me on the bed, heading to the kitchen to try again with another coffee. Unsteady on my feet, I approached the hallway mirror and saw the same warped light, like looking through heat shimmer. My reflection’s eyes were too slow to catch mine. 

I touched the glass. Cool. Solid. No reason to worry. No reason to think anything was wrong.

Maybe this is just what being a mother is. My own mom had tried to reassure me recently, her eyes carefully watching mine over two steaming bowls of a beef stew she had insisted on bringing over, that "The early days are a fog… you’ll come back to yourself eventually”. She had four of us, and she says things like that a lot. They sound wise when she says them. 

Don’t you love your new life? Maybe I had written it late at night, between wake-ups and long, loud cries. But when I tried to picture it—the thought, my hand, the pen—I saw nothing. And “getting easier”? What was I talking about? 

Later, while Gabriel nursed against me, I peered out the open door of our bedroom back to the mirror in the hall. I couldn’t see my own face from this angle, just the bend of my elbow cradling him, and the blurred shape of his soft back. 

The reflection was still and peaceful. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I watched long enough, I would find something very wrong. 

*

Next to me, the phone rang, and I answered.

“Hi, Mom.” My voice came out scratchy and unused.

“Hey, honey!” she sang, “Just calling to check in. How’s my grandbaby?”

“He’s okay.” I smiled down at him as he snored though an open milky mouth. I understood why everyone asked about him first. I would, too. “Sleeping now.”

“And what about his mom? Getting any sleep at all?”

I hesitated. “Some. I guess. I’m forgetting everything, it feels like.” 

 “Oh, yeah, that sounds about right. Where’s my phone, forgot the grocery list, is the oven on… the number of times I left the keys in the door when I came in! I’m surprised I never brushed my teeth with diaper cream.”

“Right,” I said, thought it didn’t feel quite the same. 

“Seriously, everyone goes through it! You’ll get your bearings soon enough. Just take it a day at a time.”

“Can I go slower than that?” I joked softly, gazing down at him.

 “And you’ll call me if you need anything, right?”

“Yeah, mom.” Nope. 

“Okay, you better. Call me soon, too. I love you.”

Early the next morning, we drove down the street to the pediatrician’s office, for Gabriel’s one-week checkup. I packed two sizes of diaper, double-checked the extra extra spare outfit, sealed each lotion in a Ziploc bag, and got us both out the door ten minutes ahead of time. Waiting in a pleasantly wallpapered room, I bounced my leg and answered questions. 

My phone number, our address, his name. Date of birth. 

I stalled. The nurse turned from her screen for the first time to look at me, and her fingers hesitated over the keyboard, waiting for my answer. It was taking too long.

“Date of birth? 29^th of November, right?”

“Yes, right, eleven twenty-nine,” I nodded quickly. Idiot. “Sorry, I—sleep deprivation.”

“Totally normal,” she replied gently, “You’re doing great.”

I smiled, but it felt thin. 

After the appointment, and perhaps too soon overall, I met up with Jess from prenatal  yoga. She was farther along in her pregnancy than I was when we met, and now her daughter was already sitting up. We sat by the windows in a café, and Gabe dozed, bundled up in his stroller. 

I picked at a chicken sandwich, if for no other reason than to keep the milk supply up. The lettuce looked strange. Too bright. 

“You look tired,” Jess said, not unkindly. 

“I feel tired,” I said. Then I tried to laugh. “Honestly, I barely got dressed to come. I’m wearing a diaper! And I forgot his birthday at the doctor right before this. Can you believe that?”

She laughed, too. "Been there."

“I was a student. Now I feel like the dumbest doctoral candidate alive.”

She offered nothing, her lips pressed tight in a pitiful smile. 

"I used to paint!" I said suddenly. "Watercolor! I can’t even imagine doing it now."

Jess nodded, “Oh, yeah. David and I hiked all the time before Maeve.” She turned to her daughter to wipe dribble with her bib. “I would take pictures in the woods, or of the lake... and everyone says to just take them with you, but that’s more trouble than it’s worth, you know?” 

“Does it come back?”

She looked down at her plate. “Not really. It just changes. You change.”

The way she said it wasn’t sad, but it landed heavy.

At home that evening, I caught the mirror again. This time, in the cool dark, Gabriel’s reflection was glassy, his legs stretching out contentedly as he slept in my arms. Him, I could see more clearly than anything. But as I looked to see myself, I delayed again. 

Then, for a second, I wasn’t in the picture at all. 

I blinked, and there I was again. Holding him. Rocking. Shushing, or maybe singing, my lips parted in a lullaby I didn’t recognize. But on my side of reality, I stood still, and my mouth was closed. 

I watched the movie playing out in front of me as, in the mirror, I finally looked up to meet my own gaze. My eyes grew wild as I rocked, and shushed, and sang and sang and sang. My eyes? 

I turned away quickly, my face hot with panic. 

*

That night, after Gabe finally went down, I wandered through the hallway, barefoot, my notebook held tight against my body under my arm. I didn’t want it out of my sight. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly… proof, maybe? A foothold. Something that could remind me who I had been before this. Before leaking breasts and shit stains and the person in the mirror who didn’t feel quite like me. 

I stopped at the linen closet. It wasn’t a decision—there was no reason to think anything would be in there—but something about it called to me. I opened the door. I started shifting towels, fitted sheets, infant Tylenol, a box labeled “clothes 3-6M”. I kept digging. Behind the quilts was a cardboard moving box, taped lazily shut, without a label. 

I pulled it off its shelf onto the floor, and sat. I peeled back the tape. 

Paints. The palette, cracked in the corner where I had dropped it in the kitchen once years ago. The blue sketchbook, with pages curling up at the corners where they had been wet. I ran my fingers down the coil binding, and opened it. Portraits finished and unfinished, color washes, florals. At the bottom of each, my signature. I kept flipping, until I saw all of the blank pages that I seemingly never got to. 

Below that, a plastic storage case of printed photos. Me—young, smiling, arms slung around people I almost didn’t remember. Standing at the edge of the surf on the beach, digging for clams in the sand. Smiling back from the passenger seat of a car. Laid out on a blanket with a bottle of pink wine, weaving dandelion weeds into chains. It was my face, but younger. Lighter.

Next to that, notebooks. Research notes. Annotated bibliographies. Photocopies of articles that I guess I had printed. A university ID with the same face, but different last name. I was working on a dissertation. I remembered that—sort of. But there was proof: my own thoughts, scribbled with passion and clarity that now felt disconnected from me. 

I sat back.

This was me. This had been me. I had been someone before. 

My hands buzzing, I reached for the phone. He answered on the third ring, groggy. “Therese? What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember who I was?” I asked. My voice sounded far away to my own ears. 

As though I could hear him rubbing his eyes: “What?”

“Before Gabe. Before all this. Do you remember who I was? ‘Cause there’s all this stuff. There’s pictures, and I was painting—I don’t remember me.”

Silence. Then, tentatively, “Honey, it’s so late. And this week had been really hard. Do you think you need to rest, maybe?”

Quickly, sharply, “No. Don’t do that.” And then, “Something’s wrong. I’m forgetting things. I don’t even know if I’m writing the journal anymore. I looked the mirror—”

“T, stop.”

“—and I wasn’t there.”

He was more assertive now. “Therese, stop it. You’re overwhelmed. You need to pause. You’re spiraling, you always do this when you’re upset. But you’re fine, okay? Gabe’s fine. Just go to bed.” 

“I’m serious! You’re not listening to me.”

“No, because you’re not making sense! You’re acting—honestly? You sound crazy right now.”

Betrayal. 

When I was quiet, he let out a heavy breath. “Look, I have to be up in four hours. I’ll text you in the morning. You have to get some sleep, okay?”

Click. 

I sat there, heart in my throat, as the light from my phone filled the hallway with an uncanny white. I didn’t cry, not right away. 

Nearby, the baby monitor crackled. I looked up. 

Gabriel stirred gently in his crib, dreaming peacefully among the artificial rain coming from his white noise machine. Then, I saw it. 

In the warm red glow of the night light, a figure stood over him. 

Me. 

It was me, unmistakably. The same robe, the same unbrushed hair falling limp around my shoulders, the same defeated posture. But I was sitting in the hallway. 

She leaned over him, placed a hand on his chest. 

I blinked hard. 

The screen faltered. I was gone. 

The next morning, I woke to a strange clarity. Like the fog had lifted. Gabe wasn’t awake yet as I breathed in the clean air of a storm passed. I even showered. Washed my hair. Put on jeans. 

We pulled into the parking lot for Gabriel’s one-week checkup. It had been rescheduled to today—I think. I wasn’t entirely sure. 

We rode the elevator up, up, up together. I watched the floors tick by. Gabe made sweet little noises in his carrier and I bounced him instinctively, feeling like a mother. 

The elevator slowed on floor five. The doors opened. 

A man pushing a custodial bin stepped in. He smiled as we went up. “Beautiful. How old?”

I smiled back and opened my mouth. Nothing came out. 

He wavered. The silence stretched for hours. 

Then, the doors opened onto my floor. 

He stepped out, apparently headed in the same direction, and turned back with a polite but confused smile. “What a blessing.”

I didn’t move. 

The doors closed again. In their chrome surface, my unfamiliar face stared back. The elevator hummed, quiet and suspended. 

The smile was wide, with wet teeth. Harrowing and uncanny. 

Behind it my eyes screamed, unblinking, as thick tears began to crawl down my cheeks.

---

Brooke Laurel lives in the valley of Western Massachusetts with her wife, newborn son, and their senior rescue dog. A new writer in the feminist noir space, her work explores themes of identity erosion, bodily autonomy, and domestic surrealism. She is inspired by her personal and observed experiences surrounding the disenfranchisement of the female body, motherhood and identity, and the perceived purpose of women. She believes writing, like all art, is a tool of visibility and resistance.