DECORUM
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'Buffy, Adriana, concentrate! Now! One in, one out! Go!'
Adriana is smiling at me and the corner of her mouth is twitching. After seven months, we read each other's moves with ease, and this one means trouble. In her own mercurial way, Adriana quickly falls in and out of love with training, with Slaying, with herself. And with Giles. When she loves him, she teases, and I am expected to join in. Injury often ensues, like now.
'Merde!' We're doing the quarterstaff again, and Portugal is practising her newly acquired wide repertoire of French 'euphemisms', no doubt to converse with Watcher Genevieve when she returns to Europe in three months. Paris doesn't know what it's in for.
Then, I've been told we Slayers are like that.
She lets me take point, but Giles, pads or no, has suffered enough punishment today.
'Down girl! Jeez, Portugal, you trying to kill him? Go kill your own Watcher. But then, Genevieve'd probably whip your ass.'
Giles groans. His armpads have slipped and Adriana scored a direct hit on his elbow. In theory, the idea is to fight at seventy-five percent and not wound the Watcher. Adriana left school before they did percentages, although she can take ten percent of anything. Sales tax, Aveiro style. Generally applying to fish.
It's Monday afternoon, and although the January air is cold and crisp, Giles has elected to take our training out of doors. Since the maternal support thing started happening, we've suddenly got a lawn to train on. Outdoors with privacy. When Mom said she didn't mind, I caught Giles mentally rubbing his hands together. The house has changed slightly, a minute shift toward madness. Having crossbows and quarterstaffs share closet space with ski jackets in jade and pink sort of take the edge off the weapons. As Mom says, it's not Gothic, but if you want the space....
Giles staggers to the garden seat holding his elbow, and Adriana is all concern. 'Mr Giles? Did Buffy hurt you?' A wicked grin. I am beginning to miss the days when we could talk around her and she would forever be playing syntactical catch up, and then I think of her leaving and my stomach drops slightly. When she leaves, things will change.
I am uncomfortable, a feeling that has me checking my watch even as I hear the window sash be pulled upstairs. Joyce Summers, grandmother and support crew extraordinaire, appears at the window.
I try very hard not to be so sarcastic. I appreciate everything, I really do. I'm just a bit tired. And, well, never mind...
'Honey! Are you done down there? There's someone up here who's getting a little hungry!'
Mother is the Queen of tact. She will not call the child Jennifer, or any derivative thereof, in front of Giles, a misplaced consideration bearing in mind his reaction to the name on first hearing. Positive, as I recall. And then, I am the only one that calls her Aniela. I am the only one who can.
'I'll be right up!' It's not resentment, exactly. It could be surprise that everything's working out so well, that I love my child more than anything, that her father has drifted away into the past and for the most part leaves me be. That there's nothing wrong. Yeah, I know, I'm a masochist. But this afternoon there's room for it - leaving feeding 'til my breasts are sore and agreeing to 'train' with Miss Europe 1999 when she's in one of her moods. Giles says she'll never match me but she's built like Sigourney Weaver and frequently packs a Ripley attitude.
Giles mops his brow and nods. 'Fine, Buffy. I think Adriana put paid to the rest of the day's training.' He flashes me the Grandaddy-Giles-Beatific-Smile. 'Would you bring her down?'
'It's too cold out here. Come inside.'
They both follow me into the kitchen. Portugal, already having had today's fill of all things baby, stalks up to her room. I take the stairs after her, wondering when I'm going to get back into shape, then wonder if I already have. Mom meets me outside the nursery - sorry, my bedroom - and places her finger to her lips.
'Buffy. Come and watch this.' She is whispering, I tiptoe into the room after her. In a white expanse of bassinet, Aniela is lying on her back, amazed eyes staring upwards at where she has just discovered her toes. True to character, she ignores us, and continues burbling at the fat little pink digits, trying to reach them with her pudgy fingers.
Those dark eyes.....I can't stay mad at anyone for long after she's worked her magic on me. Even myself.
'I remember when you did that.' Mom is saying. 'I used to sit and watch you for hours. You'd just wave your fingers at your tiny feet. Of course, you were still bald...'
This is a bone of contention with Mother. She still wants to know where 'Niela gets her mop of dark hair from. When I reminded her, tongue in cheek, that there was no cloning involved in this baby production, she got cross and sulked. Each of us deals with the fact of Angel in their own way. Mother's is simple. Ignore it.
I know Aniela knows me, over and above everyone else who rocks her when I'm on patrol, sings to her when I'm at school, holds her close when I'm training or studying or sitting thinking with my chin in my hands, trying to see how I can squeeze another second out of each day to be with her. It's chemical, emotional. I am assured that I am not just her private milk machine. I need this. Conversely, I always make sure I feed her myself, to give myself a certain irreplaceability, to be different from Willow with a bottle. But there is more there than that.
I pick her up. She is big for her age and fits perfectly in my arms. Mom kisses me on the forehead and the baby too - action, repeat. Then she turns and leaves. This she has always allowed me, aloneness with 'Niela, bonding time. I sit and the child turns in towards me, nuzzling at my breast.
'Alright, Jennifer Aniela Summers, patience is a virtue.' How the world coped without maternity sports bras I do not know.
Hungry, she pulls in me, and once more it strikes me how vampiric the activity is. I had to overcome my repulsion - ingrown in a Slayer - to be able to do this. Now I would not do without it. It pleases me, perversely, to see her emulate her father, to feed off me. Clever baby, good design. Inefficient Angel required a syringe or a lack of willpower. And I'm not going to go there, Buffy the masochist once again.
Downstairs.
I whore my feeding when Xander isn't around. Cordelia leaves, Giles looks away, smoothly continuing to converse. Willow goes into her 'how lovely' raptures - she'd be around with a video camera if I let her. Mom has never said anything, but her lips make a thin line and she offers Giles tea. Part of me loves her discomfiture. So, down the stairs to the kitchen - might as well eat in the right room, baby - and swap over while we're at it. I have no class. I will be a fishwife, coarse and redfaced, standing at my trailer door a baby to each breast. Screw them.
However, at the top of the stairs I hear a knock on the door and have a sudden change of heart. A rattle of cups indicates that Mom has succumbed to the temptation to ply Giles with Earl Grey. I really shouldn't interpret her actions without a control. Buffy breastfeeding baby - Giles gets tea. Alone in kitchen, Giles gets tea. Adriana, perhaps, knows this better than I. She has appeared onto the landing with her coffee container - she will not drink our 'American rubbish' - and, seeing my face, places it on the hall table.
'It will be alright, Buffy. All will be fine, querida.' She enfolds Buffy and baby in one of her comfort hugs which are like her coffee, strong and soothing with many rich undertones. She is the only one qualified to understand some of me. Add it to Mom's maternal understanding, Giles's loss, and perversely, Cordelia's pride and knowledge of the way the world works, and they cover a lot of me, but not all.
Letting me go, a kiss to Aniela's hand, and Adriana repeats the sentiment, this time in Portuguese. This equals 'with feeling'. When she loses her English, it is emotional. Then, 'I will go downstairs, and will do the talking for a moment. Buffy - Giles worries. He knows it hurts.'
'I know.' I swallow, and as she retrieves the coffee, I manhandle the child one-eighty. Still hungry, she latches on with gusto.
'Hungry, yes?' Adriana chuckles, displaying her usual European indifference to breastfeeding decorum. 'Well - come down Buffy, when Miss Jenny is full. I hear visitors.'
The knock at the door has indeed resolved itself into Willow and Xander noises. I feel like escaping suddenly. But I can hide myself in Aniela, hide myself away in the nursery until Willow comes bounding up the stairs. Only I know that she won't. Buffy's privacy is now worth more than gold, and fragile Buffy won't want to know about the pep rally because she has far more important things to do. Ah, here the fake bitterness comes again, me allowing it to well up to cover the other, more current, less palatable truth.
So feeding done, we go downstairs, complete with white shawl and this strange Mommy in sweatpants with a stake in the waistband.
Xander, talking with his mouth full of cake, shuts up as I enter. Giles and I do our practised baby swap dance in which I get whatever he's holding, which this time happens to be a copy of the Torah Willow has just given him, and he gets a well fed baby, all ready to wave her fingers around and practise the grasp thing on his nose and glasses.
'Hello, little Jenny! And how are you today?' He sits and holds her in the crook of his arm while she looks unfocusedly at his face and windmills all four limbs.
'She's discovered her toes.' Oh. I didn't mean for my voice to come out that flat.
Willow does the great, facesaving ignore. 'And she's such a good baby. Aren't you little one?' A shower of kisses for Aniela. She's right. Even at three months, 'Niela is a very well behaved baby. Perhaps she senses that, for the moment, she needs to be. Her time to misbehave will come when the mark on her arm means more than the beginning of some future event. When it means what mine does now.
'Yes.' Giles is agreeing, and looks me straight in the face. 'She is an unusually angelic baby.' Alright Rupert, don't think you'll accomplish anything by being that subtle. I, like Willow, ignore.
Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe that's all it is. Things are beginning to fall into routine now I've been back at school for two weeks. The ritual de Buffy. I wake for a six am feeding, then Mom takes over while I go to school. Study periods mean hastily done homework, catch-up coaching with Willow. Lunch, a jog home to be with baby for thirty minutes - thank God for senior leave privileges. More school. The afternoon. Monday training, Tuesday study, Wednesday, Thursday training, Friday, more catch-up. Patrol two out of three nights, once with Portugal, once alone, she does the same. My night off, Mom does Aniela duty so I can sleep. Two am feeds, get up, start again.
Saturday morning I spend with Giles, just the two of us. This was his idea, and so far it has been more helpful than I can say. Saturday afternoon, Aniela, her mother and grandmother have some quality time. Everything is arranged to make it as easy on me as possible. Sunday is just for me and the child. No one said it would be easy. I keep my face blank.
Sunnydale is a small place, and here, like in other small towns, opinions and judgments thrive. The weak current of disapproval I get at school is not because I had the nerve to sport myself around town pregnant, but more the 'Are you not one of us? Having a baby is tacky and lower class and if you're clever you don't let yourself get caught out.' Therefore, I am not one of them. The irony of extenuating circumstances and not being one of them already is not lost on me. I can bury my face in Aniela's shawls.
Willow and Giles exchange a look. 'Xander?' Giles's voice is light. 'Would you like to hold Jenny?'
He nods, mouth still full of cake. Xander is another sweet to be seen with baby. Cordelia keeps herself and her clothes a safe distance from the baby, except when Xander is holding her. Then she is on them both, like a rash. I don't like to think about the psychology behind that. But I have to admit it has a certain degree of cuteness.
Mom watches Xander closely - eighteen year old boy with baby probably sets off her danger beeper, but he's always careful. Suddenly, Giles and Will have a hold of both my arms and I am being propelled to the living room. The door closes behind us.
'What?....'
'Buff, please sit down.' Willow gives me her resolve face. I sit. Giles sits. Willow paces a moment, then suddenly kneels at my feet, putting her hands on my knees.
Okay, I know it's coming now. I can feel it welling up. I have spent the last day, the last week, holding these feelings down with all the strength I have.
'I don't know how else to do this. But I'll just say what I have to say.'
Yeah. Inside me. Voices and expressions coming to the surface.
'This day last year is burnt into my mind. I'm reading it, Buffy - every minute, every second. Right now, I'm sitting in the library researching the Judge...talking to you on the phone. Buffy, we know you're reading it too. It's okay to feel it.'
It hits like a maelstrom. I try to blank it off. How can they do this...
Giles speaks too. 'You are allowed to feel it, allowed to acknowledge it. It doesn't mean you love Aniela any less.'
The first time anyone has ever said....it breaks the scab off a sore I thought was well healed, and the remembering is there.
....Yeah. Like I really wanted to stick around after that.....
Willow pulls me into a hug. I don't want to remember it like this, but I can't do anything to hold the floodgates back. I sob as the voices come, images, pictures from a year ago dancing cruelly through my mind. Voices.
Mine.
His.
...I should've known you wouldn't be able to handle it.........Dream on, schoolgirl. Your boyfriend is dead......When I saw him at the house, he was different. The things he said......Well, something set it off. Some event must've triggered his transformation.....Oh, God. I was sent here to watch you. They told me to keep you and Angel apart. They never told me what would happen...
Jenny Calendar. More guilt to pile on my head like coals. If it hadn't happened, she would be alive. But I would not have my baby. I grasp Willow tight and hear her sharp exhalation of breath. She is crying with me. We can stay like this forever.
...So it was me. I did it.......He's doing this deliberately, Buffy. He's trying to make it harder for you...You know what the worst part was, huh? Pretending that I loved you........The important thing is you made me the man I am today.....
Guilt, be my friend. I know this is a winter blizzard, a temporary storm that will pass in a few days, but it is, and always will be, a heavy confusion. Do I deserve to have all I do when Miss Calendar is cold in the ground? It has always been Giles's voice that has answered this for me, the voice of reason.
....Do you want me to wag my finger at you and tell you that you acted rashly? You did. And I can. I know that you loved him. And he has proven more than once that he loved you. You couldn't have known what would happen......If it's guilt you're looking for, Buffy, I'm not your man. All you will get from me is my support. And my respect....
He is here in the flesh regarding me carefully. Over Willow's wet shoulder I see him get to his feet and move to the fireplace where Mom has stoked up the flames to ward off the chill. He hesitates, then speaks.
'Buffy, believe me. Missing Angel as he was, grieving for him, doesn't mean you love Aniela less. Loving your child doesn't mean that you don't wish that....things that have happened...hadn't happened. You must hold on to the fact that you have been given prophecy, you have been given a reason..and so have I. So few people ever get one. They must just go...blindly on.'
I can nod slowly, thinking of Kendra.
'Aniela wouldn't be who she is, she wouldn't be the light she is, if it wasn't for Angel and everything that happened. And something out there, something I believe is more powerful than we can know, needs your daughter to be who she is. Who are we to question that? You can grieve, Buffy, love your daughter, and let her be who she is.'
I think of coming to Angel in the dark, in an apartment far away, to tend him as he slept the sleep of the lost. I feel how it was to lean over him, wipe his brow, ever conscious of how I was changing - physically, emotionally - in the face of his stasis. Truly, I haven't cried for him for a long time. All my tears have been for my daughter. But she is whole and well, and her destiny seems as yet far off.
There is a knock at the door and Xander comes in. He carries a sleeping infant, gone peaceful and floppy in his arms.
'I think this one's just about gonzoed out. We were playing Bonanza and - well this is the result.'
He stops, worried, when he sees the tear tracks on our faces. 'Buff? Willow? Is everything okay?'
I pull back and smile at him, holding out my arms for Aniela. 'It's okay, Xander. We're fine.'
He places her in my arms and she stirs, letting out a weak cry then nuzzling in towards me as she sleeps. Willow smiles.
'She's perfect, you know.'
'I know.' I get lost in the scrunched up face of my sleeping baby. She stirs again, and her eyes open wide, looking straight into mine.
'Hey, sleepyhead.' I love the way she fixates on my face, as if there is nothing in the world quite so absorbing and interesting as me. I bend over and kiss her forehead. 'We've just been talking about you. As usual.' She looks fascinated, listening to the sage words of her mother. 'You are just about our favourite topic.' I tap my finger on the end of her nose. 'But don't you get a swollen head about it. I'm sure it'll die down.'
I watch, enchanted, as her face splits into a wide smile and she gurgles with laughter. Willow goes into baby-raptures. Not Aniela's first smile, but certainly her best-timed. I have a sudden desire to tell her about the past, to explain to her, even though she cannot possibly understand. She waylays this by yawning, clenched fists and furrowed brow. 'Tired, huh? Fed, played with...'
'And changed.' Xander adds. 'Your Mom, uh, changed her. I did the baby powder.'
I look up and see Portugal loitering in the doorway. As I catch her eye, she smiles, and is gone again like a dark wraith.
'Oh, oh..can I put her to bed?' A hopeful look crosses Willow's face. 'Is she ready?'
'Yes, and yes. Switch the monitor on before you leave, Will.'
She takes the sleepy little person as if she's porcelain. 'Neila whimpers a little then starts to cry, Willow leaning over her, shushing and rocking, Xander hovering in the background. They look like a life size nativity set, with the Madonna in overalls and a striped shirt. I stand, and kiss my daughter on the forehead. My daughter, who I love.
When Willow has gone, Xander in her wake, I sit again. Giles is rubbing his injured elbow, and he turns to me with a look of infinite compassion.
'Buffy, Willow and I, and your mother, won't allow you to wallow in silence. None of us, especially you, has that luxury.'
'It's a two way street.' I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and discover that my mascara has run. Giles looks at his hands.
'I know, Buffy, I know. I talked to Adriana last night. She is a very wise girl...'
'Woman. ' I correct. Even Mom makes a verbal distinction between Portugal, a recent twenty-one, and me at eighteen.
'Yes. Well, we talked for a long time while you were on patrol. She reminded me that all our losses have to be dealt with, by all of us. Even me. We all need time. Sometimes it's as easy as that.'
I have a lightening moment, one of those almost tactile connections in my brain that leave an indelible electric mark. This one is anger, and I can hear it ripe in my voice as I speak.
'You were denied so much...so much...possibility. Oh, god, so was I. Just by one action, one moment. It makes me want to...I dunno...do a whole lot of ineffective things. Kick a hole in the wall. Behead fate. I get so...angry!'
'Is anger an easier form of grief?'
I deflate. 'No.'
'Well, Buffy, you must grieve somehow. I must too. As I said, it doesn't mean that either of us wish Jenny away. It can't.'
He never fails to surprise me with understanding, drawing me out, making me feel what I feel. Clever bastard. Suddenly I realise I love my Watcher to death. Not that I didn't know that, but...it doesn't go well with masochistic tendencies.
'I do understand. I do try.'
I stand again and give him a quick hug. He hugs me back with unexpected ferocity. I can hear Xander and Willow returning downstairs, horsing around in the passage that leads to the kitchen. Letting me go and taking my shoulder, Giles pilots me through the doors and after them, following close behind.
As I come into the kitchen, Adriana holds out a plate with a yellow-iced chocolate monstrosity sitting on top of it.
'Buffy, you are to eat cake. Your Mother said just so much is left from yesterday and has to be eaten. I have had four.'
'Okay Marie Antoinette.' She looks puzzled, but it doesn't stop her from cutting another piece of my birthday cake. Giles takes a chair at the table.
Xander makes what I can only describe as a delighted squeal. 'More cake! Thank you providence!'
'Thank you Mrs Summers.' Willow corrects. She crosses to the table, where Giles has set down the latest tome for her Watcher-study. 'Oh! Baignot's Manuscripts! When did you get that?'
'It arrived yesterday, with Mitchell's Refutation.'
I stand back, against the doorjamb, watching the little scene laid out before me, another of the threads of my life. Xander, still eating, watches Adriana restrap the wrist that has been giving her trouble. She drops a cake fragment, he looks horrified, then they laugh together. Giles and Willow pass books and talk shop. Mom hovers near the stove with her coffee, watching us all with quiet amusement. My family, so to speak.
'Guys, I'm just gonna...go change, shower maybe. I shouldn't be too long.'
They all look up at me, and I am suddenly overwhelmed by the understanding I see in their eyes and the sudden wave of love I feel for them all. They all, without exception, know I need some time. I guess now I know it too. Time.
Pausing again at the top of the stairs, I hear an upward intonation of Willow's voice, followed by gale of laughter from the kitchen. When the hilarity has died down, it is quiet enough to hear my mother speak.
'Now, Rupert - would you like another cup of tea?'
I can't help but smile.
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