Free Dagmars Daughter by Kim Echlin

exhausted infant would not let herself sleep, Dagmar lay beside her on the big bed, stroked the little crown on her forehead and lightly rested her own leg over the dancing feet. But the baby howled, blood rushing to her cheeks, her face drawn into a scowl of indignation until Dagmar gave way to her aerial dance.
    Tap. Tap. Tap.
    Dagmar was dozing with Nyssa on the bed when Colin tapped on her window with a small coin. She looked through the glass into his eyes, still impish at forty-five. His lips were drawn back in a slight smile and he beckoned her out with that charming tilt to his head. Dagmar tucked four pillows around sleeping Nyssa and followed Colin away from the house over the rough stones into the greenhouse. The plants were already swaying to the sound of his fiddle playing “A’ Chuthag.” When the last note of the song fell silent, Colin set down his father’s fiddle and from behind a pile of pots picked up the mask of a stag adorned with real horns. In the silent flickering shadows he held up the mask to reveal one of Madeleine’s bright paintings strung between the antlers. The picture showed a girl weaving a white cloth and a row of women and men gathered along the edges of a long table waiting to mill it. Colin hummed the air to an old milling song as he handed Dagmar the picture in the basket.
    She touched the blood blister on his lip with her tongue and wanted him, but her breasts leaked milk and she pulled away. Colin followed her back up the path and into the bed-room where the infant stirred with subtle hunger. Together they admired her tiny limbs and face in the dark as Dagmar lay down to nurse, wincing at the baby’s first strong latch and sighing with her milk’s easing. Nyssa sucked well and strongly and Dagmar examined lazy Colin stretched out in front of her, his laugh wrinkles, the faded scar on his cheek where twenty-seven years before she had scraped her wedding ring hard down his face in rage. The baby dozed and Colin nuzzled into Dagmar too, sucking some of her milk for himself until she pushed him off.
    Your hair’s all clitty, he said, affectionately stroking her tousled head.
    Yours would be too.
    You’ll be wanting me around more now, he said.
    Don’t get that in your head, you always caudle things up, she answered.
    A girl needs a father.
    I’ve been trying to figure a way around that.
    His love was gouged into her like initials carved into a hardwood tree. In her eyes he still saw the young man he once was. Dagmar had been thinking about resting before she got pregnant. Colin spoiled all men forever for her. She’d fallen in love with him and was never able to shake him. Over and over when she was young she vowed not to see him but he’d show up at her window, grin, crack a joke, and it would begin all over again.
    One night her mother stood on the balcony above them and dumped water on his head, but he only called up laughing, Norea, by what name are you baptizing us?
    I’m not baptizing you anything, called the old woman from up above. I’m trying to drown you.
    Warmed by Colin’s inconstant flame, Dagmar fell asleep with her new baby and wished she could hold on forever to the peace she felt with this birth. When she opened her eyes a folded paper was tucked between her fingers and Colin was gone again. She read his familiar hand, felt her aching vulva quicken, scorned herself for letting him charm her. No matter what he did she couldn’t help herself. Always and once again. And she read:
Sing cuckoo now. Sing cuckoo.
Sing cuckoo now. Sing cuckoo.
Summer is a’coming.
Sing loud cuckoo!
Growing seed and blowing bawn,
Sing to my new daughter.
Through day’s eve and dawn,
Sing cuckoo now. Sing cuckoo.
    With and against him all her life. Gods and mortals. Age and youth. The living and the dead. It all begins and ends forever and forever with a woman and a man, shadows of godlife, then comes passion. Dagmar stroked her new daughter’s forehead with a mother’s strong