The slap came so fast I never saw Patricia Miller raise her hand.
One second, I was standing in the dim hallway of our house in Columbus, Ohio, rocking my three-week-old daughter, Lily, against my shoulder.
The next, Patricia’s palm cracked across my face hard enough to make my ears ring.
It was midnight, and Lily had been crying for what felt like hours.
Not the soft, fussy whimper people imagine when they think about newborns.
She was crying with her whole tiny body, red-faced and exhausted, while I moved through the same checklist I had already gone through twice.
Diaper.
Bottle.
Temperature.
Burping.
Breathing.
I checked the blanket around her legs, then loosened it because I worried she might be too warm.
I held her against my chest and walked slowly up and down the hallway because sometimes the movement helped.
That night, it didn’t.
I was wearing pajama pants and a formula-stained shirt.
My hair had been twisted into the same loose knot since sometime that afternoon, and every muscle in my shoulders hurt from carrying Lily and trying to sleep in twenty-minute pieces.
Still, I kept walking.
She was my daughter.
She was three weeks old.
