My name is Charles. I was raised by a single mother. She had me, her only son, when she was 16, and my father never stuck around. We were always very close.
We lived together in a series of small apartments. She did everything for me —sewed my costumes, watched bad movies on Fridays, and sometimes, after a glass of boxed wine, she’d dance with me in the kitchen, barefoot and laughing. We were a team, a package deal.
Things changed when I was sixteen. That was the year my mother decided that being my entire universe was not a complete life, and she went to a fertility clinic and paid for a baby sibling for me.
She said, “I want you to have family after I’m gone.”
The baby was a girl, and when she was born, my mother was thirty-two.
I helped where I could—sterilizing bottles, changing diapers, rocking the baby to sleep—but there were limits.
I hated watching her struggle.
I was always good at fixing things. But this was something I couldn’t fix. Until the day I did.
I’d been haunting thrift stores for years, collecting old books and weird tools. In the window of Sokolov’s Curios on the edge of Chinatown, I once saw a small bottle: deep violet glass, stoppered with cork, a label that read “Persona Transitus – $14.50.”
The woman behind the counter leaned over and whispered, “It’s for swapping places. For those who need a second chance.”
I’d bought it on a whim, fully aware it was probably some kind of novelty perfume or essential oil scam, but it made a good conversation piece.
That night, after my mother had fallen asleep on the couch with the baby glued to her chest, I stood at her side and watched her breathe. I could see how tired she was, how much she needed a break, and how much she would never, ever take one for herself.
I remembered the bottle, still in its brown paper sack in my sock drawer. I went to my room and stared at it for a long time. The idea that began as a joke blossomed, over the course of a week, into something sharper, something like hope.
The next morning, I told her about the bottle. She looked at me as if I’d grown a second head, but she was so spent she didn’t even argue.
“If you want to try, fine,” she said, “If it just lets me take a nap, I’ll be grateful.”
We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, the baby nestled in her arms. I unstoppered the bottle and poured two teaspoons into mismatched shot glasses. The liquid was thick and tasted like smoke and honey.
We toasted, and drank, and nothing happened for a long, awkward minute. Then the world tilted sideways and my vision went white, then black, then whited out again.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing on the other side of the table, looking at myself.
“Holy shit,” I said, but it came out in my mother’s voice.
My chest felt tender and heavy, and I realized with a sudden, humiliating certainty that it was full of milk.
“It worked?” my old voice asked, “Oh my god, Charlie…”
The baby wriggled in my mother’s—my—arms, a little blurred bundle of need, and in the confusion I nearly dropped her. I caught her by instinct, pressing her close, and her tiny head found my chest as though she’d been born expecting it. The wave of tenderness that followed was as real and involuntary as the milk that leaked, hot and damp, through my new cotton shirt.
I stood up—or tried to, discovering in the process that my center of balance had shifted. The baby clung to my shirtfront, rooting for sustenance, and I had no clue what to do next.
“Help,” I said, helplessly, voice a stranger’s music in my throat, “She needs to eat. You—you know what to do, right?”
The baby started to fuss in earnest, squalling like a factory siren. Finally, desperate, I pulled the neck of my shirt aside and, with trembling hands, tried to guide the baby’s face toward my nipple. She latched instantly, so hard I gasped—a sharp, electric jolt of sensation that radiated down to my core. Milk flowed, and with it a weird cocktail of relief, pride, and embarrassment.
My old self watched, fascinated and a little horrified, as I settled into the kitchen chair and let the baby nurse. I felt every bit of it: the sweet ache in my chest, the animal warmth, the overpowering urge to gather the baby up and never let go. I couldn’t stop looking at myself—at the woman I’d known my entire life and now, impossibly, inhabited.
“You’re doing great,” said my old voice, and this time there was awe in it.
Later, after the haze of shock wore off, we ran to the bathroom mirror to inspect the damage. I stood in front, shirt pulled tight across my chest, mouth open in disbelief. My mother’s face—my face—looked back, frazzled and beautiful. I touched my cheek, my jaw, my lips, and shivered at the dissonance of it.
My old self—the boy—stood behind me, “This is so weird.”
“Yeah. But…” I hesitated, “It’s not all bad.”
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