Amaia Salazar—I bai

Amaia Salazar’s relationship with Ibai joins the intimate work of caring for a newborn to the harder work of resisting inherited fear. She loves him with a devotion that predates his birth, yet repeatedly doubts whether she can be a good mother. Their bond is tested by feeding, exhaustion, and the return of memories of Amaia’s own mother; it finds its clearest expression when Amaia confronts the people who threaten Ibai and insists on his place as her son.

Love in the Everyday Work of Care

When Ibai stirs in his cradle and begins to cry, James recognizes that he is hungry. Amaia has returned in time to feed him, but James points out that a baby’s needs cannot be managed like a schedule: arriving in time once cannot guarantee that she will be there the next time. Amaia does not answer. Instead, she takes Ibai in her arms, lies beside him, and breastfeeds him. James rests next to them, stroking the baby’s nape until he falls asleep.

After the feed, Amaia lifts Ibai to her shoulder to burp him, then cradles him as sleep settles over his small body. The practical rhythm of feeding and settling gives way to a larger confession she does not make aloud to anyone else: she has loved him since before he was born, even since childhood, when she played at being a good mother. Now that love intensifies her fear. She feels that it may not be enough, that she is doing motherhood badly, and that the women in her family may have passed down something darker than their genes. In this private moment, affection and self-accusation occupy the same space.

Her tenderness is physical and attentive. When Ibai is full, his open hand reminds her of a starfish; she raises it to her lips and kisses it reverently. She thinks of him as her child of the water and the river, and whispers that she is trying. The image of the river lends their bond an encompassing quality, but the scene remains grounded in small acts: holding, feeding, watching, and answering the baby’s needs.

Feeding, Exhaustion, and the Fear of Falling Short

The demands of breastfeeding recur as a measure of Amaia’s anxiety, not of her love. After a nightmare, she wakes to find Ibai restless and takes him from his cradle. He looks at her and smiles while nursing, but soon protests for more. Amaia switches him to the other breast and realizes that he is still hungry. She goes downstairs to prepare a bottle, understanding that her milk supply has decreased as the number of feeds has fallen and that her body is regulating itself. Even so, she weeps as she gives him the bottle. The physical change is ordinary, but she experiences it as another painful sign that she cannot provide what he needs.

A later morning repeats the conflict. Amaia has slept on the sofa beneath a blanket that her aunt placed over her. When she goes to bed, Ibai is stretched across it, leaving James only a small portion of the mattress. His peaceful sleep briefly restores her sense that all is well. She leans close to smell his skin; he wakes smiling, then reaches clumsily toward her breast for food that she can no longer provide. She hands him to James and again condemns herself as a bad mother. The contrast is stark: the child’s calm and trust comfort her, while his ordinary hunger draws her back into doubt.

Amaia’s worry is sharpened by comparison with an ideal of maternal competence. In conversation with a pregnant woman, she admits that combining work with being a good mother is difficult. The stranger challenges the assumption that books, rules, and outside advice can settle every maternal fear, telling Amaia that she is the best mother for her child and that Ibai is the child she was meant to have. Amaia remains concerned that she knows too little and might harm him. The exchange offers reassurance, but it does not erase the uncertainty that has become part of her experience of motherhood.

A Family History Re-entering the Present

Amaia’s doubts have roots in her own childhood with Rosario. In a conversation with her sister Rosaura, Amaia initially tries to explain that the girls were too young to understand their mother’s confusing behavior. Rosaura then recalls a night when she secretly changed beds with Amaia. Rosario came to the bed believing Amaia was there and murmured a threat about eating the little girl. Rosaura was frightened enough to return to Amaia’s side, and from then on allowed her to sleep close. The memory shows that Amaia’s childhood fear was witnessed and, in its own limited way, guarded against by her sister.

Amaia responds by comforting Rosaura, but also names the adult failure that left her unprotected: their father was responsible and did not defend her. He protected Rosario and sent nine-year-old Amaia away from home, separating her from her father and sisters. This account of abandonment helps explain why Amaia’s fear of failing Ibai is more than a response to the immediate pressures of new motherhood. She is trying to give her son the protection she herself lacked, while worrying that the family’s past may be repeated through her.

The concealed history of Rosario’s pregnancies further unsettles Amaia’s understanding of motherhood and family. When women who knew Rosario discuss the story she told them—that one baby had been stillborn—they observe that she had not told them there was another child. They conclude that Rosario disclosed the death only because she needed to bury the baby there. Amaia’s reaction is physical: for a moment, she feels her heart stop. The hidden child’s story makes the family’s silence concrete, and gives new weight to Amaia’s fear that maternal love can coexist with secrecy and harm.

Threat, Recognition, and Protection

The bond between Amaia and Ibai is not only tender; it becomes the decisive force in a crisis. After a dream in which she sees small, grieving children with amputated arms, Amaia wakes sweating and trembling, her hands pressed against her chest as though she were still holding her son. She takes Ibai from his cradle and feeds him while trying to dispel the nightmare. The dream’s terror follows her into waking life, where the work of protecting her child is both emotional and immediate.

When Amaia realizes that Rosario has been released and may be going to Elizondo, she fears that Ibai is the target. James is in Bilbao, while Ibai is at home with Amaia’s aunt. The danger draws together her private fears and her professional situation: the people around her have been occupied elsewhere, and she believes that this distraction has left her son exposed.

Amaia reaches the cave and finds Ibai lying in the center of an intricate white design, surrounded by candles. He wears only a diaper and is playing with his feet, unaware of the danger. Rosario kneels beside him with a knife, while Doctor Berasategui watches the ritual with fascination. For an instant, Rosario’s gaze carries Amaia back to the terror of being nine years old. Then Ibai gives a small whimper, and the sound breaks through her fear. Amaia’s anger takes over; she orders Rosario to put down the knife and move away from her son.

When Rosario demands to know where the girl is, insisting that the child was supposed to be a girl and a sacrifice, Amaia answers firmly that Ibai is her son. The declaration rejects the role Rosario’s expectations would impose on the child and makes Amaia’s protective commitment explicit. She moves to Ibai, lifts him from the ground, knocks over some of the still-burning candles, wraps him in her clothes, and kisses him while checking that he is unharmed. The rescue brings the relationship’s central tension to a point of action: the mother who has feared she is not enough acts decisively when her child needs her. Her love does not remove her history or her uncertainty, but in this moment it enables her to stand between Ibai and the violence she once feared as a child.