Page 17 - WTP Vol.X #8

dark eyes are beautiful.
People tell her this all the time, people she knows, as well as strangers. When they say such compliments, they look at her intently, as if to make sure she knows the praise is meant for her, as if something about her care of him has made him this way, a good baby. A good boy.
She does not want to take their praise, because then she also has to accept responsibility for his faults. For the times he dumps food on the floor at restaurants, shits his pants in the grocery store, for the new
and startlingly intense tantrums. When he sits on the patio so close to their neighbors, screaming, screaming, screaming.
When people compliment the baby, she wants to tell them that he is his own person. One she barely knows, although she spends almost every minute of every day with him. Although her body made his, knit his bones together, built his skeleton, manufactured his flesh and skin, teeth and hair and tongue.
He was two months old before she noticed. It took her that long to surface from the initial exhaustion, the seismic impact on her life. Then one morning as she finished feeding him, he did not immediately fall asleep. Instead he looked back at her, lips slack, a rivulet of breast milk down his chin. She met his gaze, and in his
dark eyes, she saw him on the other side. She recognized that she had no idea what he was thinking. That she never would. He was a stranger to her, like everyone else she had ever met.
The baby’s shrieks have softened into whining mewls. He is no longer happy in the pool. They have already eaten lunch, played with his blocks, watched the show with the trains. He will not nap for another hour. Her husband will not be home for another five, and then tonight she has to attend the violin recital of the girl she used to babysit.
She had hoped they would last longer outside, but they are clearly done with the pool for today. She pushes up from the deck chair. There are red lines across the backs of her thighs.
“Okay baby.” She reaches down to pick up the towel. “Okay, my boy,” she amends. “Here we go.”
With one hand, she releases the tab on his diaper and slides it from between his legs. She sets it on the cement. He looks smaller without it, his hips
narrow, his penis pale and tender, like an earthworm suddenly exposed with the turn of a shovel. She envelops his naked body in the towel, and lifts him from the pool. With his additional heft, and the effort to keep the wet away from her own clothes, she staggers. Before she finds her balance, he squirms, arching his back.
For a moment, she is sure she has lost her grip on his wriggling body. That he will tip out of her arms and fall hard on the cement. She hears his skull connect with the concrete, the too soft bone shatter and splatter. She feels the impact in her very teeth, as if his tiny weight can shake the ground.
But then he whips forward, mashes his face into her neck. Although his wet hair is cold, drips down her shirt, she presses him closer. “Meh, meh, meh,” he murmurs into her skin, a complaint and a request.
She cups the back of his head with one hand. Through his wet hair, she can feel the solidity of his skull, the curve of protection over the place where his mind resides.
On the patio, the plastic pool still has an inch of cloudy water. She does not bother dumping it out. It will drain away, if she waits long enough.
~
Her husband wrestles with the baby on the living room floor, making him shriek with excitement. She watches from the kitchen where she is steaming yams.
She makes all of the baby’s food. It is one of the tasks she set for herself when she decided not to go back to work. Rather than spend money on all those
tiny gleaming jars, she would make the baby’s food
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