Page 21 - WTP Vol.X #8

She walks upstairs and into the baby’s room. Her husband left the door open, and the turtle nightlight glowing in the corner.
The baby sleeps on his stomach, four limbs tucked under his body. His breathing is steady, the cheek pressed against the mattress plumped up against his pursed lips. Her husband zipped him into footed pajamas.
She does not want to wake the baby, but her hand hovers above his back. If she can just feel him, his warmth, his weight, then she will be alright. She ghosts her fingers over his body, several inches away, not making contact. She tells herself this is enough.
“She sees it in his eyes sometimes, a tiny burning desire for more.
She does not care for such play herself, does not like even the swings on the playground. If she allows herself to think about it, this quality in the baby terrifies her. “
When she was a child, before her father and step- mother married, her favorite babysitter was the girl who lived across the street. She had big curly hair and a dog. She laughed loudly and would
read storybooks one after the other. During school holidays, this neighbor took care of her while her father worked. They played with the neighbor’s dog, walked to the public library, made apple juice popsicles in the ice cube tray. They created an elaborate make-believe game only the two of them understood.
Then her babysitter went to college. As her neighbor’s car drove away, she stood in the yard, waving until they turned the corner. After that, her
babysitter came home only for short visits. Her father and step-mother married, her sister was born, and eventually the neighbors sold the house across the street and moved closer to the beach.
A decade later, she saw her babysitter across a crowded restaurant. Her neighbor still had the curly hair, the same distinctive laugh. She sat at a table with a man and two small children, one in a high chair.
Seeing her babysitter made her catch her breath. She raised her hand, called out, “Hello!” In the noisy restaurant, it was hard to hear. Her babysitter looked up, noticed her raised hand, and then looked beyond her toward where the waitress was approaching with their food.
She lowered her hand. She knew she had grown, changed from the child whose mother left before her daughter was a year old, the one who waved goodbye from the front lawn. She knew she could cross the restaurant and introduce herself. But she did not. She thought she would not need to, that even with the years between them, their hearts would recognize each other.
She wants to go home. So badly. But there is nowhere to go except here.
Then she cannot help herself any longer. She runs her fingers through the baby’s hair. It is soft, damp in the crease of his neck, where he always sweats. When he was born, his hair was dark like hers, but over the months of his life, it has lightened. Is turning into her husband’s color.
The longing inside her chest does not go away. She moves her fingers through the baby’s hair again. She is no longer worried about waking him. In fact, maybe she wants to call him from sleep, occupy her hands and thoughts with his needs.
But he does not move. He remains locked inside his own slumber, and she hopes that someday the boy will remember this feeling of her love.
Robinson is a native and current resident of Southern California. She earned her MFA in Fiction from the University of California, Irvine, and served as editor-in-chief of their literary magazine Faultline for two years. Her past work has been recognized as a finalist for Glimmertrain’s New Voices Prizes, and been published by Grist, Scribendi, and The Westchester Review. She is currently at work on a novel.
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