They drive up and park and get out of the car and start to unload, unused to the amount of stuff you have to take with you when you travel with a baby. They lift the back of the pickup truck and take from it a stroller, a diaper bag and a portacrib, all obviously the top of the line and way more expensive than necessary, but who can tell you that for the first? Then they remove a bag with extra bottles, baby food and a huge mound of toys (unnecessary in my childpacked home), then a full bag of disposable diapers, two suitcases, and a bouncy chair with a receiving blanket tucked into its corner. From the cab, they lift the baby, car seat and all, then grab as much stuff as they can handle from where they have piled it on the sidewalk, and, leaving the rest, make for the front door. I head them off, praise the baby for a moment, and then pick up what I can carry. We go inside.
My friends are visiting for the weekend.
Peggy unbuckles the straps from the car seat and lifts her fat handsome baby out; the little girl seems to smile with relief. Their first long distance car ride, accomplished.
“How’d it go?” I say. My five-year-old boy and three-year-old girl suddenly appear at my sides and cling to me like Elmer’s.
“It went,” says Peggy. “Clara cried the whole way.”
“She slept an hour,” says Brian, Peggy’s husband.
“Oh, God, yes, an hour. But then, what is an hour in this new and bizarre scheme of things. But a mere minute, a second’s silence in the din.”
“Bad trip, huh?” I laugh. My kids had always been good in the car, at least so as I remember, but I had heard plenty of horror stories. “Well, how about a beer?”
Clara rolls back and forth on her blanket on the floor and my two, Tim and Sandy, get right up in her face. They lean into her as if they’ve never seen a baby before.
“Pretty little,” says Tim.
“She’s just like a doll!” says Sandy.
I say, “Don’t get too close kids,” but Peggy just smiles and says, “They’re okay.” I can tell she’s nervous but trying to be cool. Clara was a difficult birth, a breech after a long labor. Peggy pushed for what she said seemed like years. It had been enough to scare her to death as it was, she says, and then Clara had had some problems after birth, a little weakness in one side. And she was a fussy baby, cried a lot, she still, even as six months wakes three or four times. She’s had several colds, Peggy says: “Although I don’t know from where, we’ve scarcely been out of the house.”
“Kids,” I say to my two. “Find something else to do and leave that baby be.”
Peggy’s twirling spaghetti on her fork and balancing Clara on her knee at the same time. The baby looks as if she’ll fall, slide right off onto the linoleum. I want to say, “You can put her down, you know. Just because she’s been a little fussy. . .” But instead what I say is, “Why don’t I hold her while you eat and then you can hold her while I eat.”
Peggy accepts, reluctantly, and gives her husband a glance. He sits up straight. “Don’t look at me, babe,” he says. “I was brought up to believe you could put babies down once in awhile.”
This is the first time Peggy and I have seen each other since my youngest, Sandy, was born. Right after her birth Peggy and I had a big fight. Neither of us can remember exactly what it was about. Truly. Three years is a long time in the life of a mother: while the children may surprise you with their growth, it takes place only after months of hard work, and my mental energy, once the initial fury at Peggy was spent, had had to go toward the children. Now that I was past the hardest part, so I thought, of raising babies, I had had time to do some thinking, and I missed Peggy. I thought about our argument and remembered it had something to do with my being married and having my second kid and her still looking. But it was both more and less than that. We have known each other for thirty years and maybe we just got tired.
Anyway we had fought fierce at first, with letters back and forth and a couple of ugly phone calls, then all was silence. For about two and a half years. Until I got a note from her saying she had married and was to have a baby soon. When I got another note about Clara being born I was suddenly filled with love and forgiveness. I called and said, “What the hell did we fight about anyway?” And she said, sleepily, “I dunno. Nothing, probably.” And then I asked her all about Clara and we exchanged stories and I gave her a bit of advice, as much as I could without her asking for it, and since that time we have talked on the phone about once a week. She calls sometimes with specific questions I’m glad to answer and other times just to shoot the breeze or complain about how Brian doesn’t help enough around the house. I knew that tune. A couple of weeks ago she had said she wanted to drive up and see her parents and as we were on the way could they stop? I was delighted, although my husband Tim, Sr., was a little leery; he seemed to remember the details of the fight better than I. But he said: ‘What the hell, it’s only for two days.’ So here they are, eating spaghetti in my kitchen, looking normal and happy and fine. I pass the baby back to Peggy and eat my supper, a little too cool for taste, but then I’ve had a lot of suppers just this temperature. That’s what happens when you have kids.
We get up and move to the living room for a little while and then I wash the dishes while Tim, Sr., gets the kids ready for bed. Peggy and Brian are sitting on the sofa with Clara between them; she is sucking juice from a bottle. They look cute and almost natural, if you don’t notice Peggy’s hands shake every time she reaches for the baby or the way Brian is afraid even to hold her. They are the most nervous parents I have seen and I have seen a lot. When the kitchen is clean I come out and say, “You can set the stuff up for the baby’s bath now. I’m going upstairs to say good night to the kids, I’ll be right back down if you need anything.” When I come down, Peggy is trying to balance Clara and the bathtub and the washcloth and towel and soap all by herself. I look around for Brian and see him out on the deck smoking a cigarette.
“Here, let me,” I say, taking the baby from Peggy and setting her up on the counter. I look into her little face and try to make her laugh. She smiles for a moment, but then I feel myself lose control of her; she’s floppier than I remember babies that age being, or I’ve lost my grip, or something, and she begins to slide, just a little, down to where she’s not sitting up anymore but is kind of reclining. Immediately I thrust my hand behind her head so she won’t bump it on the toaster or the counter. And although I am positive Clara hit nothing, didn’t even slide all the way down, just slipped the tiniest bit, she begins to cry like I’ve smacked her or dropped her or let her head flop onto the tile backsplash. I have never heard such a wail and like I said I’ve got two kids. She cries like she is hurt so bad she’ll never get over it.
Peggy quickly takes her from me and puts her to her chest. My hands are shaking like I’ve just killed someone accidentally but I can see nothing wrong, no bump or red mark, no scrape. “Does she always cry like that?” I ask, almost scared to talk.
“Not exactly like this, but she gets upset,” Peggy says. She is almost matter-of-fact. It’s weird. “What did you do?” she asks calmly.
“Nothing,” I say. “Honest. I was holding her on the counter. You saw. And she must have slipped a little on the Formica. But she didn’t touch anything or bump anything, I swear. I may have pulled her up a little quickly and scared her. That’s all I can think of.” Even to my ears I sound like a liar and a child molester.
“That’s a baby,” Peggy says, walking Clara around the kitchen. “Just a little scared, is all. That’s a baby.” She turns to me and says seriously. “Don’t feel bad, really. She gets scared easily. That’s why we don’t go out much. She doesn’t like sudden movements or loud noises or things like that. Of course,” she pauses, and says, as if she has just noticed the fact: “she hasn’t been exposed to them all that much, either.”
“Do you want me to make her a bottle?” I ask. The baby is still screaming like I cut her head off. I can’t stand it. It’s unnerving, like something out of a horror movie. “Why don’t I get her some formula?” When Peggy nods, I microwave a bottle from the refrigerator and finally, what seems like hours later, hand it to her. She puts it in Clara’s mouth which stops the racket for a small moment. But then she child pushes the bottle away and continues to wail.
If it had been my own child I would have put her to the breast, I used my breast for every ailment short of smallpox or a broken leg. But Peggy hadn’t been able to nurse, she said her milk hadn’t come in. And Clara was not having anything to do with that bottle.
Tim calls down, “What’s going on down there,” and I run up to tell him what happened. He looks at me like I am crazy. “That the whole story?” he asks. “That baby crying like that because you startled it? Hoo, boy, we’re in for a long two days.” I almost burst into tears myself and then I tell him to shut up and I head back downstairs where I see Brian standing in the kitchen holding Clara and trying his best to soothe her.
Peggy turns to me and says, over the horrible noise: “Maybe she is hurt, maybe you didn’t know what you did, I’m not blaming you, but maybe she is hurt. I don’t know why she won’t stop crying. I don’t know!” while Brian alternately shakes his head at her and bounces the baby who cries hard and harder and louder and louder. “Oh!” she yells, “This is awful. Maybe we should take her to the hospital. Where is your emergency room?”
“Oh!” I say, shocked. “It’s close. Real close. Not five minutes.” I feel happy I can say this but sick at my stomach, the spaghetti rising in my throat. I have hurt her baby! Me a mother who has never spanked her own. Of course, my kids are used to noise. Tim, Sr., and I yell a lot. Play music, and stuff like that. We’re loud people. Maybe too loud. Certainly too loud for Clara. She’s been overstimulated since she came in and now I’ve gone and hurt her. Or something. “Let me go with you and show you.”
Brian, Peggy and I climb into my stationwagon, Peggy not even bothering with the car seat but just clutching Clara to her chest. Brian is still looking at his wife as if she is crazy, his hands are clutching at the legs of his blue jeans and his knuckles are white. He looks as if he is angry and sad and confused all at once. “Don’t worry about all this,” he says to me, “We have been in the emergency room several other times.”
“Whatever for?” I ask.
“Well,” he shrugs helplessly, “you know.”
The child is still crying to beat the band. The bottle of formula hangs from Peggy’s fingers. I drive slowly and carefully, wanting not to even startle myself at this point. I pull up in front of the Emergency Room door and drop them off. “Leave me a cigarette,” I ask Brian, although I haven’t smoked since I got pregnant with Timmy. I park the car and then sit in the dark and smoke the cigarette down to the filter like a penance.
Finally, when I can stand it no longer, I go in. I wander up to the window, casually, not like the criminal I am, and I ask the nurse: “The young couple with the crying baby? Are they back in one of the rooms. How is everything?”
She eyes me critically. “Are you the friend?” she says and I suddenly realize they all know, everyone in the waiting room, the nurses, doctors, anyone else hurt or dying in the back: I am The Friend Who Hurt The Baby.
“Why don’t you go on back?” she says and I decide that surely I’m wrong; they wouldn’t let the perpetrator go back to the scene of the crime. Maybe Peggy just told them that she and Brian are visiting friends who had sent them here with their baby. After all, would they send the known child abuser back to find out how her victim was?
I push open the doors and make my way down the hall. Peggy is standing outside the door of one of the rooms, her arms around her in a hugging gesture. When she sees me she rushes to me and throws her arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” she cries, “I’m so sorry. I’m such a terrible mother. I overreacted so!”
“What are you saying?” I ask, almost in tears and ice cold at the same time. I feel sicker to my stomach than I did even when I was three months pregnant with Sandy.
“It’s nothing,” she says, although I can hear Clara still whimpering in the room behind us. “She’s not hurt at all. I knew she wasn’t. I saw you, I saw you didn’t hurt her. She was just scared to death, I guess, and I couldn’t comfort her. I thought she had to be hurt.”
“The doctor says she’s okay? Nothing’s the matter?” I feel like I have just been pardoned by the governor. That last cigarette and I was ready for the chair. And here’s a reprieve. “Are you sure?”
I have to go in and see Clara to believe it. I push open the door and there are the doctor and Brian and Clara. No police or social service workers. Not even a nurse. The doctor smiles. “We have a pretty nervous mother, but it’s nothing she won’t get over, right?” He looks at Peggy who manages to look slightly, but only slightly, embarrassed.
I look the doctor straight in the eye and say “You have kids?”
When he says No, I say, “Well, wait till you have them before you call anyone nervous. It’s a nervewracking job, having kids, and they don’t come with an instruction manual, you know.”
Peggy hugs my arm and laughs, but I think she really wants to cry again. Clara is still whimpering once in a while but she seems calm, if pale. She snuggles in her mother’s arms and breathes shallow coarse breaths. Brian signs some papers, and we get the baby and get in the car. On the ride home Clara falls asleep in Peggy’s arms and she puts her to bed in the portacrib while I empty the bathtub and put the soap and towels away. Tim comes downstairs and looks at me but I just shake my head. When I get in bed he wants to talk about Peggy but I won’t.
In the middle of the night I hear a noise downstairs and go to investigate. Peggy is awake in the den where she and her family are staying, and staring down at the hard-sleeping Clara. It is four a.m. and the baby has slept through two of her usual feeds. “She must be exhausted from all the crying,” I say, wishing Peggy would go back to bed and get some rest herself but also remembering how I liked watching my own children sleep. But Peggy is not watching with pleasure, she is watching with pain; I see her place her hand on the baby’s back to feel for her careful even breathing. “I couldn’t believe it,” she whispers back. “I thought something had happened to her. I woke up with such a start!” In the dim of the nightlight, I can see Brian snoring peacefully on his back. I give Peggy’s arm a squeeze and go into the kitchen for some milk and an aspirin; my head and stomach still feel queasy. I don’t think I’ll feel right until the kid graduates with honors from Harvard. When I pass by the den again Peggy is still standing near the portacrib, her hand poised to set back down on Clara’s back.
