by Patti Abbott
“You break everything,” she said to nobody in particular. It was probably true of the entire family.
“Those boots must be murder to stand it.” Melissa looked pointedly at the blonde’s feet.
The woman’s entire body seemed thrown out of alignment due to her ridiculous shoes and for a second, Melissa did feel sorry for her.
“Look, if you wanna—you can buy my ticket to Wilmington, and I can sit on that bench over there with the baby— and your stuff.” The words came out in a rush since the line was beginning to move.
“Don’t know if Jade’ll go with you. She’s not friendly like—”
"Keep Jade with you," Melissa urged. Picking the diaper bag up and slinging it over her shoulder authoritatively, Melissa stuck a twenty in the blonde's hand, smiling encouragingly. "For my ticket to Wilmington. I think it's thirteen-fifty."
The blonde handed over the baby reluctantly, watching as Melissa took a prominent position on the nearest bench. Seating the baby in her lap, Melissa waved the baby's hand at the blonde. The baby chuckled on cue; her mother's shoulders dropped.
Was anybody watching? Melissa looked around. Everyone seemed mired in their own holiday world, toting more packages than usual, overburdened with heavy coats and the accessories that went with wet, December weather.
Beating back a desire to bolt, Melissa continued to bounce the baby, watching the line inch forward toward the ticket window. Once or twice, the blonde glanced back, and finding their position unchanged, shifted her gaze. Jade vanished entirely amid the heavily garbed bodies around her.
When the blonde finally reached the counter and was deeply engrossed in her transaction, Melissa stood up and made her way to the northern exit. Stepping out the door, she hailed a cab. The baby was sound asleep, her head nestled in Melissa's neck. The turbaned cab driver looked sleepily ahead, scarcely registering the baby's presence, the terminal with its holiday buzz a blur in seconds. Melissa gave the driver a nearby address on Arch Street, and on reaching the location, paid him with a five. Walking half a block, she climbed into her own car, fastening the baby in the car seat. It was starting to sleet.
Snatching the kid was one thing, but caring for her was another, Melissa realized as she mounted the steps to her apartment, sweating with the unaccustomed weight. Her upper flat, sparsely furnished and divided from its neighbors with flimsy wallboard, seemed even more inhospitable than usual. She looked around, suddenly wondering what you did all day long with babies. No wonder lots of mothers, like hers, for instance, smacked their kids around. The baby's odor, something always described as irresistible, was nauseating, for one thing.
Melissa surveyed the room. The crib she'd picked up at a flea market weeks ago seemed too small. Did cribs come in sizes? Next to the crib sat two boxes of disposable diapers and a few changes of clothes. Would six bottles be enough? Did a kid this age need toys? As usual, the important questions occurred to her when it was too late to do something about them.
It’d seemed like such a good idea when she told the lie to Charlie all those months ago; he'd only been in jail a few days when she wrote the letter. The idea had come to her when her period was a few days late.
"I put off telling you till now because I was scared," she lied in purple ink.
Months before, he’d confided boozily that he was the last male in his family. “When I go out they’ll never be another Batch,” he had said, stroking his chin in that melancholy manner drinking induces. “Ronnie and I will never have a child.”
Charlie kept the infamous, Ronnie, often mentioned but never seen, hidden away in some distant suburb. Melissa wasn’t sure Ronnie even existed. The only time Charlie mentioned his wife was when he didn’t want to do something—or did.
"Cool," he wrote by return mail when he got the news of her imminent motherhood. She bet anything he was already plotting how to get his hands on the baby. Except there wasn’t one. A few weeks later, small checks started coming from his grandmother up in Maine. The checks grew a bit larger when the imaginary baby was born. It was never that much money, but it bought her the odd dinner out, a dress that wasn’t on the sales rack.
Sometimes the old lady included pieces of advice with the check—odd little messages scribbled on scraps of paper that read Shelterville Hardware at the top. "Keep the baby's feet warm to prevent colic" was one. Another cautioned her to rub the navel area with Vaseline. Probably his grandmother wanted to get her hands on the baby too—her being the last Batch. Both the checks and the notes smelled like apples. She cashed the checks right away, of course, but she shredded the little notes and kept them in a jar like potpourri.
What could possibly go wrong with Charlie inside the pen? But two to five turned into less than eighteen months. No one told her this was possible. She shivered, thinking how little time had actually remained for finding the baby she’d supposedly given birth to more than a year ago now.
"I named her Madeline," she told him on the phone, looking around for inspiration. Later, she remembered Madeline was the name of her brother's high school girlfriend. Madeline DiBono had turned her onto pot at twelve, sneaking up to Melissa’s bedroom to pass a joint while Flip shot hoops in the alley.
It wasn't until the week before Thanksgiving that Melissa began looking for a baby, and she almost landed one that first day. She hadn't guessed the sex until the mother changed its diaper right on the bench in the bus station, discarding the yellow overalls, which had seemed so feminine seconds before.
Alvaro," his mother cooed. Looking into Melissa's shocked face, she said something in Spanish, probably thinking she was offended at the sight of her naked son. Melissa backed away from the bench, giddy with relief. After that, every baby she spotted seemed firmly attached to its parents. Until today.
Plopping the kid—Madeline—into the flea market crib now, she stripped off the too-large coat and the fur hat that covered her dark hair before switching on the TV, remembering too late that the baby—Madeline—was only ten feet away. The camaraderie established at the train station vanished as the baby, up on all fours in a flash, began to scream. Then she rose, like the magical Christmas tree in The Nutcracker, looking accusingly at Melissa, who hadn't even known the kid could stand. When Melissa tried to pick her up, Madeline turned bright red, twisting angrily away.
"Mamamamama," she yelled frantically, crying real tears. Her fat, baby hands clutched the crib rail so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
The baby talked! Well, that was good — really good. Charlie would expect a child of thirteen months to speak a little, to stand up. Making comforting sounds, she picked the kid up and walked around the room. She found a bottle in the fridge and the baby grabbed it greedily. She could feed herself, too! Her eyes began to flutter closed again and Melissa placed her carefully in the crib. Then the phone rang. She grabbed it on the first ring.
It was her mother, asking her for another round of favors. Pick me up from the hairdresser. Get me some groceries. Take me to the doctors. Get me some Gordon’s Gin.
"Hey, Mom," she finally broke in, "I'm gonna be out of town for a few days before New Years but..."
"Where you going?"
"Got some business up ..."
Her mother laughed. "You? You got business? Don't even got a real job now you quit the one your brother gave you! Working at a checkout counter twenty hours a week!”
"Anyway, Mom,” Melissa interrupted, stopping that old train from leaving the station. “I got some money and I thought we could go out for New—“
"I got a game New Year’s," her mother interrupted.
Melissa could hear her expelling smoke, flicking at the dial on the radio, reaching into the fridge for a beer. She couldn’t remember a time she had had her mother’s full attention.
"I thought you quit playing."
Flip had told her that only a week ago, bragging about how he’d picked up his mother's five thousand dollar marker down at A.C.
"Couldn't lay off the doublin
g-up," he told Melissa, oozing self importance. “I told them…” In all his stories, Flip told someone something.
"Well anyway, I can't do it that night," her mother said, before hanging up. “New Year’s Eve is out.”
Melissa dropped exhausted onto her bed in the next room, falling immediately into a deep sleep despite her jangled nerves.
Charlie had asked her to bring Madeline up to Massachusetts several times. He suggested it when the imaginary Madeline was three months old and then again at six months. Paging frantically through the dated book she'd picked up on infant care, Melissa came up with illnesses to get off the hook.
"Roseola," she told him the first time, wondering if she'd got the name right. "Temperature's over a hundred."
He'd accepted it and most of her lame excuses, but the question of a visit became a constant source of friction delaying more than one check.
"It's six hours," she wrote finally, after several such exchanges. "Plus we'd have to stay in a motel overnight. I'd need a crib, a high chair."
Finally, he gave up, especially after he got his early release date. Of course, he'd insisted on pictures and she supplied him with several from a photo album found at the flea market.
"Sure do dress her funny," Charlie wrote, noticing the 1960s era clothing she’d overlooked. "Looks like some old hippie's kid with that tie-dyed tee shirt and diaper."
After that, she hunted for pictures that didn't look so dated, but most of the snaps had a longhaired daddy, a thirty-year old car or an older sibling crowding out the infant. She couldn't afford to be too fussy about little things like Madeline's quirky wardrobe.
"What about a camcorder?" Charlie wrote from Pondville in September. "If I finally got a kid, I at least want to see her move. She crawling yet? My grandmother said she’d be crawling."
Melissa put him off, claiming she wasn't good with electronic stuff, didn't know which one to buy, how to operate it.
"You can pick one when you get out," she wrote, expecting that day to be years away.
Then his release date came down, sending Charlie to Boston Pre-release and Melissa out into the streets to come up with a kid. The thing was — she never expected it to go this far. Actually, she didn’t know what she expected. She was playing Charlie, like always. They had never really discussed the circumstances of his incarceration, for instance. Maybe he’d forgotten about it, but she doubted it. Maybe the baby would deflect his fist from smashing into her face when they met up. Though he didn’t really seem like the hitting type.
The kidnapping turned up on the front page of the Inquirer with the blonde's pinched face staring accusingly out at her. Luckily, the picture of Madeline (real name, Sierra) was several months old. Her hair was darker and curlier now and she looked more like a real person, Melissa thought, watching the baby bang pots together on the kitchen floor. The kid seemed to have forgotten the blonde completely after some initial whining, and now, three days later, her large green eyes followed Melissa's every move. It was spooky. If she stopped moving and sat down, the kid crawled into her lap, pulling at her hair, grabbing her earrings. Then, if she turned her head away, the baby would pull it back, looking deeply into her eyes. Once or twice, she'd felt a pull in her stomach - much like the one she had felt when she first noticed boys. This one she could resist.
Charlie had made arrangements to meet them at a friend's house, empty for the holidays. She bundled Madeline's things into the diaper bag, never thinking much beyond presenting Charlie with the baby, proving Madeline's existence, and insuring her continued monthly check. He probably had the idea he could take the baby home to Ronnie, but that kind of move would demand an astronomical payoff for the grieving mother. Her. If she even tried to work it out, her brain went dead with the effort; it was often better to just let things unfold and make the necessary adjustments.
The place in Sharon, Massachusetts was a dilapidated bungalow that looked like a crack house. At some point, its occupants had been optimistic enough to paint it yellow. Broken shingles littered the driveway, a shutter swung wildly on its hinge. She parked the car half a block away, watching the activity on the street. Things seemed quiet, but it was the middle of the afternoon and the same street might scare the shit out of her later. Every street she’d lived on had been like that, offering up a benign daytime face only to rip off the disguise by midnight. After a few minutes thought, she struggled out of the car, not knowing what she’d need and what could be left behind. Dazed from too much sleep, Madeline didn't even protest her rough handling. She wrapped her legs around Melissa's middle and hung on apprehensively as they headed for the door.
Charlie answered on the first ring.
"Hey," Melissa said struggling to find the right words. "Been doing some lifting. Pondville let you muscle up?" Charlie's prematurely graying hair had been cut short and spiky, and his old moustache, a little straggly thing, was gone.
He grinned, dragging them into the house. "Put on some weight mostly." He turned around slowly so she could admire his toned ass, his sculpted middle.
"Looks good." Though she’d just slept with him the once, and mostly out of boredom and drunkenness, he wasn’t hard to look at.
"Jeez! She’s changed from her pictures," he said, taking the baby out of Melissa's arms. "I thought she had blonde hair."
He looked her over carefully, like a new mother might, finally putting her down. She began to crawl around the room, pulling herself when she reached the coffee table.
"Wow, she's almost walking. I missed a lotta good stuff. Why didn't you write she was walking?" Hopping over, he moved a pack of Marlboros out of the baby's reach, sticking one in his mouth and lighting it. The twitchy muscles in his cheek relaxed as he exhaled.
"Babies change," she informed him anxiously. "She lost her baby hair a few months ago." Inspired, she added, "With us both having dark hair, it was likely to turn." He nodded, believing her instantly. She looked around the house. "Whose shit hole is this anyway?"
"Nobody you know. Ain't easy finding an empty place this time of year. Folks up here hunker down at Christmas. It's not like Philly." He rubbed his hands together as if to illustrate the cold weather in New England. They sat down on the sagging sofa where Madeline joined them a minute later, pulling herself up right between them, smiling broadly.
He couldn't take his eyes off of the baby. "You don't seem as glad to see me as her," Melissa observed, sulkily. She patted her hair, wondering where the bathroom was. Maybe she needed some mascara.
"What's up, Melissa? Do you want to score an old man after all? I thought it was just a one-nighter. We’re just friends, right?" He took a breath. “Partners in crime.”
"Some one-nighter,” she said, avoiding his other reference.
"Never thought you'd be one to get knocked up,” he laughed. “You handed out more rubber than Goodyear."
It wasn’t going well; he was getting her off track. "Look, I'm exhausted, Charlie. It was a six-hour drive and I had to stop to feed her."
"Right," he said, almost eagerly. "Get some sleep. I'll take care of her."
"Well, don't blow your filthy smoke at her," she told him, feeling dismissed. "I don't need…Madeline… getting asthma." He stubbed out his cigarette, waving the dying butt at her.
She found a bedroom next to the kitchen and sank wearily onto a stripped double bed, using her coat for a blanket. The mattress smelled musty, and the Spanish—sounding music from a neighboring house was way too loud. She could hear Charlie moving around, the baby babbling. Was he calling his wife, that faceless woman he rarely mentioned? Ronnie. Finally, she slept dreamlessly, waking only when the window began to rattle from the wind.
Pulling the dingy curtain aside, she noticed not a single house on the block was strung with Christmas lights. Not one candle lit up a window. It could be fucking February on this street. She wandered into the living room where Charlie sat in the same spot she had left him, staring at the sleeping baby.
"Whose kid is it any
way?" he asked flatly, his back to her.
"Whaddya mean whose kid?" She struggled with her voice, adding a yawn for effect. “She’s your kid. Ours,” she amended.
"She's a black baby. Look at her, for God's sake! I've seen enough of 'em where I've been." He whirled around then, looking like someone else entirely. She could feel heat bursting from him, and, more importantly rage, and stepped back.
"You're crazy. 1 never balled no black man."
He rolled his eyes. “Look what someone left behind, Melissa." He shook a folded newspaper at her face, and then spread it out on the table. "Who does that look like?"
In the photograph, Madeline was seated on Santa's lap in a red velvet dress, holding a handful of mangy beard. The older sister— Melissa couldn’t remember her name— sat beside her in the Christmas dress she later wet. A picture of the blonde and the baby's father accompanied the Christmas photo. The father was black and wore an army uniform.
"Wait a sec.…" she began.
"Shut your lying mouth and let me think a minute!"
Rising quickly, he began to pace. The chair toppled over, hitting the floor with a bang. Madeline woke up screaming and looked around the room frantically.
"Ah, jeez," Charlie said. "Pick her up, will you? Pick your little black baby up." She picked the kid up, searching for the diaper bag. As her hand reached out, he grabbed it, his hand tightening round her wrist.
“That hurts, Charlie,” she whined and he let go quickly—as if her wrist had burned him.
"Already fed her," he said glumly, leaning over and righting the chair. “Christ, Melissa. What the hell were you thinking?" He shook his head. "You duck and the shit meant for you hits me smack in the face. I don’t have to tell you where it landed me last time. That’s what I get, I guess, for screwing a little ball-breaker."
“Look, I did my part of the last job right. I got the key for you. It’s not my fault you got caught.” He glared at her and she stepped back. “You think it was easy cleaning houses all those months. Wearing those pink overalls. Lifting those keys.”
