There were tests, after that, and doctors shaking their heads, and finally, the referral to Lynet Mochini's therapy group. After their first session there, after handling the scrapbooks and the plastic shrouded knit hats and limp blankets, Arna had donated all of would-be Olitia's baby things to charity. Even the passed-down things from her mother, and Dehaan's mother. Which hadn't set well with either Dehaan or his family, but Arna considered all those waiting-but-unused items to be jinxed, tainted by the mystery of their vanished would-be occupant. They were not meant to be worn by her, so there was no use keeping them to hex another future child of hers and Dehaan's...
"—so that's why we're not coming back to group, next time,” Capek Holleb was saying, after his wife's voice grew thick and clotted with unshed tears.
"Oh, I wish you'd wait until after your next visit to decide that,” Lynet soothed, her small pinched face pulled into a moue that started at her lips and yanked her entire face into a beak-like protrusion.
After a beat of silence from the Hollebs, Paloma began saying something, a rush of lilting Spanish with no pauses between the words, and as soon as she did take a breath, Jonas repeated, “The boy, she see him again. Walking, this time. Eating a cookie, and what not go in his mouth, it go on the floor. She try to keep watching him, talk to him, but she hear my car in the driveway, and ... But this time, she keep crumbs. Sweep them into bag—"
Poking his wife in the side, Jonas watched as Paloma rooted around in her jeans pocket for a small clear zip-top bag, the seal marked with a vivid stripe of green where the yellow and blue sides meshed together. Under the bright verdant seal was a moist clump of buttery-yellow crumbs, and a rounded piece of unchewed cookie, like the petal-shaped outer surface of those Baby Bites cookies Arna tried not to look at in the store when she went shopping.
Holding the bag up so all could see it, Paloma began speaking, pointing at the bag with her free hand, while Jonas said, “You feel the crumbs, they still moist. From his mouth. We take to laboratory, they do tests on it. They say they contact us, with result. Test the spit on the crumbs. Prove it from baby—"
Arna could predict what Lynet would say before the woman finally opened her mouth—"That's true, they can do tests on food for saliva, but Paloma, where did you get the cookie? Children, they eat things in the park, and drop them on the grass..."
Jonas quickly translated, and Paloma began shaking her head. Then, through Jonas:
"No, not on grass. Not in park. See, in the bag, thread from the rug. See, it is red—"
As Lynet explained that yes, she did believe that the carpet in the Beltran house was red, and that there was a fiber visible in the bag, it still didn't prove that the cookie crumbs were on the carpet ... and around that time, Arna stopped listening all together, and spent the rest of the evening looking at people's shoes, at their purses and bags resting on the floor beside them, all the while wondering how she could place an anonymous call to the police, child services, someone, to report that person who kept leaving that baby on her lawn...
* * * *
The baby was gone from the back lawn when they returned home after group. Dehaan made a point of shutting the sliding window once Arna had peered outside at their darkening lawn, and pulling the drapes over the closed glass, while Arna pretended not to notice him. As she went into the kitchen, looking for something to toss into the microwave, Dehaan said, “I think I'm going to spring for that air conditioning. There's no reason not to..."
Before, when Olitia fluttered and swooped within her, there had been a reason not to install A/C—that money was earmarked for their daughter's college fund. Arna wondered if Dehaan had made his decision based on her own unfitness for carrying a baby to term, or if this was a quick fix to prevent her from needing to look out the dining room window, to even open the drapes themselves anymore—
"What Paloma was saying ... I think Lynet was wrong. At least, I think she should've waited for the results of those tests to come back—"
"What results? All those two needed to do was kiss, swap spit, and expel it in a bag with some crumbs. They're in denial, only now they're manufacturing proof of—"
"Of something that might actually be real?"
"Don't start in on that again—"
"On what?"
"That whole baby thing ... seeing them. I mean, I know I can't fully empathize with you on this, there's no way I can know what you went through, but ... just don't start this. You got the idea from Paloma, and next thing you know, that Holleb woman will start seeing them too. I know one thing—they're not the only ones who won't be there at group next time. I mean, we don't belong there, not really. It's not like we have a baby hat, or pictures to—"
"There's the ultrasound—"
"Of what, exactly? The more you look at it, the more it could be any damn thing. There's hardly a face, let alone—"
"Her ears, they stuck out. Like mine. There's that—"
"So do a lot of other kid's ears. She's gone, and that's it. No amount of sitting around talking to other people is going to change it, either. Make something for yourself, I'm going to do some work in my office."
Once he'd gone into his home office (which was going to be Olitia's room, before) and shut the door, Arna pushed aside the drapes and peered out the back window one last time, even though the yard was empty, as empty as the house for sale next door, and no birds flew anywhere above the grass...
"A/C would be good,” she mumbled to herself, as she thought, The baby wasn't eating, not yet, not on her own, so she wouldn't leave any crumbs, but maybe ... just maybe...
* * * *
Without the group meetings to look forward to every other week, time seemed to pass more quickly, the days, weeks, months merged into a repetitive whole (eatdriveworkdriveeatmaybehavesexsleepeatdrive—), and once Dehaan made good on his promise to have the A/C installed, not only did Arna have less of an excuse to periodically peer out the dining room window, and scan the lawn for stray babies, but once Dehaan bought those shrubs from the nursery on the other side of town, the view from that window was quickly obscured by something quick-growing and thick-leaved (she never did bother to read the plastic tag still affixed to the shrub's stem), which turned the yard and sky beyond into a choppy, incomplete mosaic of bright green and blue beyond the darker green of the shrub. No way to look for babies.
And with the money they didn't spend on Olitia's food, clothes and medical bills, Dehaan found enough to hire someone to mow the lawn for him, so that Arna had no reason to look out that way, or even walk around there.
Once a “For Sale” sign went up in front of their house as well as the one which was still empty next door, all of Arna's time was spent packing, and cleaning, and getting things ready for Dehaan's move (job related—at least that wasn't one of his excuses, his cover-ups designed to make her stop fixating on that lawn baby), so she almost forgot about the baby ... until she went shopping for the last time in their favorite grocery store, for food they could eat during the drive to their new town, and Dehaan's new job.
Moving her cart down the aisle with the beef jerky and other preserved meats in skin-tight wrappers, she saw Paloma pushing a cart toward her from the opposite end of the long aisle. There was no way to avoid her, and since Jonas wasn't around, no way to understand her—
"Hello, Arna! Been so long time, no? You ok?"
Wondering just how good the woman's English really was, Arna smiled and said, “Dehaan and I are doing well—he has a new job, in—"
"You miss group, you no hear ... the test, we get back. Baby real. Baby, he ours—"
Glad that Dehaan wasn't around, Arna leaned over the handle of her cart and said, “You mean DNA tests? The spit, it matched yours and—"
"Si, si, it match. They say, come from our baby—"
Wondering what Lynet had had to say about that, Arna asked, “But do you still see him? The baby—"
"Si. He big now, running down hallway. I run, but no catch. But he real. No m
atter what Lynet say. He talk. To me. Call me Mama. It not strange to him, to be here, not be here. Jonas, he not see him, but he believe. Like Hollebs, they believe too—"
"They kept coming back to group?"
"Si. They curious, about test. Then, Sagirah, she see her daughter. With dark hair, like in ultrasound. Lynet, she not know what to do, but we no have picture, or knit things to show off, so me and Sagirah, we share what we see. I tell Sagirah, look for what falls from her, pick up whatever she find. People, they shed things all time, same for babies—"
And birds, Arna found herself thinking. The birds, who always circled the baby on my lawn. They shit. They shed feathers—
Still not able to mention the baby she'd seen, so many months before, Arna nodded and told Paloma she was happy for her, that she was still seeing her son, and handed the woman a piece of paper with her new address on it, just to keep in touch, later. Smiling, Paloma shoved it into her opened purse in the top basket of the cart, and pushed her cart past Arna's, while Arna threw whatever jerky and meat treats she could find close by into her cart, wondering if she could make it home before Dehaan arrived home from work that afternoon...
* * * *
The person Dehaan hired to cut the grass had set the blade of the mower much too low—the grass was dried out to short brittle stubs above the easily visible ground. There was a great deal of bird dirt all over, thin watery splotches surrounding the tiny curled squiggle of solid matter in the middle. Most of the mess was concentrated near the spot where the baby had been resting on the grass, close to the neighboring yard, but still on her side of the property line. There was a vaguely baby-sized spot in the middle where no dirt at all was visible. She did find a feather, a thin dun-colored thing, but she heard no birds cooing, nor did she see any sign of them in the trees which surrounded the yard. No trace of the baby, but yet there was no proof it hadn't been there, either.
Kicking herself because she hadn't gone outside to actually look at the baby when she'd seen it, Arna wondered what Paloma or Sagirah would do once they finally caught their babies. When they overcame whatever it was that was still holding them back from actually snatching the child up and holding it, tight, tighter, never to let it go. Standing there on her burned grass, Arna unconsciously put her hands over her empty abdomen, and whispered aloud, “Olitia, I wouldn't have let go of you if you'd just stayed around long enough to come out."
As the wind picked up, reminding Arna of that dream she'd had, the night Olitia went away, either disappearing, or dissipating into her surrounding body, she found herself looking skyward, for those flocks of small-headed birds, until she felt the cool, damp softness on her exposed lower leg, followed by a gentle shove against her calf.
Looking down, she saw the baby, only the baby was walking now, a bit unsteadily, but upright and mobile nonetheless. Barely combed pale brown hair, the same shade as Dehaan's, framed a pinkish-tan wide face, and just like Arna, her ears stuck out past the hanging strands of her hair. Blue-gray eyes, like Arna's, like her own mother's and all her siblings’ eyes. Typical baby nose, still too unformed to hint at what it would look like later on. Little mouth, pink-lipped and slightly wet, as if she'd been chewing something and generated additional saliva.
She was wearing a yellow jumpsuit, short puffy sleeves and balloon pants down to her mid-thigh. Plastic sandals the color of dandelion flowers over bare feet. Her hands were moist, and slightly sticky, from whatever she'd been eating. Gingerly reaching down one hand, Arna felt the top of the baby's head, hard and sun-warmed under the glossy hair, yet not too hard, the bones beneath the scalp still barely pliant if she pressed down too hard, which she didn't.
"And who are you?” she found herself cooing, in that small high voice adults invariably use when speaking to young children they didn't know, as if their ears were too fragile for normal adult tones.
The little girl looked up at Arna, her, eyes narrowed, either from the sunlight hitting them, or from puzzlement. Then she smiled, as if to say, I know what you're doing ... you're fooling me, before she leaned forward and rested her cheek against Arna's lower leg, and wrapped both small fat arms around her calf—
The sound of birds flying overhead, making a flapping, rushing noise, distracted her, made her look up. As she saw the last of them wing quickly against the noon sun, her leg suddenly felt very cold and naked in the summer heat, and she didn't need to look down to know what had happened, despite all the times she'd heard Paloma tell the same basic story, and no matter how many times she'd been warned what not to do.
And when Dehaan came home for his lunch break, to help her finish packing, she wished that the baby had been older, better able to understand big words like “moving” and “find me,” but something Paloma had said to her in the store, about the boy baby being hers, gave Arna some comfort—if this little girl in yellow was Olitia, she would find Arna again. From wherever she came from, and kept going back to...
* * * *
The new house was a condo, in a long line of other condos all squashed together without a yard, and without any place that a baby might stand unattended within her sight. No one else in the complex had children, either—Arna suspected that this was how Dehaan wanted it. He had picked out the condo, after all. She'd seen it before they moved in, but hadn't really thought about it all that much. Once she was there, the reality of her new surroundings hit hard, and all she could think of was the feel of those warm, sticky tiny hands on her bare leg, and the sweet pressure of that soft cheek against her skin.
Arna hoped that the other women, Paloma and Sagirah and whoever else might eventually join that group with their own baby sightings, were able to touch their babies. One thing Paloma had said, about the baby only coming when she was around, made more and more sense—the mother's body had been the last place the baby had been before not being there any more, so if it were to somehow come back, wouldn't the mother be the most obvious person it would come to? Home turf, so to speak.
(She refused to believe that a baby, especially a baby so close to being at least a premie if it were to be plucked from her body, could just dissolve like that within her, reverting cell by cell into maternal ooze, no matter what the doctors and Lynet said about it.)
As she opened up box after box of belongings, and set about putting the contents all over the new condo, tucking things into whatever nooks and corners she could find, like hiding Easter eggs amid shrubbery, she remembered what her mother had said, when she'd phoned after hearing the news about Olitia on her answering machine after Dehaan made the call from the hospital waiting room—"Arna, sweetest, when I was a little girl, I had an aunt who ... lost a baby. That's what everyone said, ‘Aunt Mary lost the baby’ and all I could think was, Well then why aren't all of you out looking for it? The poor baby was lost, and no one was searching for ... oh god, Arna, I'm sorry, I'm rambling—"
Perfect child-logic; you lose something, you go look for it. Her mother never mentioned it again, so Arna never knew if her mother had actually voiced her suggestion, but that was a long time ago, when kids were expected to stay quiet. Yet, it made a sort of sense, if you thought about it ... and wasn't that what group was all about, anyhow? Finding, and holding on to whatever remained of the lost baby?
Tossing aside the now-empty box, Arna tried to remember which one of her cousins was later born to Aunt Mary ... it had been at least forty, forty-five years since the woman “lost” that baby, but Arna wondered if perhaps one of Mary's later children had heard more about the matter, from their mother—
"—yeah, it's been a long time ... thanks for that card you and your husband sent after, y'know, we both appreciated it ... anyhow, I just got to wondering, what with what happened to me and all, did your mother ever tell you exactly what happened when she lost that baby a few years before you were born? I was just wondering if there was some sort of genetic, y'know—"
As her cousin (second, third cousin?) Callie spoke, Arna found herself staring out the window, at
the lightly clouded sky beyond their second-story condo, wondering where the birds were.
"It was really strange,” Callie said. “Ma was about five months along or so, heartbeat was fine, the baby was kicking, only back then, there was no ultrasound, so she never did know what it was—anyhow, she goes to sleep one night all right, and come morning, she starts freaking out, Dad claims, saying she was ‘empty’ and sure enough, the doctor couldn't find a heartbeat, and couldn't feel anything in there, either. She never expelled anything, just got flatter and flatter according to Dad. The doctor didn't know what to make of it, but told her to tell everyone they'd lost it. Mom never told me any of this, but Dad remembered—"
"How did she act later on? Did she ever talk about it?"
"No, and the only way I knew what happened was when someone in the family mentioned it, when I was about seven or so. But it explains why she did a lot of standing there, not talking, just sorta spacing out, every so often. Like she was listening for something—"
The birds, Arna thought, maybe she was looking for the birds. Or listening for her baby's voice.
Hanging up the phone a few minutes later, Arna tried to remember what Aunt Mary looked like, but by then the woman was old, and distant, and all she could recall with any clarity was the way the woman's eyes never quite focused on whoever she was talking to...
* * * *
Dehaan was away at work more often since his promotion and transfer, leaving Arna alone in the condo. In the following years, she took up some hobbies, needlepoint, and egg painting, resist dye and wax work that took up huge chunks of time, before she bundled up the finished eggs and sold them at a craft store downtown. She barely knew the other people in the condo, didn't want to after a few awkward exchanges which soured when they asked if she and Dehaan had any children. Either way she answered, her words would be lies, so she kept to herself.
Even though she bought preblown eggs for her work, she did like to go down to the small park a few blocks from the condo complex, to see if she could find any broken bird's eggs on the ground near the trees, or perhaps even an ejected whole egg. She loved the smallness, and the inherent contradictory fragility and strength of those tiny orbs, and always, as she looked, she'd keep an eye out for those oddly small-headed pigeons she'd seen circling around the lawn baby, so many years ago. The birds which somehow looked familiar, even as she couldn't quite place them, or even find them in the bird books she'd paged through in the bookstore near the craft shop.
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