Every Time We Say Goodbye

by Jamie Zeppa

  Sometimes, her milk started running before the baby even cried. Something let go in her breasts, and just as milk began to leak out, the baby would cry. She wondered at this. She wondered about the baby. Sometimes, when the baby stopped feeding, she didn’t call Vera right away. She examined its tiny fingers and ears and touched the strands of dark blond hair. It knew how to drink, how to hold on. If she touched the side of its cheek, it turned its face towards her hand. She wondered what else it knew.

  She heard the baby crying, and when Vera didn’t bring him, she got out of bed and stood at the top of the stairs. “Vera?” she called. “Where’s the baby?”

  “He’s fine,” Vera called back. “I just gave him a bath. Go on back to bed.”

  Grace’s heart was hammering. She went downstairs and found the baby wrapped in white flannel in the cradle in the front room. His eyes were closed and his face was red; he was crying with all his might. “Vera?” she called. “Vera!” She could hear Vera rummaging in the root cellar. Grace drew in a tattered breath and lifted him up. Instantly, he stopped crying and pushed his hot little face into her breast. He knows who I am, she thought, astonished. Sinking into the chair beside the cradle, she unbuttoned her nightgown and the baby opened his mouth.

  The door opened and Vera came in, a basket of empty jam jars in her arms.

  “Grace! What are you doing?”

  “He’s hungry.”

  “You have to let him cry, Grace. You can’t come to him every time he cries. That’s how you spoil him,” Vera said. “Next time, leave him be.”

  The baby stopped drinking and looked at Grace. His eyes were the colour of dark slate, and she could see that he already knew everything in the world.

  DANNY

  Danny smelled of sleep and milk and a lemony sweetness. His skin was white and pink, and more golden hair was coming in, soft and feathery. Just before he yawned, a tiny frown of concentration appeared between his eyebrows. When Grace lifted her shirt to feed him, he squirmed and kicked impatiently. His eyes looked for her, and when they found her, he smiled, and every time Grace laughed. She unwrapped his blanket, examined his feet and hands, kissed his fingers. She could not get enough of him. The cradle was in her room now—she had carried it upstairs herself, over Vera’s objections—but most often he slept in the bed beside her. She fell asleep listening to his breath, and a prickling in her skin always woke her just before he cried.

  Outside, the snow had melted away completely, and the light was warm on the windows. Grace was a whirl of energy. She did everything Vera asked. She swept the floor and beat the carpet so she could put a clean blanket down and settle the baby on it. She raked stones out of the soil and planted carrots and potatoes so the baby would have food when he was ready to eat it. She watched Vera cut out a pattern for a baby jumper and said, “Let me make it, Vera.” Vera showed her how to fit the seams together, and Grace’s needle flew in and out, making small, even stitches. Vera borrowed Mrs. McCabe’s camera and Frank took their picture, Vera and Grace in front of a rose bush with Danny between them in the jumper they had made for him.

  The moment Grace was done her work, she raced to where Danny was, usually on a blanket surrounded by pillows in the front room. If he was asleep, she lay down beside him and watched his eyes move under their lids. If he was awake, she carried him around the house, showing him things. He liked brightly lit places, but only if there was something dark as well, so that his eyes could follow the edges. He liked things that dangled, and reached his round little hands out for them, and things that moved, like curtains when the window was open. And he liked surprising sounds. Grace sneezed, and Danny let out a peal of laughter.

  Vera said, “Close the window, Grace.” Babies needed fresh air, but fresh air carried germs. They needed to be wrapped up against the cold, but they also had to be able to kick their legs. Their hands had to be free, but they weren’t allowed to suck on them. They had to be fed, but on schedule, held properly but not too much. Otherwise, they would be spoiled. Vera was especially worried about spoiling. She told Frank, “I have to watch her constantly. She carries him around like he’s a doll, and the minute she puts him down, he fusses. If she keeps this up …” She didn’t finish. The booklets from Mrs. McCabe explained what would happen if Grace kept this up.

  When Vera held Danny, her face changed, softening with the sheer pleasure of him, and she murmured and sang to him, and Grace felt bad for wanting to keep her away from the baby. So she listened and nodded when Vera said, “Listen to this, Grace. This was written by a doctor. ‘Babies under six months old should never be played with, and of kissing, the less the better.’ Do you hear that, Grace? And here you are, playing with him like he’s a toy and kissing him all the time. You don’t want to ruin him, do you, Grace?”

  “No,” Grace said. She waited for Vera to leave the room before she kissed him.

  “Listen, Grace: ‘A really contrary infant might try for an hour, or even for two or three hours, to get the best of his mother by crying. She must never give in, provided she is convinced that nothing is physically amiss with the child. Habitual criers should be left alone most of the time; otherwise, they might become nervous.’ ” Vera looked up from the book. “You see? Do you want him to be nervous? Now put him down.”

  Grace put the baby down. The trick was to always be waiting, to be listening for that catch in his breath and watching for the shadow that darkened his face before he cried. The trick was to get to him just before he cried, whisk him away, upstairs, downstairs, wherever Vera was not, to feed him and rock him and kiss him, and then to put him back in his cradle before Vera got back. “You see how much more peaceful he is,” Vera asked, “now that you aren’t picking him up every minute of the day?”

  It was hard to get to him, though, when Vera sent her outside to pick tomatoes. It was hard when Frank said, “Vera says you’re spoiling the baby.” It got worse when Vera found her in the root cellar, feeding Danny on the steps. “Grace! Have you gone mad? Bringing the baby down here?” Vera’s astonishment grew into fury. “And you just fed him! This is why he won’t stay on his schedule. Give him over!” But Grace would not give him over. She took Danny upstairs, leaving Vera yelling on the steps.

  That night, when Frank came home, there was no dinner. Vera had been in her room all afternoon. Frank looked at Grace playing with Danny in the kitchen and rushed upstairs. Over by the windows, Grace could hear Frank’s low murmur in the room above, but no matter where she stood, she couldn’t hear Vera at all. When Frank came downstairs, he looked like all the air had been sucked out of him. “You’ve really upset her, Grace. Her nerves are shot.” When she didn’t look up, he said, “Grace. She just wants what’s best for the baby. You know that.”

  Grace did know it. The problem was Vera’s idea of best.

  The next morning, the baby began to cry just as she started to water the beans, but when she hurried to the house, she found the door locked. Her skin prickled and her breasts were heavy. The prickling spread over her chest, up her neck, down her arms to her hands. She pounded on the door while the needles multiplied under her skin. “Please, Vera,” she begged. Inside, Danny’s cries grew louder. She ran around to the front door, but it too was locked. She had never heard Danny cry so hard before. Grace hammered the door with the palm of her hand and then kicked it furiously. “Let me in!” she screamed. Vera appeared at the window. “That is enough!” she hissed. “Stop it this instant or I’ll leave you out there all day.”

  She slammed the window shut.

  Danny cried and Grace threw herself to the ground under the sun. This was the place people meant when they said hell. Eventually, the door opened and Vera let her in. Grace pushed past her. “Don’t you dare wake him,” Vera said. Grace sat by the cradle and watched Danny sleep. His face was flushed and damp with sweat. “I’m sorry, Danny,” she whispered. “I heard you crying, but I couldn’t come.”

  At dinner, Frank looked up from his soup. “What happened to
you, Grace? Your face and arms are covered with bites.”

  Grace said, “It’s nothing.” It was the needles that broke through her skin while Danny cried for her.

  Vera looked at her closely. “Poison ivy. Don’t touch the baby until it goes away. It’s time he took the bottle anyway.” Her voice was as flinty as her face.

  Grace covered her eyes with her hands.

  Vera showed Grace the bottles and rubber nipples, which had to be sterilized, and the powdered formula, which had to be mixed up with cooled boiled water. “He’s six months old now. Formula is better for him,” Vera said. “And it’s so much more sanitary.” But Danny would not take the bottle, sanitary or not. He pushed the rubber out of his mouth and cried and cried. Vera was not bothered. “He’ll take it when he gets hungry enough.”

  Danny cried all day. Grace’s face and arms were flaming red, her eyes swollen from crying. “What a fuss you make,” Vera said. “Do you think I’m doing this to hurt Danny? Anyway, crying is how babies exercise their lungs. Stop that caterwauling, Grace.” Finally, Danny closed his mouth around the rubber nipple and drank.

  “You see how much better he sleeps now?” Vera said the next morning. “He didn’t wake at all last night, did he?” But he had woken. And Grace was awake seconds before him. So for a few weeks, Danny drank from the bottle during the day, and Grace fed him at night, and Vera was happy until she turned on the light in the middle of the night and found them. She grabbed Danny and slammed the door behind her. In the morning, she said, “You think I’m being hard, Grace, but he has to have proper food. He’s going to eat baby food now and learn to drink from a cup. Otherwise, he’s not going to grow properly.”

  Grace said, “He is growing. Every day he gets bigger.”

  Vera brought out the booklet from Mrs. McCabe. “Look here. Scientists have made this formula. Do you think you know better than scientists?”

  Grace turned the booklet over. It had the same cover as the box of formula. She said, “But I’m right there at night. I can just feed him.”

  Vera had a solution to that. It was time for Danny to sleep in his own room. “Babies have to learn to be independent.” She said the sewing room would be Danny’s room, Grace’s room would be the sewing room, and Grace could move up to the attic room. Frank moved Grace’s bed and dresser. “You always said you liked it up here,” Frank said. The room was big, the length of the whole house, with light at both ends. “And you’ll have your privacy.” But Grace didn’t want her privacy. She wanted to scream. She squeezed her fists and pressed them into her eyes until the sockets hurt.

  “Listen, Gracie,” Frank said, then fell silent.

  “She wants to leave him alone in the dark,” Grace said. “She lets him cry.” He was a baby. It made no sense.

  “She worked for Dr. McCabe’s family,” Frank said. “She helped his wife with all their babies. Now, wouldn’t a doctor and a doctor’s wife know what’s best for a baby?”

  Grace dropped her hands from her face. “I know what’s best for him.”

  Frank shook his head. “I don’t think you do, and I can’t be in the middle like this. Enough is enough. From now on, what Vera says goes.”

  What Vera said was, the baby would come with her to town in the mornings. Mrs. McCabe loved to see Danny, and so did Vera’s sister, Anne. Grace wanted to come to town too, but Vera said no. Mrs. McCabe had a reputation to protect. Grace said nothing. She was afraid of Mrs. McCabe because of the Children’s Aid Society. They took babies away from mothers without husbands. They had taken Millie Henderson’s baby away. Vera said that the Children’s Aid could come and make a visit. If they found Danny not being cared for properly, they would take him away. They could do that; it was their jurisdiction.

  Grace was sorry she hadn’t told them about John Cherniak. Frank would have gone over to talk to his parents, and when John came back from the war, he would have married her. They would have moved to town like he wanted, and even if they didn’t, the farm wouldn’t have been so bad. She could have worked in the house while Danny played on a blanket beside her. She could have worked in the fields while Danny slept in a basket under a tree. John’s mother, with her black bonnet, wouldn’t have cared how much she kissed her own child. John’s mother had already had children, and her daughters in town all had children of their own. There would be lots of babies to go around. Then there were the things she and John had done by the creek—they could do those things any time they wanted, and she could have had brothers and sisters for Danny.

  But it was too late for all that. No one would marry her now.

  What she needed was a place of her own. At night, she transformed herself and Danny into foxes or blackbirds and found a place in the woods that Vera could not get to, and then she was able to sleep, but in the morning, she was ashamed. You are not a bird, she told herself angrily. You can’t live in a tree.

  What she needed was money, to pay for a real place.

  What she needed was a job. But what jobs were there for women who didn’t know how to do any jobs? She didn’t even know who to ask, except Vera, and that was out of the question. Then, at the beginning of December, Vera surprised her.

  GOING

  “Well, Mrs. May’s daughter is certainly doing well for herself,” Vera said while they peeled potatoes at the kitchen table. Snow hissed softly against the windows. “Remember how she got in trouble last year and went down south? Now she has a job there.” Grace did not remember, but her entire body went erect and a tremor ran through her fingers.

  “She’s making a good eighteen, nineteen dollars a week now.”

  “Where does she stay?” Grace asked. Her voice was uneven, but she kept peeling.

  “She stayed at the YWCA at first,” Vera said. “Now she’s got an apartment with another girl. That’s what they do, the girls. They get together and share a place.”

  “I wonder how she knew where to get a job.”

  “Advertisement in the paper. She got there on a Sunday night, and by Tuesday morning she was working.” Vera sliced the potatoes and dropped them into a colander. “No one knows her down there; she can start fresh. She’ll probably meet a fellow and get married.”

  Grace began to sweep the peelings into a pile. “What kind of job?”

  “A cereal company. Mrs. May showed me a photo of the two of them, Bridget and her roommate. They were going to Niagara Falls for a holiday, and they had on the cutest hats.”

  “Did she know how to do that work before she got there?”

  “Oh that,” Vera said. “No. They trained her.”

  The potatoes were finished, but Vera and Grace sat at the table, the silence between them lengthening until Vera said, “If you wanted to do something like that, Grace, I’d be behind it.”

  Grace didn’t look up, but her heart jerked and began to race. She could see them, Danny and her, in a little apartment, sitting together in the window seat, looking out onto the tops of trees. In her mind, she kissed the top of Danny’s head and drank in the smell of his hair.

  “I could talk to Mrs. May,” Vera said. “Find out where Bridget is working. Maybe Bridget could introduce you at the factory. Would you like to do something like that?”

  Grace said, “Yes.”

  “Well!” Vera looked surprised. Then she beamed. “Well, good! It might be just the thing for you.”

  “But I don’t know how … I mean, how would I …”

  “Oh, they just want decent, able-bodied people. They’ll show you how to do the work.”

  “I mean, I don’t know what I’d do with Danny while I was at work.”

  Vera blinked. “What you would do with Danny.”

  “Yes. If I found someone who could watch him—”

  Vera’s face snapped shut and she snatched the colander off the table. “And here I thought you’d finally gotten your head out of the clouds! You can’t take Danny down there! A woman with a baby and no husband—they won’t even look at you. And even if you did get
a job, which you wouldn’t, you’d have to pay some stranger to look after Danny while you were at work.” She slammed the colander into the sink. “What you would do with Danny! Honest to goodness, Grace. I don’t know what goes on in your head sometimes.”

  Grace went into the living room and squeezed in beside Danny on the sofa. He was asleep, his fists tucked under his chin, surrounded by pillows so he wouldn’t fall. She studied the shadow his lashes made against his cheek, the arc of his mouth. Did Vera really think she could go live hundreds of miles away from Danny? I don’t know what goes on in her head sometimes, Grace thought.

  At supper, Vera and Frank talked about the war and which men were seeing action and whether anything good could come out of the alliance with Stalin. Grace cut her potatoes into smaller and smaller pieces. “Frank, do they hire women at the plant?”

  “Sure, there are plenty of women working in the offices,” he said.

  Vera scowled at her. “They’re educated women,” she said. “They went to secretarial school.”

  “But in the plant part?” Grace persisted.

  “There are some now,” Frank said. “Why?”

  Vera answered for her. “We were talking about Mrs. May’s daughter this morning. She’s got a job down south, and Grace said she wouldn’t mind doing something like that. If you aren’t going to eat, Grace, take your plate to the kitchen.” Grace took her plate to the kitchen and stood behind the door, listening.

  Frank said he didn’t like the idea of Grace going away. He didn’t see why she shouldn’t try to find work here in Sault Ste. Marie. Not at the plant—that probably wasn’t the place for her—but if she wanted to work, she could probably find something, and Vera could look after the baby in the day.

  In the kitchen, Grace shook her head. Vera was already looking after Danny in the day; that was not the solution.