Getting Near to Baby

by Audrey Couloumbis

  “Are you hungry?” I asked Mom.

  “No,” she said. “But you ought to make some sandwiches now, for yourself and for Little Sister.”

  So I did. But even in the kitchen I stood where I could look in on Mom and Baby in the rocker. Little Sister sat real quiet, looking at them. It took me a long time to make cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise, to cut them in half and put them on a plate. No one acted like they were all that hungry when I carried them in.

  “You could put Baby to bed,” I said. “You must be tired of sitting like that and holding her.”

  “No, I’m never going to be tired of holding her,” Mom said. “Now go on outside and eat those sandwiches, won’t you?” There was something in her voice. Something sweet and sad that made me want to hold on to her and cry. But I took Little Sister by the hand and we sat outside on the steps to eat our lunch.

  Milly crossed her yard on the way to hang her laundry out. We watched her pull some pieces out of the wet twist that was mounded in her twig basket. We could hear the snap of the wet fabric when she shook them out. When she hung them they were two undershirts and a blouse, flashing brightly in the sunlight. We watched her hang her white kitchen towels with the red stripes down the sides. She struggled with two flat bedsheets that billowed all around her. The breeze was that strong.

  When Milly turned around, she saw us and waved. I don’t know why Little Sister and I did not wave back. Milly went back to hanging her laundry. When the last piece was up and moving in the wind, we could hear it making a sound, buffle, buffle. Milly picked up her basket and took it back into the house.

  Like I say, I don’t know why we didn’t wave, but I wasn’t one bit surprised when Milly came back out of the house and crossed the road and started up the rise to our house.

  “Your mom inside?” she said when she got to us. Her eyes were wide, and she was breathless. All I could do was nod my head and follow her in. It was like that moment in the early hours of the morning when I stood on her porch, feeling like I’d done something wrong.

  “Yoo hoo,” she said, like this was any old visit. “Why, there you are,” Milly said in the gentlest voice.

  “Oh, Milly,” Mom said.

  Mom’s eyes filled with tears, which made my breath catch in my throat. Little Sister ran over and put her arms around Mom and Baby. It took me by surprise is all. Milly and I were suddenly crying along with Mom, none of us making any sound, but letting the tears run down our faces. Only Little Sister didn’t shed a tear.

  “She was sick all night long,” Mom said to Milly “Throwing up and feverish. I thought it was something she picked up, a cold or something; you know how babies will catch every little thing. But then all of a sudden she seemed to just give up. That’s when I knew it was something more. I sent Willa Jo to get you.”

  Milly shook her head. She was kneeling on the floor in front of Mom now.

  “I sat over here where I could see her running up to your door; it was coming on light enough. The sky was so pretty, all full of cold fire, that hard burning light that makes the morning shimmer so. It was like looking at the gateway to heaven. I thought to say a prayer. I asked the angels to look down on Baby and spare her further suffering.”

  “Oh, honey,” Milly said.

  “I asked them to make her better, Milly.” Mom’s voice was like running water, her words coming fast and hitting all high notes. “At least I thought that’s what I was asking. When the sun came up, just as the sun came up over the ridge, Baby stopped breathing. They took her, Milly. It hit me all at once, what I was asking and how it must have sounded. I should have held on to her real tight, so they would know. I must not have been holding her tight enough.”

  “Oh, no, Noreen,” Milly cried, clinging to Mom’s rocker. “They took mercy on her, that’s what it must be.”

  “Do you believe that?” Mom said shakily. “Because if I thought it was because of something I said ...”

  “You couldn’t say a wrong thing. You were praying,” Milly told Mom. “I knew. I think I knew all this day. I kept asking myself how it was that you all of a sudden didn’t need to go to the doctor.”

  “It was too late,” Mom whispered.

  “We’re going to have to call someone now,” Milly said.

  “I know,” Mom said. “This morning, when you were on your way over? Her little body was still so warm and sweet, I couldn’t let her go.”

  “I don’t blame you one bit,” Milly said, and suddenly bent her head to Mom’s knee for a moment.

  Mom put a hand on Milly’s head to comfort her.

  “This is the hardest thing.” Milly swallowed noisily two or three times. “I’ll call, okay?”

  “Okay,” Mom said. As Milly walked over to the phone, Mom’s face looked like it was breaking up. “Milly? I’m so glad you’re here.”

  18

  Seeing Baby Off to Heaven

  Milly called the doctor and asked him to meet us at the hospital. And there, he asked us what Baby had eaten. It was Mom who answered.

  “I think it might have been the water,” Mom said. “The girls and me, and Milly, we all drank Cokes. Baby is the only one who drank the water.”

  “How are the rest of you feeling?” he wanted to know. “Any fever, upset stomach?”

  We all shook our heads no. He looked us over, all the same. I don’t know when Little Sister stopped talking. Whether it was before we saw the doctor or sometime after. I guess most of the things we were saying to her then didn’t need more of an answer than a shake of the head. And there was so much to do. Mom had to pick a little casket for Baby to rest in. Aunt Patty drove down and arrived late the next day. And in between, there were people to call, people to receive. Neighbors came by with casseroles to be put in the refrigerator and cakes under glass lids to be set in a row on the kitchen counter.

  The house was so full of people and we were so sad and tired that we were either visiting or sleeping the next few days. We were simply without Baby, we didn’t have time to miss her. And the single time that Mom took us to look upon her in her little bed, it was more like looking at a pretty doll—the kind no one will ever let you touch—than looking for a last time at Baby. The only way I knew for sure it was her, her name, Joy Ellen Dean, was on a little brass plate on top of her bed. Even now, the memory of it doesn’t seem real.

  And then, as quickly as Baby’s death was upon us, the funeral was over. Baby was laid to rest, the neighbors went about their business, Aunt Patty went home. And we went so early to bed that the sun had not yet set.

  I woke up in near darkness the next morning to find Mom sitting up in the rocker. She was looking out upon a mountain ridge opening up like a flower. Cinnamon-red clouds lay over the sun and washes of lavender streaked the sky like banners. “It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it, Willa Jo? Like the opening of the gates of heaven.”

  It did look like that. It had been an arresting sight, even as I stood on Milly’s porch banging on her side door. It was something to behold. Strange it wasn’t ruined for us, after Baby dying at that time, I thought. I said as much to Mom.

  “Maybe it’s worked the other way around,” she said. “Baby has made every sunrise more special in our eyes.”

  “Mom, have you noticed how quiet Little Sister is?” I said, because it was a moment when I could speak to Mom alone.

  “It’ll pass, Willa Jo,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve tried to draw her out. I can’t get a word out of her.”

  “It’s Little Sister’s way of expressing her loss, Willa Jo. I’ve already mentioned it to the doctor. He says it’ll pass.”

  It was a week or more before I happened to wake up at sunrise again. It was not much of a surprise to find Mom was awake and sitting in the rocker, looking out at the sky.

  “Can you see her, Mom?” I said. Because I could see Baby. Fresh out of sleep, I could see Mom and Baby together in the rocker in my mind’s eye. I had already had a few scary moments in
the middle of the day when I couldn’t bring Baby’s face to mind and hold it there to be looked upon. And it was awful early; things can come out different before a person’s full awake.

  Never taking her eyes from the sunrise, Mom said, “I do, Willa Jo. I really do.”

  I looked out too. Light fell in straight lines through the clouds and spread like a fan. There were these wispy clouds—pink, they were, because the sun cast a rosy color over them—clouds that looked like watery drawings of two figures reaching for each other. As Mom and I watched over the next two or three minutes, the clouds touched. The smaller cloud was gathered in by the larger cloud; it seemed to fade away. I knew they were just clouds, but something made my throat clot up so bad I had to lean against Mom in the rocker.

  When Mom began to paint not long after, Baby’s entrance to heaven sort of took on a life of its own. That first painting was fast and kind of sloppy, like it was a thought that was going round in Mom’s head and she had to slap, dash it out. Baby reaching out to two angels, who welcomed her with open arms.

  But then Mom painted it again, carefully, planning for the places where it could be better. Mom painted clouds that seemed to part like curtains, so Baby could be admitted to heaven. The angels looked so real they could have blinked. Baby looked like she expected to have a real good time. Heaven was beautiful, full of light, like a hymn sung in church. We hung it on the wall over Mom’s bed. To tell the truth, it about broke our hearts all over again to look at it. But it was Baby, and we couldn’t put it away in a closet.

  Mom painted another right after. Baby playing among the angels. And another, Baby following one of the angels around, the way Little Sister follows me. But now there were little wings sprouting on Baby’s shoulder blades. Mom painted cards in the morning or the afternoon. The rest of the time, she painted Baby.

  The more painting Mom did, the less she did of anything else. She didn’t dust tabletops or run a dust mop or pick up books off the floor. It wasn’t all that important, she said. And when it needed doing, she said, we would all do it together.

  Sometimes Mom painted way into the night, only falling exhausted into bed when she worried she couldn’t do more and do justice to the painting. If Mom was up painting, Little Sister and I were up watching. Our usual bedtime was suspended. It was summertime and there wasn’t anyplace special we had to be.

  “Why do you keep painting Baby with the angels, Mom?” I asked one night when we were by ourselves. Little Sister had earlier fallen asleep on the rug right in the middle of playing with her doll and Mom had carried her in to the bed. “Why don’t you paint Baby the way we remember her?”

  Mom didn’t answer me right away. In fact, she took so long to say anything at all I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me or hadn’t wanted to. She never stopped painting the whole time, even as she finally said, “Maybe it’s because I already know how Baby was here with us. I’m painting the part I don’t know,” she said. “I’m painting so I’ll understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “That we don’t have to be afraid for Baby, I guess. That we don’t have to be afraid of joining her, too.”

  “Are we afraid?”

  “I think maybe that’s why Little Sister won’t talk,” Mom said quietly.

  “Will the paintings make her talk?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  I thought about this for a minute. “Why would a painting make her less afraid?”

  “People have always been afraid of things they don’t understand,” Mom said.

  “Like what things?”

  “Eclipses,” Mom said, after a moment’s thought. “People once thought eclipses of the sun were God’s judgment on something they’d done. Nowadays, we can predict the next eclipse and we aren’t afraid of them.”

  “What else?”

  “Hmmm, giant squid. Early sailors thought they were sea monsters. Well, they are, of course. But they aren’t devils, or evil, or even much of a mystery anymore. Sailors don’t have to fear them in the same way.”

  I watched in silence as Mom made soft feathers grow on Baby’s little wings with a few quick flicks of her paintbrush.

  “Wherever she is, do you think Baby misses us?”

  “She loves us still,” Mom said. “But she doesn’t miss us. She knows right where to find us whenever she wants to see how things are.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I can’t, Willa Jo. Not the way you want me to be sure. I can’t be sure of heaven the way I can be sure of eclipses and giant squid, but someday we’ll know more. And I can trust that Baby has moved on to that understanding before we have.”

  I sat quietly with this for a while, watching as Mom finished the work she was doing on Baby’s wings. I was feeling better. I couldn’t really say whether it had to do with what Mom believed. Also, I was ready to fall asleep.

  Mom cleaned her brush and set it aside. “Come on,” she said in a soft voice that meant things would seem more hopeful in the morning. “We’re both tired and we ought to get some sleep.”

  “I’m glad you’re painting these pictures of Baby,” I said as we stretched out on the bed in the darkness on either side of Little Sister. “And not because they’re the best paintings you’ve ever done.”

  “Why, then?” Mom said.

  “Because it will remind us,” I said. I could feel myself already sinking into sleep.

  “Remind us of Baby?” she said.

  “Remind us that she can always be with us.”

  That night I had the dream again.

  When I woke I was panting like a dog. I had that feeling I had done a terrible thing, I had somehow lost Baby. Mom and Little Sister were right beside me, soundly sleeping. Mom had fallen asleep with the bed lamp on, so the room was not in darkness. Mom’s first painting hung right overhead. I twisted around in the bed and let my whole self sink into the sight of angels opening their arms to Baby, to erase the scary dream-picture of Baby walking into the darkness of the tent.

  19

  Aunt Patty’s Arrival

  It was coming on sunrise when Mom finished the biggest and maybe the best picture of Baby, as a full-grown angel watching over Mom and Little Sister and me. That morning was particularly beautiful and we went outside to sit on the steps. Mom and I leaned against each other comfortably as we watched. Little Sister sat between Mom’s knees. Mom ran her fingers through Little Sister’s hair.

  The sky was cloudy as the sun was rising over the ridge. The clouds covering the edge of the sun looked like they were on fire; they burned like hot coals. The clouds above were bathed in a heavenly glow. They shone soft and golden and were shot through with a glorious light. And suddenly I saw it as more than a sunrise, however beautiful it might be. I saw it as Baby’s new home. I saw it, I suddenly thought, the way Mom had been seeing it all along.

  “All these pictures you been painting, Mom,” I said. “They’re really true? I mean, do you think Baby’s with angels now?”

  “I do,” Mom said. “I really do.”

  “So you think it’s like you painted?” I said, swallowing down a kind of pain in my chest and in my throat. But I wasn’t unhappy. Just uncertain, in some way. Hoping that it could be true, and yet afraid that I would never find my way, all the way, to this belief. “That Baby will grow up to be an angel herself?”

  “I think they’ve taken her in,” Mom said. “I believe that Baby rests in the arms of the angels. But I’ve painted it the way I think of it. Being something like we have here on earth. It may be altogether different. It may be sweeter than we can imagine.”

  I nodded. Still I couldn’t bring myself to believe as wholeheartedly as Mom did. All I could allow, I was relieved that Mom didn’t feel Baby was all alone. Baby would’ve hated that.

  Mom sighed as the sky settled into full morning. She was pale and weary-looking. Milly had come over the night before and scolded her for letting herself get so thin and tried to tempt her with blueberry coffee cake. />
  “I picked these berries myself,” she said. “Why don’t you and the girls come picking with me tomorrow?”

  “We might,” Mom said. That was what she always said, but the paint always drew her in. Away. Mom painted, and hardly slept, and didn’t eat, and sometimes forgot that we needed to eat. She didn’t bother with so much else that I began to be angry with her, the way I was in the few months right after Baby was born. I don’t know for sure about Little Sister, but I always felt like I was waiting, waiting for Mom to come back to us.

  So I knew Milly was right to scold Mom. I just didn’t expect things to change. “I’m tired,” I said.

  “I think we should go back inside and get some sleep,” Mom said. “You girls have been up all night. Even Little Sister.”

  Little Sister regarded this as praise and grinned. Most nights we stayed up, Little Sister would fall asleep on the couch after hours of pinching herself to keep awake. But this time she’d made it. She’d made it all the way to sunrise. She hated to fall asleep without Mom and me.

  When Aunt Patty arrived later that day, it was some relief to me. I expected she would know what to do for Mom. I expected she could make a difference. This expectation was not one I could share with Mom or Little Sister. Or Aunt Patty. Her forward manner made it hard to share such hopes with her.

  I became her secret accomplice as we went from the first necessary cleanup to the beating of rugs and airing of bedstuff and finally to cleaning out the closets. Mom slept through much of this. I made it my business to be on my feet if Aunt Patty was on hers. I was her secret cheering section when Aunt Patty insisted that Mom eat everything she put on Mom’s plate. I even went cheerfully—if also genuinely tired enough to go—off to bed as dusk fell. At first.

  But when Mom could not be shaped up so easily as the house or the garden, I began to lose faith in Aunt Patty’s methods. She would not stay forever, and when she went, I was afraid we would go back to our slipshod ways. When I heard Aunt Patty say, “Maybe I should take the girls with me,” I felt like a traitor. Not just because I felt that Aunt Patty was taking too much upon herself, but because in that secret place in my heart, I wanted to go.