Mona in Three Acts

by Griet Op de Beeck

  “Are you happy?” Marie asks.

  “Yes, she’s very beautiful,” I say, hoping to cover for my brother’s stupidity. In the meantime, I try to put her hat back on using one hand, which I can’t manage. I hope Daddy’s right. It would be hell having to go through life with a head like that. Isabelle gets teased in class and she’s only got red hair, apart from that she looks totally normal.

  Alexander has already lost interest in the baby, he’s hovering above the basket of candied almonds that Uncle Olivier brought with him. He’s talking to Daddy and Marie. I don’t listen to what they’re saying, I just look at the little baby.

  “You poor thing,” I say quietly. “Being born with a vacuum, that’s no fun. But everything will be all right, Daddy said.”

  “The baby actually needs to sleep now,” Marie says, “and so do the both of you.”

  “Come on, kids,” Daddy says. “Off you go with Uncle Olivier. You’ve been able to make her acquaintance now.”

  I put the baby back in her cot and think, Make her acquaintance—what a formal expression. Daddy is acting strange. Maybe he’s already started loving her more than us.

  “Alexander, are you going to say goodbye to your new sister too?”

  “Goodbye, sister,” he calls from the other side of the room, not taking his eyes off the candied almonds.

  “And take some candied almonds, kids.”

  Only then does Alexander smile.

  In the car I think that I’m going to like the baby, despite her name. I’m happy it’s a girl. Alexander stuffs three almonds into his mouth, one after the other. Uncle Olivier doesn’t notice. I breathe in, planning to say something, but then I change my mind. I’ll have to take care of another child from now on, I can’t deal with everything. I stare at the trees outside and at the dark night. I was a big sister already but now I’m an even bigger one.

  27

  She lies in her cradle with a red face, cheeks wet with tears. She’s kicked everything off her and I see it right away: poop everywhere. Her diaper, clothes, the sheets. She stinks like a sewer. Where’s Marie?

  “Mommy? Mommy?” Nothing. “Oh, come here, sweetie.” I pick her up under her arms and hold her as far away from me as I can. Her and her poop. She kicks her legs, the crying doesn’t stop.

  Alexander comes in. “Bleuuurgh,” is all he says, then goes right back out again.

  “Shh, I’m here. It will all be all right.” I rock her a little, but not too hard, because I’m worried the poop will fly all over the place. Where to start? Upstairs. I go up the stairs to the bathroom. It’s not easy holding a screaming bundle like this at arm’s length. “Don’t kick so much, baby, you’ll get it all over me.” Make sure I don’t fall on the stairs, that would be typical of me.

  How am I going to do this? A baby covered in poop in a white bathroom? I swing her up onto the changing mat—it’s easier to clean than most things. I roll up my sleeves and take off her clothes. I throw them into the tub because I don’t know what else to do with them. Poop on my hands, couldn’t be avoided, don’t think about it, just go on. Then I see a streak on her face, probably from pulling her top over her head. She’s still screaming. I look for a clean bit of skin on her belly and hold her there with three fingers while I reach for the washcloth with my other hand. I stand with my legs wide but I still can’t reach it. I let go of the baby for a moment, really briefly. “Stay there,” I say, mainly to reassure myself. Quick, cloth under the tap, baby soap, and then quickly back to the mat. She screams like she’s being tortured, her face bright red. “Shh,” I try to say. “Yes, I know. It’s not pleasant. But it’s not pleasant for me either, if that makes you feel any better.” As though she was eight and could understand me. I always do that, just talk to her normally, not in that gaga-goo-goo language some grown-ups use. I find it ridiculous. Daddy once said it was good that I said all kinds of things to her, that way she’ll learn words more quickly later. I felt proud.

  I try to rinse the washcloth, but I can’t get it white again. Another one, a few more, that’s what I need, from the small cupboard next to the toilet. She’s lying still so I can get some real quick. It’s a mystery to me how such a small baby can produce so much poop. And that smell! If I don’t watch out, I’m going to vomit. “Soon, my face will look as red as yours,” I say. I wipe the last bits clean. The crying has almost stopped. Now it’s just in jolts. As though she keeps forgetting what she’s doing and then suddenly remembers.

  Now to do the whole body again with a clean washcloth and a lot of soap, and then she’ll be as good as new. I stand at the sink, turn on the tap, wait until the water is warm enough, hold a fresh washcloth under it, and then I hear a thud. After that it’s very quiet for a moment and then a very loud scream, much worse than before. I spin around, dive down, pick her up, hold her tight, hug her close to me. There isn’t any blood, is there? I study her head, her body. No, there isn’t. How exactly did she fall? I rock her and give her little kisses on her head. “Come on, don’t cry. Please be all right, little sister, please be all right.” I gently rub her hair, ouch, there’s a bump coming at the back, a big one. So she fell on her head. Babies can die of that, I’ve heard. There’s something not yet fully grown about their heads. “Please, Anne-Sophie, please don’t die.” I keep on rocking her. If she doesn’t stop, she’s going to choke on all that crying. “Sweetie, what am I going to do? Tell me what to do to make it better. A kiss on it? Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “Jesus, what’s all this?” Marie opens the bathroom door and stands in the doorway in her nightgown.

  “Anne-Sophie was crying because she had a dirty diaper,” I say.

  I hesitate for a moment. Maybe I should confess, maybe a doctor should take a look, or she should go to the hospital for X-rays, like when I broke my ankle a long time ago. But I don’t dare to tell her. My mouth opens but no sound comes out.

  “I can see. You’re covered in it too.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  Marie takes Anne-Sophie from me. Now she’s going to notice the bump. “Go and get changed.”

  I run to my room, take off my sweater, and get another from the drawer. When I get back to the bathroom, the baby is quiet. She’s lying on the changing mat in a clean diaper. Marie is putting pajamas on her even though it’s nowhere near bedtime yet.

  “Will you clean up in here? I’ll put her in the cradle downstairs.”

  “Yes,” I say, “sorry.” You can never say sorry too much.

  I tidy everything up and go into the living room. I run into Marie in the hall.

  “Everything all right?” I ask.

  “Yes, yes,” she says. “I need to go take a nap. I’m exhausted from all the carrying-on with the baby.”

  “Enjoy your nap,” I say. “I’m here. I’ll look after her.”

  “Yes,” she says, turning around and going back upstairs.

  I wonder what’s wrong with Marie. Some days she doesn’t even get dressed, not for the whole day. Daddy says it’s not abnormal and goes with “early motherhood,” that’s what he calls it. He says it’s really tiring. It must be. I’d thought the baby would make Marie happy because wasn’t that what she’d really wanted? Well, she’s got a lot on her mind, with Daddy and with us and now with the baby on top. A baby who fell because of me and who might have something terribly wrong with it now.

  I walk over to the cradle. Anne-Sophie is quiet and moving only a little, sucking on her left hand. She seems all right, but appearances can be deceiving. I lift up her head and feel the bump—it hasn’t got any bigger. Hopefully that’s a good sign. Then she smiles at me, as though nothing happened. It’s handy that babies don’t remember anything later when they’re big enough to talk. I smile back, as big as I can, and she smiles again. She’s only just learned to smile. She smiles at me the most, or that’s what I thought, but Marie said she’s still too small to be able to recognize people.

  “Sorry, sweet girl, once again I was a champion dumdum.” I mo
ve my little sister from her cradle to her playpen so I can see her better, and then she can play. Pooky Penguin is close to her, the rattle, and the plastic beer bottle that squeaks when you squeeze it. Then I get my homework and my pencil case from my bag. “You play now, all right? I have to focus on my math.” In sixth grade we’re suddenly getting a lot more homework. That’s not that convenient right now, with Anne-Sophie.

  She doesn’t seem aware of anything. She babbles a bit, blows bubbles with her saliva, and throws around any part of her body she can move. A child that was about to die wouldn’t do that, I hope.

  I wonder whether Alexander’s got any homework. He’s still wandering around outside and I don’t feel like shouting. It’s up to him. I stare out the window, the sun is shining weakly, and then I look back at the book. I hate math, I think. Then I do the first problem.

  I check on Anne-Sophie every fifteen minutes for the rest of the day. She cries once, but that’s hunger. In the evening, Marie says, “Leave the baby alone, for god’s sake. She can’t sleep like that.” I have to listen to Marie but that makes me even more stressed, because if anything happens to her, it will be unbearable and totally and completely my fault.

  I can’t sleep that night. I look outside: it’s dark, there are lots of stars in the sky. They look lovely, like tiny holes in all that black. I can hear myself breathing and swallowing. I can hear a bluebottle buzzing frantically. It flies off and immediately crashes into the window again, like it wants to get out and doesn’t understand why it can’t. I look at the fly: it’s completely alone, like most flies.

  28

  I still dream about dead and handicapped babies sometimes, but my sister is clearly all right.

  Marie’s mom is visiting. They’re sitting in the living room eating cakes, the little ones from the expensive bakery. I’ve already had one and Alexander too, and then Marie said we had to go play because the grown-ups wanted to talk. I came upstairs but I don’t feel like doing homework. I’m just sitting here wondering what they’re talking about. The teacher calls me a “nosy parker.” No one else talks like our teacher.

  I find a test paper that has to be signed, which is a good excuse to go back downstairs. An eight and a half out of ten, could have been better, but still. I walk down the stairs in my socks, through the living room, and when I reach the dining room door, I hear Marie talking quite loudly. I stand close to the entrance, barely daring to breathe. I can’t catch all of it but it’s about Daddy and us, “the children”—I don’t know if she means Anne-Sophie too. Then about something being “unbearable,” I think. And then her mom says something quietly. I stand there thinking I should go because I sure don’t want to be caught. Eavesdropping is almost as bad as, say, reading someone’s diary. I don’t have a diary because I’m certain someone would find it if I did. I do write letters, for example to Uncle Artie, sometimes he sends a postcard back, a real one with a stamp and everything in the mailbox. And Granny always says thanks when I leave her a note, so I think she likes to get them, which is probably because she’s very old and a bit lonely. Old people are often lonely. I often see them walking down the street on their own, and they talk a lot at the baker’s, even when there’s a long line of people waiting, but that’s because they don’t have anyone at home to talk to, I suppose. I would rather not get old, because then you get lonely and you start to shrink and I would like to be tall. I’m almost taller than Marie’s mom now, at least if she didn’t always wear high heels. I don’t know what her mom said, but suddenly Marie gets even louder: “Maybe I should just load them all into the car and drive into the canal, then we’ll be rid of them for good.” I forget to be extra quiet as I run back to my room. I hope they didn’t notice anything.

  Sitting in my bedroom, I think about what I heard. Drowning in cold water sounds really horrible to me, maybe even worse than dying in the car in a normal accident because I think that goes really quick. They did take my mommy to the hospital, though. I try not to think about the icy cold and suffocating and dying and I take deep breaths, in and out, in and out. Uncle Artie taught me this. He said that you should do it if you have an anxiety attack, and that after a while you’ll feel better. Should I tell Daddy? But then he’ll know I was eavesdropping, of course, and he’ll be really angry with me. And Marie will be even angrier.

  I feel sorry for Marie. You have to be really unhappy to say a thing like that. Is it Daddy’s fault? Or mine? Or Anne-Sophie’s? Not because of her, but because babies are exhausting. She didn’t really mean it, did she?

  I think about the coming winter and try to remember where that canal is again. Then I’ll know, when we’re all in the car on our way somewhere and Marie’s driving, which luckily is almost never the case, that I have to watch out if I see a canal . . .

  Daddy comes upstairs. He pokes his head around my door. I pick up my French book as though I’m studying.

  “Dinner in half an hour, Mona, OK?”

  I nod. “Is Mommy’s mom still here?”

  “Haven’t seen her. Why?”

  “Never mind.”

  He closes the door again. I can’t tell Daddy, he’s already got enough worries. I’ll just have to keep a really close eye on Marie. I can do that.

  29

  She wakes me up and tells me very quietly to come with her. For a moment I don’t know where I am, then I sit up in bed. My hair is sticking out all over the place, I can feel it.

  “Is something wrong with Anne-Sophie?”

  Marie shakes her head and then says, “Come, you can sleep in my bed.”

  I look at her.

  “Come on.”

  I get out of bed; the floor is cold. Alexander is still sound asleep. I follow Marie. The bedside lamp is on in their bedroom. There’s an alarm clock on the bedside table, an ashtray with butts in it, her packet of cigarettes and an orange lighter, her three rings, of which two have a diamond, and a strip of pills with a couple missing already and a glass jar with more pills in it.

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “Gone.”

  What does she mean “gone”? I prick up my ears. Any sounds coming from downstairs? Isn’t he going to come back up to bed and want his spot back? I’m so confused. Marie gets into bed and rolls onto her side, her face toward me. I’m standing barefoot on the woolly carpet on Daddy’s side, hesitating. I look at the pillow, it’s not white, there’s something yellowish-brownish in the middle of it.

  “Come on now,” Marie says, holding open the covers.

  I don’t want to sleep here in this room with its strange smell. I want to go back to my own bed. I don’t dare say anything, just stay standing there.

  “Hurry up, it’s getting cold.”

  I get under the heavy eiderdown, lie the way I always lie, on my side, facing the window, the same way Marie is lying. The pillow smells like Daddy’s hair. I wonder where he could be. I can’t hear anything inside the house. Has he left? Where could he have gone, so late at night? He didn’t leave forever, did he?

  Then Marie turns off the light and moves toward me. She smells of nightgowns and armpits. Then she lays her arm over me, on top of the covers. She squeezes too tight for me, and I wonder whether I can tell her. I’ll never get to sleep like this. But Marie looked so sad, I hold my tongue.

  “You can stay with your mommy,” Marie whispers, “nice and close to your mommy.”

  I feel her nose in my hair for a moment. I don’t want this. She breathes heavily and her arms feel like weights.

  “You won’t leave me, will you? You’ll never leave your dear mommy.”

  It sounds half like a question, but I close my eyes as if I’m asleep. I don’t reply, I try to forget where I am and not think about anything anymore.

  30

  It’s my ball, so I always get to decide what game we play. That’s the way it’s been since last year. We used to go home for lunch when my mom was alive, but since Marie came along, I’ve been staying at school all day. I asked if she wanted me to come hom
e to help with Anne-Sophie, and she said she’d think about it. My favorite game is Dead or Alive. You have to make two teams and try to get everyone on the other team out. You choose an opponent, say her name, and then throw the ball. If the other team can’t catch the ball and it falls on the ground, the person whose name you said is out and has to go to the side. You do that until the whole other team is out.

  I’m thinking about how to divide up the teams fairly when suddenly Nadine says she wants to play crab soccer or dodgeball or horsey-horsey.

  “No, we’re not doing that,” I say, assuming the discussion will be closed.

  But she carries on, saying how cool it would be to play something else for once and that dodgeball is really fun, they played that at the youth club and . . . She blabbers on, typical Nadine. To my surprise, a bunch of kids take her side. And before I realize what’s happening, we’re playing dodgeball. It’s the dumbest game in the world. I bring the ball to school every day, I make sure we get good at certain games, and this is the thanks I get. Ellen isn’t happy either, I can see that from her face, but she doesn’t say anything.

  I can’t concentrate in class. I’m not sure why. Three kids are about to give talks. Nadine’s one of them, she’s going to talk about Spain. She’s very proud of all the pictures she’s collected. Her family went there last summer and her mom had the photos enlarged. This morning she was rubbing the green folder containing all her material with a look of pride. But she won’t let us see inside, it has to be a surprise. I wish we could go to a far-off country on vacation; there’d be palm trees and lots of blue water to swim in and animals we don’t have here, like snakes or crocodiles, even though I’d be scared of them, but not that scared, I think.

  The bell rings. Recess. Everyone rushes out of the classroom. I hang around a bit, pretend to be looking for my apple, and then, while the teacher’s wiping the board, I get Nadine’s green folder from her bag, put it into mine, close it up, and head out.