F IC T IO N
BABY LOVE Anna Falardeau
I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle when I was four. I didn’t understand why, I only knew I had seen my father kicking Mom and the little bump she had told me would be my baby brother. I knew that when he left the house and tried to take me with him, I had hidden and was found by a police officer, though I didn’t know what suicide was or why he had done it. I didn’t like my aunt and uncle’s house, but I knew I couldn’t leave it. Mom was in the hospital for months, sleeping, according to my aunt, in a coma she wasn’t likely to come out of. She did, though. But even then, I couldn’t see her. Aunt Lisa said, “Mommy needs time alone. She’s looking for a home for you and the new baby.” But that was a lie. She wasn’t alone. She was with Rory, her friend, and probably my baby brother’s father. This knowledge kept me from asking to go home again; I didn’t like how he smiled at me. Later, my aunt told me she had married him, and I asked to stay with her and my uncle. Mom always sent me pretty things, nice little trinkets, when she thought of me, and I think if I had lived with her, life might have been better. Aunt Lisa and Uncle Dan never seemed to get over pitying me. They tried to give me whatever I wanted, or pretended to, but it was always what they imagined I wanted. No one ever asked me. They gave me Mom’s old doll, but she was ugly with her spotted porcelain face and balding head from where too many people had brushed her hair. And her painted eyes didn’t blink like the doll I wanted or like my new baby brother’s eyes probably did. I didn’t get to go see him, but they talked about him for hours like they never talked about me. “A miracle he survived and is so healthy!” Grandma told us. Aunt Lisa smiled. “He is a little miracle.” “Do I get to see him?” I wanted to see a miracle. I wondered if he would look different from a normal baby. “Maybe soon.” Aunt Lisa reached a hand back towards me and patted the air somewhere near my head. I wandered back to my room, grabbing a Little Debbie along the way to take back and eat in my closet. I didn’t like eating in the kitchen. Aunt Lisa watched me out of the corner of her eye, her hand resting near a dishtowel, jerking occasionally towards it, ready to swoop down and wipe away a mess before it began. She’d smile with more teeth than lips when I was done and ask how preschool was that day and if I had made any friends. I told her the same names every day and she smiled a bit wider and said, “That’s nice.” Aunt Lisa stopped cleaning so much when I was six, and she had a baby, my cousin Karlie. She was prettier than my doll, though not very pretty. Aunt Lisa looked down at her with a smile I had never seen. “She’s so beautiful.” Uncle Dan nodded at me and stared at them both adoringly. Grandma sat beside her. “All babies are miracles to their mothers. The miracle of life, right there.” She slid a knobby finger under the tiny red-splotched hand. Why was this baby a miracle, too? My brother survived my father’s foot and I stayed hiding in the house when he tried to take me with him to drive into death.
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