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by Virginia Walker
It was late now and she held the transparent orange bottle in her hand, shaking the contents
like a rattle. As the tiny pills clanked against the plastic she caught herself and grasped the
bottle firmly, silencing its noise. He was finally asleep; she didn’t want to risk waking him.
No, soon enough he would be grunting and squirming, searching for her swollen, aching
breasts. She watched the quilted blanket rise and fall with his breath. He was lying beside
her on the middle couch cushion. She thought about moving him to the bassinet, but did not
want to chance his rousing. She pulled herself up from the couch, her loose stomach skin
filling her lap. She glanced back to see if the baby noticed her departure. The blanket still
pulsed rhythmically.
At the doorless hall closet she pulled her denim jacket from its hanger. Sliding an arm into
the sleeve, she remembered trying the jacket on at The Gap a few years ago. She had
saved her tips from waitressing at the diner. She felt so powerful, strutting into a brand name
store and purchasing the newest jacket at full price. Now the jacket was snug against her
post-pregnancy weight and dated by its fringed collar. She opened the sliding glass door of
the apartment and stepped onto the balcony, leaving the door ajar so that she could hear
the baby if he stirred. Deftly, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her cigarette
pack and lighter. She put a cigarette between her lips, lit the burly tobacco peeking out from
the end of the roll and dragged her breath inward, filling her lungs with the sweetness of
nicotine. As she paced the small balcony, the orange bottle jittered, calling to her. She hadn’
t even realized that she had brought the bottle with her.
She could take one now. The baby was sleeping. Johnny wouldn’t be home from his night
shift until morning. He would never have to know. She smashed the butt of her cigarette into
the balcony’s cinderblock railing, grinding the filter into tiny sparks that danced against the
stone. When the light died, she flicked the butt into the black openness beyond the railing. It
joined the hundreds of cigarette butts that she and Johnny had tossed off the balcony. In the
morning light, the spent cigarette filters looked like white and orange confetti decorating the
grass.
She slid back into the apartment, stole a glance to the couch to confirm the baby was still
there, and then walked into the small galley kitchen to wash her hands. She never used to
wash her hands at all, even after using the bathroom. The nurse at the hospital told her how
important it was to wash her hands frequently to keep germs away from the baby. She
turned the faucet towards hot and waited for the water to warm. As the water rushed from
the faucet in a furious waste, she laid her forehead against the coolness of the steel sink. She
could smell the rot of old food and coffee grounds lying at the bottom of the garbage
disposal. Hot tears filled her eyes and her body trembled. She relented to the moment and
let out a sob, muffling the sound with her shirt sleeve. She heaved as she cried and her tears
and spit soaked through her sleeve while her teeth left tiny crescents engraved in her skin.
Two weeks. It has only been two weeks. It felt like forever.
Two weeks ago Johnny took her to the hospital, her back aching and her bowels cramping.
The baby was early. They checked out only hours after she delivered him. She didn’t want
to pay for nonsense like crappy hospital meals, needles and tubes of fluid and what not.
Besides, she really needed a cigarette.
The baby was small and red and slept a lot in the beginning. Those first two days she felt
entirely whole by simply holding the baby and watching television. Johnny hopped around
the house, making scrambled eggs for them to eat while he sang a Bon Jovi song.
“Oh baby, we’re half way there, ooohhhhh, living on a prayer!” He used the plastic spatula
to dramatically pound at the air, as if he were really holding wooden sticks and drumming
the beats to the song. It was over scrambled eggs and Bon Jovi that she gave the orange
bottle to Johnny. It was the last of her stash, carefully rationed throughout her pregnancy.
Just enough to keep her going, not enough to hurt the baby. She was high on the wrinkled
face of her son, his velvety hair and his paper thin nails grown over his toothpick fingers. He
was all she needed.
Johnny went back to work on the third day. He worked two shifts, one at the restaurant,
and the other at the twenty-four hour convenient mart. The baby started crying a lot and she
would offer him her nipple, swollen flat and dripping with milk, aching to be emptied. The
baby turned his head in fits and thrashed his tiny legs, never getting a hold of her milk.
Johnny came home in the afternoon to eat and change clothes.
“What the hell’s wrong with him” he yelled from the bathroom.
“He’s hungry” she said. She looked into his scrunched face. Helpless. “We need to get
some formula, he won’t take my milk.”
Johnny’s head popped out of the bathroom doorframe sideways, like a child’s jack in the
box. “I told you, we ain’t got money for that. Not when your titties are full of free milk.”
On the fourth day the visiting nurse came to the apartment and showed her how to hold the
baby and feed him. Now he fed so strongly her nipples were cracked and bled every time
he latched on. He cried incessantly and she fed him through out the day and night. She
existed in a state of half sleep. She was never able to lie down and fully relent to heavy
slumber, and she lingered in a fuzzy haze as she sat on the toilet or nursed, her head
involuntarily jerking and waking her. A few days ago she fell asleep while she stood over
the stove, making soup for dinner. She swooned and caught herself, thrusting the palm of
her hand into the bright red coils of the electric burner. Her skin went white and she fell to
the floor screaming. Johnny was at work. The baby cried from the other room.
Two weeks of not sleeping. Two weeks of crying. Two weeks of aching breasts and
bleeding nipples, stomach cramps and burnt skin. Two weeks of no pills.
She found the orange bottle that afternoon. She had spent the morning at the Laundromat,
washing baby blankets, spit up rags, her stained maternity clothes that she still wore and
Johnny’s work clothes. The baby slept soundly in the Laundromat, the hum of the washers
and the heat of the dryers working their magic. She sat in a plastic chair and waited for the
cycles; the rinsing, the drying. She absently picked at the dead skin on the palm of her hand,
peeling away the burned layers until she accidentally peeled too far, revealing pulsating, raw
pink flesh. She cursed out loud at her stupidity and squeezed her palm tightly with her other
hand. Overcome with the need for a cigarette, she left the baby sleeping in his carrier atop
the washer with whites in it and went outside the Laundromat. Smoke snaked from her lips
and she leaned into the large glass window and watched the gently vibrating baby carrier.
She stood only a few feet away from the baby, the dirty, thick Laundromat glass with
lettering between them. She had an impulse to start walking. Just walk away. Leave the
darks in the frothing suds. Leave the baby sleeping on top of the whites. Someone would
take the baby. Probably raise him better than she could. Her breasts would dry up and she
could convince herself that the whole scene had been one too many pills washed down with
beer.
She dropped her cigarette to the pavement, opened the glass door and was smothered by
the thick warm haze of fabric softener. The baby remained sleeping as she switched loads.
That afternoon at the apartment, she held the baby in one arm and put the folded, clean
clothes away with her free arm. She had a handful of Johnny’s white socks and opened the
top wooden dresser drawer slowly, careful not to pull the handle too hard. The dresser had
been Johnny’s childhood dresser and its sorry state worsened when Johnny had loaded his
pick-up truck in such a hurry. He got everything he could out of his Mom’s house while his
Mom was at work. She sat in the passenger seat of the truck, nauseous and crying while he
threw furniture in the truck bed with such force the whole truck shook. When he finally
climbed into the driver’s seat, he was dripping with sweat and had a scowl knotted into his
brow. “Why are you crying?” he sneered at her. They were married at the court house by
the end of the week, before her belly began to bulge.
She placed the socks in the drawer and slid the drawer shut when she heard it. It was faint,
a soft nestling sound, like a mouse burrowing in the wall. She opened the drawer again and
then shut it with more force. The rattling echoed her movements. She set the baby on the
floor by the piles of clean laundry. She opened the drawer wide this time and started to pat
her hands through the soft mass of socks, like a blind man searching for something familiar.
The cotton grated her raw palm but she ignored the pain, spurred on by the noise, the cobra
jittering its tail. She felt something hard in the softness and pulled out the dense sock. She
peeled the white cotton away, revealing the orange bottle. The little pale pills danced and
rolled in the plastic, hiding behind the prescription label then reappearing again. She heard
the front door open and knew Johnny was coming home between shifts. She shoved the
bottle down the front of her pants and it nestled itself in between her loose belly skin and the
elastic of her panties.
When Johnny left for his night shift, she reached down her pants and retrieved the slippery
bottle, moist with her sweat. She carried it with her for the rest of the night, comforted by its
presence.
The running tap water had reached scolding and steam billowed from the steel sink. She
lifted her head from the sink and wiped her wet face with the back of her hand. She
readjusted the water temperature and started to wash her hands. Her body involuntary
shuddered, the aftershocks of a crying spell. She turned off the water and froze as she
heard the baby grunt, then silence resumed. She remained frozen for a few minutes,
listening. Sirens could be heard ascending and descending in the distance. There were
footsteps from the apartment above and the muffled sound of a television.
She lunged back towards the sink. She grabbed a dirty glass from the kitchen counter,
dumped the remains of syrupy flat soda and filled the glass with water from the tap.
Trembling, she pulled the orange bottle from her jacket and flipped off the cap. She threw
one tiny white pill onto her tongue and washed it down with the cloudy water from the dirty
glass.
Immediately calmed, she went back to the couch and carefully sat down beside the sleeping
baby. She studied the baby’s peaceful beauty. She waited. It started to come to her, like
the ebb of the ocean tide, gradually washing over the sand, receding slightly, and then
emerging again even further. She let her head fall back into the softness of the couch
cushion. She could feel the pill spilling through her body, tickling her fingers and numbing her
toes. She started to feel her stomach flip, the onset of nausea, but she knew it would
subside if she waited it out. Her lips curled into an easy smile and she thought about how
much she loved the baby. She drifted into an unburdened sleep with various, unconnected
images and colors popping into her mind and then fading. Eventually, there was nothing.
She woke up in spurts and the rush hour traffic from the street became part of her dreams.
The morning sun sliced through the sliding glass door window, leaving squares of light on the
carpet from the cinderblock railing. She laid on the couch and listened to footsteps going up
and down the apartment steps. She shivered from a cold wetness on her front, her milk had
leaked throughout the night. Immediately, she bolted upwards, remembering the baby. She
jumped from the couch and searched for him. The couch was empty except for a tiny quilt
corner that peeked out from the crevice between the sofa cushions and the couch back.
She yanked the cushions off the couch, throwing the cushions with such force one knocked
over the small television set they had found by the apartment dumpster. The baby, tightly
bundled in the quilt, was wedged into the furthest recess of the sofa. She gathered the baby
and cradled him in her arms. She searched his still, pale face. His nose was flattened and his
tiny pursed lips were slightly parted and tinged with a feathered deep blue. The noise of the
morning died away and the quietness brought a white hot sinking feeling that originated in
her face and drained into her stomach. Heavy with quiet, she sat down on the cushion-less
couch. She held the stiff baby to her wet chest and rocked. Her movements were magnified
by the large sofa springs bulging against the thin muslin littered with crumbs and lost coins.
The front door knob jiggled. Johnny opened the door, home from his second shift. He
fumbled with his keys in one hand and held a half eaten candy bar in the other. He used his
foot to slam the door closed.
“Shhhh ….” She said, “You’ll wake the baby.”
Short Bio:
Ginny Walker is an ex-dot.commer in the very suburban world of Northern Virginia.
After too much scandal and bureaucracy, she decided to obtain her teaching license
for high school English. Ginny is also a parent/humor columnist for a local paper. She
is the mother of an eight year old girl and a one year old girl and is unusually happily
married. Her fiction has appeared in Spoiled Ink. She writes when she should be
doing more practical things, like laundry.