I press that baby to my chest, my lips to her head, and together we walk out of the room.
I settle into the rocking chair with the baby. “There now,” I utter aloud, swaying rhythmically with the baby on my lap. I count her fingers, I count her toes. I run my hand across her silken head and breathe in the silence of the room, silent save for the steady ticktock of a wooden wall clock, its distressed white finish and Roman numerals just barely visible in the light of the rising sun. Outside the sun begins its ascent over Lake Michigan, turning the east-facing sides of the buildings a golden hue. There are clouds in the sky, cottony clouds, in shades of silver and pink, a pale pink clutching the edges of the clouds. A flock of birds flies through the sky, sparrows I assume, and a mourning dove perches on the edge of the wooden balcony, staring in through the bay window, watching me. The baby and me. Its beady eyes stare, its small head tilting from side to side, side to side, asking a question only it knows. The street below is quiet, just the occasional early morning pedestrian headed to work or out for a jog. The city bus passes by, quickly, not bothering to stop at the vacant bus stops; taxis soar by without pause.
I press my bare feet to the hardwood floors and force the chair back and forth, back and forth, aware of the way the baby presses her face to my flannel pajamas, rummaging around for food, for a nipple from which to feed, like a hungry, suckling piglet pressing its way into its mother’s teat to drink.
I was a firm believer in breastfeeding Zoe when I still could. Chris and I never truly talked about it; it was something I planned to do. And Chris wasn’t about to argue; my breastfeeding Zoe meant there would be no midnight feedings for him, no hungry baby awakening him in the middle of the night. He could sleep the night clear through while Zoe and I sat together on a glider in her nursery for hours on end.
There were many benefits to breastfeeding, everything from financial benefits, to breast milk’s ability to fight disease, though Chris eyeballed me squeamishly whenever I nursed. But for me, it was also about convenience. It was far more convenient for those late-night feedings to simply place baby Zoe on my breast and let her eat to her heart’s content. There was no need to prepare bottles, to wash bottles and, more than anything, I felt an intimacy to my newborn, an indispensability that I haven’t felt from Zoe in many, many years now. She needed me. As she needed me to rock her to sleep, to change her diaper, but unlike those things, this—breastfeeding—was the one thing only I could provide for her. It was something only I could give.
I planned to nurse until she was a year old and then I planned to wean her from the breast.
But once I fell ill and caring for my own health became a priority, my plans changed. Zoe’s breastfeeding was quickly discontinued, and she was forced onto a formula-filled bottle, something that she didn’t take to well. There was a part of me half-certain that she, my baby, resented me for the sudden change, for the fact that I never asked her opinion before thrusting a silicone nipple in her mouth. She would scream when I did, refusing to latch on to the foreign object, refusing to drink the foreign milk. In time, she learned to adapt, of course, through trial and error, a half dozen types of bottles and nipples, a half dozen brands of formula until we found one she would consume, one which didn’t upset her stomach, one she didn’t refuse.
But Willow—I think, completely cognizant of the way the baby roots around in the pleats of my shirt—I’ve never seen Willow breastfeed.
Why, then, is the baby exploring the shirt of my flannel pajamas for a nipple, the agitation brimming in her tiny little body because she can’t make her way past the clear plastic buttons to find my breast.
But I don’t have the time to think it through, to come up with a list of sensible scenarios, like engorgement or an inadequate milk supply, because there she is, Willow, standing before me in the room. Her long hair sweeps across her face so that all I can see are her eyes—moody and mistrusting eyes, which fall on me like meteors from the sky. Eyes that make me suddenly wonder how virtuous this girl is, how trustworthy.
And once again my thoughts go to the blood on the undershirt.
She says, “You took the baby. You took Ruby from my room.”
And I say calmly, “Yes. I did,” and then I think fast for some excuse. “She was crying,” I lie. It’s instantaneous, spontaneous, far too easy a thing to do. “I didn’t want her to wake you,” I say. “I was up anyway. Just about to start a pot of coffee. When I heard her crying.”
“She’s hungry,” Willow says to me, her voice soft, watching as I watch the baby paw at my chest.
“Yes,” I say, “I was just about to make her a bottle,” but Willow says with a sureness I’m certain I’ve never heard from her before, “I’ll do it,” and her eyes stray to the coffeemaker, yesterday’s remains now syrupy and cold.
“You haven’t had your coffee,” she says, and I tell myself she is simply being helpful, doing her share. I tell myself there isn’t an edge to her voice as she gropes the baby awkwardly and removes her from my lap. Suddenly, I feel as if something has been taken from me, something that was mine.
Perhaps Willow isn’t as wide-eyed and green as she’s led me to believe.
She’s taken the baby and stands now in my kitchen, baby thrust to a hip, holding her awkwardly as she tries to prepare a bottle, as the baby wiggles ferociously in her arms, her eyes glistening with tears. The baby stares at me, her arms reaching past Willow for me—I’m just sure of it—as I remain on the rocking chair, unable to rise and make my coffee because I can think of nothing but wanting that baby returned to me. My blood pressure is rising, sweat pooling under my arms, sticking to the flannel. I feel suddenly unable to breathe, unable to find enough oxygen to fill up my lungs.
The baby is staring at me, her eyes still, though everything else is flailing about. Her feet kick at Willow, her hands pull madly on Willow’s sepia-toned hair. The baby’s skin has turned a beet red, and at Willow’s sluggishness, she begins to scream. Willow takes the abuse as if she barely notices, and yet it makes her clumsy, makes her knock the formula-filled bottle to the floor, the white powder creeping its way into the cracks of the floorboards. And I could help. I could, but I find I’m frozen still, like a statue, my body glued to the rocking chair, my eyes locked on the baby’s.
A door parts from down the hall, followed by the sound of Zoe’s voice, half-asleep and annoyed, the child who once clung to my breast needing me and only me. Now she didn’t want a thing to do with me.
“Doesn’t anybody sleep around here?” she asks, piqued, not making eye contact with Willow or me as she emerges into sight.
I manage a, “Good morning,” my voice breathless, as Zoe slides drunkenly down the hall, the strands of her auburn hair in a complete state of lawlessness and anarchy.
Zoe says nothing. She drops to the sofa and flips on the TV, MTV, the preteen equivalent to caffeine.
“And good morning to you, too,” I mutter to myself, sarcastically, my eyes staring at the baby with longing, craving another chance to do this right.
WILLOW
Ms. Flores asks to know more about Matthew. Just talking about Matthew somehow brings a smile to my face. I don’t say anything, but Ms. Flores sees that smile and says to me, “You like Matthew, don’t you?” and suddenly that smile goes away. Just like that.
“Matthew is my friend,” I say.
I tell her about Matthew passing by my room at night, about how he left the books under my mattress so I didn’t turn into a dimwit like Miriam.
But that was before.
Matthew was six years older than me. He was fifteen when I came to live in that home in Omaha. I was nine. It wasn’t too long before he was done with school, and by the time I was twelve or thirteen, maybe fourteen, he’d moved out of the house. Just one day, when Joseph was at work, he packed up his things and decided to leave. But he didn’t go far.
Instead of going to college like his friends were doing—Matthew couldn’t afford college—he worked at the gas s
tation down the road, and for a while, instead of bringing books for me, like he did when he was in school, he brought candy bars and bags of chips when he came to visit, the kinds of foods Joseph swore were the devil’s creation.
I didn’t know where Matthew slept at night. He didn’t talk about it much. Sometimes he’d talk about living in a big, tall brick building with an air conditioner and a big-screen TV but even I knew he was lying. Other days it might be that he was traveling down the Missouri River in a barge. He just didn’t want me to feel bad for him, is all. But of course, anything would be better than living there, in that home with Joseph and Miriam, with Isaac, whose own eyes had started to have that same thirst I saw in Joseph’s the nights he came into my room.
But still, sometimes, Matthew would come to the home in Omaha on the days when Isaac was at school and Joseph was at work, and Miriam, of course, was in her own room, oblivious to the world around her. He’d tell me how he might just join the army, how he was making more than I might think in that gas station down the street.
But even I could tell how his eyes looked tired, how sometimes he smelled as though he hadn’t bathed for days, how his clothes always smelled, how sometimes he’d nap on that bed of mine while I washed a shirt or a pair of his jeans, or scavenged the cabinets for something for him to eat. Every now and then he’d search around that house for some money, a dollar bill here, some forgotten coins there, and he’d stuff them in a pocket, and I came to believe that Matthew was getting by on that money alone, on whatever money he could steal from Joseph. Once he found a twenty-dollar bill in the pocket of an old coat Joseph didn’t wear anymore, and I could see in Matthew’s eyes: it was as if he’d struck gold.
Matthew wanted to get me out of the house. I knew he did. He just didn’t know how, is all. One day, he swore, when he had more money. Like Momma, Matthew was starting to talk a lot about one day. One day he’d have enough money. One day he’d get me far, far away from there.
I thought about Joseph and Miriam getting paid to foster me, and I wished that maybe Matthew could foster me instead.
But that was the child in me talking, the real me knew nothing like that would ever happen.
I could tell that something was changing in Matthew. He talked about bigger things than cockroaches and Venus now. He talked about getting me out of that house, away from Joseph. Homeless people living on the city’s streets.
Matthew continued to bring books for me that he picked up at the public library. I fantasized about that library, about the fact that without any money, you could read all the hundreds of thousands of books for free. Matthew told me about it time and again, about the four floors of nothing but books, and I wondered how long it would take me to read them all. Matthew would bring a book or two when he came by to visit, and let me keep them until the next time, and when I finished the cleaning and the laundry, and I had taken out the trash, I would lie down on my bed and read from the pages of whatever it was that Matthew had brought.
Matthew and I would perch together on the edge of my bed, sometimes, him looking too big for my room, like a full size man trying to squeeze into a doll’s house, and together we would read. I could tell that Matthew was changing from the boy who used to stop by my room and tell me about Venus and dumb stuff about bugs. He was filling out, no longer a broomstick, but now a man. His voice was lower, his eyes much more complicated than I remembered in the days when he and Isaac would walk home from school, staring down at the concrete, trying hard to ignore the punches they received.
I felt like something was changing in me, too. I felt different around Matthew, somehow. Nervous like I’d only ever been that first time he came into my room, when I wasn’t sure what he was there to do. Matthew looked at me like no one in the world ever had. He talked to me like no one had since Momma and Daddy. We’d read together from this book or that—my favorite being Anne of Green Gables, one I must’ve asked Matthew a hundred times to get from that four-story library—and when we got to a hard word I didn’t know how to say, Matthew would help me with it, and never did he give me that look like I was dumb.
I learned a lot in those books, about science and nature, about how unstable air caused thunderstorms, about how, in some parts of the world, thunderstorms happened every day. About how lightning was actually good for people and plants, not something to fear.
I started wondering if Joseph was wrong, about the fire and brimstone and all that stuff. I started thinking that maybe when the thunderstorms rattled across the land, shaking the living daylights out of our small Omaha home, it wasn’t God coming for me because he was mad.
It was just a thunderstorm after all.
But I didn’t dare tell Joseph.
* * *
One day Matthew arrived with burns on his arms and hands, the skin raw and red and blistery. I could tell that it hurt, the way he cradled one hand in the other, one of his forearms wrapped up in a gauze bandage. He came into the house quiet-like, like maybe he wasn’t sure I should see. I gasped when I saw him, hurrying into the kitchen to get him a bag of ice.
What he told me was there was a fire at the shelter where he was staying. When I asked him where he was staying, he said a homeless shelter. I thought of Momma collecting our old clothes for the homeless, but otherwise that word didn’t have a whole lot of meaning to me. I thought of Matthew wearing someone’s old clothes, sleeping on someone’s old bedspread, and the thought made me feel sad.
I knew Matthew wasn’t lying about the homeless shelter because when he told me about it, he actually looked at me, but when he told me about riding barges on the Missouri River, he looked away, at the peeling wallpaper in my room or the old paint that lay hidden beneath.
He had a bag with him, stuffed near full with everything he owned. He said he wouldn’t be going back to that or any other homeless shelter ever again. He was through.
At first he didn’t tell me exactly what happened to give him those burns. But he did tell me about the shelter itself. How it was too crowded. How there weren’t enough beds for everyone, how some nights he had to sleep on the floor. How he kept his belongings tucked beneath his bed, feeling lucky if they were still there come morning. He told me about the rows of identical bunk beds with the gaunt mattresses and mismatching bedspreads, some stained and torn, others brand-new. Donated, Matthew told me, because they weren’t good enough for the rest of the world, and I could see in his eyes that that’s how he felt: not good enough for the rest of the world, and I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true.
He said that the others there, they were drug addicts and drunks, and the people that ran the place, they couldn’t care less. He told me that in order to get clean sheets or a square meal, sometimes he had to do things he didn’t want to do.
“Like what?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
And then he told me what happened there, in that homeless shelter, to give him those burns. He didn’t tell me because I asked, because I didn’t ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know that, either.
He told me about a fire. Maybe faulty electric wiring, he said, but more likely arson. I asked him what that meant—arson—and he said someone was upset when there wasn’t enough room in the shelter for them to stay, and so they took a match to the place, and torched it, he said, leaving two dead, a man and his ten-year-old son. The fire escapes were barred with beds and belongings, so that there was only one way in or out.
I looked hard at those burns, the red skin that bulged from his hands. I pictured a building consumed in fire the way Matthew said it was, the walls left black and charred, everything inside burned to a crisp. This picture made me think of that place Joseph told me about, the one where sinners go. Hell. A place of never-ending punishment and torture, with demons and dragons and the devil himself. Eternal punishment. Lakes of fire. Fiery furnace. Unquenchable fire. Fire, fire, fire.
And I decided then and there that I wouldn’t ever step foot in a homeless shelter. Didn
’t even matter that I didn’t know what a homeless shelter really was.
“Where did Matthew stay after he left that shelter?” Ms. Flores asks, her voice tearing me away from my thoughts. I’m thinking about Matthew and a complicated look that had developed in his eyes, one which I liked, the brown somehow browner, warmer, like the syrup Momma poured on our hot fudge sundaes.
That’s what I thought of Matthew’s eyes: warm and sweet like hot fudge, rich and delicious.
“Claire,” she says. “Are you listening to me?”
But before I can answer a phone rings and Ms. Flores dives her hands deep into the pocket of a bag and sets it free. She gazes at the screen, her eyebrows wrinkling up like raisins.
She skids her chair back from the table abruptly, making me jump. “Stop there,” she says. “We’ll talk about Matthew in a minute.” And then, to the boy in the corner, “Watch her. I’ll be back,” and with that, excuses herself from the cold room, the sound of her heels clattering down the concrete floor.
When she’s gone, the barred door sealed shut by a second guard who follows her out of view, the boy in the corner whispers to me, “If it was me, I would’ve killed ’em, too.”
HEIDI
In the morning, there’s a knock at the door.
Zoe is in her bedroom, preparing for the school day, getting dressed, brushing her hair and such. Willow is in the bathroom. I pass by, en route to the front door, the knock beckoning me from the master bedroom where I’ve partially dressed in a pair of tweed pants and a cami, a cardigan left abandoned on my bed. My hair is wet, drying more quickly than I’d like.
I tote the baby on a hip, seeing that Willow has left the bathroom door slightly ajar as I pass by. I catch a glimpse of her in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, staring at her own image. Her hair, like mine, is still wet from a shower, dripping idle drops onto a shirt of Zoe’s. There is dark eyeliner placed on a single eye. She leans in close to the mirror to plant it on the second eye, but instead, hesitates, and pulls down the front of Zoe’s vintage wash shirt, far down, to the tender skin around her breast. I feel myself gasp for breath, willing the baby to remain silent. She runs her fingers over a lesion right there on the milky white skin, so close to the areola that I can see where the pigment changes colors. It’s instinctive when I lean in, desperate for a better look, of what appears to be teeth marks, the imprint of incisors and canines, teeth pressed hard enough to leave a mark. Hard enough to deface the skin forever.