“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 station 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.