I run back to the living room again and look out the window again and now Maura is standing next to the mailbox talking to someone. Mrs. Taylor. They are talking and talking and upstairs the crying is getting louder and behind me I know the burner in the kitchen by now is red, red, red.
I put the towel on my shoulder and start to pick at my fingers.
Maura said to go in my room if the baby starts crying. Maura said she’d be right back. She didn’t say anything at all about stopping to talk with Mrs. Taylor.
I look down the hallway toward my room. I think. Then I run into the kitchen again. I turn the burner off and pull the towel from my shoulder and hold it in front of me. By two corners. I put the corners together and lay the towel flat on the counter. Then I fold it in half again and smooth it out. Nice and even, even though my hands are shaking from the crying. Because I need everything to be all set and ready to go when I get back.
I turn and run up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs the crying is so loud that I have to cover my ears even though it’s on the other side of the bedroom door. I look through the bathroom out the window and still see Maura and Mrs. Taylor talking at the mailbox.
So I push the bedroom door open and walk right up to the crib. The baby’s eyes are closed. It doesn’t see me yet. I bend down close and say, “Ush, ush, ush.”
But the baby doesn’t stop. It just gets louder. Its tiny hands are in fists and its mouth with no teeth is open and it is screaming, screaming, screaming.
Then on the dresser I see the bunny. The bunny is small and fat and has eyes that are sewn in thread because buttons are dangerous for babies. The fur on the bunny’s ears is flat and thin because the baby chews on it all the time. Maura washes it mostly twice a week so that it doesn’t smell. It makes Baby Wendy feel better when it is sad or having a hard time going to sleep. It needs the bunny. Now.
So I grab it and put it in the baby’s arms but the baby is all worked up. I know it isn’t going to stop. I start looking for somewhere to hide. Outside I still see Maura and Mrs. Taylor talking, talking, talking so I pick the baby and bunny up together and move up and down gentle, gentle and say, “Ush, ush, ush,” again even though I’m breaking the most important rule.
And it works.
The baby settles down and is quiet. I take a deep breath and hold it close. Its bottom is in my right hand and my left holds the back of its neck and head. Baby Wendy is little, little, little. It snuggles close and grabs my shirt and starts to suck.
The feeling is warm. Like a hug. Its hands and arms feel like my Baby Doll’s. I want to recoil because it isn’t supposed to feel that way but I can’t because I’m too deep in my brain. In the feeling. I can’t let go even though I want to.
Then I hear a noise downstairs. Is it the door? I can’t tell.
I walk to the stairs to look and listen. I don’t hear anything. I turn to look out the bathroom window again but when I do the bunny falls. It falls down three, four, five steps. And sits there.
The baby starts to cry again.
I bounce and I ush but this time it doesn’t help. The baby needs the bunny. I have to get it but I can’t get it because both of my hands are holding Baby Wendy.
Outside I see the mailbox. Maura and Mrs. Taylor are gone.
Which means I have to move fast.
I put the baby down on the floor and step over it. Onto Step One. Two, Three, Four, Five and I bend down to grab the bunny. Then I turn and lay on the stairs so my chin and arms are on the landing next to Baby Wendy. I put the bunny near her face. “Look! Here it is!” I say.
The baby stops crying. It opens its eyes. It looks sideways at the bunny. Then at me.
It doesn’t know what is happening. It doesn’t know anything. It opens its mouth and yawns. Then it looks in my eyes like it is surprised. I wonder, Does it see what’s in my brain? Does it know that I am (-Ginny)?
My mouth is open so I shut it fast. I look at Baby Wendy over my glasses. “The brain is in the head,” I tell it.
It smiles and laughs.
Then I say, “I know you can’t see inside but that’s where my brain is. I don’t want you to see what I’m thinking.”
I move the bunny closer to her. Baby Wendy is too little to always grab things on the first try. She picks her head up and reaches and falls back down again with her cheek on the carpet.
I move the bunny closer.
I remember doing the same thing with my Baby Doll.
“Ginny?”
Maura is inside the house. I take a deep breath and my shoulders and arms get tight. “Ginny, where are you?”
Baby Wendy doesn’t make any noise or sound. It just keeps looking at the bunny. Reaching for it.
“Ginny, where are you? Ginny, what are you—” Her words stop but they are all one word. Her voice is a hole in a window.
She leaps four, five, six times and is past me. I duck. She picks up Baby Wendy.
Now Maura is standing over me on the landing with her lips curled and her teeth showing. “What the hell were you doing?” she screams.
“The baby dropped the bunny!” I say.
Maura looks confused. She looks and looks and looks. At me. At Baby Wendy. At the bunny near the edge of the landing.
“You were trying to get her to roll!” she says. “You took her out of the crib and tried to make her roll down the stairs!”
“No, I didn’t!” I say.
“Yes, you did! What the hell else could you be doing, offering a toy to a baby at the top of a staircase? What’s wrong with you? Why would you do something like this?”
That was three questions all at once and I don’t know which to answer so instead I self-advocate. I push off the edge of Step One so that I’m kneeling on Step Three.
“You were outside too long! The baby started to cry! I picked her up and gave her the bunny and she stopped! Then I heard a noise so I went to look but the bunny fell and I had to pick it up! So you stop yelling at me, Maura! Stop yelling at me right now! I did a good thing!”
Maura’s mouth opens but no words come out.
It is exactly the same look that Gloria gave me when I yelled back at her. It is exactly the same look she gave before she told me to have a nice life and left me all alone.
I want to put my head down but instead I look right in Maura’s eyes. I look and I look and then I open my mouth and breathe.
“I believe you,” she says. She swallows. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
I don’t know what to say so I don’t say anything.
“I still don’t think we’re ready to have you start holding her yet, though,” she says. “There are things you need to learn, no matter how much you already know. And this proves it. You can’t put a baby down near the edge of something she could fall off of. But I do think you’re probably ready to start helping out with Wendy a little more. How does that sound?”
That sounds confusing but she is not yelling and she is not calling me a crazy girl. She is not screaming or telling me I did something bad even though I was going to set the kitchen on fire. She’s telling me I can help take care of my baby sister.
“That sounds really, really good,” I hear myself say. It is my voice. Ginny’s.