Page 15 of Baby Blue
In response, she kicked her legs and made a sound that sounded like, “A-heh.”
“Are you hungry?” He hadn’t asked Anne when she’d last been fed, so he warmed a bottle just like Anne had taught him to and sat down on the bed, then picked up the baby carefully and held her in one arm, using the other hand to feed her.
To his surprise, she took the whole bottle. Then he remembered what they’d shown him, and he put her on his shoulder and began to jiggle her and pat her back. Sure enough, in just a couple of minutes, she let out a huge burp. “Good job!” he told her, then took her back into his arms. She squirmed a little, made a few funny faces, and settled down to stare up into his face. “You should go to sleep now,” he told her and put her in her basket, but when he did, she began to cry, not hard, but a sniffling, whining kind of sound. “Okay, okay! Sorry!” he told her and took her back out. “But you have to go to sleep. I’m exhausted.” Was this how new moms felt? If it was, he felt sorry for them. He was ready for bed, but she wasn’t, or at least she didn’t seem to be. He tried to put her back in the basket, with the same result.What do I do now?he wondered. There wasn’t a rocking chair in the house and, based on commercials he’d seen, most babies liked that.
Exasperation was about to take over when he remembered something: He’d seen people singing to babies. Maybe that would work. But he was so tired that he couldn’t even think of a song to sing. After a couple of minutes, he decided he’d just sing his own song, so he looked down into her face and began. But, on a whim, he substitutedyouandyourforherandshe.
If you asked me to,
I’d pull the stars from the sky,
Build a castle treetop high,
Write your name in the sand.
If you asked me to,
I’d give you the moon,
Make every month June,
Stop the river with my bare hands.
And what I’d do for you
Is everything,
Everything,
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do.
And what I’d do for you
Is everything,
Everything,
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do.
As he sang,he watched his tiny daughter gently close her eyes and by the time he’d finished the song, she was sound asleep. Then he sang the last half of the last chorus.
And what I’ddo for you
Is everything,
Everything.
We’d never be apart,
I’d give you my heart.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do
For you.
He wastired and it was time to put her in her basket, but for some reason, he didn’t want to. Something inside him made him want to hold her. She felt good in his arms, the perfect shapeand weight, and he smiled as he looked down into her little face. Sitting there in the quiet house, he thought about the last four lines of the chorus:We’d never be apart, / I’d give you my heart. / There’s nothing I wouldn’t do / For you, and he began to shake. He managed to get her into her basket and set it on the floor beside his bed, then climb into the bed, turn off the light, and bury his face in his pillow.
And as he’d done so many times over the years, the child inside Blue Wallace began to cry silently, as though someone would hear him and beat him like they had all those times before. He cried for the little boy who’d never been loved, for the teenage boy who’d had to take care of himself, for the young man who’d struggled to find a place to be and to make a living, and for the adult Blue who was still lonely and alone. Then he cried for the baby in the basket, for how she wasn’t wanted and was just left behind. If he could manage to keep his shit together and do right by her, what would he tell her? And could he raise her? He wasn’t capable of loving anyone. He didn’t know how. No one had ever loved him, so he didn’t even know where to begin. But there were a few things he knew for sure.
