Page 6 of Baby Blue
“Do you want her? The baby? Because I can’t take care of her.”
Her eyebrows shot upward. “You don’t want her?”
“No! I can’t take care of a baby!” Blue was growing more frightened by the minute. Shit was getting far too real, and he didn’t know what to do. “Do you want her? Because I’ll give her to you. I really don’t want her.”
To his shock, he watched a big, silvery tear run down the woman’s cheek. “You’d just give away your baby like that? How could you do that? If you don’t want her, they’ll come and take her away. They’ll put her in foster care. Is that what you want?”
Blue didn’t know what to say. And now he had a crying woman on his hands. Good god, things just kept getting better and better. But foster care? No. “I don’t… they’ll put her… oh, god.” Blue plopped down on the sofa beside the woman and sat there, trying to figure out what to do. He didn’t want a baby; he didn’t need a baby. He couldn’t take care of a baby.
And yet he’d grown up in foster care and he didn’t want that for any child. He’d been in one foster home after another, sometimes being beaten, at least twice being sexually abused, often hungry and dirty, sometimes wetting his pants because he was denied the right to even go to the bathroom. In at least one home, he’d been tied to the foot of the bed and could only walk in a three-foot semi-circle. Treated like an animal, he’d had to focus his growing up years on one thing and one thing only?surviving. While other kids were worried about playing ball or who their date to the prom would be, Blue had worried about how he would get enough to eat and have clothes to wear so he could eventually escape and find a job, get out on his own, and not have to worry about being beaten or starved. One day when he was seventeen, he’d managed to get away and he had run fast and far until they couldn’t find him. He’d lived on the streets for seven months until he’d finally managed to find a job at a church, sweeping and mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms. One shelter after another had taken him in until he’d figured out how to do something with his hands that would let him earn a living, and he’d been a mechanic ever since.
He didn’t want that for the child in the basket. She hadn’t asked for anyone to treat her that way, but he didn’t know what to do. The sound of the woman next to him sniffling brought him out of his thoughts and he turned to her. “Go. I don’t have much money, but I’ll give you what I’ve got. Buy whatever I need to get me through the weekend and show me what to do. Please. Please?”
He watched as she wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and held the tiny infant with the other arm. “Okay. I’ll get some diapers, formula, baby lotion and powder, a pacifier, some little tee shirts and socks, a blanket or two, a couple of bibs, and some laundry detergent for you to wash her clothes in. Oh, and you’ll need a car seat to go in your truck.”
Blue shook his head. “I don’t have enough money for that.”
“Well, you can’t take her anywhere until you have one. Wait?let me go to the thrift stores tomorrow and see if I can find one. I’ll be back in a few minutes with some things. Just hang in there. Go wash your hands and if she starts fussing, put a finger in her mouth for her to suck on until I get back.” The woman situated the baby back in the basket and covered her with the little blanket, then headed for the door.
“Wait!” When she spun, Blue looked into her face. “I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Anne. AnneBlack. And you’re BrentWallace?”
Blue smiled. “Yeah. And all my friends call me Blue.”
“Okay then, Blue. I’ll get back as fast as I can. There’s a dollar-type store right down the street. I don’t know if I can get formula there, but I know I can get diapers and a few other things. Just hang on. I’ll be right back.”
When the door closed behind her, Blue felt panic overwhelm him again. God, he was so scared of someone so tiny! Would it squash her to death if he picked her up? How did that even work? He sat down beside the basket where Anne had placed it on the sofa and looked down into the child’s little face for the first time.
What he saw there took his breath away. There, in those little features, was…
His own face. Blue could see his own features on the front of that tiny head, his eyes, his nose, even in the little bow-tie lips. There was no doubt in his mind. She was his child.
As he stared into her face, her eyes met his and she made a little hiccupping sound. Squirming a little, she seemed to try to focus on him, and then she screwed her face up and made a sound like a squirrel barking. Was that a good sound? A bad sound? Blue didn’t know, but she didn’t seem to be in any pain, so he just watched her. Her vocalizations turned tosomething that reminded him of a cat, and then a sound came from somewhere other than her mouth… Did babies do that? Apparently they did. Relief was all he felt as the odor drifted past him and she made a face that looked somewhat like a grin. It was replaced with a redness and stern expression, her eyes squeezed shut and her legs stiffened straight out. It only took one whiff for Blue to figure out what she’d done, and he hit pure panic mode.Oh, no! I don’t know what to do about THAT!Hell, I hope Anne gets back here soon. What the fuck will I do?The odor filled the small living room and Blue felt himself readying to gag.
But something even worse happened. There was an initial squeal and then the infant started to scream. Blue had no idea what would happen next. Would she puke? Fall out of the basket? Start to bleed from somewhere? He really didn’t know what to expect. Hell, if she exploded he wouldn’t be surprised. Sitting there listening to her scream, he poked through his memory. He’d had to sit through dozens of commercials of people with babies. What were they doing in the commercials? The screaming kept him from being able to think clearly. He remembered smiling mommies, babies with baby food on their faces, some of them crawling about with saggy diapers. On one commercial a baby put a stuffed toy in the toilet and flushed it. Well, at least he wouldn’t have to worry aboutthatfor a while. Should he check to see if it was coming out the legs of her diaper? And if it was, what should he do?
Worse yet, what if Anne didn’t come back? It was no secret there was no love lost between the two of them. Maybe she was just fucking with him?maybe she wasn’t coming back. As he sat there, his brain screaming right along with the baby, there was a tiny tapping at the front door. Blue shot to his feet and cleared the space in half a second. Throwing open the door, he expected to find Anne standing there, but instead, there was a mini-Annestaring up at him, her eyes as big as saucers. All Blue could manage was a croaked-out, “Yeah?”
“Uh, mister, um, Mom called and told me to come over to help you. Is everything okay?”
Blue could feel himself reaching the breaking point. “No! Oh, uh, she’s screaming and I don’t know how to make her stop!”
The girl made her way around him and into the room, then stopped and wrinkled up her nose. “Oh, she’s poopy!”
“I was thinking the word was ‘shitty,’ but yeah, that’s pretty much what’s happened here. And I really don’t know what to do,” Blue gasped out. “Sorry for the smell.”
“That’s what babies do. Do you have some paper towels? And a garbage bag? And maybe some bath towels?”
“Yeah! Oh, yeah, I’ve got all that stuff,” Blue offered and started running around, collecting things. When he’d brought it all back, he gave the girl a wide-eyed stare. “Now what?”
“Let’s see what we can do.” With that, the girl took a bath towel and folded it in half. She picked up the baby and placed her on the towel, then started unwrapping the duct tape from around the kitchen towel. When she got it opened, Blue made a face. “Oh, yeah, it’s bad,” the girl said with a smile as Blue tried hard not to throw up. “Now take three of those paper towels. Stack them on top of each other, fold the whole thing in quarters, and wet it with hot water.”
Blue couldn’t wait to go to the kitchen and do that. It took him out of the stench he’d been under for at least twenty minutes. How did something that small make that much stink? It was kind of amazing, really, when he thought about it. Horrible but amazing.
By the time he came back to the scene of the crime, the girl had managed to wipe most of the mess from the baby with the clean end of the towel, and the little thing was no longer screaming like the devil. Taking the wet paper towels from Blue’shand, she took the baby’s ankles in one hand and lifted her butt up, sliding the towel out from under her, then began wiping the pink, rosy flesh with the paper towels until everything was wiped away. Blue was impressed. “Now what?”
The girl just smiled and lifted the baby onto another bath towel, then cuddled her close. “We just wait for Mom to come. If she pees, the towel will soak it up and we’ll just wipe her down and get another one.”
