‘La, la, la…’ Screaming now.
But it was no good. She could still hear the wailing, no matter how hard she screamed.
Hester slammed to a halt, turned to look at the baby, the thing that had promised so much happiness and contentment but which was bringing nothing but trouble. It lay in an old rusted tin bath with a none-too-clean blanket underneath it and another one covering it. The cot that Hester herself, the whole family, had used as a baby. She should have been sentimentally attached to it – after all, it was a family heirloom – but she wasn’t. Her mind didn’t work that way. Perhaps as a baby she had felt safe and secure in her cot. But she didn’t know. Couldn’t remember that far back, she told herself, had blocked it out. Those memories belonged to a different person. And she never wanted to be that person again. She couldn’t be.
She took her hands away from her ears. The baby was still making that noise. It wasn’t the same crying as earlier, strong and loud; this was more like one unending cry of pain. If anything, it was worse than the shouting. She stomped back to it, picked it out of the cot, held it under its arms, looked right into its mewling, shrieking, stupid little face.
‘Shut up!’ she screamed. ‘Shut up! I’ll… I’ll…’ She shook it hard. The movement just made the sound vibrate. It sounded funny. She would have laughed if it wasn’t so annoying. ‘Shut up! Or I’ll fling you against the wall! Yeah, that’ll keep you quiet…’
But the baby didn’t seem to understand her. It just kept on wailing. Hester looked between the wall and the cot, then, with an angry exhalation, flung the baby back down into the tin bath. It bounced on the blankets, looked startled for a few seconds, stopped wailing in surprise. She scrutinised it. Smelled that smell.
‘You stink… urgh…’
The baby was thinking about wailing again. She could tell. She had to do something quickly. Maybe that was it. Maybe it needed its nappy changing. It was still wrapped in the blankets her husband had put it in when he brought it home. Wasn’t even in a proper nappy. Not yet. That was okay; she had seen them get changed on TV. The babies always lay on their backs kicking their legs and laughing while the pretty young mums smiled and wiped their bottoms with a special cloth and put a new nappy on them. Well, that was easy. She could do that. And if she did, the baby would smile again and she could smile again. Easy.
She cleared space on the workbench by sweeping the tools out of the way with her thick, muscled arm and blew any sawdust or iron filings off the surface before hefting the baby out of the cot and placing it down. It remained silent, startled at being moved. Hester smiled. This was what a mother would do. Good. It was working.
She unwrapped the blankets one at a time, pulling them off as quickly as she could, throwing them on the floor. The silence encouraged her to speak in baby talk again, like she was supposed to. She took a nappy out of the bag and picked up a cloth to wipe the baby with.
‘Be prepared,’ she gurgled in an approximation of baby talk. ‘Mummy’s got to be prepared…’
She looked at its body. All pink and blue blotches, like its face. But there was yellow in there too. Was that right? She didn’t think so, but it was still moving so it must be. And it was cold as well. Were they supposed to be cold? She had thought they would be warm. Something else the TV and books had got wrong.
Hester smiled to herself. Maybe she should write a book on babies. Or go on TV to talk about them. Tell the truth about what they were really like. She grinned at the thought and began to undo the final blanket. What she found there wiped the smile off her face.
‘Urgh… no…’
She didn’t know what to do. She had the cloth ready but didn’t want to touch it. She wished her husband was there to help, but knew he wouldn’t do anything.
And she had accepted that. So it was down to her.
She took the cloth and set to work, holding her breath all the time. She did it eventually, throwing the soiled cloth in the pile of blankets. She brought out the wipes that came alongside the nappies. When they were wiped with these, the babies smiled. She wiped it. It didn’t smile. Or laugh. But it didn’t wail. That was something. She wiped it again. That was better. Getting it clean. She threw the wipe after the cloth and the blankets. Looked at the naked baby lying there.
It had a thing sticking out. Little and wrinkled, but with quite a big bump underneath. It was a boy baby.
‘Oh.’
She reached out, got its little thing in her big fat hand. Tiny. Felt a sadness build within her. A tingling somewhere in her body to accompany it. The sadness increased.
No. That was in the past. She was what she was. She was Hester. She was a wife and a mother. She was happy. Happy.
She let go of its thing, started to put a nappy on it. It couldn’t be that difficult. She looked at the picture on the packaging, tried to copy it. While she worked, she thought. About the baby’s little thing. She hoped her husband wanted a boy. He should do. They did, didn’t they? Fathers wanted boys. Another shudder of sadness rippled through her. Most fathers. Some wanted girls. Some made them girls.
She looked again at the baby as she covered its thing up. Smiled.
‘Let’s hope he wants a son,’ she said, baby-talking again, ‘or he’ll have that thing off you quicker than you can say…’ She thought. There was a phrase she should use but she couldn’t think of it. ‘Well, quick, anyway.’
She pulled a one-piece suit on to it.
‘There. Don’t you look handsome?’
It just lay there, kicking its legs slightly. Eyes still screwed tightly shut. But at least it wasn’t screaming.
She checked her watch. Her husband had been back and gone out again. Should be back soon. She could usually feel when he was going to return. Time to feed the baby in the meantime.
She crossed to the fridge, took out a bottle of milk. She knew she couldn’t feed it from her body; that would be stupid. So she got milk from the shop. Full fat. She had read that it should be given powdered milk and something called fortifiers. But she didn’t know what they were. And the powdered milk she didn’t like the sound of. Better off with proper milk. From a cow. Full fat was good; that would have all the fortifiers and stuff in that it needed. That was being responsible, because she had read that children shouldn’t be given diet things. Coke was all right when it was older, a few months maybe, but not yet. She knew that. She wasn’t stupid.
She squirted the milk into her own mouth. Cold. Too cold. Pop it in the microwave. She did, waited for the ping, watching the baby all the while. It lay on the bench, kicking its legs again. She smiled. She liked it like that, when it was quiet. That’s how she’d imagined it would be.
The microwave pinged. She took the bottle out, squirted milk into her mouth. Bit hot. But that might be good. It was cold in here, warm the baby up a bit. Put a bit of colour in its cheeks, make it smile.
She crossed to the bench, shaking the bottle in her hand to cool it a little. She scooped the baby up in one meaty, powerful arm, held the bottle to its mouth. Looked at it, just lying there, its face twisted into a permanent scowl, like a miniature gargoyle. Not what she’d imagined at all. It looked weak, too. Weak and yellow. Like a very old and wise Chinaman in a temple from a martial arts film. She smiled, looked again. No. It just looked tired, like it wanted to sleep. Well, it could. After it was fed.
She ran the bottle along its lips, moistening them. It moved slightly. She took advantage of that, put the bottle in. It jumped.
She laughed. ‘Ooh, almost opened your eyes there.’
She jammed the bottle all the way in. Let it suck. It was good for it.
The sadness was still within her. She forced it away, along with the earlier rage. This was a time for mother and baby. A time for contentment. She had read that somewhere. She sat down in a chair. Sighed. It wasn’t like she had expected it to be. But then she had also read that it never was.
This was her new life, she told herself. She was a complete woman now. Wife. Mother.
‘This is me,’ she said out loud to the baby. ‘This is me. And look… I’m complete.’
The baby didn’t reply. Just lay there, slowly taking in milk but too weak to swallow, letting it run down its sickly yellow face.
Hester didn’t notice. Just smiled.
