Baby, Please

Jen Ippensen

            Marie hums a lullaby, rolling lemon-colored paint up and down the wall to the rhythm. Her plan is to finish the second coat before Thomas gets home, slide the crib and rocking chair into place, pull the blinds, switch on the floor lamp, and remain calm. That’s important. They both need to remain calm.

            She doesn’t hear him on the stairs. The crib, late afternoon sun reflecting off its cherry wood, stands vacant and not quite ready in the middle of the room. 

            “Marie?” His voice comes from behind her. 

            Her heart beats through the soles of her feet. 

            “I lost track of time,” she says, turning and pushing her hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist. One strand stubbornly sticks to her forehead.

            “What’s all this?”

            “I wanted to surprise you. But then—the trim—it took longer—I mean, longer than expected—and the time—” Her voice is like a bird with a broken wing.

            Looking around at the partially painted walls, her husband asks, “What’s going on?”

            “I didn’t think you’d mind if I chose the color. It’s versatile, but if you hate it, we can pick something else.”

            He enters the room tentatively, like a stranger. Inches from the crib, he stops. “How did this happen?”

            “I did it myself.”

            He shakes his head.

            “I know, I’m not great with this stuff,” she says. “You should check it, to be sure it’s safe.”

            “Not this,” he snaps, waving a stiff hand over the crib. “This!” He throws both hands out toward her—toward her midsection, flat but filled with life.

            She steps back, out of reach. Just remain calm. It’s important, she thinks. She takes a deep breath and says, “I know it’s not what we planned—”

            “Not what we planned? No, it’s not what we planned, Marie.”

            His voice is not calm. This is not what she planned.

            One lemon-colored hand reaching out, she steps forward slowly, cautiously, as she would toward a wounded animal. “Honey, I know this isn’t what you wanted, but I—”

            “You what?”

            She wants to explain, but her voice is flapping and falling again. Finally, she manages to say, “Let’s sit. We should calm down so we can talk.”

            She moves toward the rocking chair as if to sit, but his hand closes around her wrist. Her step falters and her feet tangle in the drop cloth. The plastic crinkles. Her feet aren’t working. She catches hold of the doorframe and turns. The sun streaks low in the sky, and as she trips backward, it blinds her. His hand whips out and he grips her elbow, but his fingers slip away. Suddenly, she feels weightless, but only for a second. Then, her full weight crashes into the banister and she tumbles down, bumping and banging into balusters and stairs. At the bottom, her body sprawls across the landing, one leg against the wall, an arm bent unnaturally beneath her.

            Thomas bounds down the stairs and crouches over her. “Oh god, no. No, no, no,” he says, again and again. 

            She clamps her eyes shut against a sharp pain pulsing through her abdomen. Finally, she feels him touch her face. He says, “Marie? Baby, please. Can you hear me?”

            She does hear him, barely. His voice sounds stranded in the distance, alone, and that’s fine with her. She doesn’t want to see him. She looks inside herself instead. Baby, please. Can you hear me?

            Her face feels wet. She reaches up with her free hand and struggles to open her eyes. 

            Bent over her, Thomas repeats, “No, no, no. Baby, please.” 

            She realizes it’s not blood running down her face as she first thought. It’s his tears. When she looks up into his wet eyes and wipes his cheek with her fingers, she leaves a streak of yellow war paint behind. “I wasn’t ready,” she says.

##

            After Thomas leaves for work in the morning, Marie pulls blood-stained sheets from the bed and buries them in the backyard. Her hands are unclean, her nails caked with dirt. Hair strands that pulled free from her loose bun, stick to her forehead, damp from digging, and to her cheeks, wet with tears. She stands in the yard, alone. 

            She looks back at the house. Though the sky is purple gray, like a bruise, the sun reflects off the attic window and catches her eye. She imagines herself on the other side of the glass, looking down, as she once did when she watched from her second-story bedroom window while her mother buried a box in the backyard of her childhood home. The same feelings of anger, and grief, and failure fill her now.

            When she returns to the house, she climbs the creaky stairs to the attic. She swipes cobwebs from the forgotten air, and makes her way to the window. Aching from the fall and the digging and the loss, she looks down into the yard where the freshly turned dirt scars the grass. She pictures the shoebox once kept under her bed and later placed in the ground. She wraps her arms around herself, feels the pangs of an empty embrace, and wonders if she will ever feel full again.

            Turning from the window, Marie squints until her eyes adjust to the relative darkness in the attic. She sighs. Then, she steps carefully around an old box fan and inches her way past stacks of boxes and toward the steps. She is about to head back downstairs to face her bed, stripped of sheets, when she sees a familiar box and stops. She slides an abandoned computer monitor to the side, wincing at the twinge in her biceps, and moves a crate of old VHS tapes out of the way. Stooping to avoid hitting her head on the slanted ceiling, she moves toward what she wants. 

            Several boxes have been piled on top of the one she’s after. She lifts them one at a time and sets them aside. Finally, she uncovers it. This box is not like the others. It is sturdier and covered in cheerful pastel stripes. She dusts the top with her shirt sleeve and lifts the lid.

            “Hello there,” she says. It’s the baby doll she had as a child. She holds the small figure up amongst the dust motes and smiles.

##

            The next morning, Marie watches Thomas drive away. Then, despite the stiffness that has settled in her thighs and her sore midsection, she climbs the attic stairs and looks around. Did she once complain that this space was too small? How silly. As long as she remains in the middle of the room where the roof is peaked, she can stand fully upright without hitting her head on the bare beams running the length of the ceiling. She looks around. Sure, it’s a bit dark and dusty, but with a little attention it could be quite nice, she thinks.

            It doesn’t take long to string an extension cord down the stairs and around the corner, so she can light the floor lamp brought up from the partially-painted room on the second floor. She pulls the lamp’s dangling brass chain, and a pair of 60 Watt bulbs cast a warm glow across the storage space and throw long, dark shadows on the slanted ceiling. She imagines how she might tidy up a bit to clear a space in the middle of the room, and then she sets to work. Damp from years of humidity and neglect, box flaps crumble in her fingers and float to the floor. I’ll grab a broom, she thinks. I can clean up this mess.

            She spends most of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon pushing and pulling, shifting and stacking. She stops frequently to rest and rub her sore muscles, but eventually, a section along one wall is clear. There she places the box fan, the computer monitor, the VHS tapes, a window air conditioner from their first apartment, and an assortment of other items they no longer use. Marie doesn’t want to look at these reminders of the past. She is focused on the future.

            She organizes boxes by size and weight. Slowly and methodically, she walls off the collection of unused items. Boxes, once thrown in the attic haphazardly, are now stacked neatly and take up less space. Marie moves through the attic more freely. She leans her baby doll, Rachel, against the newly formed box wall where she can see her as she works.

##

            Marie stands at the front door and waves goodbye to Thomas. She has spent a week in the attic and each day she has grown more impatient for him to leave in the morning. It’s not that she doesn’t want him around, it’s just that she has so much she wants to do, and she fears he won’t understand.

            When the door clicks closed, she goes directly to the attic and picks up Rachel. She pats her back as she moves among the boxes, searching. After a few minutes, she finds what she’s looking for and sets Rachel down, gently propping her against the box wall. Marie peels back the box flaps and lifts a pastel quilt that she kept folded over the end of her bed when she was a child. She shakes it out. Then she picks up the broom and sweeps a space in the center of the attic before spreading the quilt out under the lamp.

            She knows just how to make a comfy little spot for Rachel. One summer, the year she was seven, Marie spent most late afternoons in the backyard, eating popcorn under the elm tree where she watched a couple of cardinals building a nest. The male, his red chest bright against the greening grass, glided down to hop in the undergrowth, plucking out twigs and flying them back to the female who worked in the branches above. She squeezed the twigs in her beak, crushing each one, making it pliable, then she turned and turned, bending them around her body, forming a little bowl with her feet. All the while, Marie watched in wonder.

            Now, squatting in the middle of the blanket, Marie turns round and round, scrunching up the quilt to form a nest on the floor. As she turns, she thinks how lovely it must be to have someone bring you twigs, but her eyes sting and she pushes the thought away. Last night, Thomas wouldn’t even bring a rotisserie chicken home from the store. It would do her good, he told her, to put some music on and busy herself in the kitchen. He misses coming home from work to find her dancing across the tiled floor with a spatula. She didn’t tell him she was too tired from working in the attic all day. When she finishes making a nest with the quilt, she places baby Rachel in the center, carefully supporting her heavy porcelain head.

            Marie unpacks tiny plastic bottles and burp rags, blankets and bonnets and then listens at the attic door. Reassured that Thomas has not returned home early, she carries them downstairs. At the kitchen sink, she scours the bottles in hot water. The cloth items she tosses in the washing machine. When they are clean and dried, she gathers them up and buries her face in their fresh smell. She carries them back up the attic stairs, folds them neatly, and stacks them on the floor near Rachel.

            She keeps a close eye on the sun out the attic window, and with plenty of time before Thomas gets home, she tucks the quilted nest tight around baby Rachel’s small body. She says good night and makes sure to close the attic door behind her when she goes downstairs to make the evening meal.

##

            The rocking chair is heavy, hard to lug up the stairs alone. But she does it. She closes her eyes against the sharp pain shooting through her arm, the one that bent beneath her when she fell. The strained muscle has been feeling a little better each day, but the weight of the chair and the yanking motion she uses to bump it up, step-by-step, tests its limits. At the halfway point, careful to keep the chair balanced on its step, she squeezes herself past and around to the bottom side of it. She rests the chair on her backside while she pauses to catch her breath. It would be better if she didn’t have to do this alone, but at the moment she doesn’t see another way. Determined, she dries her forehead on the sleeve of her shirt, grits her teeth, and goes back to work. 

            Pleased with her accomplishment, Marie spends the next few days rocking in the warm light of the lamp with Rachel. Each day, when the sun dips low in the window to the west, Marie tucks Rachel into the quilted nest. She goes downstairs and has dinner waiting when Thomas comes home from work.

            One night over a plate of pork loin, he says to her, “This is delicious. And you’re getting around a bit better. I knew being productive would help. Let’s see what else we can come up with.”

            Later, lying in the dark, she listens to his breathing, waiting. When she’s sure he is asleep, she crawls out of bed and creeps up the attic stairs, avoiding the creaky steps she now knows well, and checks on Rachel, who is such a good baby. She doesn’t fuss, isn’t demanding, even sleeps through the night.

            To avoid further discussion on the topic, Marie spends a few minutes each day attending to an item on the list Thomas made for her, doing just enough to pacify him: alphabetizing the movie collection or organizing the junk drawer, for example. But she refuses to waste too much time on his trivial tasks.

            “Today’s the day,” she sings to Rachel one morning when Thomas has gone. “We cleared enough room for your crib. Yes, we did!” She tickles Rachel under her chin. “He thinks we don’t have enough to do. Well, he doesn’t know, does he? No, he does not.” She cradles Rachel in her arms and goes down the attic stairs.

            The toolbox is still on the floor in the corner of the lemon-colored room. Marie sets Rachel down beside it. She hums “Rock-a-Bye Baby” as she takes the crib apart. Then, balancing Rachel on her hip, she carries it piece-by-piece up the stairs. Rachel naps in her nest while Marie reassembles the crib in the attic. When Marie finishes, she checks to make sure Rachel is still asleep before climbing over the guard rail and into the crib. She’s technically over the weight limit, she knows, and risks breaking the boards, but Marie needs to make sure the crib is securely constructed. And she knows now she can’t have Thomas check it, as she once hoped. Gently, she sways back and forth and bounces ever so slightly on the mattress. When she’s sure it’s safe, she climbs back over the railing and gathers Rachel in her arms. The only thing missing is the mobile. It was backordered but is expected to arrive before long.

            Marie rests Rachel on her shoulder and pats her back. With her free hand, Marie picks up the nest quilt and shakes it. She holds a corner with her chin against her chest and stretches the blanket out wide along her arm. Rachel stirs and Marie bounces and hums until she drifts back to sleep. Marie manages, with some difficulty, to fold the quilt in half over the end of the crib. Standing back, she looks at their little space. Things are really coming together, she thinks and uses her hip to angle the rocking chair toward the crib.

##

            Marie kneels on the floor and uses the quilt as a changing pad. “Oh no, don’t cry,” she says, as she buttons the onesie between Rachel’s legs and smooths her skirt back into place. “We’ll get you off this stinky old floor.” She’s been changing Rachel’s diapers on the floor several times a day, and they’ve both had enough of it. “Let’s see what we can do.”

            The box walls are now complete. On the long sides of the room, the irregular rectangular units, staggered and stacked three or four rows high, easily reach the low, angled ceiling on either side. Along the short sides, boxes rise more like pyramids and Marie picks her way through them. “How about these boxes here?” she asks Rachel. “We can make two nice stacks and lay the ironing board across them.” 

            She lays Rachel on her back in the crib. Marie holds a burp rag up over her face and says, “Wheeeere’s mommy?” Lowering the cloth with a smile, she chirps, “There she is!” She pats Rachel’s feet before returning to her task. 

            With the boxes stacked and the ironing board in place, Marie stands back to admire her progress. “Almost done,” she says, slipping her hands under Rachel’s arms and whisking her up in a wide arc that makes her little lace skirt billow out behind her. “Weeeeeee,” she says, and her voice fills the enclosed space around them, as if it isn’t still empty. “I think I know just what we need.”

            She tucks Rachel in the crook of her arm and heads downstairs. She pads through the living room singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” In the bedroom, Marie places Rachel on her back in the middle of the bed. “Now, don’t you wiggle around. I’ll be just a minute.”

            In her bottom dresser drawer, Marie uncovers the pink cable-knit sweater Thomas gave her the Christmas before last, back when he knew what she wanted, when he gave her what she needed. She rubs a sleeve against her cheek. Turning to Rachel, she says, “Feel how soft it is.” She touches the sleeve gently to Rachel’s face and smiles. “It’s perfect, isn’t it?” Her voice rises up, high and sweet. “Yes, it is,” she says. “Yes, it is.” She’s kissing the bottoms of Rachel’s feet when the doorbell rings. 

            “Oh, goodness! Who’s here?” she says to Rachel, scooping her up. “Let’s go see.” She rests Rachel on her shoulder with one hand and carries the sweater in the other as she rushes to the front door.

            When she swings the front door open, she comes face-to-face with a delivery man wearing brown shirtsleeves and shorts. “Oh, it must be the mobile for your crib!” she cries. “You’re just going to love the little animals.” Still holding the sweater in her right hand, Marie reaches forward to take the man’s clipboard and sign for the box. 

            The man stands motionless on the front step. 

            Marie’s chest tightens and she swallows hard. She’s seen that facial expression before. Her mother had that same look on her face when she discovered the shoebox under Marie’s bed when she was seven. It was the summer she watched the cardinals build a nest in the backyard. The summer she fell in love with the baby bird that hopped in the grass beside her and pecked up her popcorn flakes. The summer that baby bird broke its wing and Marie tried so hard to save it. The summer her mother took it away and buried it in the backyard.

            Marie flings the sweater over Rachel’s head and pats her back. Pushing the door partway closed, she maneuvers her body so her left shoulder and Rachel are hidden, safe, behind it. “I’ll just sign for that,” she says with a tight smile. She thrusts her hand out and waits. 

            “Yes, ma’am,” the man says and slowly extends the clipboard toward her. Awkwardly, Marie leans forward and scribbles her name.

            “You can just set it on the step there, and I’ll get it,” she says.

            He sets the box at his feet and nods to her. She watches him turn and walk away and waits for him to climb in his truck before she steps outside to grab the package. Back inside, she closes the front door and leans against it, breathing hard. “All right then,” she says. “Let’s get this upstairs.”

            In the attic, she lays Rachel in her crib and tucks the mobile box behind the rocking chair. “It’s getting late today, but tomorrow you’ll have music and little animals overhead to keep you company.” Marie smooths the pink sweater over the ironing board and ties the sleeves underneath to hold it in place. The sweater Thomas bought provides a soft spot on top of the make-shift changing table, and it’s almost as if he is contributing to their lives. “There we go,” she says in her now-familiar baby-talk. “You won’t have to lay on the floor any more, will you? No, you won’t.” She casts a glance out the window where the sun has moved into the western sky. “I’m off to make dinner. Sleep tight.” She kisses Rachel’s feet and heads downstairs.

##

            The next morning, Marie slides the box out from behind the rocking chair and opens it. She turns the crank on the mobile and it plays “Brahms’ Lullaby” while she changes Rachel’s diaper on their newly manufactured changing table. “That’s so much better than the floor, isn’t it?” she says, smiling down at Rachel.

            “Did you see what I brought up?” she asks. “We’ll be finished in no time and then your room will be perfect. Yes, it will.”

            Marie unfurls a drop cloth along one wall of boxes and pops the top off a paint can. The lemony paint shimmers in the lamp light, and Marie’s breath shudders. Thomas suggested she get out of the house, that maybe she would feel better if she had coffee with the girls or got her nails done. “This isn’t the painting he was talking about, is it?” she says to Rachel. “Well, we just won’t mention it, will we?” She steadies herself, pours paint into a tray, and dips her roller in it.

            The cardboard soaks up more paint than she anticipated, and drips run down along the box tops and sides. This isn’t working quite the way she’d imagined. “It’s a little messy,” she says. “But don’t you worry. We’ll fix it right up.” She swipes her fingers along the creases to catch the drips and wipes the paint on her jeans. It’s getting a little out of hand. She rolls and swipes and wipes until beads of sweat stand out on her forehead and she feels light headed. “Whew, it’s getting stuffy in here.” She sets her roller down and picks Rachel up. Crossing to the far end of the room, she says, “Let’s get a little fresh air.” She struggles to open the window with one hand.

            She holds Rachel in her arms, leans against the window frame, and takes a deep breath, looking down. The upturned dirt where she buried the bloody sheets in the yard still scars the grass. She squeezes Rachel tight. When she slams the window down, she catches her fingertip. She squawks in surprise at the pain and pulls her hand back. “Let’s get you over here where you’ll be safe,” she says to Rachel and places her in the crib.

            Marie winds the mobile again and the lullaby plays as she paints. It’s hot in the attic and the paint fumes make her woozy, but she works quickly to finish the job. When she’s done, she checks on Rachel who is still sleeping. Then, she boxes up the painting supplies and carries them back downstairs.

            Most of her bruises from the fall have faded, and her muscles have been feeling much better. Today, though, her lower back hurts. It must be all the painting, she tells herself. But when she goes to the bathroom, she finds that is not the case. A sob rises up in her throat and she bites her lip. She closes her eyes and bloody bedsheets fill her mind.

            “Rachel,” she says aloud, her voice unsteady.

            She misses a step on her way up the stairs and bangs her shin. Her vision goes blurry, but she doesn’t blame the throbbing in her leg. She scrambles up the remaining steps, hurries to the crib, and picks up Rachel. She holds her tight. That afternoon, they rock and rock and Marie reads Rachel that Robert Munsch book Love You Forever front to back, again and again, rocking and rocking. Back and forth. Back and forth. Even the unsettling parts where the mother creeps into the grown man-boy’s house and holds him, and later when he rocks his aged and dying mother on his lap. Back and forth. Back and forth. Marie reads it again and again, until it is Rachel reading to her, holding her, rocking her. Back and forth. Back and forth. They lose track of time. The sun dips low below the window to the west. “Love you forever,” they say. “Forever.”

            The front door slams and startles them. Marie jumps from the rocking chair, dropping the book to the floor and clasping Rachel to her chest. Dinner. She’s forgotten. She cradles Rachel’s delicate head and rushes downstairs and into the kitchen where she goes about opening and closing cupboards, doors, and drawers. Then, standing with the refrigerator door open, she bounces lightly and hums an unknown hymn.

            Nothing left over. No meat and potatoes, no pasta, no comfort food. One hand patting Rachel’s back, she works quickly, pulling everything from the fridge. Ketchup, mustard, a bottle of ranch. Last week’s milk. They can make it work. They have to.

            Thomas is shuffling around in the entry, maybe hanging up a jacket, kicking off his shoes. “Marie?” His voice rings through the house. Honey, I’m home, she thinks. Her perfect life. If only she hadn’t lost track of time. 

            “I lost track of time,” she calls back, a little waver creeping into her voice. She stacks pickle spears and tabasco sauce on the counter, hushing the baby. She bends down, searching the fridge. She is behind the refrigerator door when Thomas enters the room.

            “We were reading, and I forgot about dinner.” She stands, closing the door, cooing, “Hush, hush.” She turns with the small bundle in her arms. 

Seeing them, Thomas stumbles back. His feet aren’t working, but he catches hold of the doorframe. “What is this?” he asks.

            “This is all we have,” she says. “We’ll have to make it work. I’m sure we can.”

            “Not this,” he says, lifting his shaking hand toward the countertop laden with condiments. “This.” His voice cracks, a sorrowful sound, as he waves a hand weakly toward her—toward the childlike figure she holds in her arms.

            The day’s last rays of sunlight slip over the horizon. The room grows shadowy and still. Marie bounces, at first gently, then more vigorously, saying, “No, no, no. Oh god, no. Hush, hush.”

            “Marie,” he says. “Let’s try to calm down.” 

            “Hush, hush,” she says.

            He inches toward her.

            There’s that look again. Marie knows what it means. She pictures her mother digging a hole in the backyard and fear courses through her. Her hands shake. She squeezes Rachel close to her chest and backs away until she bumps into the countertop. She turns her body, shielding the baby from Thomas.

            “Let me take it, and we can talk.” He reaches forward.

            Suddenly, a mother in the wild, she thrusts a claw at him and pulls the baby back. Its porcelain head cracks against the countertop. It splits open. A fragment of face drops to the tiled floor. One wide eye looks up at them. Marie falls beside it. She caresses its broken edge, slits her finger. Blood streaks the tiny cheek. Marie cries out. 

            She lurches forward and rams into his legs. His knee cracks. Thomas cries out, falling back with a thud, knocking against the countertop. Condiments clatter around his body, bent now unnaturally beneath her.

            Marie crouches down, among the broken pieces, pleading, “Baby, please. Can you hear me?”

Jen Ippensen lives and writes in Norfolk, Nebraska. She spends considerable time fostering an obsession with the color black and consuming dark chocolate, hazelnut coffee, and copious amounts of cheese. You can find her at www.jenippensen.com or on Twitter @jippensen.