Pretty Baby

Hesitantly, she answers, “Matthew.”

“Matthew?” I repeat, worried that her confession will end there, with that one word.

But to my surprise she continues, the dark bangs shrouding her eyes as she watches a robin hunt for worms on the street. The first sign of spring. There are tiny buds on the trees that line the city streets, crocus shoots poking through holes in the sodden ground. “Matthew, my...” And she hesitates—there’s a distinct hesitation before she says, “my brother,” and outwardly I nod, but inwardly my heart leaps. One piece of the puzzle. Willow has a brother named Matthew. Willow has a brother, at all. A brother who read Anne of Green Gables.

“Your brother read Anne of Green Gables?” I ask, trying to ignore the peculiarity of it, of Willow reading a book such as Anne of Green Gables with her brother, a book that a mother and daughter should share. I want to ask her about her mother. About why she didn’t read the book with her mother. But instead, I say nothing.

“Yes.”

I see a wistfulness come over her when she mentions her brother. Matthew. A tinge of sadness, a mournful sigh.

I wonder about this Matthew and where he may be.

And then Ruby’s bloodcurdling scream makes me remember the acetaminophen. I tread lightly. “I think Ruby is running a fever,” I say. “I bought some Tylenol at the store. It might help.” I hand Willow the box so that she can see it is, in fact, Tylenol, that I’m not trying to drug her baby.

Willow looks at me with concern in her eyes and her voice becomes that of a child. “She’s sick?” she asks, her own naïveté showing through.

“I don’t know.”

But I see that the baby is a drooling, boogery mess. Willow concedes to the Tylenol and I read the directions for the dosage. Willow holds Ruby while I squeeze the berry flavor medicine into her mouth, and we watch as Ruby goes silent, and then smacks her lips together. It’s yummy, the Tylenol. And then we wait for the medicine to kick in, for Ruby to stop crying. We wait and think. Think and wait. Wait and think. Think and wait.

What will I do when Ruby does, if ever, stop crying? Say goodbye and return home? Leave Ruby and Willow here, in the rain?

With the diarrhea soaked diaper, a red, swollen, boiled and blistered diaper rash on her genitalia and buttocks (as I imagine there to be, hiding beneath the diaper). That, alone, would make me scream.

“When’s the last time she saw a doctor?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” says Willow.

“You don’t know?” I ask, taken by surprise.

“I don’t remember,” she corrects.

“We could take her to the doctor.”

“No.”

“I could pay. For the bill. Medicine.”

“No.”

“Then a shelter. Protection from the elements. A good night’s sleep.”

“I don’t do shelters,” she says again—a replay of last night in the diner—the tone of her voice hammering the message home. I. Do. Not. Do. Shelters. I can’t blame her. I, myself, would think long and hard before checking into a homeless shelter. Shelters themselves can be dangerous places, brimming with desperate men and women, turned by circumstance into violent predators. There are communicable diseases in shelters: tuberculosis, hepatitis and HIV, and, sometimes, the homeless are not allowed to bring their personal possessions inside. Which means, abandoning Willow’s vintage suitcase and whatever treasures it may hold. There are drugs in shelters, drug addicts, drug dealers, there are infestations of lice and bed bugs, there are people who will steal the shoes from your feet while you sleep. In the coldest months, people wait in line for hours to be assured a bed in a shelter. And even then, there may or may not be space.

“Willow,” I say. There’s so much I want to say. The “L” comes soaring in on the tracks above us, drowning out the sound of my voice. I hesitate, wait for it to pass and then say, “You can’t stay out here forever. There are things Ruby needs. Things you need.”

She looks at me with those cornflower eyes, her skin drab, remnants of eye makeup intensifying the baggage beneath her eyes. “You think I want to live on the streets?” she asks. And then says to me, “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

CHRIS (#ulink_14090772-d292-5510-9c3c-ec28bd01520a)

The front door opens and there they stand like two drowned rats. There’s a baby in Heidi’s arms, a scent far worse than cumin wafting from the girl. I rub at my eyes, certain I’m hallucinating, certain my Heidi would never bring a homeless girl into our home, into the home where her own daughter lives and breathes. The girl is a ragamuffin, a street urchin. She’s barely older than Zoe. She won’t make eye contact with me, not when Heidi tells me her name is Willow or when I say lackadaisically (I don’t want to appear too stupid when the cameramen appear to inform me that I’m on the next installment of Candid Camera) that mine is Chris.

Heidi announces, “She’s going to stay with us tonight,” just like that. Like those damn kittens, and I’m too stupefied to say yes or no, not that anyone bothered to ask my opinion. Heidi shepherds the girl into our home, and suggests she remove the soused boots from her feet, and as she does so, about a gallon of water pours from their insides and onto the floor. Beneath those boots, her feet are bare. No socks, her feet macerated and covered in blisters. I wince, and Heidi and the girl’s eyes follow mine down to the bare feet. I know Heidi’s thinking about how to remedy the girl’s ailing feet, but I’m just hoping whatever she’s got isn’t contagious.

Zoe appears from her bedroom, the words “what the...” dropping from a gaping mouth. I’m guessing our daughter isn’t overly familiar with the f word that follows that statement, so I nearly say it aloud for her. What the fuck are you thinking, Heidi? But already Heidi is showing the girl into our home, introducing her to our daughter, who stares dumbly at this waif and then looks to me for an explanation. I can only shrug.

The girl’s eyes get lost on the TV, on some basketball game: Chicago Bulls versus the Pistons, and I hear myself ask—for lack of anything better to say—“You like basketball?” and she flatly answers, “No,” and yet she’s staring at that TV as though she’s never seen an electrical appliance before in her life. When she talks, I catch a scent of bacteria fermenting in her mouth: halitosis. I wonder when she last brushed her teeth. They’ve probably got that “fuzzy sweater” thing going on. There’s an ungodly smell coming from her and when I move to the window and open it a crack, Heidi shoots me an evil eye, to which I reply, “What? It’s stuffy in here,” and hope the rain stays at bay long enough to air out the stench.