What Was Mine

by Helen Klein Ross

  Where was I going? I couldn’t think straight. It was as if a jack-hammer was drilling into my brain. But when I saw signs for Maple-wood, I suddenly knew. I nosed the car off the highway and onto an exit that led to a hidden trailhead where Warren had once brought me. He’d liked to walk. He’d had many pairs of shoes (perhaps he still does) each suited to a different sort of walking: a pair for hiking rocks, a pair for walking flatlands, a pair for climbing hills. He’d counted 119 trails in New Jersey and had set out to do every one. The one he liked best led to a waterfall and he’d taken me there several times. There was a back entrance to a trail you’d never know was there. I turned off into a covert indent by the side of the road, parked, and, after gently unraveling the belts around her, took the baby out of the car.

  It was blisteringly hot in the sun, and I shielded her head with my hand until we reached the dark shelter of trees, and the temperature grew cooler by many degrees. I held the baby on my hip, securing her with both arms, as I navigated bumps in the trail, glad I’d gone out that morning wearing sensible shoes. I hoped a place I remembered was still there: a grove of pines around a redwood table. I crested a hill, and my heart leapt—the table was still there.

  The air was heavy with sweetness as I sat with the baby on a sturdy bench at the table. I took a few deep breaths, to make my heart stop beating so fast. Then I began to talk to her. I didn’t speak gibberish as I’ve heard mothers do. I spoke in words that revealed my heart while she regarded me with a wise, sympathetic expression, like a friend who knows you need someone to listen. I talked to her of the majesty of nature, pointing out the beauty of birdsong, the slices of blue between boughs that rose like arms of giant sentries guarding us from the rest of the world. I told her how much I wanted a baby. I said what a beautiful baby she was. I confessed that I longed to keep her, but assured her I was bringing her back to her mother. I couldn’t endure the thought of her mother’s sorrow. I told the baby I was sorry I couldn’t keep her, and when I said this, she began to fuss and I wondered if perhaps she was telling me something: that she wanted me to keep her, not to bring her back. I thought of the baby Warren and I had lost and wondered if possibly, impossibly, that baby was this baby, redirected to me. Perhaps her mother was mean to her, inept, or cruel, or otherwise unfit. But the baby’s fat, healthy cheeks and neatly ironed lace bib assured me that was wishful thinking on my part. She began to cry. A small, restrained whimper. I picked her up and stood swaying back and forth over the soft carpet of fallen pine needles. I sang to her. This seemed to console her. There was an echoing chorus of birds singing sad songs, as if in solidarity. I waited until she fell asleep on my shoulder, until her breathing was raspy and regular. Then, I carried her, stepping carefully to avoid rocks in the path, back to the car.

  I laid the baby, still sleeping, on the front seat, nestled her in the impression she’d made in the towels. I secured her again with the belts and the bungees.

  With a heavy heart, I closed the passenger door, walked to the other side of the car, and slid behind the wheel. Our journey together was over. It was time to bring her back.

  The key glittered as I held it above the ignition and maybe it was this flash of brightness in the dim car that pierced my brain fog, returning me to my senses. How could I bring her back? Walk in the store and look for Returns? I’d be arrested as soon as I walked through the doors. The baby’s disappearance must be a news story by now. Had the woman with half-glasses taken note of my license plate? Had the police traced the number? Was I being hunted already, my name on the news? My hand went for the knob of the radio, but I decided not to turn it on. Not only because the baby was sleeping and I didn’t want the noise to wake her. I didn’t want to hear news about the baby’s disappearance. I didn’t want to hear the name I hadn’t named her. This would make the fact that I’d taken her real.

  When I was in school, a nun read us a story about a soldier on a train. I don’t remember who wrote it, but the narrative has stuck with me all of these years. The soldier has gotten leave to visit his sick wife and receives a telegram just before he boards. He knows it’s bad news, but he doesn’t open the envelope. He spends the trip talking people’s ears off about his wife—how beautiful she is, how kind, generous—all the while feeling the unopened telegram in his pocket, knowing as soon as he opens it, she’ll be gone. It was like that, for me, in that moment. I wanted to isolate myself from reports of what I had done, extending time, being outside of it, beyond the point where laws of our universe obtain, pretending for as long as I could that the small being on the seat beside me was mine.

  Without consciously deciding to do so, I drove the rest of the way home to Montclair. Where else could I go? I would figure out what to do, once I got there. I cruised past signs for the Oranges, then for Bloomfield. Sweat trickled down my neck. It was so hot in the car that my shirt stuck to my back. Beads had formed on the baby’s temples and upper lip, but she continued to sleep peacefully on the seat beside me. I reopened the windows, letting cool air rush in.

  The only time I took my hand away from the baby, besides opening the window, was driving up my own driveway, to press the button on the remote to open the garage. When the garage door went down behind us, shutting us off from the bright, exposing midafternoon light, it felt like we’d entered the safety of Ali Baba’s cave.

  I put my head down on the steering wheel and wept. I was physically spent, as if I had just run a marathon. I sat there, needing time to gather my strength, to figure out what I should do next. I cried quietly, not wanting to wake the baby, not wanting her to know my distress. Her little arms were a halo around her head.

  I struggled with whether or not to take her into the house. Taking her into the house seemed a crossing almost as momentous as taking her out of the store. Somehow, staying in the car with her seemed not as damning to me as taking her into the house. If I’d been caught with her in the car, I could say I had found her somewhere and was returning her, Just trying to do the right thing, Officer—but no. I couldn’t lie about not having taken her out of the store. Jasmine, Security would surely recognize me. I’d say I’d taken her out of the store for her own good—it was freezing in there and she’d been dangerously cold—and now I was on my way to bring her back. The lapse in time could be explained by . . . my lack of a sense of direction—I had just gotten lost. Anyone who knew me—coworkers, my ex-husband—would confirm that I had a terrible sense of direction. As long as I was in the car with the baby, I was still in transit, destination unknown, intentions improvable. But once I took her out of the car and brought her over the threshold, well, then my intentions would be undeniable.

  The car grew hot and airless. The baby woke up. There were beads of sweat on her upper lip. I bent toward her and she studied my face as if trying to place it. Then, she smiled in recognition. My chest flooded, as if a dam had been broken. Her smile turned to a grimace. Then came a stench. She began to cry and suddenly the complications of my dilemma faded away. I knew what to do next. It became very simple. The baby needed something. I needed to do something for her. And I acted on what would guide my actions for the rest of my life: giving her what she needed. What she needed now was a new diaper. What I should do next became clear. And that is the reality of taking care of a small child—there is so much they need from moment to moment, so many decisions to make on their behalf in the course of each day, that you rarely have time to stand back and consider the big picture, which is something I succeeded in ignoring for years.

  I got out of the car and went around to her side of it. I opened the door and unstrapped her from the seat. I took her into my arms and walked, without doubt or question, through the passageway that led from the garage to the kitchen door. But as I stepped from cement to linoleum, a queasiness came over me. My feet were acting out a decision the rest of me hadn’t agreed to yet.

  11

  marilyn

  Store security called the police and I called Tom and a storm of blue uniforms made re
al what was impossible—my baby had been kidnapped.

  They took me to a room in the back of the store. A door opened and the store stopped being shiny aisles of colorful merchandise and turned into grim, gray surrounds. The room was airless. There were no windows. I felt as if I were unable to breathe. A detective asked questions: When did I realize my baby was missing? When had I last seen her? Had I ever lost her before? My mind was already crowding with horrible visions. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be tortured by thoughts of what is happening to your child as you are being grilled as if you are a criminal, while whoever took her is being allowed to get farther and farther away.

  I know now that questioning a lost child’s parents as if they are the kidnappers is standard procedure, but I didn’t know it then and it was agony to be made to account for every minute of my day to an angry-looking detective who’d sat me in a room separated from Tom, who was being asked the same questions, to see if our answers matched. At a certain point, I stopped talking, stopped being able to understand what was being asked of me. Voices went too soft to hear, then came at me deafeningly loud. I had to focus on lips to get the meaning of words.

  They dusted the rubber duck—the last thing I gave my baby—for prints. A man in a white coat, wearing plastic gloves, pushed long Q-tips into our mouths and swabbed saliva off the duck, to match DNA with the samples they got from the Q-tips, to confirm that Tom and I were her parents. They said most abductions involve a biological parent, and this about sent me over the edge, because even in my agitated state, I knew they were referring to abductions that happen when parents have separated and Tom and I were still together, which should have been obvious to them.

  Then the press showed up. So many people with notepads and mics wanting to talk to us. We were told it was best to give an exclusive, that would get us the most airtime for our plea. We chose Connie Chung because our lawyer said that CBS had the biggest audience. We wanted to spread the word as fast as we could. This was before social media, before AMBER Alerts. We were told that most abducted children who come home are returned to their parents within twenty-four hours. The alternative was unthinkable.

  How I regretted not having a better photo of Natalie. Babies change fast. The picture we had of her at two months looked nothing like how she looked at four months. But this was before digital. People didn’t snap away at their babies like they do today. I’d made appointments at Olan Mills Studios, but had canceled them because things always came up at work. I could have sent her with Charu, but I wanted to bring her to the studio myself. I didn’t want my sitter to do it. We had plenty of time for a session, I thought. The Christmas-card deadline was still weeks away.

  That TV appearance! I’ll never forget the horror of it. Lights shining on us bright as kliegs as we sat there trying to look like good parents, not crazy, having to plead for mercy from the monster who took our baby, hoping the monster was watching Connie Chung.

  12

  lucy

  It felt as if I were walking into someone else’s house, so different did it seem with a baby inside it. The air was strangely charged. The light in the kitchen seemed brighter, sharper. Objects I saw every day acquired new luster, new clarity. The toaster gleamed, vivid in its dark corner. Pastel Fiestaware deepened to the colors of rainbows. Little painted teapots danced on the walls. The house was no different, yet everything had changed. It felt both larger and smaller, shape-shifting around the baby’s presence, her small weight on my shoulder somehow expanded to fill up the space. The narrow corridor widened as I brought her to the nursery. Its windows were street-facing, and once there, I pulled the blinds shut. Not because I was afraid some neighbor might drop by unexpectedly. I barely knew who my neighbors were; I spent most of my waking hours at work in Manhattan. I took the precaution because I didn’t want to risk the chance that anyone—landscaper, postman, salesman—might peep in and see me walking around, suddenly endowed with a baby.

  Gently, carefully, I took her from my shoulder and laid her down on the changing table. She looked around, taking in the mobiles, the stars on the ceiling, the ducks on the wall, the sconces, which were in the shape of sheep, smiling as if in appreciation of the decorating efforts I’d made on her behalf. For years, I’d imagined a baby in that outfitted room. In my mind, she had long been a presence there. But now I realized that tending to a baby was different from imagining one. How vulnerable, how trusting she was in my care, and how little I knew about taking care of her. Changing a diaper, which I’d done only a few times as a sitter, now loomed as a terrifying prospect. What formidable responsibility. My ignorance could cause her injury, perhaps even death! What if I made the diaper too tight, cutting off her blood supply? What if I missed a spot with the cream and she got infected? How much more was at stake when the baby was yours. Holding her with one hand to keep her from rolling off the table, with the other I tore into the package of disposable diapers on the shelf below. In my nervousness, I dropped the first diaper. How far from my reach it looked on the floor. Rather than bend down, which would require removing my steadying hand from the baby, I retrieved another from the package. I saw that the diaper was too small for her. For babies up to ten pounds, said the packaging. I unsnapped the crotch of her sunsuit, which was now stained brown from the seepage, unpeeled the sticky tabs of tape at the sides of her diaper and marveled that such a tiny, sweet-looking body could have produced such a mess. But I didn’t find the foulness offensive, which was strange because I didn’t have a strong stomach for that kind of thing. I hadn’t been able to deal with my mother’s incontinence at the end. My sister had rolled her eyes at my squeamishness. But she was a nurse.

  “What the heck did your mother feed you?” I wondered. Saying “your mother” made me flinch, but she didn’t notice. She seemed intent on grabbing a cloth star from the mobile I’d hung above the table. It played “It’s a Small World.” The song made her smile. I rewound it and she pumped her tiny fists to the music as a colorful galaxy twirled above her head.

  I was afraid the wipes had gone dry, but when I broke the seal on the plastic, I was glad to feel that the cloths, though years old, were still soft and wet. She smiled as I cleaned her, gurgling a little, kicking free, glad to feel the fresh air. I checked the old diaper, expecting it to be marked with a size, but all that was on it were decorative animal prints. Not even the name of the company that made it! I rolled it up and slid it and its contents into a step-on metal can and reached to a shelf where I’d stacked some cloth diapers. Once, in a focus group for Pampers, I’d heard that cloth diapers were the better, more comfortable option. But how to turn a cloth rectangle into a diaper? I reached for a book. The answer was on—I’ll never forget—page 137 of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, the trusted bible by which my mother had raised Cheryl and me. Well, not her edition. That had gone to my sister when she’d had her first baby.

  Folding a diaper looked easy in the simple line drawings explaining the process. But I had to lay the baby down on the braided rug while I practiced folding and folding the cloth into shapes that seemed as complicated as origami. No wonder disposable diapers had taken over the market. Lying on her back, she gurgled with happiness at her half nakedness—or perhaps it was amusement at my dilemma. I turned her onto her tummy so I could arrange the cloth over her, according to drawings. She extended her arms and legs and arched her back and I stopped folding and watched her, her perfect, plump, splendid body, seemingly preparing for flight. Even then, I thought her a magnificent creature, capable of anything.

  In the end, I couldn’t stick pins near her. I opened the plastic duck ends of the diaper pins, but was alarmed by how big the needle exposed was. How could I be sure it wouldn’t break free and lacerate her? I resorted to wrapping the diaper with packing tape. Heavy-duty, clear, dependable tape with no sharp edges or potential to maim. The baby looked like a precious package prepared for shipment by a sender who’d never shipped a package before. Which, in a way, she was. It was the devil
to get the diaper off a few hours later. I used a sewing scissors, the one from my grandmother, the sharpest scissors I owned. I warmed the blades first in hot water from the bathroom faucet so the steel wouldn’t feel cold against her skin, then pushed the blades forward, millimeter by slow millimeter, until the diaper fell open and the baby kicked happily free again.

  To know what to feed her, I had to find out how old she was. According to Spock, age could be determined by a baby’s weight and whether or not she had teeth. I took her to a scale to weigh her. I didn’t have a baby scale, so, holding her, I stood on my bath scale and subtracted my weight. She was just under fifteen pounds. Holding her on my hip, I washed my hand in the sink, then gently probed her gums for protrusions. There was a tiny bump in her upper gum and my forefinger slid smoothly, up and down, as I felt for others. There weren’t any others. She drooled and sucked at my finger until I removed it from her mouth. I studied the chart. She was four or five months old, I discovered. No wonder the wicker-pushing woman in the store had been so surprised! There were Similac cans that I’d long kept stacked behind boxes of pasta in the pantry. I checked the expiration dates. The cans were still good. I opened one, grateful for modern preservatives.

  The baby was happy in my care, and I began to wonder. If she’d come from a good home, wouldn’t she be crying to get back there? If she had a good mother, would she be blithely cooing in a strange room, gurgling at a new rattle? Perhaps the mother who dressed her in fine clothes also neglected her. After all, she’d abandoned her in a store!